Royal Yacht

Jonathan,

Congratulations with the new post on the Embraer fleet. Nice. Where do you do your type rating ?

As for salaries, I know what you mean. Unless you occupy the left hand seat of a BA 747 you can struggle.

I flew to Calgary a few months back in an A330 with one of my students from 25 years ago. He is now a Training Captain with Thomas Cook so earns a decent salary and flies a variety of interesting routes. Big change from Dan Air where he started ! But I understand Thomas Cook are consolidating these days.

OTOH, my young nephew has been two and a half years  flying Super Pumas for Bond to the North Sea oil rigs. He gets c.£60k and is just turned 24. But he still has a long way to pay off his training loan. 

I hope it all works out well for you.

Cheers

Don

Don,

Thanks for the good wishes - I'm very excited about it having spent five years looking at the jets out of the window of the Q400 wishing I was flying one of those and almost 40 years looking skyward and dreaming of being up there at the controls in front of a contrail at FL350!!

The type rating comprises groundschool at Exeter for 3 weeks and then 2 weeks in the sim either at EXT or LGW - I know the Ext sim is Flybe's own but I think the LGW one is Oxford's. 

Interesting that your nephew is working out in the North Sea - superb experience and very challenging flying so I'd say he's worth every penny of his £60k even though that is a superb wage for somebody so young and so early in his career.  I had no idea helis paid so well.  A couple of our guys were thinking of going for the Antarctic survey which would be superb (as long as you don't have a family).

Re: Thomas Cook I was sad to see them talking of redundancies.  I really hope the charter co's like Monarch, Mytravel and Thomas Cook manage to succeed as in many ways they offer the best lifestyle of the lot and you can certainly enjoy a fine career there.  Sadly I think the likes of ryanair have been growing at their expense in recent years and the less I say about them on a public forum the better....

Anyway Don - what are you instructing on at the moment?  I'd be interested to hear.

Brg,

Jonathan

Charles can not be forced to be king and if he stands asides as I expect he will then the next in line is William. Saying Charles is entirely unfit for any kind of public office is clearly stupid furthermore I never suggested it and you can not show that I did. Charles has been in training for the job all his life and he'd be better at it than you. I met the man and I was greatly impressed by what he knew and the questions he asked. He is no fool. The queen could live another 10 years and Charles will already be old and William will be in his prime. I believe Charles got Camilla instead of the throne. Unless something goes drastically wrong William will be a very popular new king. Time will tell.  

Interesting perspective, and probably contains more than a hint of truth if the "Camilla won't be Queen" statements turn out to be true.

The boy will certainly be popular if he follows Granny's roll of senior sensible person in the room and to help steer the government the right direction with a dash of big picture smarts. He also made a blinding choice of wife, new genes in the pool and all that.

Growning up in Windsor will always skew your views on the Royal Family but rather them than some souless money grubber like Teflon Tony or George Dubyah in the head of state role.

Jono

Re Queen Camilla:  I understood the plan was for her to become "consort" 

As I said before King Charles will cause a huge fall off in the respect for the Royal family around the world.  William might be the better choice, but even so he will probably be one of the last before some form of move towards a republic.

Jonathan,

I passed the magic 65 some while back. So its basic instruction on PA28s, Warriers, Archers and Arrows with a Cougar for multi. Lots of IMC renewals at present in case the new EASA rules limit its future - and the Instructor courses and modular CPL courses are holding up well. Even the basic PPL market is steady, surprisingly. Since early November, evenings have been pretty busy with night qualifications.

All in all,, fairly busy, but only four days a week.

I still look forward to recreational flying around the Rockies in 172s, I'm off again on Monday.

Cheers

Don

Rich you might get President Boris though.

Don, you are still allowed to fly at your age? 

I agree Rich, but people need to be warned of the possible alternatives. 

'fraid so...........

Cheers

Don

Just wondered if anybody had any verifiable facts so as to replace the usual sentiment.

Cheers

Don

We're surely all of a mind here that the idea of inherited power is an anachronistic and ridiculous one?

But the UK royal family don't hold any real power any more. If any of them tried to exercise what power they do have, in purely constitutional terms, then that would be a different matter, but they don't and wouldn't. Such power could and would be withdrawn if, for example, Elizabeth went as bonkers as apparently Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands now is.

They continue to exist as part of history and tradition. Short of actually executing ALL of them, this would still continue to be the case even if we, in some way, 'disbanded' the institution of monarchy.

That Prince Charles' views get aired at all, irrespective of what one might think of them, is purely down to his fame or celebrity or whatever. He'd still have that, even if we prevented him in some way from being king (and no guarantee it mightn't be even more so). Personally I cannot see anything especially wrong with his fame being as a result of his bloodline, any more than the 'celebrity' of other famous people's progeny, or because of having won some dubious television competition or other. Or whatever.

To abandon the monarchy for reasons of anachronism would also mean, logically, abandoning many thousands of other things, positions, items, customs, expressions and all manner of historical hang-ons, from Beefeaters to Shakespeare's Globe, that serve no great purpose other than to remind us of, and perpetuate, tradition. A tradition which many other countries clearly envy, and some emulate.

If it could be shown, in absolute terms, that the monarchy costs the country more that it generates, then a very compelling argument for its abolition could be made. Possibly, as Don points out above, how much the monarchy saves versus the costs involved in regularly electing a figurehead instead. But no matter how republican you are, these are just not quantifiable things (certainly not until it would be "too late" anyway). And even if you did it, their views would still continue to be given publicity.

Royal Yacht if it makes sense economically, not if it doesn't (which is probably the case in this climate, although a £60million yacht might generate a lot of jobs. We used to be a great shipbuilding nation after all.)

Don,

Great to hear you're still doing real flying, I miss it in a world of automation and will get back to proper flying when finances permit.

Enjoy the rockies,

Brg,

J