Category: Aviation

Comment

Custom and practice are as important as the rules and regulations that are part of our lives. Now and then, someone is criticized for applying the letter of the law without care for the spirit of the law. The same is true for custom and practice. Whereby, acting outside past norms can trigger a backlash.

Because, in free countries we believe in a free press, the rules and regulations that imping on what should and should not be said about events are always hard fought over. The banner of the “public interest” is touted as overriding. It may or may not be, but there’s an argument to be had.

In the aviation safety profession, I’ve grown up with an instinctively “need to know” disposition. I’ve shaken it off, mostly but there are signs that the attitude persists. This instinct can run counter to the transparency and openness that most people expect to see.

Why talk about the way major events are talked about?

A case in point is the recent runway collision in Tokyo. There’s much already written about the newsworthy aspects of the event, so I’ll desist from adding much more. There’s a lot of speculation too.

Graphs can be drawn of the media attention given to such tragic events against time. It’s typical that from moments after a major aviation accident until a few days after most initial facts are known there’s a huge surge in activity. This used to be described as newspaper column inches.

Today, wide ranging speculation is inevitable. It can be highly literate, and, on the other side of the coin, it can be badly informed, and now and then damaging.

In over three decades, I’ve been dealing with aviation accidents and incidents there has been notable changes in media and communications. For one, the universality of the INTERNET is now unquestionable. For another, the deference offered to authorities has diminished markedly. For yet another, the speed of with which images can travel around the globe is astonishing.

Most aviation professionals are tempered by caution. Aware of the techical complexities that can arise in aviation accident scenarios. What can seem in the heat of the moment to be an obvious cause and effect, after detailed analysis turns out to be wrong, or only a partial picture.

So, should aviation professionals be scathing about the enormous growth in commentary and public speculation? Especially when some of it is wild and or even outrageous on social media. No. I don’t think so. Like it or not this is our digital world. The freedom it affords to throw-up any opinion or theory can only be tempered a bit. The hope is always that the pure dross fades away when a reputable authority challenges it.

That then puts a responsibility on someone, with professional knowledge to challenge ill-founded speculation. Or, at least, to ensure that the major media outlets have reliable sources of trustworthy information. I don’t think aviation professionals should remain silent concerning speculation. That may have been the strategy decades ago. It no longer works. The greatest degree of transparency and openness, based on verifiable facts, should be the aim.

Comment?

Next Decade Aviation

Here, I thought I’d speculate on what’s coming our way. That’s looking at the next ten-years.

Although this maybe contradictory to my earlier writings the subject is by no means all or nothing. Aviation is a technology-based means of mobility. Without the technology component there is no flight. Aviation a youthful industry when compared with ships, roads, and rail.

On the other hand, people are at the heart of the aviation system. That’s particularly true in assuring its stability, safety, and security. People create, innovate and fix systems when they fail. People make go-no go decisions. People protect systems from attack.

Commercial aviation maybe a youthful industry but it has an inbuilt conservatism. It’s the characteristic of not wishing to change when systems are working well. This has both and upside and downside.

A maturity of rules, regulations, processes, and procedures comes about by continuous improvement. By people learning. However, it’s often the case that industry does not reflect the society that it serves. People are excluded or walk away when expectations are dashed.

Across the globe, the future of the aviation workforce depends upon change. There again is a rub. People operating in a successful system rarely welcome change. Especially, if the drivers for that change come from outside the tight knit community of aviation professionals.

The first decades of the jet-age were characterised by a sense of adventure, glamour, and pride. As commercial aviation became available to a wider traveling public there was a gradual opening to professional entrants from most sections of society, even if that was predominantly male.

Now, big company traditional career paths are more an exception rather than the norm. Aviation competes with other industries at a time of rapid digital transformation. This has the impact of opening a wide range of options to potential professional entrants. In the coming decade the trend is going to advance.

A successful aviation industry organisation looks for skills and behaviours as much as it looks for raw technical talent. Assuring stability, safety, and security means having a responsible attitude, an instinct to challenge and question.

Today in the post-pandemic world, the industry is going through a period some people have called the “great resignation”. A generation have walked away from the pressure and stresses of the crisis. Industry behaviour, in a rush to cut costs, exasperated this by treating people exceptionally poorly.

For a sustainable future, commercial aviation needs to work to eliminate the hire and fire cycle. The global aviation industry needs to think and act differently. Aviation needs to get off the trap of the “similar-to-me” effect found in hiring. When a selection bias dominates potential professional entrants are put off. Talented young people are likely to choose meritocratic employment where rewards are there for achievement and commitment regardless of non-relevant factors.

Some work will be replaced by automation. However, retaining aviation people with people skills, regardless of background, will be invaluable in the next decade.

Two upfront

One of the fundamentals that remains a part of civil aviation is having two pilots in the cockpit. It’s an indication of the safety related activities of the crew of a civil aircraft. Today, we have a mixture of human control and management. Pilots still fly hands-on when the need arises. The expectation is that throughout their working lives pilots have the competence to do so, at any stage in a flight.

Progressively, since the establishment of aviation’s international order in the 1940s the required crewing of aircraft has changed. Back in September, I visited the de Havilland Aircraft Museum in Hertfordshire. There I walked through the fuselage of a de Havilland DH106 Comet[1]. This was the first turbojet-powered airliner to go into service and it changed the experience of flying forever and a day.

That passenger aircraft, like aircraft of the time, had four crew stations in the cockpit. Two pilots, a navigator and flight engineer. It was the era when electronics consisted of valves in large radio sets and such long since forgotten devices as magnetic amplifiers. The story from the 1940s of IBM saying, “I think there is a world market for maybe five computers” is often repeated.

For modern airliners the navigator and flight engineer have gone. Their functions have not gone. It’s that having a crew member dedicated to the tasks they performed is no longer required. As the world of vacuum-tube electronics gave way to transistors and then to integrated circuits so computing got more powerful, cheaper, and abundant.

With a few significant failures along the way, commercial flying got safer and safer. The wave of change in a human lifetime has affected every mode of transport. More people travel to more places, more safely than ever could have been imagined 80-years ago. Does that mean the path ahead will take a similar shape? Excitable futurologists may paint a colourful picture based on this history.

Let’s get away from the attractive notion of straight lines on graph paper. That idea that progress is assumed to be linear. Tomorrow will be progressively “better” by an incremental advance. That’s not happening now. What we have is differential advances. Some big and some small. 

The aviation safety curve is almost flat. The air traffic curve, with a big hole made by COVID, is climbing again. The technology curve is rapidly accelerating. The environmental impact curve is troubling. The air passenger experience curve may even be at a turning point.

Touchscreen tablets already help flight preparation and management[2]. Flight plan changes can be uploaded and changed with a button press[3]. The squeezing of massive computing power into small spaces is being taken for granted. What does this leave a crew to do?

Back to the start. Two pilots in the cockpit, with executive responsibilities, remains the model that maintains public confidence in civil aviation. The golden rules still apply. Fly, navigate and communicate in that order. Crews, however much technology surrounds them, still need to act when things do not go as expected. Does this mean two cockpit crew forever? I don’t know.

[1] https://www.dehavillandmuseum.co.uk/aircraft/de-havilland-dh106-comet-1a/

[2] https://aircraft.airbus.com/en/newsroom/news/2021-02-electronic-flight-bag-the-new-standard

[3] https://simpleflying.com/datalink-communications-aviation-guide/

Flight Ahead

Although, I’m an advocate of having people in control of machines it isn’t people that are opening new opportunities in transport. Technology is racing ahead and making the past illustrations of popular science magazines become a reality. I can do without the hype in the headlines of flying cars. Building expectations of one in every garage remains a 1950s dream or nightmare, dependent upon your point of view. Aside from that hot air viable new electric vehicles are in the works.

Heavier-than-air machine that do more than buzz around our heads are going to proliferate. The inevitability of this is open to question but if I was to assign a probability to it, the number would be close to one. If we stretch our minds back to an unobserved small corner of the planet in late 1903, a couple of diligent brothers flew a machine that hopped a short distance into the air under its own power. Many newspapers of the time didn’t bother to print this breakthrough story because wise and eminent scientists had told them that it was impossible for people to fly.

It’s clear, getting into the prediction business should be done with humility.

We have a dilemma. It’s so rare of us to turn away from advancing technology when we know it can be made. It’s even more irresistible when the economics scream out buy me. So, a ticket to ride in the realm of Urban Air Mobility (UAM) will need to be no more than a typical taxi ride. Given that a taxi ride from my home to Gatwick Airport is about £20 then that’s the mark to hit. True that short journey may not be commonplace by air at that price until around 2033, a decade away, but it will be irresistible when it comes.

This chapter in air transport, that is being written is as significant as that in late 1903. I know that’s a mega statement, but the signs do point that way.

Eventually, UAM will become a network of piloted and autonomous electric air vehicles operating between cities and major destinations like airports.

Now, a couple of solvable challenges stand in the way. One is the endurance and portability of the energy storage devices. The other is complexity and mastering the science and art of functional safety. There’s plenty of confident hyperbole to suggest that these two are short-term barriers to progress. I say they are not.

Weight is one of aviation’s biggest enemies particularly on small vehicles. Batteries are expensive, heavy and require tailored control. Autonomy or the semi autonomy, needed to make the economics click is challenging systems engineering orthodoxy. Both tasks require the meticulous diligence of the Wright brothers to get past. No fanfare or flashy investor can push them aside.

Making the absolute most of energy storage technology is essential. Finding the optimal configuration of batteries, transmission and control electrics means iteration and the tolerance of a good handful of failures. The engineering of what’s becoming a system of systems, with the complexity of vehicles and the complexity of traffic management, interacting at great speed demands extensive analysis and testing.

These tasks can be accomplished. Rushing them would be foolish. That’s difficult to resist when everyone wants to be first.

Looking back

Yesterday, was a day for reflection. Sue and I attended the celebration of the life a former colleague and a friend who passed away recently.

Mostly, I was reflecting on the events of the 1990s. To me, that’s not so long ago. To the calendar that’s 30-years ago. Not an original thought but it was a moment when I was reminded that time passes remarkably quickly. Those years have raced by. In that time the country’s fortunes has gone backwards as much as forwards.

Baroness Thomas of Walliswood, to me Susan Thomas, was a Surrey County Councillor at the time that I also held that position in Reigate. I had one term of office from May 1993 to May 1997. Those years were special, and I don’t mean just to me. For one, the County Council was No Overall Control (NOC)[1] for the first, and only time in its history. During that 4-year period there was two Conservative budgets and two Liberal Democrat budgets. Susan was Chair of the full Council during the Liberal Democrat led period.

Susan was a parliamentary candidate in Mole Valley in the 1983 and 1987 General Elections. That’s when one of Thatcher’s Ministers Kenneth Baker held the seat for the Conservatives. A decade before I had my first outing as a parliamentary candidate in Surrey.

In the years up to 1997, the Liberal Democrats underwent a period of growth under the leadership of Paddy Ashdown. It was a time when change was happening. There was a strong wish to sweep away the stale remains of Thatcher’s legacy.

Lots of memories flooded back of sitting in meeting rooms in Kingston-on-Thames playing my part as a junior councillor. Although, that was before the executive system created a gulf between local government councillors. There may have been a mixture of long-standing and new members but each had an equal voice when it came to voting.

I sat in meetings were Susan put her experience to good use. As a large political group of 29 members it wasn’t a given that we would all go in the same direction. As has often been said, getting agreement could be like herding cats.

Susan was a strong supporter of our role in Europe. On that subject we agreed without question.

After the ceremony at the crematorium in Chichester there was a gathering at a pavilion in a park in the city. It was an opportunity to chat about those decades’ past reflections. One or two local campaign leaflets from the were displayed on a table with photos from the 1980s and 90s. This was before the internet dominated every aspect of campaigning. Simple printed paper with a message was the main way people with something to say said it. Party style and branding has moved on but the method remains.

A conversation with a lad who wasn’t born at the time that I’m recalling brought me back to 2023. Over sandwiches and nibbles we both discovered an affection for the city of Bristol. The city where Sue and I first met. It was good to hear that down the generations our political concerns of the moment were not so different. We agreed that change was in the wind and about time too.

There’s hope that the next generation that ventures into political activism will be driven by the same liberal instincts that united Susan and me. Just as in the years running up to 1997, the sense that change is on the way is growing. The failures of a long list of Conservative Prime Ministers, Brexit and the current air of sleeze can not be glossed over and forgotten. Change is on the way. Let’s hope that proves to be true.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surrey_County_Council

Overhead

Massive intertwining skyscrapers. Towering masts. Flying cars. Pulp magazines in the 50s and 60s had it all. Beautifully illustrated in bold colours. Sharp lines and chiselled faces. Heroic poses and streamlined transports.

Visions of the future. Idealistic imaginations of a utopian society. Don’t we just love them. That is until someone builds them in our neighbourhood. Until the bulldozers turn-up unannounced on a Sunday morning to root out the trees. The birds flee the vicinity (except the pigeons).

You can blame the draftsmen of the past if you like. In our heads there’s a disconnect between the images on a set of drawings and what that might become in concrete and steel. Grand designs are but few. A great deal of the building and planning of the last 60-years can justly be called dreadful.

We have an outcry over brutalist architecture or a lament about a Victorian park that has been paved over. Has anyone ever walked through a public car park that inspired?

If you dream it, you can make it. Nice phrase but often stifled because current technology and thinking are way behind the curve. It could be said that this is one of the drivers that pushes technology forward. The realising of dreams but who’s?

Where does the flying car fit in all this fiction and near realism? New forms of air mobility are just about to start operating.

It’s a habit of our times to jump to an instant polarised opinion. Those open toed sandalled greenies will object. Those red necked, but reforming petrol heads will welcome. That sort of stuff makes nice headlines. It’s only a basis for the crudest dialogue. Anticipate conflict and then fuel it with prejudice. Please, let’s avoid that pointless waste of time.

My thoughts are that the potential of the greater use of airborne transport is a nuanced.

Electrification is a pathway to more environmentally sustainable ways of moving around. If this helps to reduce miles of fuming traffic jams that must be good. At its best, flying can get people from point to point without having follow roads set-down at the time of the horse and cart. Accepted that concrete may be poured to create a take-off and landing zone but compare that with road building and there is no comparison.

On the more concerning side, contrast that with cluttering the skies up with fast moving machines.

In HHGTTG there’s a tale about a shoe event horizon. When gloom causes people to look down and so then buy new shoes to cheer themselves up. So, the whole economy switches to shoe production and then collapses as a result. The association with salvation coming from looking-up is there in the wit of Douglas Adams. We look up to cheer up.

If looking up, as I do at home, to see high altitude vapour trails crisscrossing the sky, my thought is – I wonder where they are going? On the days when a light aircraft crosses the town, to or from our local airfield that doesn’t bother me. Even a noisy police helicopter keeping an eye on the traffic. That’s fine because they are solely there for our safety and security.

What will be the public reaction when we look up to see half a dozen new urban mobility vehicles buzzing past overhead? Perhaps we’ll accept new flying machines if it’s for a public service, an ambulance, fire services, police, or even newsgathering. Brightly coloured in emergency orange.

A public flying taxi service might raise a few eyebrows. A flashy private flying car, now that might be another matter altogether. There you are on a hot summer evening, in the garden, having a pleasant barbeque with friends and whiz a flying car swoops over the treetops. The passengers have their mobile phone out filming their trip. This is when fist will be raised skyward. It’s a time when you hope the next-door farmer hasn’t got a shotgun.

Today, a few pilots do get prosecuted for misbehaving when low flying private helicopters. Not often, it’s true. This happens with less than 1500 helicopters registered in the UK. What would happen with, say, 10,000 private flying cars? I wonder.

Scary 2

My list is still open for horror in aviation. I’ve opened the door to action movies with elements of horror. I’m excluding war movies and fighter pilot romps. A dramatic scene must have a moment of suspense when everything hangs on a thread. It could be a hide behind the sofa moment or felling that all is lost, and the faint light of hope is dimming. I was tempted to include zombie movies only to quickly come to my senses and say – no. I’ve avoided Snakes on a Plane. One, because I haven’t seen it. Two, because it’s write-ups suggest that it’s too ridiculous for words. Although, it’s not impossible. It’s even happened on general aviation flights.

Here’s five more movies, ancient and modern in my private list.

There’s an adaptation of the book No Highway. With actors James Stewart and Marlene Dietrich in the movie you would have thought it would have been a big smash. No Highway in the Sky is pedestrian, but the tension comes from us knowing that metal fatigue is real. Why don’t they believe it? We know the history of the first commercial jet, the Comet aircraft.

The original Flight of the Phoenix is a great suspense movie[1]. It’s not so much horror as intensely griping. Frightening in the sense that it tells us something about the good and bad of human behaviour. The constant battle between despair and what can seem like hopeless optimism in the face of terrible odds. Through gargantuan effort, crash survivors stranded in a desert survive.

There’s something especially frightening about aircraft crashes and danger in the cold white wastes of the poles. Again, passengers and crew struggle to stay alive in freezing weather in the desperate hope of rescue. Stranded, death visits the unfortunate survivors. Ordeal in the Artic[2] is a chilling movie of 1993 based on real events in 1991.

Final Destination has simple plot[3]. A student has a premonition, he and his friends get thrown-off a flight to Europe and then when they are back in the terminal there’s a fatal crash. They cheat death. But that’s not the end. That set-up is the ultimate scary imagining. It’s the what if? It’s the question survivors of aircraft accidents must ask – why me?

The 1955 British movie The Night My Number Came Up[4] plays on a similar theme but this time a nightmare before a planned journey. A bad dream of an aircraft crash. Will it happen just as the dream predicts. You must watch to find out.

Generally, in films there’s so much pure aeronautical nonsense on display. Commercial aircraft do not fall out of the sky when struck by lightning, flight crews do not lose control at the first sign of trouble, fuel doesn’t explode for no reason and the worst of weather doesn’t signal game over.

That said, there’s an inherent claustrophobic feeling inside an aircraft fuselage. It’s like a locked room drama. Passengers are isolated from the outside world. They are dependent on pilots, engineers and air traffic controllers all doing their jobs right. There’s the potential for this set-up to be the stage for an excellent dramatic horror movie. Tales of bravery, camaraderie, and sacrifice can all spring from the most dreadful of events. Unfortunately, so many movie makers make a mess of these situations.  

[1] https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0059183/?ref_=ttls_li_tt

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ordeal_in_the_Arctic

[3] https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0195714/

[4] https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0047278/?ref_=ttls_li_tt

Scary

Let’s stick with fiction. In the run-up to Halloween there’s several stories where aviation and horror overlap. Not real-life dramas but concoctions of the imagination. Even with the coolest, most experienced passengers there’s moments of apprehension when encountering strong turbulence or unexpected diversions. We know that the risks are well managed but there’s the unforgiving nature of flying. Too many things going wrong at the same time and fate takes a hand.

There are far more action movies with aviation scenes than there are horror movies. So, forgive me if I step over the boundary between the two for a couple of this collections.

Who can forget the expression of a young William Shatner as he looks out of a window to see a large gremlin on the wing of his aircraft[1]. Panic sets in but no one sees what he sees. He becomes a hysterical. Grabs a gun. Opens a window and starts shooting at the gremlin. Everyone thinks he’s gone mad. Carried off in a straitjacket. Then in the last shot there is a view of the aircraft’s damaged engine cowling. Shatner had saved the day, only no one will ever believe him.

Again, in the category of iconic is Cray Grant being chased by a low flying aircraft in a cornfield. Running from machine gun fire he hides. Then in a spectacular explosion the aircraft crashes into a petrol tanker. Hitchcock pulls out all the stops. The film “North by Northwest[2]” will always be recalled for the crop duster scene. Grant’s character, Roger Thornhill gets away with his life.

There’s the in-flight abduction scene in the X-Files[3]. Aliens attempt to abduct character called Max Fenig from a commercial flight. He’s then found dead following a fatal crash. Agent Mulder theorises that the aircraft was forced down by aliens. The NTSB accident investigator is not buying it. Then there’s the mystery of the nine lost minutes between the aircraft crash and the time on the victims’ wristwatches. Yes, it gets a bit ridiculous. All in the vein of a good X-Files story.

Scary realism in science fiction qualifies. In this case 21st century technology as imagined in 1997. First to come to mind is the cab driver Bruce Willis driving his flying taxi. The Fifth Element[4] is a polished English-language French science fiction action movie. The flying taxicabs are terrifying. Weaving chaotically through the cityscape. Not something we will see with the current plans for urban air mobility – I hope.

The telling of the drama is a frightening fiction, but the events were real. This survival film is based on a crash in the Andes mountains on October 13, 1972[5]. A Uruguayan rugby team is faced with a terrible situation. Starving passengers debate how to stay alive. Pushed to the limit they eat the flesh of their dead relatives and friends. 29 died but 16 survived. More than one movie has been made of this awful tragedy. It speaks of the human instinct to survive as much as the catastrophe.

That’s five scary movies scenes with a commercial aviation theme. I’m sure there are more – what’s your favourite? 

[1] 1963 episode of “The Twilight Zone” called “Nightmare at 20,000 Feet.”

[2] https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0053125/plotsummary/

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tempus_Fugit_%28The_X-Files%29

[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Fifth_Element

[5] https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0106246/

Tip

You may think it was a bit of a joke. Certainly, some of the holiday makers around me thought the cabin crew were joking. I was at the back of the aeroplane and so one of the last passengers off.

We arrived at London Gatwick’s North Terminal at about 9:30 pm on a Sunday. Passengers were keen to get off and get home. That said, the amount of sizable luggage in the aircraft cabin overhead bins and maybe the sleepiness of one or two people meant the long line down the aisle was moving slowly and intermittently. The process was civilised but at a snail’s pace as it seemed from the back.

When you hear a request to hurry-up otherwise the plane will tip up it does instil some urgency. That and one or two questions. It also made me think; could that really happen in this situation? I was standing next to the cabin crew at the back, and I can attest to their concern being real. Being at the terminal gate there was only the front door open to exist the aircraft. When we got on-board the aircraft both the front and rear doors were available.

The Boeing 737 MAX-8 is a not an overly long aircraft. That said, under certain unfavourable conditions it can tip. In fact, there are longer versions of both the Boeing and Airbus single aisle aircraft that pose more of a challenge in this respect. There is much stretching of popular aircraft types to increase passenger capacity.

At the same time as we were deplaning[1] (ghastly word), the ground crew were unloading our luggage. As a result of all this movement of passengers and luggage it is possible to have too much weight at the back of the aircraft. Yes, you could blame it on masses of carry-on bags obstructing the aisle on a full aircraft, but it also takes the front passengers to have got off quickly. There are more passenger seats behind the aircraft wings than there are in front. On a cool Sunday evening when the airport’s public transport options are limited there’s an incentive to rush-off from the front. As the deplaning continued there was a sense that something was happening underfoot.

Does it happen? Do aircraft tip up? Yes, they do[2]. It’s not an attractive sight. I have no idea what the procedures are if it does happen. It certainly would be a shock for those on-board. Anyone in the vicinity of the aircraft would have to watch out too. In these unplanned events, there is a hazard to ground crew that can result in injury.

This sort of event happens more often in the air cargo world[3]. While these events maybe comical to witness, they are no joke for airlines. The possibility of damage and the disruption to aircraft operations can be significant. Nose wheels coming off the ground don’t always result in an aircraft tip, but this is not somewhere any crew responsible would want to go.

Weight and balance issues are real. Each aircraft will have weight and centre of gravity limits established at the time of aircraft certification. Aircraft operators will have procedures[4] that fully consider loading and unloading. That said, as we can see, miscalculations do get made.

[1] https://grammarist.com/spelling/deplane-or-disembark/

[2] https://youtu.be/JTDSS8unwQM

[3] https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/747-plane-tips-backward-airport-cargo-doha-qatar-fars-air-qeshm-a8829896.html

[4] https://www.faa.gov/documentLibrary/media/Advisory_Circular/AC_120-27F.pdf

Bad Seat

There’re bus trips, I can recount where people were packed in like sardines in hot sweaty environments. Never a pleasant situation but, in such circumstances, a way of getting from A to B. Maybe the only way of taking an essential journey. Life’s necessities.

I could rattle off the mantra “any safe flight is a good flight” and that remains true. It’s top of our normal priorities. Getting from A to B in one piece. No harm done. It’s the homing pigeon in all of us. I’ll put up with this unpleasantness because it gets me home.

Last night, I had that experience. It was my first flight on a Boeing 737 MAX. I’m not going to recount the saga of that aircraft type over the last couple of years. Much as to say, I reassured a nervous flyer with me that she was quite safe and nothing bad would happen. That is bar a small amount of turbulence in our three and a half hours in-flight.

I was returning from Preveza-Lefkas [PVK] to London Gatwick [LGW] on a TUi package flight. We got into Gatwick at about 9:30 pm with a full aircraft. The temperature change of having gone from a day of sunshine and about 28 degrees C in Greece to 6 degrees C and darkness on the ground at Gatwick was quite a shock. I must admit I was prepared with three layers to keep me warm.

What I want to recount is the gross unpleasantness of seat 32D. Row 32 is the last row of passenger seats in the aircraft cabin, with two toilets behind. By the way seat 32E is just as bad.

The aircraft was chock full of holiday makers returning home. Bags full and overhead bins stuffed. This shiny new Boeing 737 was fuller than anticipated. Left on the tarmac was an EasyJet aircraft that had been expected to depart earlier in the day. It had “gone technical” – as they say. So, to get home, many passengers had transferred to the later TUi flight ensuing that every aircraft seat was full.

Now, given that I’d checked-in for my return home flight in good time and I have no idea why TUi decided to punish me. I should have spotted that 32D meant the last row of seats. But you know how it is, it was enough to get that bit of administration behind me and carry on enjoying the day.

My intention was to do what I do well, at least in the past and that’s to get some sleep on an uneventful evening flight. I was ready to sit back and wander off to dreamland hoping to wake as the aircraft wheels hit the ground back at Gatwick airport. Unfortunately, I wasn’t to be given that opportunity last night.

Toilet flush motors are not silent. With a full aircraft, and three and a half hours the toilet traffic was almost continuous. The sequence of noises had a horrible rhythm. Door open. Clack of the door latch or fumbling around as a passenger worked out how to close the toilet door. Maybe even a few words with another passenger who block the aisle. Then the clank of the toilet seat. Maybe the walls get bumped as awkward manoeuvrings took place. There was no stop to this soundscape of lavatorial processes, ablutions, and choreographies.

It’s so British to que. When the trollies were not being pushed up and down the aisle, the aisle filled up with passengers waiting for the loos. Then those returning to their seats had to squeeze past the assembled que. Naturally, the 32nd row aisle seats got to see every kind of human shape and form. Trying to ignore a rear end sliding past your face gets tedious when it happens a lot.

That’s not all. When the toilet doors swing wide open, they bump against the back of seats 32D or 32E. What a mad design or stupid afterthought.

Then there’s the issue of well used aircraft toilet facilities, even on a new aircraft. They may start off as sweat smelling as the air freshener applied. After a few hours of constant use, they are nothing like sweat smelling.

My overall message is – when flying on a Boeing 737 MAX, do not accept passenger seats 32D or 32E unless you have been a very bad person and deserve punishment. Ideally, a good airline would remove these two seats altogether but to make such a suggestion is to p*** in the wind.