The BBC has decided that it needs to explain to its readers/listeners exactly why fog shuts down airports.
No, really.
I swear.
Dense fog has brought misery to thousands of travellers after causing major disruption to flights in the run-up to Christmas.
But why do such weather conditions result in chaos at airports such as Heathrow?
Flying an airliner is widely seen as a hi-tech affair, involving aircraft that are bristling with navigational and safety devices to assist the pilots.
So how can weather conditions such as the fog that has descended over much of the country over the past few days bring so much chaos to airports?
The root of the answer, says David Learmount of Flight International magazine, is that pilots still rely a surprising amount on a very simple piece of technology – their eyes.
Wow. Whatever would Britons do without the BBC to tell them that pilots need their eyes to fly planes? And that fog, what with its tendency to make things difficult to see, would affect the ability of pilots to fly planes?
Good for you, BBC! Way to infantilize your subjects. I mean, audience.
I hate to stick up for the BBC…but in Europe, autoland systems–in which the autopilot brings the airplane all the way down to the runway–are used more commonly than they are in the US. So it’s possible that BBC readers might expect the total operation to be more automated that it in fact is….
Iain Macleod, Conservative Party politician many years ago referred to Britain as the nanny state.
No doubt progressive PC socialism has resulted in the dumbing down of the proletariat to such a degree that they have no idea of that apart from flights of fancy the eyes do have a role to play.
David, you’re harshing my mellow, dude.
Actually the BBC is completely wrong. Every plane landing at Heathrow is capable of a fully automatic landing. In fact, the automatic landings are usually softer than the ones involving pilot ego. They’re just really really dull after you’ve sat doing nothing for 8 hours. The eyes are needed but around Heathrow, they’re not fast enough to rely on when closing speeds exceed 1000 MPH (two planes flying toward each other).
No, the reason that Heathrow is shut down is because of capacity. Heathrow runs from 5am to 12pm approx with a gap of around 90s between landing aircraft and the same for departing aircraft. I’ve worked in offices with a view of the runways and timed planes during really boring meetings.
With the fog, air traffic control doubled that gap. Heathrow only has two runways, one arriving, one departing and so there is no scope to up capacity. Every slot is full and so if you halve the slots you have to cancel flights and the easiest to loose are BA domestic. The fact that 3 days before Christmas the trains are packed is just unfortunate.
I love Heathrow: its very convenient for me. I’m 30 mins from a flight to pretty much anywhere in the world, but this country is stuck with an inability to plan and a whole load of people who will gladly take cheap flights, but don’t want the airports or flights to give this to them. Some of the other airports around London would take me longer to drive to than if I had to take a train to Paris.
It’s just typical of the BBC to not be able to work out a story like this. They’re so busy screaming about global warming and the evil of air travel and why we mustn’t build runways that they won’t let this interfere with their right to deceive us. David Learmount of Flight International magazine knew the problem, the BBC just didn’t ask him for that.