Sweden has a problem, Europe an even bigger one and a visit well worth it

Ain't life weird. Greece issued for the first time since years new government bonds and they were oversubscribed 6 times! One of our Belgian top economists even found it necessary to state on national tv that "Greece is the only one that is still offering a reasonable interest". The interest he refers to is 6% and yes that's a lot more than anyone else but, and he didn't mention that did he, Greece is still virtually bankrupt. The only reason that banks are buying the bonds is because of the interest rate and because they have seen that European politicians are not going to let any euro-country default. In contrast Sweden, which has one of the healthiest government finances in the world, had difficulties placing its government bonds. Everyone who is not blinded by the hunt for interest will see that this situation is crazy. Question is: how long will it last before it blows up (again) in our face?


"Human rights, democracy and the rule of law in Europe now face a crisis unprecedented since the 
end of the Cold War. Serious violations – including corruption, immunity from prosecution, 
impunity, human trafficking, racism, hate speech and discrimination – are on the rise throughout the 
continent. People’s rights are also threatened by the impact of the economic crisis and growing inequalities. 
The Council of Europe and its member States must act urgently to stop this erosion of fundamental rights.": this is the opening paragraph of Thorbjorn Jagland, secretary general of the Council of Europe, in a just released report titled: State of democracy, human rights and the rule of law in Europe.
In the document they list following shocking numbers:

• Discrimination against ethnic and national minorities: 39 of 47 states
• Overcrowded prisons: 30 states
• Corruption: 26 states
• Police misconduct: 23 states
• Violation of human rights of immigrants and asylum seekers: 20 states
• Human trafficking: 11 states
• Limited freedom of speech: 8 states

In addition they found countries where the judicial system is completely corrupt and they fear that unemployment and poverty in some countries will drive the population to extremism and confrontation.

Yes I know the membership of the Council of Europe is larger than the EU. But with scores like 39 or 30 states out of 49, many EU countries are involved too. None have been named though because of... political pressure. Freedom of speech???

I was scrolling through some photo albums and came across a trip to Seoul in 2007. Every aviation enthusiast has heard about the Smithsonian in Washington DC and, if in the neighbourhood, has visited it (like I did). But I can recommend the Korean War Museum too. Tragic as the Korean military situation has been over the past 50 odd years, they do have a smashing collection! What else would you call following line-up: O-1G Bird Dog, S-2 Tracker, KT-1, T-37, C-46, C-123, H-5H, MiG-15, OH-23G and so much more! So when you do find yourself in that corner of the world, go and have a look, it is well worth it.

O-1G Bird Dog   Picture Kris Van der Plas

OH-23G   Picture Kris Van der Plas

MiG-15    Picture Kris Van der Plas

H-5H   Picture Kris Van der Plas

S-2 Tracker   Picture Kris Van der Plas

C-123   Picture Kris Van der Plas

C-46   Picture Kris Van der Plas

T-37   Picture Kris Van der Plas

KT-1   Picture Kris Van der Plas

Solar Impulse, deep water and a birthday

A new plane was presented this week. Not a Boeing, not an Airbus, not a Bombardier or Embraer.
Nope, a real visionary airplane: the Solar Impulse 2.

Read all about it here.

And this is how it looks.

Picture by Solar Impulse

The data are pretty impressive too:

Picture / data by Solar Impulse

I saw its predecessor once when it visited EBBR. What struck me was the speed (or rather the lack of it) as it flew by. With the Impulse 2 the aim is to do a non stop flight around the world.

About another flight(the MH370), I saw an interesting graph about the challenge of finding the airplane if indeed it came down where the latest pings were heard. Have a look here. One of the things that struck me was that it took 73 years to locate the wreck of the Titanic and if confirmed MH370 is in an area where the seabed is even deeper.

And I had a birthday this week. I received this card from twitter: I'm now a 4 year old twitterer. I don't tweet a lot but I do find it an excellent news source. Once you've found some key twitterers, you get news a lot faster than through the traditional channels (websites, newsreports, radio, ...). It's like being your own press agency. And you can also get the news from different involved actors which gives you in general a much better perspective on the event. Much better than what traditional newspapers/agencies provide you with. So thank you twitter for being around!

CHAT but I prefer sulking in silence, Top Gun II

Not sure what to think of this bit of scientific news: software translated the whistle of dolphins in real time. The thing is called Cetacean Hearing and Telemetry (CHAT). So far only one word was translated but analysis is continuing and scientists hope to be able to communicate with dolphins by Summer. Now imagine, just imagine this would become reality. First question would be: do dolphins know grammar? Do they have names for relatively new things (like boats, fishing nets, ...).  But the real big question for me would be: would we want to speak to them? And more worryingly what would they have to say about us humans?

I have a cat at home. I don't have a CHAT (Cat Hearing and Telemetry), but I don't need one. We understand each other perfectly well. Just a look, the way she parades through the house, the slightest sound, is enough to know what she wants or what she wants me to do. She can entertain complete conversations based on her facial expressions alone. I talk to her, and she understands me very well (note: I didn't say she obeys, she's a cat and she knows it!). Now would I want a CHAT device that allows me to communicate with her? No, I don't think so. Frankly, I am pretty sure I don't want one. Just imagine getting home from work and the cat starting a long story about all the birds (and mice and bees and so much more) that she saw through the windows. That wouldn't be too bad. But then she would start nagging to get outside, or to get some food (the candy like ones, not the ordinary ones), or to go and inspect the garage... Or, and this is the real deal breaker, when the wife gets home, she would go and tell all the stuff I've been up to whilst she was out! O no, my cat and me are pretty happy with the conversations we have without a CHAT. When I choose to ignore her I pretend not hearing her begging to open the door or get some tasty whiskas temptations. And when she is angry at me, I don't get to hear why, she just turns her back and sulks in silence. And that's how I like to keep it: whenever there is a slight disagreement between us, I prefer continuing moping in silence.

And some other exciting news, although we'll have to wait longer than this Summer for it to become true:  a sequel of Top Gun is on the charts! Producer Jerry Bruckheimer said such a movie is getting closer to reality. The idea would be that all pilots have become redundant because of the use of drones and that Pete "Maverick" Mitchell would prove that pilots will always be needed. That's an interesting intake! I just hope that they won't make any basic flying errors in their filming as they did in the 1986 movie.
But as this movie has probably inspired many guys and girls from my age to start flying, another such movie is mostly welcome! The star in the original Top Gun was the F-14 Tomcat. And... you know me, just for nostalgia reasons here are some pictures of that variable wing! Whilst you scroll through them, enjoy listening to Berlin: take my breath away!

F-14 which I built about 25 years ago

F-14 at Koksijde 1992

F-14 at Koksijde 1992

Being a contrarian helps, don't take your aircraft for a spin and nice-sounding jargon

Obama made a blitz-visit to Brussels (less then 24h) and the whole country became victim of Obamania.
Police had warned car drivers not to drive to Brussels during the Obama visit as the complete city would be in gridlock. I chose to ignore the advise figuring everyone else would listen to the police and I would have a pleasant drive to work. So I did and had the swiftest most relaxing morning drive into Brussels ever. Sometimes it really helps being contrarian!

In our airspace it was less pleasant. EBBR shut down for Air Force One to get in and out. Obama flew with Marine One a return between EBBR and EBKT which basically shut down the main part of Belgium. This is the chart that went with the NOTAM...

So unless you wanted to test the interception alertness of the Belgian airforce, taking your aircraft for a spin was not a good idea.

And I can't help but also post this table which crossed my internet travels this week:

Do you think there is a problem in the eurozone with non-performing loans? Non-performing loans is nice-sounding jargon for loans that are not being paid back. Nothing to see here, please move on.

I don't know, turkeys and complacency

"I don't know", that's the answer I have given since the Malaysian 777 disappeared and people asked me what happened.
"I don't know", is what aviation experts should have answered as well when media asked them.
"I don't know", is what media should have stated daily instead of hypothesising and spreading rumours.

But they don't. No, apparently we live in a society that expects answers right now. No time to wait, we need to know immediately and preferably with all gross details attached and at least some self made youtube movies posted on the internet. That's the least we can expect. So if an airplane goes missing, media and society don't seem to grasp the concept that it may take years before answers are clear on what happened. If an airplane crashes at an airport it still takes years, and rescue workers and accident investigators are on site within minutes. When the SA-227 Metro crashed at Cork airport in February 2011 killing 6 people, it took almost 3 years before the final accident report was published (January 2014) identifying what happened, why it happened and the lessons to learn. Why does it take so long? Because aviation is complex, distilling what happened exactly is very complex and there is no room for error.

What worries me as well is that since the Malaysian crash we have seen in every newspaper and media report wonderful graphics (like the one below) showing how safe flying is. And it is, no doubt about it. But I don't like these graphs. They risk turning us, aviation professionals, decision makers and authorities into turkeys.

I don't make sense? Let me explain with the example that Taleb (yes yes I know) thought me: every day the risk management department and the economic department of the turkey sees the human coming into its pad with food. So every day the turkey learns from his risk management and economic assessment that the human brings food which makes the turkey happy. As days go by, the confidence of the turkey in the human grows and grows. And then after hundreds of days where the signal has been confirmed over and over again, the human walks into the turkey's pad with an ax. It's the day before Christmas (or Thanksgiving for the American turkey).

When I see graphs like the one below saying aviation has never been safer, I don't want to be a turkey. Yes it is safer than ever. But that should not make us complacent. Complacency is the biggest enemy for aviation safety.

Terra Joule and uphill landings only

Whilst the world is holding its breath how Russians and Americans have raised the global chess game to another level, let's turn to something extraterrestrial.

I know a thing or two about crashes. No, not because I crashed so often myself (touch wood!), but because in a previous life I worked on car safety and attended a lot of car crashes. Watching a car slamming into a barrier at 64 km/h is a humbling experience, let me tell you that. To get the protection right, it's all about energy management. Well there was plenty of energy at the below crash. The news broke this week that last year on September 11 an estimated 4 foot-wide, 880 lbs asteroid hit the moon. It had an explosive force of 15 tons of TNT. I can't really picture how much 15 tons of TNT is. The energy upon impact gives me a better idea: 79,42 TJ (Terra Joule). Now that is a lot and the Spanish telescopes, part of Moon Impacts Detection and Analysis System (MIDAS), that recorded the explosion don't really do justice to it. 

And I came across another top 15 list.
CNN's world's most scenic airport approaches. Have a look.
Of those selected my favourite one is Courchevelle. Only uphill landings and downhill take-off's I guess...

Just for the fun of it some more photos from Airliners.net

Billionaires, simulation and a periodic table of a different kind

I was guided to an online survey about billionaires. You know the kind of stuff: utterly useless but fun anyway. A couple of multiple choice questions result in the website comparing you with the billionaire that you would be. If you wanna have a go, do the test here.

This is my result (of course I am only posting this because it is so flattering :-)):

Simulation is a big thing in aviation for obvious reasons. I just came across a little toy for those of us who still nurture the little boy in us. Forget Nintendo or other PlayStations. That's for babies. This is the real racing or flying stuff:

And if you have a living room like this, it fits nicely in!

Check out their website and if you have 14000,- € (up to 50000,- €) to spare, don't forget to invite me to give it a ride!

One of my fellow twitterati pointed me to another website. eDreams made the top 100 list of best airlines based on passenger questionnaires. Nothing new, you can find these lists everywhere. Except that they came up with a neat way to present it: as a periodic table.

So the nitwits amongst us can now enjoy themselves and figure out what following chemical formulas are: SQ2TK, SQ2JPTK4, EKTK2, A3TK3, ...

The thing is that even though SQ achieved first place, FV (Rossiya Airlines) is actually gold (Au - element 79) and BE (FlyBe) is silver (Ag - element 47) and CZ (China Southern Airlines) is Polonium (Po - element 84). I think I better stop here before I cause a global political incident!

Mass migration and nostalgia from a grass strip

Mass migration probably gives you images of thousands and thousands buffalos crossing the African savannah. The mass migration the Wall Street Journal pointed at is of a different animal. It's us humans and more specific our Chinese friends. Chinese officials estimate that 3,65 billion passenger trips will be made during this year’s 40-day Lunar New Year travel period. 3650000000 trips! That's a lot...
You can visualise the migration pattern live at baidu, here's a screen shot:

We're in the darkest period of the year for those on the Northern Hemisphere who like airshows. So all we got to bridge this gap with, is submerge ourselves in some nostalgia. In the early nineties there were still wonderful events where a very diverse air display was put up operating the show from a grass strip. What would you say of following line-up: a plethora of warbirds (B-17s, Spitfires, Bf109, Corsair, Fury, B-25, Mosquito, Blenheim), a T-33, dH166, some regular airshow visitors (F-27, F-16, C-130, Alpha Jet, ...) and the icing on the cake being Team 60 (Swedish airforce flying 6 Saab 105/Sk 60 Oë) and Team Striji with 6 MiG-29s! And all of that taking off from the grass strip just in front of you (except for the F-16 and Alpha Jet). So, in an attempt to brighten up your days as well, some (grainy) pictures from those good old times!

Fokker F-27 KLu

Team 60 Saab 105/Sk60 0ë

Team Striji MiG-29

Team Striji MiG-29

The winner takes it all, God 'Elp All Of Us

It's the World Economic Forum in Davos this week. For that occasion Oxfam issued a publication titled 'Working for the Few'. This is the picture that goes with it:

If that doesn't make you stop and think, how about this:

• Almost half of the world’s wealth is now owned by just one percent of the population.

And

• Seven out of ten people live in countries where economic inequality has increased in the last 30 years.

You can read all about it here.
With growing inequality putting more and more stress on the social fabric that holds nations together, this does not bode well for our collective future.

One more statistic from Davos: Chinese investment in the UK in the past 18 months was equal to that of the previous 30 years.

For some reason this week there were some human interest articles about 100 years of commercial aviation. I say 'for some reason' because the first scheduled flight happened on January 1 1914, so our dear journo's are lagging about 20 days behind. That first flight was between  St Petersburg and Tampa in Florida and was operated by SPT Airboat Line. Airboat because the aircraft operating the route was a Benoist Type XIV. It made me think back to those exciting pioneering days of aviation and about the legendary flights of the Vickers Vimy. It was the first airplane that made a successful transatlantic crossing (June 15, 1919). John Alcock and Arthur-Written-Brown were the pilots. After having crossed the Atlantic John Alcock said "Yesterday I was in America... and I am the first man in Europe to say that." Statements like that make my world stop for a moment!

Later that same year the Vimy (registration G-EAO God 'Elp All Of Us) also flew from London to Adelaide. They left Hounslow Heath (now Heathrow) on November 12 1919 and reached Darwin on December 10, 1919. They continued on to Adelaide the home town of the Smith brother's (the pilots). If that ain't adventure, nothing is.

I saw a replica of the Vimy at Farnborough in 1996. The replica repeated the 1919 flight in 1994. Again quite an accomplishment! There is a magnificent book about the 1994 journey of which I have a copy signed by Peter McMillan one of the two pilots (the other one was Lang Kidby).

Vicker Vimy G-EAOU  Farnborough 1996

Vicker Vimy G-EAOU  Farnborough 1996

Vicker Vimy G-EAOU  Farnborough 1996

An open invitation to risk my money, justice exists and aerobatics

This is it. I have warned about it a couple of times but now it's agreed: bail-ins will be possible as of 2016. The eurogroup finance ministers adopted a new "Bank recovery and resolution directive" that puts your savings at risk when your bank goes belly-up. What are the rules? Pretty simple:

• First the shareholders have to cough up. They have to take a minimum of 8% of the banks losses.
• Savings are guaranteed until 100000,- €, anything above that is up for grabs.
• Every member state has to establish within 10 years a 'resolution fund' that has to reach 1% of all deposits covered. All banks have to contribute to this fund.

Before you start applauding a couple of small remarks:

• The 8% minimum coverage of bank losses by shareholders will quickly become a maximum when the dirt hits the fan. Shareholders will argue that they only have to cover 8% of the losses before savings above 100000,-€ can be shaved. With many governments now shareholder of banks, I expect they will also argue this way.
• It is noteworthy that there is no cap above 100000,-€. In other words, you don't risk loosing a part of what you have saved above 100000,-€, no you risk loosing everything above 100000,-.
• There is no differentiation between a personal saving account or an account of a small or medium enterprise. They too will suffer the same fate.
• That 'resolution fund' only needs to be established within 10 years. I would surely hope that we are out of the woods by then! What happens in the mean time (if bank goes bust and no 'resolution fund' available yet) does not bode well for our savings.
• A 1% 'resolution fund' is not going to resolve anything if a big bank is in trouble. A quick calculation: in Belgium there is about 250 billion € on saving accounts. That means the fund will have to be at least 2,5 billion € big. This is peanuts if one of the bigger banks goes bankrupt as they hold tens of billions of € in savings! And it'll be interesting to see how banks can be convinced to depart from 2,5 billion €.
• A lot of that 250 billion € is on Belgian saving accounts but from foreign banks (example PNB Paribas, a French bank, that took over Fortis). So the Belgian fund has to guarantee savings deposited at and controlled by a foreign bank over which it has no control. Am I the only one who sees this as an open invitation for foreign banks to take risks with money collected abroad?

Justice exists in the financial world... but you have to go to Iceland for it. Those at the helm of the Icelandic Kaupthing Bank that threw the whole country into the abyss got sentenced to 5 years of imprisonment. The rest of the world could learn an important lesson from this.


One of my friends started his own company called AURTE: Aerobatic & Upset Recovery Training Europe. Anyone who followed civil aviation and pilot training discussions over the past years, knows there is an issue with degrading manual flying skills. So this new start-up is very welcome. But it made my heart beat faster for another reason. They are using a Corvus Fusion. Ultralight adepts (like me) know what this means: a fast aerobatic ultralight. Watch how they take it through its paces. In summary: I want one!!!