Last but Not the Least

Killing time? But stop

Stop killing,

stop time.

Can you stop time?

The moments fly too fast for that

But you can

 

Try.

Impede the perpetual flow

that takes you down the ages.

Take the path

less used

and you do not know

where you are headed.

 

Uncertainty,

The less you know

darker it gets.

You draw up a chimera

hope for it to come true.

But will it?

Uncertainty

you hope that it will.

 

Maybe dreams are meant

to be that way,

mere glimpses into

another world

uncertain, uninhabited.

Or you hope

you hope

you try and believe in

dreams turning true;

maybe they do

 

You keep glancing sideways

looking for encouraging signs

that do not exist.

Never stopping

to find any escape route

never finding

continue moving

forward always hoping.

 

Though things look bleak

you march on

and on

and further yet,

till you last

last but not the least.

It is true.

-BrokenArrow

Report Card

 
 

With the DGCA having just published the airline performance data for Jan'09 the feeling is hardly of elation. It is much like a school boy who has not performed well, but could've done worse! The performance of an airline is basically measured in terms of its load factor which is simply the percentage of seats booked on all their flights. Here's a summary of the load factors. As always, the statistic speaks for itself.

 

Airlines	Load Factor
Air India	22.60%
	66.00%	International
Air India Express	33.90%
	74.90%	International
Alliance	54.50%
GoAir	63.80%
Indian Airlines	60.40%
Jet Airways	64.70%
	74.90%	International
JetLite	67.50%
	72.60%	International
Kingfisher	64.20%
	71.00%	International
Paramount	83.10%
SpiceJet	68.30%
Total:	64.20%
	70.40%	International

 

 

As is evident the load factor continues to be less than 65% which is making flying unsustainable for most airlines. The possible solutions for this would be reducing capacity.

Separation - is a good thing.

In so far as human relationships are concerned, separation is something that is dreaded. It has the ability to bring ill-health. In aviation, not so.

Maintain separation, and you'll do just fine. Take for instance the Chakri-Dadri disaster. Two planes hugging each other midair - catastrophe. One of the worst disasters in aviation history. The cause and effect ladder coming into play behind it is a whole different story altogether. What I wish to underline here is the fact that for the "health" of the aircraft and their occupants, you've got to maintain separation between them!

After that incident, the DGCA (Director General of Civil Aviation) made it mandatory for aircraft to carry on board ACAS/TCAS (Airborne/Traffic Collision Avoidance System) equipment. Making India only one of the few countries back then to have this rule in place. 

The system works on the simple principle that if two aircraft were to collide they'd have to be at or about the same altitude AND be approaching each other. So how does it work? A transponder in each of the aircraft transmits its altitude, whenever it receives a Mode C interrogation. This, identifies the aircraft as well as makes it visible as a dot on the RADAR display at the control center. This information is also utilized by other aircraft in the vicinity, to calculate if they're on a collision course. If that is the case, it triggers an alarm. A few binary information is exchanged between the aircraft where the Collision Avoidance Computer calculates a best possible path to evade the conflict.

There's more to it..... but guess I should catch some sleep. Intricate details, I'll discuss later! Thanks for reading.

Every dark cloud, has a silver lining

Is it not amazing, the number of times a stark discovery has been made out of something trivial (the falling apple!). Or the number of times a great invention has just been an accident?

But how many times have you seen a completly avoidable tragedy being the impetus for the implementation of an existing technology, that could've avoided the tragedy in the first place, to prevent it from recurring?

This article alludes to the introduction of the GPS system into the field of civil usage. The Global Positioning System, GPS for short, is a system comprising of satellites that can precisely locate a given 'receiver' on the surface of the earth (or airborne). Before the incident of the Korean Airlines Flight 007 incident, the GPS had been an exclusive property of the US Department of Defence, not intended to be used by the public in general.

The KA flight 007 from New York, after a stopover at Anchorage, was headed  to Seoul, South Korea. The prepared flight plan took the aircraft over international waters. But, due to the aircraft losing its heading and the pilots not recognising the deviation from the flight plan, the plane ventured quite some way into Russian airspace without the necessary clearance. The ill-fated flight was, not long after, shot down by Russian fighter jets.

So, the next time you use GPS to navigate your car, you know to whom you owe the availibility of the technology - the 269 lives that were on board.

The silver lining? The world can now use GPS, and is a safer place from that standpoint.

The glass is half empty.... or is it?

With innumerable books and webpages devoted to the type of attitude one should develop, the title shouldn't be unfamiliar to most. After all most of us know how important it is to see that the glass is half-full rather than seeing it as half empty. Now let me just take it a step further.

Consider a pessimist, not a hardcore, but somebody who just likes to sulk at stuff and see's things through a negetive perspective. He would consider the glass to be half empty. And on the other hand an optimist, or somebody who likes a bit more cheer in his life, would perceive the glass to be half-full wouldn't he? That is at least what most people would say. So even with the different ways to view a given predicament, the only difference one makes is to his state of happiness. Where a pessimist would always feel low about his shortcomings, the happy guy would be happy that his is not a completely empty glass.

Following the same chain of thought, which do you think is better. I'm sure you'd go with the pessimist, for who'd like a sad and depressed guy around? Just let me know if you differ in your opinion!

But hang on, what if the happy-go-lucky guy stays blissfully ignorant of his incomplete life? And, on the other hand, we have the whining pessimist working towards fulfilling his capacity. Who would you side with now? The satisfied-static "optimist" or the "diligently-dynamic" pessimist? I leave it for you to decide.......

In conclusion, I'd say that seeing the glass as half-full or half-empty is not as important. Of prime importance is what you do about it.

The Nokia Touch.....

I doubt that I have enough readers that might have noticed the absence of posts for the last couple of days. Well, I owe it to Nokia.

Th Nokia 5800 Xpress Music is a "first" from the Finnish major in that it is the first touch-screen phone to be launched by it. It is at loggerheads with Apple's I-Phone. Which is better is worth another post on its own, so I won't do it here. The 5800 is a great phone no doubt, but with hardly a month since I bought it, it is too new to be developing any kind of problems, which it is. I, for Nokia's sake, hope that this is just a one-off case and not a problem with the 5800 in general. That would be a disaster, not only for the 5800 but for the N-96/97 dunno which one exactly that they have lined up to be the successor.

Now, the problem may have arisen due to the fact that over the last few days I had used the phone to connect to the internet for 8+ hours. That's just exploitation, but isn't a device as expensive as that supposed to handle that kind of a work load? It is a problem with the display, which flickers when you make or receive a call or when you 'unlock' the screen/touch pad.

Its over to you guys at Nokia-Care, to which I'll have to schedule a visit pretty soon.

Murphy's Law!

Last year, a brand new Airbus A340-600 was parked at the Airbus assembly plant ready to be handed over to Etihad. I had just undergone its test flights successfully, when the engineers (either Airbus or Etihad, don't know which) started their tests.

To check the performance of the engines, all the four engines, with the parking brakes applied, are taken to take off power, on a virtually empty aircraft. The flight computer raises an alarm, since the aircraft hasn't been configured (with respect to slats/flaps etc) for take off although the engines are at take off setting.

To silence the nagging alarm, on of the engineers pulls out the circuit breakers for the Ground Proximity Detector. This fools the flight management computer into thinking that the aircraft is airborne. And hence, it releases the brakes. This, in fact, is a safety feature incorporated to prevent the pilots from accidentally landing with the brakes applied. With the engines running at full power, and no brakes, it hardly takes the brand new airplane to transform into a heap of expensive junk.

Just another example of the Murphy's law: If anything can go wrong. It will.