At the beginning of 2007 I made a really useful list of things to practice when I’m, well, out of practice. And then I never looked it again. I’m once again going through a stretch of not-flying and somehow, this year, I’ve managed to feel particularly out of touch - as if every flight were a catch-up flight and I never got to a point of feeling in control.

So New Years Resolution Number 1 is to have a set time, once a month, where I do text-book studying, mental practicing and refresher reading. It may not seem like very much but it is more than I have been doing!

Resolution Number 2 is to redesign this blog. It needs shifting anyway as it is running on an old version of WordPress. I still like the idea of flying to all the islands but it really doesn’t seem realistic to do it in any sort of short-term time-frame, so I want to move the emphasis away from that. On the other hand, I quite liked writing about the places we’ve been (and from the stats, people do like seeing those posts) so I want to open it up a bit so the focus is split between flying and travelling rather than just flying.

Resolution Number 3 is to get caught up on posting my photography. I have a lot of photographs taken last year (and some taken the year before!) and I am simply going to inundate the Fear of Landing flickr account until I get them all uploaded. I’m not going to worry too much about sequence and timing although I will try to write a bit about the different places we’ve flown to.

Resolution Number 4 is to lose some weight so that I can do a new “pilot photograph” to replace the one I said was temporary until I lost weight - and have used for almost a year now.

Last year I resolved to post here once a week and I’d say I generally managed a post every ten days-ish, so I was close! Luckily, I didn’t put any other resolutions online so you can’t catch me out.

Happy New Year! I’m looking forward to the next one.

I’ve been meaning to post, I swear it! And I’ll make a specific New Year’s Resolution to do with this very website — it needs a redesign and a better focus. So expect to hear more from me in the new year.

And yes, Mom, I know I tell you that every year!

In the meantime, quite a cute holiday poem that I found on Jeremy Zawodny’s site:

‘Twas the flight before Christmas, and out on the ramp,
Not an airplane was stirring, not even a Champ.
The aircraft were fastened to their tiedowns with care,
In hopes that come morning, they all would be there.

Head over to his blog to see the whole thing. Merry Christmas!

As the plane begins its descent, you react to the pinging sound and put your seatbelt on, quickly finishing off your gin and tonic as the stewardess comes around to take your empty glass. An announcement comes through the speakers asking everyone to put their seatback upright and turn all electronic equipment off. You look out the window as the plane breaks through the cloud and see the Spice Girls holding out oversized plastic cups of Pepsi.

What, that doesn’t sound right? Just you wait, Ad-Air is on the case:

A unique advertising medium that targets airline passengers in their seats. Ad-Air reaches this highly desirable demographic and captive audience by placing advertisements of 20,000m2, approx 5 acres in size, flat on the ground alongside the flight paths in and out of the world’s busiest airports.

Recently I toyed with writing some futuristic fiction but you know, I couldn’t make stuff like this up. They’ve already done this with a 5 acre sign up in Dubai, winning the Guinness World Record for the largest banner ad in the world. Passengers, they tell us, are a captive audience, with nothing to do but stare out the window. Why not give them something to see?
This is the future, coming soon to an airport near you. Maybe it’ll increase the popularity of the smaller airfields? It sure gives me yet another reason to want to avoid commercial flights - what a way to ruin the landscape!

I didn’t do the flight to Blackpool this time so I got to take photographs. The sun was just starting to come down and we got gorgeous views of the coast and the tower and the Pleasure Beach. It is a bit odd to see a roller coaster on final approach. As we turned from base leg to final, I’m pretty sure I saw Cliff aim for it for a brief moment. :)