Starting grids ... stall

link

- Starting grids are suspended indefinately
- 1 per cent of business-class passengers took up the chance of a Heathrow Express train ticket instead of a CDC
- 5 per cent of biofuel had been used instead of normal aircraft kerosene in a flight described as creating the first airline in the world to fly on renewable fuel.

[Pete]

I can understand that the landing gear problem is a valid reason to suspend trials of starting grids, but a bit disappointed that the AEF are calling it 'bogus green initiatives'. I can understand that of Greenpeace, who appear to be under the naive view that once all the fossil fuel is gone, demand will evaporate for air travel (yes, sad isn't it?), but the AEF seemed to have a sensible objective of encouraging activities which were green in nature. As Branson is one of the few that is doing anything, don't be surprised if the rest of the industry tell you were to get off if all you can do is bitch about the baby steps.

There. Glad I got that off my chest.

Starting grids at LHR were and are possibly the worst idea that Virgin has come up with. It was only ever going to be lip service for the media.
If only we could reserve a third of the runway holding areas for starting grids at the worlds most congested airport. I remember watching this on Sky News and thinking was Dicky really being serious? Has your chief pilot actually flown out of LHR in the past 20 years?

I agree with Yellow in that it did sound slightly pie in the sky mainly due to the lack of infrastructure and operational changes necessary to implement it.

Must be pretty lairy down at LHR today with all this weather!

I understood that biofuel was made from stuff grown on land that once had trees on it in the amazon, that would seem more a sideways step than a step in the right direction to me.

Don't get me wrong I personally am not convinced about man made global warming nor if it is happening believe it would be stoppable, but doing stuff thats just different but isn't going to make a blind bit of diference is stupid, especially using a fuel that is going to damage the environment in another way. Cutting down the forests kills living things right now that would normally have a home. Seems its ok to obliterate wildlife for the sake of a theory that might affect us.

Originally posted by easygoingeezer
I understood that biofuel was made from stuff grown on land that once had trees on it in the amazon, that would seem more a sideways step than a step in the right direction to me.

Don't get me wrong I personally am not convinced about man made global warming nor if it is happening believe it would be stoppable, but doing stuff thats just different but isn't going to make a blind bit of diference is stupid, especially using a fuel that is going to damage the environment in another way. Cutting down the forests kills living things right now that would normally have a home. Seems its ok to obliterate wildlife for the sake of a theory that might affect us.

Quite right. Biofuels not only pollute more sometimes because of the processes to obtain it but they also can divert land that would otherwise be used for food.

I think the starting grid idea was actually a real good idea, putting aside the logistics at an airport such as LHR. It would have saved a lot, but it's a shame that it's not structurally possible with the aircraft (though wouldn't that mean current methods of towing aircraft during push-back are bad as well?).

VS-EWR, the design is for a given amount of pushing/pulling motion & turning forces during normal pushback operation. As you can imagine pushing/pulling/stopping a fully laden B744 puts a lot of stress on the nose gear, this can easily be multiplied by 10 when you take into account towing the aircraft to the start grid. A comparison of the carbon output of that big diesel engined pushback tug (with no particle filters!!)with 4 modern turbine engines would be interesting!!