The 777-300ER (not a jumbo jet) was on a VIP flight from Washington State to Hong Kong, with the chairman of the airline was on the flight. After take-off, the pilot did did a very low swoop, flying 28 feet over the Seattle runway. Local ATC knew what he was doing although he’d not filed paperwork for formal approval. He was greeted after landing in Hong Kong with cheers and champagne.

A man described by the Daily Mail as a senior pilot said:

Maiden flights are treated as a bit of a jolly for executives with lots of champagne flowing and these fly-bys used to be done for a wheeze in the old days.

Liem Bahneman was there and posted photographs on his photo site along with this description of the events:

Quite a hullaballo over at the Future of Flight museum for the delivery flight of Cathay Pacific B-KPF, as it was parked on their ramp and there was a large party on their deck.

The 777 rolled out and departed with a traditional wing-rock before disappearing in the low overcast.
[…]
I heard someone whistle and looked out and saw B-KPF in bound for a flyby. Got in position just in time to see it do its low pass. Very exciting, and it generated cheers from the crowd at the FoF.

You can see the photographs he took towards the bottom of the page, marked as Cathay Pacific B-KPF. That was it - there wasn’t a fuss - until a video of his photographs showed up on YouTube:

Wilkinson is planning an appeal - it will be interesting to see where it goes.

This is very cool. A 360 degree view of the A380 flight deck that allows you to swivel the camera around. I’ve only seen this sort of view of hotel rooms before - where it always struck me as a bit wasted. There’s the sofa, there’s the bed - the 360 view doesn’t really offer any more information than a normal snapshot. This is a much better use of it - I pitched around that cockpit until I started feeling seasick.

I’m kind of curious as to what that laptop looking thingie at the back is.

It’s disappointing. I had this great idea of flying to various little airfields and compiling a list of the best cakes in southern England. Enstone usually has slices of home-made carrot cake on the counter (next to a tin where you drop in your coins) and North Weald have a coffee shop with the cake-of-the-day out on the counter. I would discount any major restaurants or canteens and no pre-packaged goods. I wanted to go searching for all the real cakes made by little old ladies who live locally and post the list to compete with the American idea of the $100 burger. Just much more genteel: a cup of tea and a piece of homemade cake.

So here I am in England and the weather is amazing: clear blue skies, crisp horizon, chilly but not icy. Ben, who used to work as an instructor and now flies jets, is in the local area and has free time to go flying with me. Unfortunately the gyro on the plane has failed completely and although functionally the plane flies just fine, I really don’t fancy navigating by compass. It turns the wrong way and lags behind the plane, so it’s a rather bizarre feeling. I did it once as a part of my training (so that I could fly it in exactly this type of scenario) and the instructor and I both agreed it was not something anyone would want to do for fun.

Ah well, I’m supposed to be on a diet anyway.

This is a bit of an odd one - I need photographs of “not flying” to go with an article where I complain a lot about winter weather and being grounded.

I’ve put together a collection of photographs of rain, cloud and fog:

Help me out by telling me which ones you like best. If you click through on the mosaic, you will find links to the full size versions.

I was just pondering whether I had anything to write about when I got a research question as a comment - how exciting!

Sex Scenes at Starbucks is a speculative fiction writer living in Colorado. She is working on a novel which includes a scene with a jet flying out of Cambridge. She asked me if I’d ever flown in there and what size jet could land there.

As it happens, I flew into Cambridge for the first time last November (in fact, my last flying trip - uh oh, I better watch those take-offs and landings again). Cambridge City Airport is only a few miles from the University, where I was invited for dinner. Cambridge Airport is a regional airport geared towards executive travel. They see a fair number of jets and they also have two flying schools.

Cambridge runway is 1,965 metres long, long enough for a Boeing 737 or 757 or an Airbus 320/321 under normal circumstances. They have customs and immigration services so it would make a logical exit point from the EC. They also offer a “VIP Catering and Floral Service” which I thought sounded intriguing. Marshall Executive Aviation have a Cessna Citation Bravo available for “corporate travel” which is based there. Their website includes brief descriptions of the planes, including “18 passenger jets with a trans-Atlantic range” which might be useful for your research.

There used to be regular scheduled flights from Cambridge to, among other places, Amsterdam. Suckling Airways (I’m not making this up) was a husband and wife company which operated for many years from Cambridge using 18-seat Dornier aircraft. When advertising for an air-hostess, they specified a maximum height permitted of 5′2″ (158cm) so that she could stand up in the aisle.

So there you go: more than you ever wanted to know about Cambridge Airport - but maybe it’ll inspire you ;)