The age of non-polluting air travel came a step closer today when Bertrand Piccard's amazing sun-powered aircraft left the ground in Switzerland on a brief maiden flight.
The Solar Impulse, which is designed to soar across oceans with four solar-driven electric propellers, flew 350 metres about a metre above the runway at a military aerodrome near Zurich with a German test pilot at the controls. A small hop for a plane, but it's more significant than generally realised. You'll hear more about the Piccard project in a year or two.
Several experimental aircraft have flown with pilots on solar power since the late 1970s, but the Solar Impulse is the first designed to fly indefinitely. It will stay aloft all night using batteries that are recharged by its solar-paneled wings in the daylight.
Piccard, the Swiss pioneer behind the 80-million euro project, was thrilled by the first feat of the spindly, ultra-light machine which has a wing-span as wide as that of a big airliner.
"It is a very strong emotion. It has been a dream for 10 years and now we have got to this point," he told me. "I am elated that we have managed this a week before the Copenhagen climate summit. That sends a strong message that there can be sustainable powered flight with no pollution."
On his site tonight, Piccard says: "Never before – in the whole history of aviation - has an aircraft so big, so light and consuming so little energy, actually flown"
After perfecting the single-seater, which weighs only as much as a medium car and flies at about 40 mph, Piccard, 51, and André Borschberg, 57, his partner, aim to fly the Solar Impulse across the Atlantic and then around the world. They will land every five days to exchange pilots.
The team developing the prototype at Dubendorf Air Base said they were thrilled by how well the pioneering technology was working. "It has behaved even better than expected. It is a very new flight domain," Borschberg, an engineer-businessman, said.
Piccard set out to blaze the way for future low-polluting flight after he and Brian Jones of Britain made the first non-stop flight around the world in a hot-air balloon, in 1999. After expanding test flights, Piccard and his partner aim to fly for a day and a night by the end of next spring over Europe. All going well they will set off around the world with the Solar Impulse in 2012. The International Air transport Association (IATA) has committed itself to zero-emission airliners by 2050. 
This has not been a good week for airline pilots. Four American ones -- all employed by Delta, have been suspended for two blunders. Now we hear that Air France, the national carrier, has accused its pilots of dangerously sloppy flying.
The charge arises from a dispute between pilots and management over the Flight 447 disaster which killed 228 people off Brazil last June 1. There is a common thread in these three cases. It is the reminder that aircraft depend on human beings to pilot tham.
On Monday, a pair from Delta got muddled and put their Boeing down on a taxi-way at Atlanta instead of the runway. The other two, flying a Northwest Airlines Airbus from San Diego, failed to notice that they had flown past Minneapolis, their destination. That incident, which passengers did not even notice, has sparked a furore while the more dangerous Atlanta bungle has been largely ignored.
People imagine that jets these days are guided to their destination by a web of computers, satellites and other high technology. In reality, the automation is simply there to help the pilots, who use their judgment to keep everything the right side up. New technology is on the way, but airline crew still take "turn left, turn right" instructions from controllers over old-fashioned radio, as they have since the 1920s. They put the plane down on the runway by hand -- after making sure that it is the right one. Airliners have even landed at completely wrong airports quite recently. Fatigue, boredom, emotions and many other things can get in the way. It's surprising that they do not cause damage more often. Flying near Paris airport in a small plane I sometimes have to correct incoming airliners who have called our aeroclub frequency by mistake because it is only a few digits on the dial from the Charles de Gaulle tower.
No-one was hurt in the two US incidents. Old airline pilots recall getting away with worse. The Delta crew made their error after being asked to switch, at the end of a tiring night flight, from one runway to a parallel one. It was not fully lit for the approach and its instrument landing beacon was off. They were rushing to disembark a third pilot who had fallen ill. They were very lucky that nothing was on the long taxi-way that they mistook for the runway. The Northwest pilots (whose airline is now owned by Delta) have not said publicly what was going on when they flew past their destination. Initially they talked of being distracted by a heated discussion. They were initially suspected of having fallen asleep -- something which has befallen many pilots but usually not both at once. [November 1 update: The pilots have told investigators that they were were distracted by a discussion in which they had opened their laptop computers. They seem likely to lose their jobs.]
In the case of Air France, the story is complicated. The airline management is reacting to unrest among pilots over the way they have been blamed for recent incidents and accidents and especially the AF 447 crash. On Tuesday, the management sent all crew a memo headed: "Enough argument and false debate on flight safety." They accused "over-confident" crew of ignoring standard procedures and risking their aircraft. Too many foolishly believe that they have "mastered elementary risk" -- according to the text leaked today.
The management said it was especially unhappy with the way that pilots have blamed the AF 447 disaster on the Airbus A330 and on faulty airline practices. "There are no procedures to correct, no new ones to create," it said. The Unions are furious. "The bond of confidence between pilots and management is totally broken," said the SNPL, the moderate main union. The more radical minority unions are in open war, accusing Air France and the state accident investigators of trying to cover up serious flaws in the Airbus A330 by blaming the dead crew for the Flight 447 crash [previous post].
None of these three episodes do much to inspire the confidence of passengers who travel on these major world airlines. But they are nothing new. Flying stirs special emotion. People put up with carnage on the roads but are outraged by every mishap in the much safer air. When you think of the thousands of airliners aloft 24 hours a day, it is a huge achievement that human error does not lead to more trouble.
It will still be fascinating to find out what the crew on Northwest Flight 188 were up to on Wednesday evening as they forgot to land.
[Top photo from Air France advertising]
Getting away from the Paris soap opera, I have just landed in a little Grumman Tiger four-seater at Lausanne airport. Beside me at the controls in the blustery cross-wind was Bertrand Piccard. He has just spent the afternoon at a military field near Zurich showing me his astonishing new flying machine.
Flying-minded people will know what I'm talking about here. Piccard is the Swiss adventurer who made the first non-stop flight around the world in a balloon -- with Brian Jones of Britain in 1999. Now the first take-off is nearing for Solar Impulse, a plane that he and his fellow pilot aim to fly around the world, day and night, powered only by the sun.[Top picture: computer image of projected solar flight. Below: Piccard with me over Switzerland today]
That sounds a little crazy, but Piccard has excellent credentials. Not only is he an aviation pioneer of standing, but his grandfather Auguste was the first man to reach the stratosphere in a balloon. He also plumbed the ocean depths. Professor Tournesol in the Tintin adventures (Prof Calculus in English) was based on grandfather Auguste. His name was also the inspiration for Jean-Luc Picard, captain of the starship Enterprise in the second generation Star Trek.
Experimental planes have been flown with solar energy in daylight since the 1970s and un-manned versions have managed to fly at night on batteries at high altitude. What Piccard and André Borshchberg, his partner, are doing goes far beyond that. Their contraption, designed from scratch and built over five years by a team of 60 people, will circle the planet with a human pilot. That means pushing to the extreme the equation of weight and energy that keeps a heavier-than-air machine in the sky.
The prototype Solar Impulse, which is due to make its first short hops in a month or so, has meant almost going back to the beginning of aviation and thinking again. The gossamer-like machine has a huge wingspan, the same as that of an Airbus A340 airliner, yet it weighs only 1.6 tonnes, about the same as a medium car. Its four electric motors have the same total power as a motor scooter. They are driven by solar cells that cover the wings and charge 400 kilogrammes of batteries. The batteries let the craft fly through the night -- combined with the energy that it will obtain by gliding down from 25,000 feet to about 5,000 while awaiting the dawn and the return of power. And I almost forgot, the airspeed will be about 40 miles per hour.
If that fragile technology works, the plane could in theory achieve the dream of perpetual flight, never landing, say the project team. The big limiting factor is the human payload. Since the Solar Pulse can only carry one pilot, Piccard and Borschberg are to alternate, landing every five days to change seats. That still means that each will spend five days and nights snatching only momentary sleep as their attention is needed permanently to keep the plane in the air. There will be only a minimum auto-pilot. Piccard, who is a psychiatrist by profession, says he is training for it using self-hypnosis. Borschberg, an engineer and former fighter pilot, is depending on yoga and self discipline. They have already "flown" 25 hour stretches in the simulator.
For anyone who has survived a Europe-Australia flight in tourist class, the mind boggles. But the pair laugh it off, saying the excitement of the flight will keep them alert and pointing out that they will get lots of practice. They aim to start making longer and longer flights next year, if the prototype works, taking off from near Lausanne. Flying in bumpy air for just an hour over the Alpine scenery in the noisy little Grumman today, I asked Piccard how he felt about being cooped up in an even smaller space for five days at a time. "It's more comfortable and I'll be used to it," he said.
I'll write about the project for The Times in coming days. The two pilot-adventurers, both in their early 50s and extremely fit, have an infectious enthusiasm. Boschberg, the engineer, is more down-to-earth. Piccard talks more of his vision of transforming the way the world uses energy.
"Solar Impulse doesn't aim to change aviation. Its goal is to change mentalities and behaviour," he said. They are convinced that their project will make a big impact on the world's awareness of renewable energy if they achieve their flight. They compare it to Charles Lindbergh's first non-stop crossing of the Atlantic in 1927. Having humans circle the world on solar power alone will "help make people think sustainable development is sexy", says Piccard.
The Russian navy has its eyes on a new helicopter-carrying warship. The impressive model that they want to buy could have let Russia drive Georgian forces from the north Caucausus last year in a flash,says Admiral Vladimir Vysotski, the navy chief.
And who makes this great vessel ? France. In Moscow yesterday, two ministers -- Bernard Kouchner of Foreign Affairs and Hervé Morin of Defence -- settled the outline of a deal to sell a 700 million euro Mistral-class helicopter-carrier to the Russians.This would be the first sale of a major western weapon to Russia since World War Two, so President Sarkozy will have some explaining to do with Washington and the Nato allies.
Paris is optimistic. Kouchner, a lifelong human rights activist, waxed enthusiastic about the imminent sale. "This political agreement should be reached, I think, but it's not up to me to decide ... concerning this wonderful warship," he told Moscow Echo radio station.
Moscow is aiming to order one or two Mistrals from the French naval dockyards, plus the technology to put together their own versions. The ship, which is France's second biggest after the Charles de Gaulle nuclear-powered carrier, is capable of carrying more than a dozen helicopters and 470 infantry along with dozens of tanks and other armoured vehicles.
Moscow wants the ship to supplement its antique surface-fleet. It is just the thing to project Russian power around the world -- and close to home. Russia's Black Sea neighbours are appalled and Admiral Vysotski helpfully spelt out why. Talking about Russia's ejection of Georgian troops from the rebel province of South Ossetia last August, he said that a Mistral "would have meant that our Black Sea Fleet could have accomplished its mission in 40 minutes instead of 26 hours by road."
France, you may recall, claims credit for stopping that conflict. Sarkozy flew to Moscow and Tbilisi and brokered a ceasefire after three days of fighting in August last year.
Dutch and Spanish firms are also bidding for the Russian deal but the French are confident that they have it sewn up. But there are obvious hurdles. The United States jealously guards the export of its technology, especially of a military kind. It is pretty likely that despite French expertise, the Mistral class carries a load of US patents. So if France is determined to go ahead, Washington will become involved.
The Obama administration would have to decide whether it will accept what would in Cold War times have been an unthinkable deal in the interest of the famous US-Russian reset button. Washington is unlikely to be happy about a western ally giving a helping hand to the Kremlin to flex Russian muscles on the high seas. Whatever happens, Moscow has a good chance of driving a wedge into the Nato alliance over the affair.
The sale would be a nice boost to the French arms business after last month's provisional agreement by Brazil to buy 36 Rafale fighters plus the technology to build them.
But before everyone piles in against French "merchants of death", here is last year's table of suppliers. The USA was top with 49 percent of the world military export market. Britain was second with a 15 percent share. Russia scored eight percent and France seven percent.
The disaster of Air France Flight 447 was the result of a preventable mix of human and technical failures, according to a London law firm that is representing families of the victims.
Stewarts Law, which is pressing claims for relatives of over 50 of the 228 dead, presented its argument in Paris today after its experts replicated in a simulator the conditions that were experienced by the crew of the Airbus A330 off Brazil on June 1.
Their findings reflect the consensus in the aviation industry -- and which we have covered here before -- over what went wrong in one of the most worrying air disasters in recent decades.
The official investigation, carried out by the French BEA accident bureau, is far from a conclusion and the black box flight recorders have not been found. Air France and Airbus are on the defensive and saying little. But enough data was transmitted by satellite from the stricken plane to identify with certainty four factors that led to the crash, said John Mahon, an Airbus and Boeing training captain.
-- The aircraft flew into an area of storms which other aircraft avoided by steering around them.
-- The pitot tubes (speed sensors on the front of the plane) suffered faults
-- There was a malfunction in the ADIRU, the three air data computers which feed information to the flight system and the pilots.
-- The pilots may not have had sufficient training to retain control of the malfunctioning aircraft.
"It any one of these issues had not happened to AF 447, the accident would not have happened," said Mahon, who is advising the law firm.
In the A330 simulator exercise, Mahon said pilots retained control of the handicapped aircraft, but they all knew that there was a malfunction. The pilots at the AF447 controls, who are thought to have been the two juniors on the three-man crew, would have been confused by conflicting information from the plane. They were also being thrown around in heavy turbulence at night. The simulator cannot replicate that faithfully any more than the fear that must quickly have gripped the crew.
James Healey-Pratt, the firm's chief aviation lawyer and also a pilot, said: "It is too simplistic to blame the pilots. They are not here to defend themselves. They did the best job they could."
Mahon said the pilots would have lost control of their handicapped plane in one of two situations.
If they entered a climb, the instruments would have erroneously shown increasing speed -- because of the blocked sensors. They would have tried to slow down and that could have led to a low-speed stall. If they were descending, the blocked sensors would have interpreted a decrease in speed. To compensate, the pilots would have increased the descent or added thrust. That could have caused the aircraft to over-speed and lose control.
Since the crash, Air France has signalled concern over its crew's ability to handle high altitude upsets of this kind. It has ordered special training for A330 pilots and called in outside experts to conduct a full-scale audit on its safety procedures. Some Air France pilots are accusing the airline, Airbus and the accident investigators of trying to put all the blame on the crew.
A separate judicial investigation is under way in France. Air France and Airbus will be asked to explain why no action was taken to replace faulty pitot tubes on the A330 series although they had suffered multiple failures over a decade.
The law firm, which has its own priorities, accused Air France of trying to settle with victims families "quickly, cheaply and quietly" in order to avoid having to pay the large sums that they deserved. Healey-Pratt estimated that if settled under European law, the final bill for Air France and Airbus would by about 450 million euros. He suggested that the two companies put one billion euros into a pot to be divided among the families. A similar method was used to avoid litigation after the 9/11 attacks in New York in 2001.
The saga over faulty the pitot tubes continues. The European Aviation Safety Agency today issued a new safety warning. It told airlines to check Airbus sensors from the US Goodrich company. Only two months ago, the same agency ordered airlines to install the Goodrich pitots instead of the ones made by the French company Thales which were the ones involved in all the incidents.
It's worth noting that Captain Mahon - who trains pilots in both Airbus and Boeings -- told me that he does not share the misgivings that some pilots have over the very automated flight systems of the Airbus family. He also pointed out that pitot and air data failures have caused accidents on Boeings in the past.
For an alternative view of AF447 and the plane that some pilots call the Scarebus, I would point you to the latest from John T. Halliday [no relation of our Johnny the rock idol] the well-informed expert on Huffington Post
President Sarkozy appears to have pulled off a true feat of salesmanship. On a one-day visit to Brazil, he has secured President Lula's agreement in principle to buy 36 Rafale fighter jets. If it comes off, the five billion euro deal is more than a business story. It is a political and strategic breakthrough for France and Sarkozy.
The Rafale has suffered something of a jinx since Dassault aviation began developing it in the 1980s. Though highly agile, technologically advanced and beautiful from the pilot's point of view, the plane has so far failed to win a single customer outside France. Potential clients have found it too expensive or succumbed to rivals' political pressure -- notably from the United States. The Rafale was launched when France decided to go it alone and stay out of the Eurofighter project of Britain, Germany, Italy and Spain.
It entered service with the air force and navy from 2000 and a squadron is on duty in Afghanistan.
The failure to sell was a big frustration. The French tax-payer forked out most of the 30 billion euros it took to build the beast and supply it to the forces. Before Sarkozy, President Chirac flew thousands of miles to press France's traditional customers such as Morocco and India to buy the successor to Dassault's legendary Mirage -- which did well abroad. Talks advanced but the orders never came. Chirac's interest was personal as well as patriotic. His father was employed in the 1940s by Marcel Bloch, who changed his name to Dassault and founded the great plane-making firm. It is still family run. I recently sat beside Olivier Dassault, Marcel's grandson, as he landed one of the family Falcons on a visit the Rafale factory near Bordeaux. Serge, his father and current chief, was in the back. He told me that Dassault had not lost money despite the export failure because the state had financed the project.
Last week, Paris even sent two Rafales (the word means 'gust' in English) to take part in Muammar Gaddafi's anniversary festivities in Libya. The Colonel has been toying with the idea of buying a few of the planes, which so far have cost about 138 million euros a piece.
Sarkozy has applied his usual determination to pulling off a first order for the hitherto unwanted plane. In Brazil, the Rafale was in competition with the Saab Gripen NG and Boeing F/A-18E Super Hornet. The deal is part of Lula's plans for turning Brazil into "one of the great powers of the 21st century." Sarkozy's clincher was agreement to share all the Rafale technology with Brazil and let the Brazilians assemble many themselves. US bars on exporting military technology meant that neither Boeing nor Saab (which uses US systems) could do this.
"The relationship between Brazil and France is not one of supplier and client, but of partners," Sarkozy said in Brazil. "We want to act together because we share the same values and a same vision on the big international goals."
Brazil is already buying five French submarines - including one that will be modified to run on nuclear power - and 50 military transport helicopters, for a value of around 10 billion dollars. As part of the Rafale deal, Sarkozy agreed to buy 10 KC-390 transport aircraft to be built by Brazil's Embraer.
No contract has been signed yet and there are reports that the Brazilian Air Force feels that it has been strong-armed in a contest that is not officially to be decided until October. Optimistic French officials hope that the final Rafale contract will be announced on October 23. That is the 103rd anniversary of the pioneering flight by Alberto Santos-Dumont, the Brazilian aviator, in the Bois de Boulogne in west Paris. The American Wright brothers took off three years earlier, but, as we have seen here before, Santos-Dumont was officially recorded as making the first powered flight because the Aero Club de France was on hand to certify it.
It is over three months since Air France Flight 447 crashed into the Atlantic off Brazil. They have not found the flight recorders but the elements are falling into place. It became clear this week that Air France, the Airbus corporation and the BEA, the French state accident investigators, would like to blame the crew for the crash of the A330 Airbus, which had 228 souls aboard.
Pilots are angry over what they say is an attempt to make them scapegoats for a failing in the Airbus design. Families of the victims are also accusing the authorities of obfuscation. A lot is at stake. I have been talking to Air France pilots. Gérard Arnoux, an Airbus A320 captain with the company, told me: "They are trying to blame the pilots. They do not want the truth." Arnoux is active in the Union of Air France Pilots (SPAF), a militant offshoot from the company's branch of the mainstream National Union of Airline Pilots (SNPL)
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An Air France jet diverted to Corsica on its way from Tunisia to Paris today because the crew found an MP3 player and were unable to find its owner. That example of excessive precaution is not quite as crazy as the case of a Paris region engineer who has just fallen foul of the hysteria that prevails among the crew and passengers on US airlines.
Patrick Minot, 53, was flying on American Airlines from Paris to an automotive show in Boston on August 15 to demonstrate a fun gadget that he had developed for his company called an EcoGyzer [in picture above]. This is a combined pocket GPS, accelerometer and calculator that tracks movement and estimates energy consumption and efficiency. Also available as an iPhone application, it has made the French media as a clever idea for teaching drivers to go easy on the accelerator (gas pedal) and brakes.
During the flight in economy class, Minot decided to try out the EcoGyzer. He stuck it to the arm-rest with a little a blob of Patafix, a putty-like adhesive used everywhere. That was a bad move. Terrified passengers reported him to the crew as a potential terrorist. First they took away his mobile phone then, when he visited the lavatory, the stewardesses grabbed the EcoGyzer. Minot explained to the crew what it was, to no avail. The captain announced that they were diverting to Gander, Newfoundland, for technical reasons. On arrival, police boarded, arrested Minot and threw him into jail.
"I didn't understand. I thought it was a bad dream," Minot said. After three days, he was released on bail and advised by a court-appointed lawyer to plead guilty to causing mischief on an aircraft. He was ordered to pay 32,000 US dollars (23,000 euros) in fines and costs to American airlines and sentenced to seven days in jail. Then he could not find an airline willing to take the risk of flying him back to France. American eventually gave him a seat with a stop-over in New York. Landing there, he was handcuffed and detained as a dangerous felon until he was put aboard the Paris-bound flight.
Okay, Minot should have known of the fear that any odd device inspires in travellers and cabin crew since 2001, but this was a case of absurd over-reaction. From the court accounts, the middle-aged engineer was not aggressive or threatening. He told the crew what his gadget was. I'm ready to be corrected if anyone has other information. As usual in anything involving aviation, media reporting was ludicrous. The Canadian Press news agency reported: "A French national who forced an international flight to divert to Newfoundland last weekend has been fined more than $30,000." Others talked of him brandishing "a GPS device" and, gulp, failing to switch off his mobile phone.
Everyone has forgotten to switch off a cell phone and besides there is no evidence that active phones or GPS receivers have any effect on aircraft electronics, despite what they tell you. Many phones come equipped with "GPS devices" as Minot's suspected weapon was termed. No-one has tried to hijack or blow up a US airliner or any other US aircraft for nearly eight years.
Minot, a mild-mannered family man, has featured in the French media as a victim of American -- and Canadian -- excès de zèle. At least the publicity should help the EcoGyzer. And France is certainly not innocent in this field. I have been told at French airports recently to remove my shoes and empty my pockets going through security -- although they knew that I was the pilot and only person aboard the plane. That makes absolutely no sense but we know what happens when you argue with the security people.
Since it's the silly season, allow me to post a couple of pictures of the dog and report how we relieved the problem of aircraft noise.
Sparky -- yes, it's a corny name -- enjoys flying but I have always felt bad about inflicting on him the high decibels of a small aircraft cockpit. Noise-reducing headsets greatly solve the problem for humans.
The other day, I found a US company that makes aviation ear-protectors for dogs. You measure their ears and order the size (and colour). Given dogs' dislike of having things attached to them, I imagined that Sparky would rip off his "Mutt Muffs" straight away, but he didn't. They are attached by Velcro and the makers tell you to put them on after starting the engine. You could almost see the smile on his face when the noise faded. He kept them on for a return flight to Saint Valéry on the Normandy coast yesterday.
His headset has no earphones or mike, so he can't bark to air traffic control, which is just as well.
Top picture: flying home in the evening sun, 2,000 feet over Normandy near Rouen. Below, the co-pilot at the controls during touch-down at St Valéry [Just joking. The dog sits in the back during take-off and landing]. For anyone interested, the plane is a 1980 Robin Aiglon. It's registration is F-GCRH so the radio call-sign is "Foxtrot Romeo Hotel", which Sparky rather likes.
While everyone has been commemorating the moon landing this month, aviators in France and Britain have been remembering another epic feat -- the world's first air journey. It was 100 years ago today that Louis Blériot flew his flimsy flying machine across the English from Calais to Dover.
A flotilla of ancient and modern planes began crossing the Dover Strait at dawn today in salute to the great pioneer. The fleet today includes original monoplanes built by Blériot and replicas as well as some 130 microlight aircraft and the Red Arrows and la Patrouille de France display teams. Watch Blériot's historic take-off at the end of this post.
The festivities, which include a postage stamp issue in France and exhibitions in Paris, Calais, Dover and Cambrai, the pilot's birthplace, are reminding younger generations how sensational at the time was the landing of the frail wood and fabric 'Blériot XI'. Among other things, it shocked Britain into realizing that foreign invaders could just hop over its glorious navy. [below: a Bleriot XI in flight]
"Flying machines are no longer toys and dreams, they are established fact," said David Lloyd George, then the Chancellor of the Exchequer, after reading The Times' breathless cover of the historic flight. "The possibilities of this new system of locomotion are infinite, I feel as a Britisher, rather ashamed that we are so completely out of it." [Read the original Times reports here]
Lord Northcliffe, the press baron who had offered a 1,000 pound prize for the first Channel flight, told his Daily Mail to proclaim: "Britain is no longer an island".
The secretive Wright Brothers had achieved the first aeroplane flight in North Carolina in 1903, but aviation was seen as an eccentric pastime pursued mainly by French sportsmen until Blériot, a 37-year-old engineer, crash-landed on the Northfall meadow by Dover Castle. Four years later, the Royal Navy bought Blériots to found Britain's first military squadron and his SPAD biplanes became the favourite mount for the allied aces of the Great War.
"The crossing was the starting point of modern aviation," Louis Blériot, the pioneer's 64-year-old grandson, said this week. "He was an exceptional character whose trail is still being followed. Today's aircraft are still handled the same way: a rudder bar under the pilot’s feet, and a stick to control the aircraft."
The shy and mournful-looking Blériot, was an unlikely hero. He was an unglamorous business-man inventor. The Belle Epoque playboy-aviators mocked him for crashing 38 times as he developed his machine through trial and error. At one point he even called in the aging Gustave Eiffel, who knew little of aeronautics, to design him a steel propellor -- which he abandoned.
Blériot's triumph was so unexpected that The Times man who reported his daybreak take-off suspected foul play against Hubert Latham, his rival and hot favourite for the prize. Latham, a languid playboy with a British grandfather, had ditched in an attempt earlier in the week and was to try again that dawn. His mechanic failed to wake him, "robbing" him of his triumph, wrote The Times' correspondent. "Incredible as it may sound, M. Levavasseur allowed M Latham to sleep on. ...and the thing ended in M Latham's not being aroused until 5 o'clock, 20 minutes after M Blériot had actually left the coast of France."
Monsieur Blériot did not make things easy for himself. He was a non-swimmer, he was on crutches because of a recent crash and he had no compass. He reluctantly took his chance and limped out before the crowd as dawn came up. "I admit it, I absolutely did not feel like doing it," he said after his 37-minute journey. You can clearly see his unhappy expression in the film.
Everything went well until he ran into fog and lost sight of the Kent coast. "The flight continued for about 10 minutes with nothing in sight but sea and sky," he told another Times man, who claimed to be the first reporter to greet him at Dover. "It was the most anxious part of the flight... I had no fear for the machine, which was travelling beautifully. At last I sighted the outline of the land, but I was then going in the direction of Deal."
Arriving by Dover, he spotted a French journalist waving a big tricolor to mark the landing spot, cut his motor at 60 feet and thudded onto the hillside, breaking his undercarriage and propellor. When the customs officer arrived, he only had forms for boats, so Blériot was registered as the master of a yacht. Land and wireless telegraph splashed the news around the world, Blériot was feted in London and Paris and his monoplane went on show in Selfridges department store.
The aviator received the world's first pilot's licence from the Aéroclub de France. He retreated from the limelight and went on to mass-produce his invention. The Blériot XI, of which some 900 were sold, became the standard aerial runabout.
Blériot's original cross-Channel plane has been at the Paris Musée des Arts et Metiers since 1909 and it is the heart of a special exhibition which runs until October. Elegant and fragile but a little forlorn-looking, it hangs from the ceiling of the church of Saint-Martin-des-Champs, on the museum grounds. They have even built a simulator on which you can try to fly a Bleriot XI. I had a go and found it not at all easy. The plane is very unstable. Like the Wright Brothers' Flyer, the plane is banked by pulling on a cable that warps the wings, rather than moving ailerons.
Bleriot took 37 minutes for his flight. My little plane does the same short crossing in about 10, but it is still pulled along by a single wooden propellor, like his was. If it stops, you swim. Flying out over the coast, I always think of old Louis and his magnificent achievement.
Another Airbus has fallen out of the sky and once again everyone is haring off into scare territory. Since the investigators are issuing their first findings on Air France 447, the June 1 crash in the Atlantic, here's a quick reality check.
[ Friday Update: First crash investigatin of A447 shows the airliner belly-flopped onto water in one piece.]
I've been talking to an Air France A330 pilot who confirms the sequence of events that brought down the Air France A330 off Brazil and which we have discussed here. More on that below, but first the latest accident.
The Yemenia Airbus that came down yesterday off the Comoros islands, killing 152 aboard, had nothing to do with the problems that ended Flight 447. The plane was a relatively old (19 years) A310 that was in poor condition and which had been banned from French air space in 2007.
That point is being hammered by the French media today. But it seems likely that the state of the plane had little to do with the crash, from which a 14-year-old girl has survived. From the accounts so far it looks like a classic approach-to-landing mishap of the oldest kind. Witnesses said the plane appeared to have been upset by a gust of wind or a down-draft as it was approaching the notoriously tricky runway at Moroni airport. The pilots were going around for another try and hit the water in the low turn in stormy conditions. That's a demanding manoeuvre at an underequipped airport in the dark. Most airline accidents take place in the landing or take-off phases and sloppy piloting is usually responsible. The investigators may find that higher crew standards are needed at Yemenia as much as better aircraft maintenance.
The Yemeni plane was a first-generation Airbus, a relatively simple aircraft. These do not have the computerised, fly-by-wire system that Airbus has used since the 1980s and which is under suspicion in Air France flight 447
It now looks as if AF447 was a disaster waiting to happen. Thanks to leaks from pilots and engineers, we now know that Air France and other airlines had experienced a string of failures in the speed sensors and air data system of the long-range Airbus family, the A330 and A340.
Crews had always managed to recover the aircraft by hand after their electronics disconnected. Unnoticed by most media, the United States authorities (National Transportation Safety Board) has just jumped in with its own investigation of the latest two. They involved Airbus incidents on flights originating in the United States on May 21 and only last week.
In the case of AF447, it seems that the crew faced conditions that were beyond them. They were flying at night at high altitude in a storm that appears to have played an important role in the chain. After the speed sensors and computers played up, they had no airspeed indication. Saving the plane would have been a very tough job. It is assumed that the two junior pilots were at the controls. Captain Marc Dubois, 58, would have been resting.
That is the scenario described to me yesterday by Cédric Maniez, a colleague of the late captain who flies A330s for Air France. The blocked speed sensors -- the pitot tubes -- were the originating cause of the accident, he said. This led to the cascade of electronic breakdown. Air France has now intensified training for such a situation, he said. He had tried last week to fly an A330 simulator that recreated the conditions on AF447 and he had found it "very very delicate".
Maniez, who is also a spokesman for the SNPL pilots' union, said he was now satisfied that the airline had solved the problem because it had replaced all the unreliable pitot tubes. "I have more confidence than ever now that the problem has been elucidated and corrected," he said.
That will not get Airbus, the airlines and the regulatory agencies off the hook. Questions are bound to be asked about why nothing was done to mandate replacement of the unreliable pitot tubes and to explain the erratic electronics -- which had been known since 1994. Some pilots are worried that the French accident bureau, the BEA, will play down the technical failures and play up the storm and shift blame to the crew. Why they flew through the storm rather than avoiding it, we don't know. Without the black box cockpit voice recorders, it's unlikely that we ever will.
The lawyers are ready to pounce. The British firm representing AF447 victims passengers thinks the European Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) will have to think about grounding the A330/340 fleet.
All that said, everyone should calm down. Two disasters in a month sound frightening. But remember that AF447 was the first fatal crash involving a plane of which over 900 are in the air around the world every day. Here's a comparison on air safety. Eight thousand pedestrians are killed in Europe annually. In the whole world, only 550 people die in airline accidents every year. Or another figure: flying is 32 times safer than taking the car, in terms of deaths per 100 million passenger miles, according to the French civil aviation authority.
Three weeks on from the crash of Air France flight 447, it is clear that the airline and the Airbus company are going to face some hard questions over the worst air disaster since 2001.
The latest leaks from the airline and its pilots indicate that Air France and Airbus were aware earlier than they have publicly admitted of serious problems with the speed instruments on the long-range A330 and A340 aircraft. Faulty speed readings were reported automatically by the Air France plane at the start of a series of failures that ended with the plane breaking up at night over the Atlantic with 228 aboard early on June1 .
The accident investigators have yet to reach any finding, but the consensus among pilots is that erroneous speed data probably confused the flight computers and left the pilots with a plane that would have been near impossible to fly.
As more documents have come out this week, Air France confirmed to us today that a maintenance team had been sent to await the arrival of AF 447 at Paris Charles de Gaulle airport during the night of the crash. They were supposed to correct faulty pitot tubes, the outside sensors that register the speed of the oncoming air.
The dispatch of the mechanics was a standard response to the automatic alerts (known as ACARS) that reported the erroneous speed data to Air France's Paris base. At the time, the airline did not yet know that the aircraft had crashed just over four minutes after its satellite transmitter sent the first ACARS alert.
The boss of Air France said last Friday that the airline had experienced a series of faulty speed incidents on its long-range Airbuses beginning last August. But last night, company documents reached the internet showing that the problem was known before that. Eurocockpit, a site run by professional pilots, including some from Air France, published an Air France maintenance notice, NT-34-029, dated last August 20. This said that at that time there had already been six cases of malfunctioning pitot probes on the company's A340 aircraft, the bigger brother of the A330 [see extract below]. These were said to be due to water and ice. Eurocockpit, which has been the source of the main leaks from the airline since the crash, said work on the technical notice had started in June last year (see full documents here).
Air France 447 was the 36th known occurrence of faulty speed readings on the A330 and A340 series, said the Eurocockpit association. The 35 previous incidents followed the same sequence as those reported by AF447, except that the pilots were able to recover control and return to normal flight.
The Eurocockpit pilots voiced amazement that the August 2008 technical note says that the faulty pitot tubes would have "nil operational impact". They called this outrageous. "How can it be imagined that there would be no operational consequence from the loss of so much information and vital systems?" it asked. "We have consulted the pilots who had these pitot problems. All told us that it took a big dose of immediate lucidity to avoid distraction by the stall warnings which came with the incident and face up to the deluge of alarms...." Maintaining control of AF447, at night in a tropical storm with faulty information, would have been a monumental task, the pilots said.
The pilots are obviously keen that the crew of AF447 should not be blamed for the crash. The flight recorders still lie on the floor of the Atlantic with only days left before their locator batteries run out. It is early to pronounce on the cause of this rare disaster, but the evidence is building up and it does not look good for Air France and Airbus. The accident investigation bureau, the BEA, is to produce a preliminary report by June 30.
Below is an extract from the August 2008 Air France note setting out the pitot problem and remedial action to be taken by engineers. AF447 reported the same auto-pilot disengagement and disconnection of the computerised flight controls as set out here at least 10 months earlier (THT is Air Tahiti Nui, whose aircraft are maintained by Air France).
A hundred years ago, Louis Blériot, Louis Bréguet and other pioneers decided that aviation was more than a branch of the rising automobile industry. To boost their fledgling pastime, they staged the first 'International Exposition of Aerial Locomotion' at the Grand Palais in Paris.
Their successors opened the 100th anniversary edition of the Paris Air Show today at Le Bourget, the historic airport in the northern outskirts, but there is not much celebrating. Today's heavy rain is in tune with the glum mood at le Bourget, which alternates years with Farnborough, England, as the world's main industry gathering. Gleaming military and civilian jets, helicopters and other flying machines are all on show as usual, but spirits have been dampened by three factors -- the global slump, unease over the crash of Air France Flight 447 and the swine 'flu epidemic
Since airlines are expected to suffer a 12 percent drop in revenue this year, many are cancelling orders already placed with Airbus, Boeing and the other makers. The possible global 'flu pandemic is also raising doubts about the prospects for short-term recovery.
Also worrying the industry is the unexplained catastrophe that hit the Air France A330 Airbus with 228 souls on board over the Atlantic on its flight from Rio to Paris on June 1. No airline disaster for decades has had such implications for an industry that thought that it had licked the technical side of Blériot's sport.
A century since Blériot coaxed his flimsy 'flying motor cycle' across the sea from Calais to Dover [picture above], man has mastered the mechanics. With modern construction and infallible computers, modern airliners are not supposed to vanish in the night. "It is safe to say that the aviation community is still in some shock," Tom Enders, the Airbus chief executive, said last week.
David Learmount, safety editor of Flight International, said in today's Financial Times: "An event like this is the kind the aviation world hoped it would not see again because it involves a world-class carrier flying the latest generation of airliner and it occurred en route, not during take-off of landing in difficult weather."
The speculation over Flight 447 rages on as new shreds of evidence emerge. The original theory seems to hold. The jet broke up at altitude after suffering a rapid but not instantaneous, emergency. Debris was scattered over a very wide radius. Brazilian autopsies on the 44 bodies recovered so far show that the passengers and crew were not prepared for trouble and died either in the shock of the break-up and depressurization or on hitting the water. None drowned.
Suspicion still points at the mix of factors that emerged immediately after the accident. Speed readings (from the pitot tubes) were faulty, there was a problem with the electronic flight system and the aircraft went out of control, possibly stalling or overspeeding.
A US airline pilot and accident expert who reads this blog has sent me a copy of an Airbus bulletin to airlines issued after the Qantas A330 episode last October. It describes a sequence of electronic failures very similar to what AF447 appears to have suffered. The Australian crew were able to pull their jet out of its dive. Stewarts Law, a London-based aviation law firm dealing with the Qantas case, told me that there are parallels with AF447.
A new element in AF 447 is speculation over the vertical stabiliser (tail) which was found by the Brazilians last week [picture above]. Some engineers and other specialists are wondering if the tail might have sheered off because of a structural flaw as the plane was struggling for control in heavy turbulence. American Airlines Flight 557, an Airbus A300, crashed in Queens, New York, in 2001 after its tail broke off and fell into Jamaica bay. Excessive control inputs by a pilot were blamed.
If they don't find the black box flight recorders, the BEA, the French accident investigation bureau, may never be able to do more than conclude with a supposition. Paul-Louis Arslanian, the head of the BEA -- which is based at le Bourget -- warned last week that this might be the case. Either way, confidence in the Airbus and all high-tech airliners will be shaken.
You could sense the public anxiety at my humble level of flying this weekend. It was open day at Enghien-Moisselles, our little aerodrome which is two minutes flight north of Le Bourget. The Cessnas, Robins and other small planes were out on display on the grass. Visitors kept asking about pitot tubes. I showed the pitot on my old Robin Aiglon and explained that the plane can take off and fly even with the tube blocked and no airspeed registering. That's the advantage of having no computer. We have a few electronics though. The air force has stationed two uniformed air controllers in our club house to make sure, via radar transponder codes, that none of us strays into Le Bourget's space.
The public displays at le Bourget start this weekend. There is a lot to see, including a flying Blériot plane and a breathtaking performance by la Patrouille de France, the air force display team [below]. The Patrouille, which now includes one female pilot, has been absent from le Bourget since the 1970s
Nearly five days after the disappearance of Air France 447, it is becoming a little clearer how the Airbus A330, one of the world's most modern airliners, came to grief with the loss of 228 lives.
[Sunday Update: Since this Friday post, Air France has confirmed that there was a problem with the pitot tubes (see below) on this Airbus series. They are prone to icing. The airline is in the process of replacing them. This confirms the theory of icing, faulty readings and control loss below. Also, the Brazilians have now found debris and bodies.]
Despite all its sophisticated flight systems -- and some might say partly because of them -- it seems that the airliner was knocked out of the sky by a storm.
Cloud, wind and ice bring down small planes all the time. They are not supposed to get the better of multi-million pound flying machines stuffed with computers and piloted by the elite of aviation [picture above: A330 flight deck]. The disaster cannot be written off as a freak. Airlines, manufacturers and regulators will be forced to review how they handle extreme weather.
Data transmitted automatically by the Air France jet have outlined a four-minute chain of events that began when the Airbus flew into a line of cumulonimbus cells, the heart of a full-blown equatorial storm.
The accident investigators confirmed officially today that conflicting speed readings confused the electronic flight system, which went into emergency mode. There is suspicion that this was caused by ice in the "pitot" tubes, narrow intakes that measure the pressure of the oncoming wind. For four minutes, during which the pilots apparently flew the bucking aircraft by hand, one system after another failed. The cabin lost pressure and the last message reported it plunging towards the sea.
Much is unknown. Why did the crew fly into violent weather rather than steer around it ? (Perhaps their weather radar was out of action). Did the cascade of system failures cause the loss of control or was it the result of an aircraft in its death throes?
Some airline disasters have had simple mechanical causes -- like the metal fatigue that destroyed the early Comets in the 1950s or the wing fire that brought down the Concorde in 2000. Pilot error has been blamed in many cases, most recently for last January's commuter airline crash at Buffalo, New York. Most have resulted from a mix of human and mechanical malfunctions.
That could be the case this time. The investigators are said to believe that the crew, flying in violent turbulence and possibly with a failing aircraft, may have used too much or too little jet thrust. This could have caused an upset due to excessive speed, or a stall due to low speed. Airbus put out a notice to operators of its aircraft overnight, telling them to observe the right procedures in the event of faulty speed readings. Jets at high altitude have little margin for error. Pilots use the expression "coffin corner" to describe the altitude where it becomes impossible to keep an plane in the air because its stall speed rises to meet the maximum safe speed reaching the sound barrier.
The chief investigator has said that the truth may never be known. That will become a near certainty if the flight recorders remain at the bottom of the ocean and the experts are not optimistic about the chances of finding them. No-one so far has even recovered any floating debris, though Brazilian planes say they spotted some.
Failure to explain fully the crash will worry nervous flyers and frustrate the world's desire to find a tidy cause for the worst air disaster since 2001. Somthing simple, like an explosion or a collision or a single defective component would be easier to deal with.
The disaster will certainly speed the arrival of more modern systems for tracking and communicating with aircraft in flight over oceans. In an age of satellite navigation and mobile telephones that can tell people where you are, it seems odd that airliners are flying thousands of people across oceans 24 hours a day without being tracked by anyone.
[Below: French aircrew search for wreckage over the Atlantic on Wednesday]
Here is a list of reasons why Air France Flight 447 may have fallen into the Atlantic, but first a little explanation:
Modern airliners do not just vanish in mid-flight. That was certainly the first reaction to the news of the disappearance of the Airbus en route from Rio de Janeiro to Paris yesterday. Planes missing in storms sounded like something from the old days of oceanic flight, not the world of satellite links and automated flight systems.
But the Airbus A330-200, with 228 aboard seems to have fallen victim to the same unforgiving elements that have dogged mariners and aviators throughout the ages. It's testimony to the achievement of modern aviation that the "mystery of Flight 447", as it is being called, is such an exception. The last unexplained disappearance of a big jet was in July 1996 when a TWA Boeing 747 blew up off climing away from Long Island, on a flight to Paris. The crash was blamed on an explosion in a fuel tank triggered by an electrical arc, but there is still suspicion that it could have been hit by a missile. In October 1999 a Boeing 767 of EgyptAir crashed off the northeast US coast killing 217. The flight recorder indicated that the co-pilot sent the plane into the water deliberately.
Suspicions of foul play and conspiracy theories are circulating around Flight 447 today as the search continues for wreckage between Africa and Brazil. But the reality is probably more mundane. The air is a rough place and when things go wrong there they do so very quickly.
Most plane crashes are not the result of a single event, but a chain of events, usually involving technical and human factors. Crew are taught to break the chain before it's too late. All we know is that the Air France Airbus stopped flying very suddenly when its electrical power, cabin pressure and other systems suddenly failed a few hundred miles out of Brazil. An automated data link reported the shutdown to the Air France control room at Paris airport.
No distress call was heard from the crew and the three locator beacons emitted no signal. They are independent of the other aircraft systems and are triggered by shock or extreme manoeuvres. The lack of signal suggests that something very brutal happened.
Here are the possible causes, with the most likely last:
-- A missile. Highly unlikely given the altitude.
-- Hijacking. All but ruled out because there were no suspicious passengers and the crew would have communicated.
-- A collision. Unlikely, given the separation of airliners on their oceanic airways. No other plane is missing. However a Brazilian airliner crashed in 2006 after colliding with a US business jet over the Amazon in cruising flight. A mixture of pilot and air traffic control error was blamed. Aircraft in mid-ocean are not tracked on radar.
-- A bomb. This was initially excluded but it remains a distinct possibility. Security at Rio is said by pilots to be lax. A French airliner was brought down by a bomb over Africa in 1989. Libyan agents were blamed. A blast would explain the sudden failure of all systems (see next item).
-- Accidental explosion. Unlikely but it remains a plausible possible cause. Big planes have in the past been brought down by dangerous cargo or sparks igniting fuel fumes but they are well protected now.
-- Fire. Unlikely by itself. An engine fire would be controllable and give the crew time to communicate, as would an electrical fire.
-- Lightning. Unlikely alone because airliners are often hit by bolts, which are discharged along the fuselage and off the wings. Elaborate precautions shield the flight systems. Questions are being asked, however, about the way that the composite, non-metal parts, of modern airliners conduct electricity.
-- Ice. Quite possibly a factor in combination with the storm system. Freezing rain or intense cold could block the sensors that give the plane its performance data. This could leave it "blind" and prone to upset. -- Extreme turbulence. Likely to have been a factor. Air France said the plane was flying in a zone of tropical storms. These are normal in the equatorial region and airliners use weather radar pick their way around the violent towering cumulonimbus (storm) clouds which lie in their their paths.
No crew would knowingly fly into one of these cells, which can carry the energy of nuclear explosions and are capable of throwing an airliner around like a twig in the wind.
The likely explanation is a chain of failures. Electronic problems, perhaps caused by a lightning discharge, could have interfered with the computers that control the aircraft, navigation equipment, or simply the weather radar. The pilots could also have been distracted by some other problem that let the plane fly into the heart of one of the cumulonimbus. That could have upset the plane, leading to a quick break-up.
The "black box" flight recorders can tell the story, but they may never be found at the bottom of the ocean. Perhaps data from US military survillance satellites can shed light. They may have picked up a radio transmission.
Inevitably, questions are being raised about the safety of the computers that that control modern airliners. Some pilots have doubts about the Airbus family because its "fly-by-wire" system is a little more automated than that of the rival Boeing company. Most experts discount the doubts.
Computers fly the plane unless specifically over-ridden. Pilots input their controls with little electronic sidesticks but the computers will not carry out their commands if they appear abnormal. This can be over-ridden in emergency but all the control surfaces remain electronically controlled.
The last suspicious incident involved an Australian Qantas A330 -- the same as the Air France plane. On a flight between Singapore and Perth in October last year, the system suddenly commanded a dive while the pilots had set the automatic pilot for level flight. A dozen people were seriously injured in the abrupt 600-foot descent, which has still not been explained. One theory, backed by some scientists, is that strong electromagnetic radiation -- such as an intense radio waves -- could have interefered with the flight system, causing erratic behaviour. Read this, from the New Scientist, if you want a fright.
Accident causes are usually not what they seem to be at first. This is just speculation and media do far too much of that after crashes. But pilots guess about crashes as much as everyone else and they do it from an informed point of view. I have summarized what they are saying (for new arrivals here, I have been a small-plane pilot for 25 years).
Back on an historical note, the ocean between Brazil and Africa s a graveyard of French aircraft. Several pioneers disappeared in the same area as the Airbus in the early decades of air transport. The most famous was Jean Mermoz, a colleague of Antoine de Saint Exupéry, who disappeared mid-ocean in December 1936 flying an Air France Latécoere 300 amphibious plane.
Unlike Air France 447, however, Mermoz had time to report by radio that he was shutting down a failed engine before his plane vanished.
UPDATE Wednesday 3/3: The accident investigation confirmed today that apparent inattention by the pilots led to the Amsterdam crash after one of the two radio altimeters malfunctioned.
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Why do airliners seem to be falling out of the sky these days ? The question is worth looking at after the Turkish Airlines crash in Amsterdam this week added to what looks like a series.
Part of the answer in some cases could be that the sophisticated systems on modern airliners are lulling some pilots into a false sense of security. In other words, they might be rusty on the stick-and-rudder skills of basic flying. This is dangerous territory. I am not a professional, just an amateur pilot, but the matter is being discussed by the pros.
I won't speculate about what caused the Turkish Boeing 737 to come down short of the runway at Amsterdam Schiphol airport, but let's look at the recent pattern. In the past 13 months in west Europe and the USA at least five airliners have crashed after suffering stalls or apparent stalls and two have safely crash-landed after losing all power.
First, to clear up a common misunderstanding, an aerodynamic stall -- to use it's full namel -- happens when the wings suddenly stop producing lift [see picture below]. They do not stall because engines stop. It happens because the plane is flying too slowly or performs an abrupt manoeuvre. If the engines fail -- or "stall" in media parlance -- a plane becomes a glider. It remains controllable -- as Captain Sullenberger showed masterfully when he ditched his Airbus in the Hudson river last month. The pilot's first action must be to push the nose down, turning height into speed. That obviously has limits if the plane is already very near the ground, as with the Boeing 737 at Amsterdam .
There are common patterns in the recent incidents:
In August, 154 were killed when a Spanair MD 80 stalled after take-off. The pilots failed to set the take-off flaps so the plane was unable to climb out of ground effect, the air cushion near the surface. That accident arose from apparent negligence.
In November, an Air New Zealand Airbus with two pilots from a German airline hit the Mediterranean, killing all seven aboard as it approached the French city of Perpignan. The accident investigators reported this week that the plane stalled after the crew took the risky decision to test its slow flying performance while they were at a dangerously low altutude. Technical factors may have contributed, but the pilots' unwise action led to the crash.
On February 12, a Continental airlines Dash 8 turboprop crashed on the approach to Buffalo, New York, killing all 49 on board and one on the ground. Though the inquiry is far from over, the investigators have found that the plane stalled and the crew apparently failed to take the right emergency action -- according to media leaks. Rather than gliding, it fell like a stone.
The latest was the Amsterdam crash on Wednesday. What is known so far is that the engines appear to have lost power a couple of miles from the runway and the plane flopped into a field. Passengers and witnesses described what the investigators have said was an apparent stall, from which the pilots may have been unable to recover. The sudden gyrations of the plane could have been caused by a number of events, including possibly the turbulence left in the air by a heavy airliner that preceded it.
The two successful powerless landings involved airliners that suddenly lost engine thrust but were under control until they made contact with the earth. A British Airways Boeing came down short of a runway at Heathrow on a flight from China in January last year. And Captain Sullenberger glided his Airbus A320 onto the Hudson last month after birds stopped the engines just after take-off. In both cases no lives were lost, thanks to good airmanship.
All pilots practise stalls in order to avoid them. You learn on the first day that no matter what, you fly the aeroplane right down to the ground. Airline pilots practice in simulators handling potential emergencies on approach. Airliners are equipped with systems that shake the control columns or sticks and provide aural warnings if their flying speed decays and they are approaching the danger zone. Some, such as the Airbus, have computers that do not let the plane stall -- unless they are over-ridden by the crew as they were in the case of the Air New Zealand plane in November.
The theory that is doing the rounds is far from new. Ever since the Wright brothers took off in 1903, complacency has been the biggest killer and pilots are trained to fight it. But, some are wondering whether the advanced electronics of the modern plane lead pilots to lose the edge? Landing a modern jet is usually a matter of monitoring the system until the pilot hand-flies the touch-down. With the autothrottle on and the electronics guiding the plane down the glide-slope, it is conceivable that pilots might not realise that they are approaching a stall.
Here for example is a pilot's remark on PPRUNE.org (Professional Pilots Rumour Network) after the Amsterdam crash this week. "We've not seen the end of this type of accident. Forget birdstrikes - in this instance. Inattention may be the real enemy". PPRUNE, by the way, has a lot of uninformed people contributing, but you can tell the difference.
 [Image of wing stalling]
[Footnote: the confusion by the media over engines "stalling" and aeroplanes stalling is avoided entirely in French, and I assume many other languages, because the words are different for each. An aerodynamic stall is un décrochage. A plane stalls = un avion décroche. If the engine stops, as in a road vehicle, the verb is caler. The engine stalled = Le moteur a calé. Décrocher is also much better than stall because it literally means unhooking, which is what the wing does from the air when it stalls. CB]
Last week the English city of Birmingham caused a furore when it dropped apostrophes from street names. The reason was confusion over spelling for satellite navigation. An elegant Norman town near the English Channel has come up with a similar high-tech problem. It wants to change its name because internet searches are unable to find it -- and because the lady mayor may be a little embarrassed.
The town of 8,000 on the border of Normandy and Picardy is called Eu. It is an honorable, ancient name that has featured in literature and is appreciated by cross-word enthusiasts. It is pronounced in the same way as "euh", the delaying sound in French speech that corresponds to err or um in English.
Eu, which is close to the coastal town of Tréport has been suffering from a drop in holiday visitors and they think they know the reason: the internet. People booking on line are not directed to the town's fine hotels and inns because search engines fail to recognise a two-letter place name which is the same as the past participle of the verb avoir (J'ai eu, pronounced roughly like the letter U in English, means I had). It also does not help that EU stands for European Union in English. Further complicating Eu's problem is the fact that two other French words are pronounced the same way: eux, meaning them and oeufs, meaning eggs.
After making only 7,700 euros in hotel visitor tax instead of the expected 24,000, Marie-Françoise Gaouyer, the new Socialist Mayor of Eu (above), has set out to add a few more letters. She has an extra good reason for doing so. Try saying her title in French. La Maire d'Eu (The Mayor[ess] of Eu) is pronounced the same as La merde (sorry for spelling out what will be obvious to most here).
Because of that, the town hall stationery carries the careful heading "Mairie de la Ville d’Eu". (...of the Town of Eu) That is one of the possibilities for a new name, along with Eu-en-Normandie or Eu-le-Château. That's its historic château in the picture.
Of course the change is being resisted by locals who are not keen on bowing to the internet. Eric Pradels, owner of the town's main newspaper shop, told Paris Normandie newspaper that he likes the quirky name: "When people ask my address, I hear them hesitate. They think that I have not finished my sentence. That gives me a chance to talk about the town."
Jean-Claude Andréoni, another local, said: "If people don't know it, we say near Tréport. Or Dieppe. There is no way it is going to be changed because of the internet."
Madame la Maire says that it will take four years to make the change. This requires a council vote, a referendum, a parliamentary act and approval by the President's cabinet of ministers.
A pilot's footnote: Eu has a nice little aerodrome. It's almost impossible for English weekend flyers to state their destination on the radio as "Eu". So the airfield is called Eu-Mer (pronounced roughly 'Ermer' in English).
 After air crashes, everyone usually jumps to conclusions and gets the story wrong. This is unlikely to be the case with US Airways Flight 1549, the Airbus which ditched in the Hudson River just off Manhattan's west side. The facts seem straightforward and the credit goes to extraordinary old-fashioned airmanship.
The flying world is full of admiration for the pilots who put a big, all-electronic airliner, down so softly on water that it stayed in one piece. Bored passengers are used to briefings on the "unlikely event of water landings", but in reality, big planes more often break up and sink quickly, killing many of their occupants.
Along with his first officer, Captain Chesley Sullenberger achieved a text-book 'dead stick' landing only three minutes after hitting a flock of birds as their Airbus A320 was was climbing low over northern New York City. I can imagine the picture well because I used to pilot light aircraft along the same low path over the George Washington Bridge and down the Hudson beside Manhattan.
Praise is also going to the three cabin crew who organised the evacuation of the 150 passengers. And there is credit for the French-based European Airbus firm for building a tough airliner. Among other things, unlike Boeings, the Airbus has an emergency "Ditch button", which closes vents and makes the fuselage more watertight. Airbus pilots have always been sceptical about the button, on the overhead panel. Today, they are saying today "Oh, so that's what it's for."
Here is what is known about an episode that will go down in flying lore. We do not know if Sullenberger or his co-pilot was flying the leg when the the Airbus left La Guardia, a difficult airport on the water's edge inside the borough of Queens. They were at 3,200 feet in the climb when they reported hitting large birds. These stopped one engine and severely dropped the power or killed the other one. When that happens, there is no-where to go but down.
At that moment, the aeroplane driver is no longer a systems manager. He or she has to forget the electronics and call on the most old-fashioned aviator's skills. A Dutch airline captain called Denkraai decribed it on the PRUNE pilots' network this morning: "What a nightmare. We sit there in our cockpits for years and years and nothing goes wrong. Then all of a sudden you have seconds to decide. I salute you sir, and your crew." 
Continue reading "Airmanship, not miracle, saved US Airways jet in New York" »
[Update: here's my related story on Ariane launch Saturday night]
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It's difficult to avoid describing the scene this morning without thinking of clichés from James Bond films. The sun was beating down on the equatorial jungle when we emerged by the Atlantic Ocean and came across a new Russian space base. Towers and cranes loomed over a launch-pad for Soyuz rockets, exactly the type that took the first Soviet cosmonauts into space all those decades ago.
And adding to the atmosphere, the Russians were labouring away a few miles from the dreaded Devil's island and the rest of the pestilential penal colony off Guiana where, for a century, France sent its prisoners to be broken.
But this wasn't the cold war or the secret lair of SPECTRE. The Russians are the latest addition to an extraordinary European success story. The 100-strong team of engineers from the Baikonur space base in Central Asia are here to build and operate their rockets to reinforce the French-run outfit that has become the world's leading launcher of commercial satellites.
Sometimes it's healthy to get a little perspective away from Paris. I'm 4,500 miles away but still in France, at least technically. I am in French Guiana, on the northeast side of Brazil, to watch the latest launch of an Ariane 5 [Picture above and launch below]. This is the 20-storey tall rocket which deposits bus-sized satellites in stationary orbit half a dozen times a year (That's Ariane waiting for launch in the picture). The project, which France began in the mid-1970s, has benefited from persistence, skill and good luck to overtake the Americans and Russians in the business of commercial space launching. Now, 185 flights since the first small Ariane, they have bought Russian service. A dozen Soyuz rockets -- smaller than the French heavy lifter -- will hoist television, internet and communications satellites into orbit from the French base.
This is all done from a site of a few dozen square miles carved out of the jungle swamps at Kourou, north of Cayenne, the Guiana capital.
Continue reading "Reaching for space from French jungle" »
The subject today is the abuse of power by French police and judges. Two lurid examples have made the headlines for different reasons. One involves a journalist and the other a recreational pilot. Since I am both, I of course feel extra indignation.
Journalists do not usually get sympathy when they complain about mistreatment, but the tale of Vittorio de Filippis [in picture], a manager with Libération, has caused an outcry. It tells you about the heavy-handed methods of a system which has extensive power to arrest and hold people.
Plainclothes officers hammered on de Filippis' door at 6.40 am last Friday. He was arrested in front of his two young sons and insulted. An officer called him "worse than garbage". He was taken in handcuffs to a holding cell and twice subjected to an intimate body search. He was questioned without access to a lawyer and released five hours later.
The police carried out their raid on the orders of Muriel Josié, an examining judge. De Filippis' alleged offence is that he was liable as publisher of Libération for a defamatory comment left by a reader on its internet site. In France, when you sue for libel, the case is prosecuted as a criminal one. In this instance, the victim of the supposed libel, an internet businessman, has already lost two cases against the newspaper.
In other words, a judge ordered a newspaper executive to be dragged from his home and abused over an internet comment. "I barely had time to reassure my son that I was not a crook and that this had to do with the newspaper," said de Filippis.
Continue reading "Rough justice for French journalist and pilot" »
Have a look at the video below. If you love birds, flying or mountains, it's impossible not to be moved.
It's a report from France 2 television on a flight last Friday by Sherkan, an American bald eagle from the summit of Mont Blanc, Europe's higest mountain. The eagle, which has a two-metre (6'6") wingspan, flew with Jacques-Olivier Travers, a professional falconer. He specialises in teaching flight to big birds born in captivity.
Travers, who runs the Eagles of Leman park on Lake Geneva had been training Sherkan, a 14-year-old bird born in Germany, the art of aviation for the past 18 months. When he was ready, he took him by helicopter along with paraglider pilots to the top of the mountain, which is at 4,800 metres (15,800 feet) altitude. The result was this film, shot partly from the escorting paragliders, of Sherkan making the 40-minute flight down to the Chamonix valley over 12,000 feel below. The thin air at altitude meant that the bird tired quickly and came back to his instructor mid-air to rest. He enjoyed himself more in the lower air, Travers says on the video. [Thanks, Dot King, for posting the link yesterday]
Jacques-Olivier Travers
There is an excuse today for some musical nostalgia. Jacques Brel died exactly 30 years ago. Most people reading this blog will need no introduction. But I'll provide a little since some otherwise well-educated colleagues in London told me that they had never heard of the man who is probably the most widely revered French-language singer-poet of modern times.
Brel was a Belgian who wrote and sang passionate, bitter, sardonic ballads in the 1950s and 1960s before retiring young to the south Pacific and dying of lung cancer at the age of 49. He was a magnetic performer and an admired actor and film director. For people who lived those years, his anthems -- Madeleine, Les Bourgeois, Le Plat Pays, La Valse à Quatre Temps, Le Port d'Amsterdam -- are as much part of the soul as Beatles tunes are for English-speakers of that generation. Non-Francophones certainly know Ne Me Quitte Pas, which was reprised by Sinatra, Nina Simone, David Bowie and many others as If You Go Away.
The air is full of those tunes today and not just for the oldies. Abd Al Malik, a rap artist, has just had a hit with Brel's Ces gens-là. Brel's records still sell over 200,000 a year in France, more than those of any dead artist, including Edith Piaf and Serge Gainsbourg.
Last night an anonymous Belgian paid 108,000 euros (150,000 dollars) for the little notebook in which Brel composed Amsterdam [picture below and video]. The item was one of 94 of Brel's possessions that were auctioned by Sotheby's in Paris. The whole lot, including guitars, assorted other manuscripts and papers, brought in over a million euros (1.4 million dollars).
The first such sale of a popular entertainer's memorabilia in France was preceded by a spat between the owners and Brel's widow and daughters who claimed that they had no right to them. This is because they were passed down to relatives by Sylvie Rivet, the mistress with whom Brel lived for most of the 1960s. France Brel, 55, one of the daughters, said: "It is odious and mean. We have tried all kinds of ways to stop the sale...These things are unuseable because we are the only ones who have the rights to have them."
Brel, a politically engagé satirist, would certainly have been amused at the unseemly squabble and the rush to buy his things.
The singer is regarded more than ever as a Gallic treasure and monument to the tradition of chanson française. President Sarkozy carries his songs in his iPod, according to Carla Bruni. But he is worshipped in Belgium as one of the country's immortals. Brel, born in a comfortable Brussels family, had a love-hate tie to the country that he left as a young man. "I am attached to my country but it stirs in me great anger," he said. He had no time for the quarrel, greater now than ever, between the Dutch-speaking Flemish and the French speakers of the southern half. Anyone trying to get a feel for Belgium should listen to Brel singing Le Plat Pays, his melancholic ode to Belgium, in both French and Dutch.
"Miche", as Brel called his wife, is visiting his grave in the Marquesas Islands today. He is buried there near the tomb of Gauguin. In Tahiti yesterday, she said: "Jacques would never have imagined that 30 years on, they would be still be commemorating him year after year, from one generation to another."
Brel became a passionate aviator and was running his own air service in the islands at the time of his death. His pilot's licence and other flying souvenirs sold at Sotheby's for 34,350 euros (see the photo of his plane on my last post).
 No, France has not moved its rocket launchpad from Guyana to the heart of Paris. The Ariane European space vehicle is being displayed in the middle of the Champs Elysées as part of a spectacular celebration of France's first 100 years of pioneering aviation.
I snapped these pictures in the lunch-hour yesterday as crowds were swarming around the exhibits, which include helicopters, fighter jets, vintage planes, Airbus wings and parts of airliners.
Since the show opened at the weekend, over a million people have strolled between the Place de la Concorde and the Rond Point, where the planes have been arranged almost like sculptures in the historic surroundings.
Even if you are not un passioné de l'aviation, you still have to admire France for going to such lengths to promote its achievements with style -- and those of its European partners in the case of Ariane, the helicopters and the Airbus.
The occasion is the centenary of the creation by Louis Blériot, Louis Bréguet and other pioneers of the first aviation industry organisation. France in 1908 was the home of the fledgling flying game. That was the year that the Wright brothers came from a sceptical America to show that they really had invented a workable flying machine. Blériot and company were highly impressed. The vintage planes on display, which include one of Blériot's own, all come from the museum at le Bourget aerodrome, which is one of the world's greatest collection of historic aircraft.
[Below, a Spad XIII world war one fighter]
One of the most evocative planes on show is a little red Wassmer monoplane of the early 1970s. It belonged to Jacques Brel, the great singer-composer. He fell in love with flying and retired to run his own air service in the south Pacific. He died of lung cancer 30 years ago tomorrow at the age of 49. His pilot's licence was sold in a collection of his memorabilia in Paris this evening.
Continue reading "Flying down the Champs Elysées" »
 
A small black shape dropped into sight in my aeroplane's windscreen as we circled high over Calais in a brilliant blue haze after lunch today. Yves Rossy had just leaped from the safety of his jump plane. Following behind, we watched in awe as "Fusionman" extended the eight foot wings strapped to his back, ending his free-fall and swooped into level flight.
Like a black hawk, Rossy throttled up his four little but noisy jets, accelerating in level flight to over 100 knots and headed out towards the thin white line that shimmered through the haze on the other side of the Channel. The distant Dover Cliffs were the only thing we could make out in the intense blue goldfish bowl in which sky meets the sea with no horizon.
The Times' Cessna 182 was part of the little squadron of two helicopters and two planes that escorted Rossy as he made history, zooming like Buzz Lightyear, the spaceman of Toy Story, out into the wide blue yonder. Protected by a special air corridor, we tucked in behind the Pilatus Porter drop plane which was guiding Rossy, following him just above like a body guard, with the two yellow helicopters in tow. Six thousand feet below, Channel ferries zig-zagged through the dense stream of container ships.
The helicopter escort was comfort, should Rossy have been forced to ditch among the shipping in the cold grey-green water. But his path did not waver as we sped along in his wake, a member of a strange flock of birds following their jet-powered human leader in extended V formation.
Unlike Rossy, we were in a warm cockpit behind controls and a reassuring engine, talking to air traffic control and with GPS navigation. Rossy has no instruments except an audio altimeter in his helmet and his wristwatch. And, apart from the throttle, he has no flight controls, just his body. To steer, climb or descend he moves his head and limbs slightly, a skill he first learned as a sky-diver. "I fuse with my machine. It was my dream as a boy to be a bird," he told me before the flight.
Within 10 minutes, the white lighthouse on Saint Margaret's bay hove into slight and the jetman descended, wheeling into a left turn as he crossed the coastline. Along with the flock we pulled aside to get out of his way as Rossy performed a spectacular "victory" figure of eight, turning out over the sea again to face the wind. We watched from just above as his blue, steerable parachute unfurled and Rossy lined up with the field where the media crowd waited. No-one said anything on the radio. "Bravo !". The cheer went up from my French companions in the Cessna when we saw Rossy touch down. "Spectaculaire!"
Much the same would have been heard near the same spot 99 years ago this year when Louis Blériot swooped down in his monoplane, becoming the first powered aeroplane pilot to fly the Channel (balloon and dirigible pilots did it before Blériot)
Rossy, cheerful, gangly and boyish was coolness itself before take-off. "There should be no problem today," he said as he tucked into pasta and mineral water in a tent beside the old air terminal that still welcomes arrivals with a sign saying "Gateway to the Continent". "It feels right. The weather is holding", he said.
Red wine was on the table, but Fusionman touched none. On Thursday, Rossy cancelled because of fog which he said gave him butterflies in the stomach, a warning sign that he does not ignore. Minutes after our lunch, he donned his flame-retardant flight suit and his team wheeled out his wings to the Pilatus. Close up, the black Kevlar and foam wings with their four Thermos sized engines look distinctly home made, which they are. Rossy strapped on the contraption and took position in the Pilatus cabin, which has a flame-proof floor. That is because he lights his four engines standing on a platform by the open door with two of the motors still inside. Several fire extinguishers are held at the ready.
"See you the other side, he waved' at his team as we took off ahead of the Pilatus to climb to await him.
The world's latest aviation pioneer has only a weekend to absorb the adrenalin. On Monday, he takes command of his usual "office" -- the captain's seat in a Swiss International Airbus 320 in which he will fly tourists to Luxor and Sharm El Sheikh.
CLICK CONTINUE FOR MORE PICTURES
Continue reading "Flying the Channel with the human jet" »
Regulars here may remember Yves Rossy, the Swiss airline pilot who has turned himself into the world's first human jet. I spent the day with him today at Calais as he prepared to strap on his wings and become the first jetman cross the English Channel.
At the last minute, with TV networks broadcasting live, fog rolled in over the landing area at Dover so he had to call off the flight, which starts with a free-fall from a plane. (That's him in the picture getting the bad news from Dover.) He is going to try again tomorrow (Friday) lunchtime.
Rossy, a lanky, boyish 49-year-old was disappointed after preparing himself mentally all morning for what remains a dangerous mission. His flight of about 23 miles will take only about 13 minutes at 115 MPH, but if he runs out of fuel too soon or his four little jet engines cut, he must splash down under parachute in the cold grey water of the Channel.
We flew up from Paris in a Cessna to tag along behind the little escort fleet of two helicopters and two planes. The visibility on the French side of the Channel was already so poor that I found it hard to make out the Calais airport in the murk below us. That's when we small-time pilots bless GPS, the satellite positioning system. I cannot imagine what it would be like to fly in the same conditions with no instruments and no flight controls apart from your body. That's what Rossy does when he is being Fusionman, the name he uses for his human flying machine. Rossy, who is constantly cheerful, said the descending fog was just one variable too much.
"There are so many unknown factors. We don't want to add another layer," he said after being told by phone of the closing cloud. His senses told him not to push it, despite the pressure of heavy media attention and commitments to sponsors. "I have butterflies in my stomach and that's a bad sign," he said as he rolled his wings back from the Pilatus jump plane. "I only have one life and I would rather keep it."
I hope that he makes it tomorrow. He has to be back in the captain's seat of his A320 Airbus flying out of Zurich early next week. The forecast is better but we're expecting a headwind wind that could force another cancellation. With only just enough jet fuel to get across the Straits, Fusionman has no margin for error.
The pressure to perform on schedule is a strain that the early aviators did not suffer so much. Only a few reporters were in attendance at Calais and Dover in July 1909 when Louis Blériot, a French pioneer, became the first man to fly the Channel in an aircraft.
We'll make another attempt to watch Yves from the air tomorrow. You can watch him live on natgeotv.com
[Calais pictures by Alastair Miller]
France is pleased with the stylish way that its navy and special forces handled the seizure of the Ponant, the big French superyacht that was boarded by pirates off Somalia 10 days ago. Six of the 20 or so pirates were captured by helicopter-borne French commandos as they made an overland getaway with part of the ransom.
The operation, directed by President Sarkozy, was well run and it shows how France can put well-equipped forces into action on the high seas at long distance. The 30 crew, most of them young French citizens, were released on Friday and are flying back to Paris tonight on a military Airbus. Sarkozy is going to the airport to greet them. There were no passengers. The captured Somali bandits -- said to be former fishermen -- are being brought back to Paris to stand trial.
The armed forces have been putting out their story and le Figaro today has details of their intrepid exploit. The pirates, for example, brought two goats on board for milk but they spent a lot of their time draining the ship's copious bars. One pirate disappeared overboard in the night, apparently drunk.
I don't want to dampen the good news, but no-one is asking how much the whole thing cost or wondering about the ransom, said to be 2.5 million dollars, that was paid for the crew's freedom.
[le Ponant (an old word for west)]
Continue reading "Super Sarkozy greets hostages after pirate triumph" »
Meet Virginie Guyot. She flies Mirage fighter jets for the French air force and has done two tours based at Kandahar in the Afghan war zone. Captain Guyot, who is 33 and a mother, has just made the news by becoming the first woman assigned to la Patrouille de France, the air force display team.
The eight-jet Patrouille is one of the best. It is equal or superior to the US Air Force Thunderbirds and Britain's RAF Red Arrows. Its tight formation aerobatics is breath-taking (watch one of their videos). Every July 14, the team opens the Bastille Day parade with a low-level run down the Champs Elysees trailing their trademark tricolor smoke.
Guyot, whose father was in the military, got the bug with her first flight in a light aircraft at the age of 12. She is due to become commander of the Patrouille from next year. She never saw flying as a men-only job, she says. "Flying a plane nowadays requires finesse more than physical force."
That has been the case for decades. Only in movies do pilots wrestle with the controls. Most planes are flown with the tips of the fingers. The need for delicacy is part of the reason why women make such good pilots -- including aerobatic ones. Look at Patty Wagstaff who in the 1990s was US aerobatics champion three times. When she was asked how a woman could beat men at such a demanding sport, she used to reply: "Do you think the airplane knows the difference?".
Another advantage is female judgment.
Continue reading "French pilots show women can fly" »
I
Some news scoops are too good to be true. I hope that this one is not false because it will solve one of the great mysteries of aviation -- and wartime history. A former German fighter pilot has claimed to French researchers that he shot down Antoine de Saint Exupéry, author of Le Petit Prince and legendary French pilot-author.
Horst Rippert, 88, who lives in Wiesbaden, said that he had suffered remorse all his life after discovering that Saint Exupéry was the pilot of a P-38 Lightning of the Free French Air Force that he blew from the Mediterranean sky on July 31 1944. "If I had known that it was him, I would never have fired," Rippert told the authors who traced him and have produced a book.
[Saint-Ex at the controls of his Lightning, 1944]
Continue reading ""I shot down Saint Exupéry" says German ex-pilot" »
Nicolas Sarkozy has been taking credit for the extraordinary decision by the US Defense Department to buy a fleet of Air Force refuelling tankers worth at least 35 billion dollars from EADS, parent of the the European Airbus company, rather than from Boeing.
The French president said that the deal, which has sparked a political storm in the USA, would have been unimaginable if he had not repaired the damage to relations with Washington that had been inflicted by President Chirac's opposition to the Iraq invasion.
"Could one think for a minute that the contract which EADS has magnificently won... would have been signed in the climate of tension that existed between the Americans and French?" Sarko asked in le Figaro.
Sarkozy is right that his warmth towards the US has eased the chill that prevailed under Chirac. This undoubtedly helped the deal with the European Aeronautic, Defense and Space company. But he could be a little more modest. EADS' American contract was the fruit of years of effort, most of it before he won office last May. On top of that, the US order conflicts with his own doctrine of "economic patriotism".
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Continue reading "Sarkozy's dubious glory in American Airbus deal" »
If Colonel Gaddafi was so eager to linger in Paris when he came last December, it was perhaps because the Libyan leader is half French. His father was an air force pilot from Corsica. That's him in the picture on the left.
This extraordinary claim has surfaced over the past few days after a report by Bakchich, a French investigative news site. They looked into a legend which has long circulated in Vezzani, a village of 600 people in eastern Corsica. According to this, a Vezzani gendarme's son called Albert Preziosi was stationed in the Libyan desert with the Free French air force in 1941-42. He is said to have had an affair with a local woman at about the time that young Muammar would have been conceived.
Preziosi was killed when his aeroplane was shot down over Russia in 1943. As a member of the famous Normandy-Niemen squadron, he has been celebrated as a hero in his home village ever since. An air force base near the town of Solenzara, is named after him. Not a shred of evidence exists to stand up the Gaddafi legend but the physical resemblance is so strong that it has persisted.
Continue reading "Is Colonel Gaddafi a Frenchman?" »
As we know, the French did more than any other nation to pioneer aviation a century ago. Now they have scored another flying first. Little noticed by the outside world, on December 23, a pilot took off from an Alpine airfield and flew for 48 minutes in the first light aircraft to be powered by electricity.
With electric cars and boats finally in action, that might sound like no big deal. But electric power has long been the impossible dream of aviation because the energy is so puny compared with the dead weight of the batteries. Sitting behind the noisy, gas-gulping beast that pulls my little plane through the sky, I often muse on what it would be like to have a smooth quiet motor turning the blades and belching no carbon into the air. That, in modest form, is exactly what the APAME, a team of French engineers at the village of Saint Pierre d'Argencon, have just achieved.
Their "Electra", a kit-built single-seater, flew around the high Alps with a 25 horse-power electric motor and 47 kilogrammes of lithium-polymer batteries. The flight shows that non-polluting, quiet and inexpensive flying is withing reach, Anne Lavrand, the president of the APAME group, said. "This will be a real aeroplane that will have an airworthiness certificate. It's a machine built for anyone with a pilot's license."
Continue reading "Electric flight over France" »
Jet fighters make a din, cost hundreds of millions, they pollute like crazy and they are made to kill people. But there are few things more heart-stopping than seeing one showing off low in the summer sky over Paris.
All right, you have to love aeroplanes. For those who do so and those who make their living from them (not necessarily the same thing), the Le Bourget air show is a feast. Even if you don't fancy seeing a 20-tonne Dassault Rafale fighter pulling turns with the agility of a dancer, Le Bourget's biennial Mecca of the aviation business is great spectacle. I have just dropped in there with my 16-year-old son, soaking up sights that ranged from glider aerobatics to the new A380 Airbus performing steep turns over the field. The amazing thing is that the giant airliner, which can carry 850 people, makes little noise.
The same could not be said for the John Travolta's Boeing 707. The actor, who is Hollywood's biggest pilot, flew his old private airliner into le Bourget on Wednesday. He was full of praise for the Airbus and French aviation when he chatted with us reporters.
Continue reading "Gas guzzling at the Paris air show" »
Here is the antidote to an excess of French politics and forgive a brief digression into the sky.
Seen from a thousand feet on a sunny Saturday morning, France is a picture of tranquility. For months, the French have been absorbed by a presidential campaign that enters its final week today. With its promise of change and a new generation in power, the race has gripped the country. You can hear the argument everywhere, not just in the media, but at bus-stops, work places and cafes -- and even in the sky.
When you cruise in a small plane over the towns and countryside, the densely populated Ile de France is a vision of peace, order and prosperity. It is the ideal of candidates' speeches and the idyll envied by visitors. Twinkling in the spring sun, even the banlieue housing estates -- home to the 2005 riots -- look less grim, enfolded into the rolling landscape with rivers and village churches. You can see this from pictures that I snapped yesterday, flying around Paris and Normandy from Moisselles, the grass airfield tucked into the northern suburbs, where my elderly aeroplane is based.
Central Paris is only 12 miles away, but you take off over maize fields then forest and after three minutes you are over the Oise river and L'Isle Adam, a much-painted town that was home to Honoré de Balzac.
The Oise flows into the Seine, with barges hauling the fuel and materials to keep Paris running. The sun glints on hypermarket parking lots crammed with Saturday shoppers and then the horizon fills with green and yellow fields. It is only from the air that you can see how many châteaux are scattered around the Paris area, most of them well hidden from the roads. If you fly up the Seine [left] but steer around Rouen, a carpet of unbroken countryside rolls below the wings until you are over the coast half an hour later.
[Monday election update from newspaper here]
Continue reading "La France Tranquille" »
The scene sounds like a French comedy. On a sunny winter afternoon, Monsieur Blaise, a 35-year-old dairy inspector, drives home through the Languedoc countryside after visiting his aunt. A strange object appears overhead. Mysteriously, the engine of his Citroen stalls. Struck with terror, Blaise runs for his life. He later describes the mysterious craft to the gendarmes."It was a kind of cigar that I compared to a baguette of bread." His Citroen refuses to start for another day.
M. Blaise's encounter of the after-lunch kind, which took place in January 1981, was meticulously recorded and analysed by a unit of the CNES, the French national space agency. It has now been put on line along with 400 sightings of suspected UFOs -- OVNIs in French -- from the official Gallic X-files.
Eventually some 100,000 documents, covering 1,650 cases going back to the early 1950s, will be available in the first such exercise in public transparency. Like the United States in the post-war years, the French state has taken its UFOs seriously and devoted resources to interviewing witnesses and analysing sightings scientifically. The fascinating thing is that a full 28 percent of the cases remain an absolute mystery. These are decribed as "inexplicable despite precise witness accounts and the good quality of material information gathered."
Naturally UFO fans from around the world are now jamming the site of the GEIPAN, the agency's "flying saucer division", as sceptics call it.
Continue reading "Strange baguettes and the French X-files" »
Picture Paris and chances are that the images that flash into mind include those nostalgic shots of ordinary people by Robert Doisneau, Brassai, Willy Ronis and the other street photographers of the post war era. More than ever, they are everywhere. As well as filling the world's poster shops, the monochrome icons of 1940s and 1950s France are stacked high as post cards in Paris kiosks. The Amélie film of 2001 was one long homage to their style.
You couldn't take those photos any more because France's ridiculously strict law requires the subject's prior approval. A signed waiver is needed for publication. This applies even to people who might appear in the background, as Magali, our Paris photographer, was lamenting the other day as we walked down the street spotting Doisneau-type scenes. And, of course, do not even think about photographing children -- as Doisneau, Henri Cartier-Bresson and the others did all the time.
Now anyone with a mobile phone can play the photo-reporter. You don't have to haul around a Leica, or a boxy Rolleiflex like the oldies. But a batch of exhibitions around Paris this winter show the vast difference between art and the quick snap. Doisneau is featuring in a fine (free) exhibition at the Hôtel de Ville until April 3. The City Hall is of course the scene of his over-commercialised Baiser de L'Hotel de Ville.
Continue reading "Paris in black and white" »
 You settle into a Swiss airliner and hear the welcome "this is your captain speaking". You picture a reassuring guy with four rings on his sleeve, greying temples and the steady hand of command. Now try imagining your captain leaping into the sky dressed only in a flying suit and a pair of wings and answering to the the name Jet Man.
Implausible as it may sound, this is the double life of Captain Yves Rossy, 47, a devoted -- some would say mad -- aviator who has come closer than anyone so far to achieving the ancient dream of flying like a bird. If you think the festive week has got the better of me, watch Jet Man's video . It's not quite Superman or Icarus. He straps a pair of wings to his back and swoops around the sky with the help of four tiny jet engines. Few might want to try, but no-one else has done it.
Continue reading "Captain flies without aircraft" »
 Everyone knows that aviation was invented in France. That may sound like a provocation to admirers of Wilbur and Orville Wright of Dayton, Ohio, yet the French believe it and in many ways they are right. Today, on the Bagatelle field in the western Paris parkland, we are to watch a flying machine take off in a re-enactment of the flight that is officially recorded as the world's first by an aeroplane.
The contraption is a faithful replica of the "14bis", a boxy, bamboo-framed plane with a 50hp motor which Alberto Santos-Dumont, a Franco-Brazilian showman, coaxed into the air on the same spot in November 1906. For France and Brazil that 21-second hop over 220 metres marked the start of powered flight and the centenary is being celebrated with fanfare as such in both countries. This is a good example of how the facts can be clouded by patriotism and prejudice (yes, France-versus-USA again, I'm sorry). Yet, France has good grounds for claiming to be the main home of aviation.
Continue reading "Pioneers and patriotism" »
 If you want to get somewhere quickly, don't take a small plane. The old rule was confirmed again this morning when I found myself facing a platoon of heavily armed and rather nervous soldiers of the French special forces on the rainswept tarmac of an airport in Brittany. Oops, was my first thought. I must just have done something bad, like violating prohibited air space, and they have come to get me.
It was mid-morning and a time when I should have been at my desk in Paris. The little episode was of no importance and has nothing to do with our usual matters of moment, so read on only for the sake of anecdote. It's a chance to mention a beautiful corner of the world and another example of French hospitality towards aviators.
Continue reading "Landing in Breton trouble" »
While France glides into another long holiday weekend (VE Day), here is a reply to queries and points about my last flying posting that were raised by Peter Carrington, Selwyn, Michael Robertson, Edward Johns and Sarah. Stop here unless you are of an aviating nature.
Continue reading "Flying points" »
 Flying along the Normandy coast at the weekend, I witnessed a little episode of Anglo-French misunderstanding that could have had dire consequences.
The air around the delightful airfield at Saint-Valéry-en-Caux, a port south of Dieppe, was busy with aviators enjoying a spring Saturday. The radio frequency was filled with the position-reporting that goes on at fields without traffic control. You try to ensure safety and some order by telling other pilots where you are and what you will do next. In France this is done in French.
As I was joining the circuit to land, a woman's voice announced in English that her plane was landing on runway 25. Everyone else, however, was using runway 07, which is the same one in the opposite direction. The British crew did not understand the chatter and bowled into the circuit in the wrong direction while the French pilots scrambled to get out of their way.
Continue reading "French in the air " »
 For shrugging off the daily grind, there is nothing like taking to the sky with your own wings. Apart from the United States with its big tradition of citizen flying, there is nowhere like France for enjoying the pleasures of the air.
I was reminded of this yet again on Sunday morning, when, after a month pinned down by bad weather, I coaxed my old aeroplane off a muddy grass runway under a cold blue sky. Overhead, a big Airbus was hauling its passengers out from Charles de Gaulle airport just six miles away. Behind lay the outline of Le Bourget, the original Paris aerodrome, where Charles Lindbergh touched down in 1927 after his epic flight from New York. Back in the southern distance, you could make out the Eiffel tower.
Seven hundred feet below, the fields and woods were still in their winter brown as I took the corridor north to the Oise and the riverside villages that were painted by Van Gogh, Cézanne and Pissaro.  The great thing from the air is that you don't pick up the modernity. Even highways fail to blot the lie of the old landscape. The engine noise becomes a drone and the world looks peaceful below.
Continue reading "Enjoying French skies" »
Your writer
Charles Bremner is Paris Correspondent for The Times. He started out as a journalist in Russia and then moved to the United States. He has reported from all the continents but most enjoys observing the exotic tribe on Britain's doorstep. Though France is home, he avoids going native by offering what the locals call an "Anglo-Saxon" eye on their country.
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Charming, totally unself-conscious; they are really enjoying themselves. That's what politics is about for politicians. Thank God for them.
Posted by: thomasine | 10 Dec 2009 18:43:39
Azloon,
Classier than Heidi Fleiss.
Posted by: do-re-mi | 10 Dec 2009 18:26:04
Rick you told me to read Homage to Catalonia didn’t you?
Moving to another country, even if you want, to can be traumatic. You have to learn another language, another way of being, thinking, acting, reacting to people and events. It can liberate you ( in my case) or events scare you into not functioning. If you have escaped war, rape, poverty, the promise land you thought you were reaching may not be as easy to negotiate as you imagined.
If your resilient quotient is low after your struggles, if you don’t find a support system, one more might push you over the edge.
It depend on so many things, your DNA, cultural heritage, your upbringing and the people you meet. I was alone, with a family to look after, you can become insular as the world out there can be harsh and you can be treated unkindly.
Your family becomes your heaven. You sometimes sentimentalise and romanticize the place you left and see it as you want it, you don’t want to forget where you come from, betray your ancestors. You send money back home to the wrong people. You have changed, your birth-place has too and sometimes you can’t acknowledge neither.
The covered head to toes is a cultural thing, it’s from the house of the Wahabi. I hate seeing women dressed like that, it’s desexualising but from a country in the throes of sexual repression it makes sense. Lots of it has to do with the culture and the politics of the time, and who pays for the books.
Yet many women welcome it ( peace and quiet from their folks – they are good Muslims so they can go about their business and out of the house), the equivalent of western women who dress short to please their men folks or shave the hair on their arms because they want to be feminine ( wanted by men) or pole-dancer shoes. Ok I exaggerate a bit.
“A pious pr*ck-teaser” , maybe for you, but I truly hate seeing it.
“suicide bombers ..., but victims of what? “
Your pain ( whatever that is- in second-generation immigrant in a cultural quagmire – or a Gaza resident with no hope), confusion gets taken away when your mind gets reprogrammed for the annihilation of others – ( yours included). Your mental and physical pain on this world will disappear and you will get willing girls. You are being programmed by people who will not be putting their own bodies on the line but like control and power.
Here we have “It is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God”..
In a changing world “stubborn conviction” is so reassuring, enlightened liberal humanists look like sissies or deluded dreamers.
Posted by: do-re-mi | 10 Dec 2009 18:23:33
AZLOON
"Eating the creme brule out of a bag on the front seat of my car will be challenging, but I'll figure it out."
Suck it out with a straw, dude!
Be daring like the UMP!
Posted by: rocket | 10 Dec 2009 16:36:22
Dot -- yes, completely misread Estrosi.
African-Americans will remark occasionally that they were stopped by the police for 'driving while black.'
Following the money will usually lead one to the root of a problem. Easily-obtained European welfare benefits surely are a 'carrot' for many non-caucasian immigrants (and Brit retirees seeking medical care?). Why wouldn't a person want to go where he can live better and for free? This mindset starts the whole immigrant experience off on the wrong foot. Few emigrate to the U.S. for welfare benefits because they aren't there. When they were more liberal here, a taxpayer rebellion forced states to require recipients to get jobs quickly or lose benefits. It worked. But there have to be jobs for this to play out.
It's amazing how integrative an invitation to the capitalist orgy is, if one believe that they can as naked and drunk as everyone else.
Note: the orgy is currently on hiatus.
Lex -- Your Knox analogy is perfect.
Posted by: azloon | 10 Dec 2009 16:01:21
'Changeons Le Monde Ensemble"
Now that's the scary part......
....but 'cute' in a treacly way. People willing to make asses of themselves can't be all bad.
My jaundiced eye also noticed that France now seems to have its own fair share of portly/oversized citizens (as France delights in reminding Americans about their own disproportion of corpulent souls).
How creme brule can be such a good thing and a Big Mac so bad is one notion I've never quite been able to grasp. I am hoping McDo will offer both so I can have one followed immediately by the other.
Eating the creme brule out of a bag on the front seat of my car will be challenging, but I'll figure it out.
Posted by: azloon | 10 Dec 2009 15:42:40
JGF
I believe HEREWEGOAGAIN says Bible, not New Testament. Notwithstanding JC's updates on what is and isn't allowed in the New Testament, there are plenty of people who treat it as a documentary, rather than collection of works written hundreds of years afterwards to fit the known facts at the time and serving as a useful allegorical tool for the primitive. And I haven't even read Dan Brown!
Posted by: Ray Alist | 10 Dec 2009 15:25:13
It 's correct to put that on this blog?
http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xbfdzb_lipdub-ump_fun
Posted by: Francois D | 10 Dec 2009 15:23:23
The video has dissapeared as of 15:48
?????????????????
Posted by: rocket | 10 Dec 2009 14:48:48
Dot,
As long as you don't promote Pyrénées bears wildlife, it's ok by me.
ROMAIN
Yes, I've often wondered what might happen in the unlikely event of my doing a spot of strolling about the Pyrénées in my swimsuit, tiara and spike heels, if I met a bear.
Sweet! :)
I'd better take Simon Smith with me in case - it's just the "set Price" a girl has to pay. ;D
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N8zI5xjwKYw
Posted by: dot king | 10 Dec 2009 14:17:28
Time for the Dalai Lama show.
Posted by: richard jones | 10 Dec 2009 14:09:56
What proportion of French Muslims consider themselves fully integrated and how many would be prepared to abandon parts of their religion and culture that conflict with French law? Would it be too dangerous to ask?
JOHN O'D
I think that might not be the right question.
The problem is that in France "looking Arab" is enough to get you stopped and asked for your papers more than once a day - it is also enough for you to be thought of as Muslim -> Islamist -> Integrationist -> Terrorist (or at least hoodlum).
Yesterday I heard Jamel Debbouze quoted as saying that he was born in France, grew up in France considers himself to be French and loves France, but is always referred to as being of a different nationality. What should he do, change his name to Jacques Dubois?
Come to think of it, perhaps all people with non-French names should change to being Jacques or Jacqueline Dubois - but what we do about their faces . . . hmm problem.
Many who are thought of as "Muslim" have already given up many of the habits and customs required by their religon, but, what a bummer, they still "look Arab".
So, maybe we should ask them to give up the Qoran, but keep the couscous?
I think the right question might be: What is it that prevents you from feeling French despite the fact that you were born in Trappes?
Posted by: dot king | 10 Dec 2009 14:09:10
TO RICK,
Part 1 of 2
I tried to copy a map for you but technology defeated me.
I know yer old road very well. La mosque de Genève was built in the early 70’s at the junction of Champ d’Anier and ch. de Colladon would have been 5 minutes walk away. At the ave. Trembley junction would have been the newly started (prefabricated) Annexe to the UN, built on old League of Nations bequest land and initially viewed as a the L of N's ‘cultural centre’. This land was part of the L of N pension trust and still affords me Sfr. 200 a year.
You would also have been 10 minutes from la place de Petit-Saconnex and therein the outer stables (carriage and wagon horses only) of le duc de Budé, the attached groom’s lodgings used by Napoleon Bonaparte (not a long séjour apparently) and now called le café du Soleil. When I returned to Geneva in 1954 (maybe 1955) after settling all the problems linked to my illegal 1939 joining of the French Army, I lived in Moïse-Duboule next door to the café and had one of the first offices in the UN Annexe, on a daily contract, working under my Argentinian national identity CH not in UN). I was in charge of a project called GPBVA – Global Pig’s Bladder Verification and Assessment – no!I joke. I was part of a tiny group that eventually (I’d already gone) became UNCTAD in late 1962 with their first conference in Geneva in 1964.
1962 – no mosque, only bits of the first Swiss autoroute to Lausanne, still a tram into la Place. Wonderful world wasn’t it?
Posted by: richard jones | 10 Dec 2009 14:04:54
The danger with a French debate about identity is that definitions might result.
For example, who might be defined as French, part-French, or almost French?!
EU rules allowing migration of its inhabitants begs these questions.
And, how might (non-EU) immigrants be defined?
So, anyone without an acceptable definition might find life difficult.
This is what the Nazis did in the 30s with Jews, Slavs, Gypsies and certain other groups with a discernible ethnic origin.
However MAGGIE et alia, muslims come from all ethnic groups and are not a "race of people", so the analogy, and hence the comparison is not exact.
And the problem is with the AGENDA they might want to impose.
I'm not saying a pogrom aganst Islam won't develop, it could and it might, but the reasons would be more to do with those of the Crusades.
HERWEGOAGAIN - the New Testament does'nt say the earth was made in 7 days.
Yes DANIEL, "the problem is the concentration in big cities". It has a multiplier effect on their influence as we can see in the big cities of Europe.
Posted by: john gregory flinn | 10 Dec 2009 13:53:37
Dot,
As long as you don't promote Pyrénées bears wildlife, it's ok by me.
Posted by: Romain | 10 Dec 2009 12:39:11
Susan,
I am a hard-ass liberal by the way.
I read the Times for fun and challenge.
"Moderation is already gone out of the window"
Of course I hope I am wrong.
Posted by: do-re-mi | 10 Dec 2009 12:33:54
Nat
Your comment is a little bit "condescendant" no?
I have watched the show and i don't like Jean Pierre Pernot, and i'm not a "beauf".
This year many girls seems to be not bimbos. The winner studies law. Miss provence (who was for me te most beautifull and the reason why i watched the end of the show ^^) is nurse student.
And Madame de Fontenay is a Revolutionary Left support! It's not a joke, she votes Besancenot ^^
Come on Genevieve!
Posted by: rem | 10 Dec 2009 12:14:40
"Amanda Knox, the American girl who was found guilty...in Italy. I am totally stunned by the hysterical reaction in the US." -- Maggie
We Americans were stunned when the British reacted hysterically when Louise Woodward was convicted of killing the baby in her care.
Had Amanda Knox been involved in that murder in the US, the mob would be demanding that she swing for it.
The mob never makes sense, and those selling soap often make even less sense.
Posted by: Lex Stevens | 10 Dec 2009 12:11:14
Can you imagine Brown & co doing that!!
Posted by: Jake | 10 Dec 2009 12:07:18
Pathetic, not even funny.
Posted by: John O'D | 10 Dec 2009 11:59:27
In Matt Carr's criticism I was alarmed to read the following extract:
"Caldwell mobilises similar factoids in an attempt to demonstrate that 'the tabloid-reading public is not off-base to fear the introduction of sharia law'. To prove this thesis, he claims that 57 per cent of Irish Muslims want Ireland to become an Islamic state, citing a survey carried out for the Irish Independent/RTE by the Lansdowne market research company. The actual figure quoted in the survey found that 57 per cent of young Irish Muslims wanted this outcome, compared with only 37 per cent of Irish Muslims overall. The same survey found that 73 per cent of Irish Muslims considered themselves 'fully integrated' and that 58 per cent were prepared to abandon parts of their religion and culture that conflicted with Irish law."
What proportion of French Muslims consider themselves fully integrated and how many would be prepared to abandon parts of their religion and culture that conflict with French law? Would it be too dangerous to ask?
Posted by: John O'D | 10 Dec 2009 11:56:15
I'm sorry, but Miss France, when her prénom was mentioned the other evening on LGJ by Ali Badou, her reply was "Oui, mais je suis française, moi" (now how do you spell that farting noise of the hooter that signifies "mauvaise réponse"? How about THHHWWWWWPPP?) Ali Badou is also French, but he isn't called Pierre.
Malika means "queen" so Ali Badou said, but that was after she'd blurted out her Frenchness, spoiling the effect and ignoring the fact that someone with a brain was treating her as an equal.
After all, what's in a name?
Someone above posted that the Miss are all "gourdes" - this one certainly is - I think this year there was a subliminal collective selection of a physical style called "Carla".
And the same whispery, childlike, unconfident voice. She sounded like an insecure teenager.
Oh, and worry not Charles, she said she just wanted to be a journalist at local level.
(Anyone know if her father owns the local newspaper? :))
I would just like to say that if I'm elected Ms Blogger (wonderful typo - I'd put "Ms Blooger" ;D) of the year, I would like to travel and spread happiness and help starving children in Africa, discover a cure for AIDS, sponsor a white rhino and generally help save the planet.
Posted by: dot king | 10 Dec 2009 11:32:21
@ DO-RE-MI : "I am not a bleeding-heart liberal ..." That makes two of us !
"Moderation is already gone out of the window." A truly scary thought, and I hope for the future of Europe that you're mistaken here.
Posted by: susan durst | 10 Dec 2009 11:30:13
Dumb question, but why is the Miss France winner standing next to Boy George in the first photo?
Posted by: textibule | 10 Dec 2009 11:28:07
TO RULF,
Currently Sarkozy looks more like a refugee from an Aristophanes comedy than any Greek tragodia.
Aristophane's 'Birds' or 'The Ecclesiazusae (Women in Politics)' spring to mind.
Posted by: richard jones | 10 Dec 2009 11:14:12
"being eaten alive by 10 million immigrants who are getting paid to do nothing" is not constructive.
SUSAN D
In his "interview" that Maire of that tiny commune, didn't mention immigrants, he just made a sort of grunting noise when asked who he meant, and said nothing, possibly realising he'd gone too far.
The day after, I heard on the radio news that he'd made a "back in the fold" declaration that he wasn't referring to immigrants, but to the unemployed, the old, the hadicapped - they are (he said) who he meant when he spoke of those who were being paid for doing nothing.
Just think, there are people who elected him - I wonder how bad the opposition was . . .
MAGGIE, excellent posts - in full agreement.
AZLOON - you have misunderstood Estrosi I think - he postulates that if the Germans (or rather the party in charge - ie the Nazi party) had launched a debate on national identity before WW2, the Holocaust might have been avoided.
I mean, do me a favour.
Had Hitler launched such a debate, it would have been in anti-semitic terms, just as this one in France was launched in anti-immigrant trems - or at least with a certainty that it would soon take that route.
Like property transactions, national identities and moral one-upmanship bring out the worst in people.
BTW I'm no historian, but I think centuries of wars in Europe have been more about land than race or religion - marriages made in politics, that sort of thing.
Posted by: dot king | 10 Dec 2009 11:08:14
Instead of this "puéril" exercise in "futilité"
I think each and every member of the cabinet should have stood up straight and looked the camera in the eye and blurted out
I'm Tiger Woods.
Then in unisson
We're all Tiger Woods
Now that would have been superior and believable marketing
Posted by: rocket | 10 Dec 2009 11:01:42
DO-RE-MI, you write convincingly about the Muslim experience... ah, but you don’t, you write convincingly of the newcomer experience in London – who happens to be particularly disadvantaged because (s)he is Muslim.
‘I am not all that happy with women covered head to toes but that is a cultural thing’. A shrewd suspicion suggests the body and head covering are recent affectations, more defiant or identity-affirming in the metropolitan anomie than modest. It’s simple-minded, perhaps, since the end effect is to achieve the opposite to what was intended. Having it both ways: ‘eff-off’ and ‘I’m me’, all at once. She’s sending out mixed messages. She or her string-puller should realise this. A pious pr*ck-teaser.
‘See suicide bombers as angry and lost human beings first, before you see them as Muslims’. Yes, but victims of what? Loads of social forces: the immigrant experience, ignorance and fear of the unknown, peer-pressure, family and clan obligation, security in a tight-knit group, joblessness, elusive ‘success’, (unadmitted) envy of others, sexual frustration, ignorance of the world, real or imagined lack of consideration shown by others, security in a value-system too black and white – in all this the specific religion, sect or offshoot is rather incidental. But hardly helpful, in the circs.
A successful lawyer in Iran incurred the wrath of the regime and emigrated to Switzerland, along with his family. There, he couldn’t get a job commensurate with his education. While his wife and daughter integrated well, he became odder and odder: his by now pubescent daughter had to hide her prettiness, she got taken out of school trips, sports, and other lessons. To cut a long story short, this tale ended with assault, attempted rape, and murder. All because this highly educated lawyer was rendered more vulnerable, inflexible, and un-exportable by his ‘pensée unique’ one-dimensional upbringing. The orphaned daughter has now a boyfriend and is ‘Miss Earth Switzerland’ or something similar. [3 Sat, last week]
You write: ‘You don’t put all Catholics in the same bag’. Absolutely! The Western and Eastern Churches of the Catholic Church in communion with the Bishop of Rome; the Eastern Orthodox and Oriental Orthodox; the Old Catholic, Anglican, and some Lutheran and other denominations that claim unbroken Apostolic Succession from the early Church, and see themselves as a constituent part of the Church – what a mixed bundle of fun. Their sheer multiplicity suggests that the Christian/Muslim (un)believers come in all shades and sizes.
Though, ‘sous la loupe’, they may have much in common – not least a stubborn conviction of the utter rightness of their own sectional, particular point of view. An infinite number if deep convictions cannot, each, be right. But by gosh, they help to keep the fervor going. And each adherent is for that very reason a potential zealot, a fanatic – to the extent that he isolates himself in certainties. And, if there’s one thing that scares enlightened liberal humanists it’s dingbats with their certainties.
Posted by: Rick | 10 Dec 2009 10:51:06
ROMAIN - loved the clip of Montagné driving - it's reassuring, non, that the Secretary for the handicapped has a "grand rêve" that blind should be able to drive!
Sort of a case of the blind driving the blind :)
And note how many times the instructor says "à gauche, à gauche, un tout petit peu à gauche".
Also please note that it is a German car - an Audi - but GM might not have seen that . . . ;D
Posted by: dot king | 10 Dec 2009 10:29:50
Mme Lagarde and Mr Woerth have sent me a letter explaining the utility and harmlessness and - quite payer-friendliness on the whole really - of Taxes Professionnelles.
I'm not at all surprised to see them conveying their positive message full of hope for the future along with all the other idiots taking part.
For Gawd's sake, who can believe a word they say, or follow them down any road, after this?
And I notice the name Karl Zero at the end, CB please explain, who is sending up whom here?
The image of a blind man at the wheel is appropriate IMO.
Posted by: dot king | 10 Dec 2009 10:20:39
Susan
If I partly agree with you but I don't know here you live.
When I go back home and visit my parents, lets say in the South of France, descendant of immigrants of North-Africa and now technically French are still call "Arabe". Even when they are clean-shaven and speak proper. So life is real hard for the ones from inner cities whose French is patois and urban. It's almost a catch 22, assimilate, ignore your cultural identity and become " French" but somehow your Frenchness is always going to be questioned because it can't be traced back for centuries. I am the grand-daughter of a Spanish immigrant and my mother was born on a boat that landed in a French port and I look dark. Been there, the fact that my mother spoke perfect French and did better than French de souche made her life difficult. Like I said I am not a bleeding-heart liberal. In these economic climate where the bottom is going to fight for resources, moderation is already gone out of the window.
Getting votes any way you can is the way to go.
Posted by: do-re-mi | 10 Dec 2009 10:15:39
Et Johnny..... fais moi mal!!!
Posted by: Peter | 10 Dec 2009 09:36:40
Look at Gilbert Montagné speed driving:
http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x3g4r1_gilbert-montagne-roule-a-160-kmh
And Ray :"Je vous dépose quelque part ?"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KcMZ_u_vCog&NR=1&feature=fvwp
Posted by: Romain | 10 Dec 2009 08:54:28
@ ROMAIN : Exactly the point I've been trying to make - we need a constructive debate on (a) current and future levels of immigration and (b) full integration of those immigrants (often naturalised French) already in the country. However in my view the key to finding effective solutions is MODERATION. Mayors ranting about "being eaten alive by 10 million immigrants who are getting paid to do nothing" is not constructive. But harping back to Jews in the 30's and euro-guilty allusions to "hostile lands" is not constructive either. These are just the two sides of the same extremist coin.
Posted by: susan durst | 10 Dec 2009 08:49:35
What can you say. This is beyond words!
Posted by: rocket | 10 Dec 2009 08:45:03
Chris Morris is working in France now days?
Love the “ Ethnic theory of plane crashes in Malcolm Gladwell’s Outliers and the “ Power Distance Index” or PDI, incidentally high in France.
Obviously nobody of the people above had the cojones to say “ no way Jose”. I understand cause in my job I have to cope with whatever bright idea a consultant has come up with since I want to keep my job.
Posted by: do-re-mi | 10 Dec 2009 08:39:12
Hilarious, Tks Charles !
Posted by: Romain | 10 Dec 2009 08:28:32
Daniel,
Y a un proverbe din Ch'Nord qui dit :"Au plus que t'es moins grand, au moins que t'es plus petit". lol
Posted by: Romain | 10 Dec 2009 08:23:36
Ridiculous
Posted by: Francois D | 10 Dec 2009 08:00:38
MONIQUE,
"She (i.e. the US) is a nation of immigrants and these immigrant cultures meld into the general core culture..."
This is (or was) also true for France since she had successive waves of immigration coming from Italy, Spain, Portugal and also some other countries (for instance Poland). There were no major integration problems, since the cultures - including the religions - were more or less comparable. This immigration was wanted by the state, since France had a very low birthdate and had suffered very heavy losses in WWI (Source Wikipedia - Pop. 1914: 41.630 millions; pop. 1918: 38.670 m. Fallen soldiers: 1.4 m) and also in WWII, with heavy destructions.
After WWII, when the economy started to recover, immigration was encouraged. In 1945, the population was 39.660 m. It is now roughly 65 millions (including the départements d'Outre-Mer).
Muslim immigration (North Africa) started mainly well after WWII. There are now also sizable numbers of Africans.
If one believes CHARLES :), there are now roughly 6 millions Muslims in France - this is not far from 10% of the total population. The problem is the concentration in big cities.
Contrary to the US and Canada, France for a long time did not set and enforce selective quotas for immigrants.
"From my view some of the immigrant problems in France stem from French colonialism"
I am not bad-faithed enough to be able to contradict
you :).
Hereafter an interesting Wikipedia link:
http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/D%C3%A9mographie_de_la_France
ROMAIN,
Although I was aware of the English edition of "spiegel", it didn't cross my mind to check it for Caldwell's interview. Comme dirait (probablement :) ma femme: Daniel, tu as une grosse tête - grosse à l'extérieur, petite à l'intérieur...
Posted by: Daniel Strohl | 10 Dec 2009 00:00:16
All of this only reminds us of why France is so distant regarding religions : it is because of what religion is about : domination of the minds, proselitism, intimidation, power demonstration through symbols and clothings, and ultimatly....war
It's been like that for centuries and will be like that for centuries to come.
Atheism will save us from darkness...
Posted by: Dominique | 9 Dec 2009 22:34:59
Sarkozy is trying to put things in a sensible perspective and he is now hated by Le Pen voters (at least those I know). And you go on finding his every move wrong because he is not a man of the Left. France, love it or leave it.
Posted by: thomasine | 9 Dec 2009 21:43:37
@DANIEL STROHL
If it's not over-stretching Charles's patience, this should be my final comment to this post. I would like to deny that Sarkozy is "hated". He's actually not "hated" but disdained, more than any of his predecessors -- and increasingly so by his own troops. Even Chirac commanded more esteem than this man who in turn despises the French like no other president before him. In his heart, France and the French are foreign to him. No wonder, since his father was a Hungarian, his mother and grandfather (also his ersatz father) came from the Greek diaspora, his first wife was a Corsican, his second of Spanish-Moldovian extraction, his third an Italian. This "foreignness" is more and more shining through. I wouldn't be surprised if the Sarkozy Fallacy would end up in a Greek tragedy.
Posted by: Rulf | 9 Dec 2009 21:34:19
Susan
Before the final solution – the ground work had been done with “ Jews killed Jesus, they are not like us, they are dirty, have all the money, have lot of babies, they are communists” for years and centuries, sending them to the gas chambers to make killing very clean and not give executioners nightmares sounded almost normal .
You debase and dehumanised and the rest in on the slippery slope.
I am not all that happy with women covered head to toes but that is a cultural thing, it’s not in the Q’ran . That will change with time.
The pirates from Somalia might be “ Muslims” but they are just guys who want stuff in a country that is going back to the Middle Ages and that Paul Collier puts in the bottom Billion ( I think).
The pirates are Muslims like some my neighbours ( I live in the East end of London) yet they couldn’t be different. You don’t put all Catholics in the same bag.
I am not immune to prejudice, after the 7/7 I was in a bus where a young bearded Muslim with a bag was praying reading the Q’ran, moving forward and backwards, as I read that in Israel they spotted bombers like that, I panicked ( my line had been bombed and I missed the mess by 10 minutes), remembered that if he was planning to kill himself and us he would have had a shave. People were moving away from Muslims-looking people in the tube and buses openly at the time. The ironic thing of course is that the 7/7 plotters bombed Edgware Road, not exactly a “ white neighbourhood” and full of Muslims.
See suicide bombers as angry and lost human beings first, before you see them as Muslims.
The world is changing, old certitudes are being challenged.
Giving to fear and we are back in the bacteria pond.
Posted by: do-re-mi | 9 Dec 2009 19:38:43
JOHN GREGORY FLINN,
"Europeans are not supine as Caldwell seems to think"
And, at least I hope so, not stupid either :). First, I misread "supine" (an English word I didn't know) for "stupid"...
Interesting quote from Renan. The last time I heard of him was at school - er, some decades ago :).
Herafter a link to some quotes of Renan:
http://www.evene.fr/citations/auteur.php?ida=173
Posted by: Daniel Strohl | 9 Dec 2009 18:28:04
Susan Durst,
One has to name the problem: if it is immigration, let's review immigration policies, review the code on nationality, e.g. right of the soil, family regrouping, double nationality etc.
But once immigrants are legally recognised as residents or nationals, how can one deny them and their descendants the right to practice their religion like anybody else ?
The demographic resultant of immigration is one in the very long term, it cannot be reversed easily. In other words, European countries have long practiced immigration on demand to satisfy the job market fluctuations, it is now unfeasable to turn the tide.
Posted by: Romain | 9 Dec 2009 16:12:22
I just wonder how much effort either "side" makes to engage the other. FOr basic "values" I am all for assimilation, except to the point where we become clones in a world of the same shops, clothes and so on. Everyone has the right to privately practise their spirituality, if they have one. For my sins and despite my misgivings about the extremists seizing the issue with the ensuing descent from rationality into pure racism, I have to admit a certain admiration for my hosts' secularism. Just a shame they can't shut up the bloody bells in my village at 7am!
Posted by: Johnny Foreigner | 9 Dec 2009 16:00:14
I'm just waiting for the first one to say "Ah but it says in the Q'ran this that or the other", because there are naturally no contentious parts in the Bible. Still less are there any nutters who believe that God actually made the earth in 7 days.
Quite a relief really.
Next you'll be telling me there are people who are prepared to kill other people to save unborn people. If that unlikely event were to happen we'd have to start segregating Christians too.
And if Isreal started on its neighbours, we should shut down the entire Jewish faith too.
Remember Islam is about 1100 years behind Christianity in terms of its maturity and blind obedience to the indefensible, so maybe we got to cut them some slack and help them along. Show them it's all a bit of a laugh really.
Joseph Goebbels said "Better 10 innocent men are killed than one guilty goes free". But then Nazism was a bunch of scary men dressed in black telling you what to do, whereas priests are, er....
Nothing wrong with "robust" debate, except that this is a PC term for pre-concieved Points of View.
Posted by: Here Wegoagain | 9 Dec 2009 15:50:47
JOHN O'D - Ive read Caldwell's book and (now) Matt Carr's criticism.
Caldwell paints a depressing picture of Europe and Islam. He indicates that he expects the present trends to continue, and Europe to change (for the worse). He is American and I've read other Americans who believe it could'nt happen in the US because muslims become integrated and assimilated quickly. Whereas in Europe they are segregated, and stay so. That seems to me to be Caldwell's thinking.
Matt Carr describes Caldwell thus, inter alia,
"His arguments are measured, thoughtful and nuanced, and considerably more sophisticated than the rantings of Melanie Phillips."
Yet later he contradicts this with, "But again and again the shrill tone of the ideological zealot breaks through the nuance and detachment,"
I have made my views clear in these and other columns. The muslim religion is a worthy one, but its Islamic temporal polemic is generally medieval in nature and maturity, and hardly acceptable. Indeed, consideration should be given to it being proscribed.
The european electorate is becoming more aware of the menace of political Islam, and european politicians are starting to notice. As, when and where the voter gets the opportunity he/she votes accordingly.
Europeans are not supine as Caldwell seems to think, nor racists as Carr may do.
Posted by: john gregory flinn | 9 Dec 2009 15:16:12
"Replace the word Muslim with Jew and we are back in the 30's." (Do-Re-Mi)
"This is a facile knee-jerk statement and grossly unfair to hundreds of millions of Europeans." (Susan Durst)
Susan, I think you misunderstood the point Do-Re-Mi was making. It is not a facile knee-jack statement at all. It's a very rational statement.
You just can't say that EVERY SINGLE MEMBER of a certain group, since the beginning of time, has been an exception to the rest of humanity -- just too different, too backward, too evil, too stupid, too dishonest or whatever, to fit in with the rest of us.
That's what Hitler said about the Jews. Today it's the Muslims that fall into this category. There is always SOME group that fits into the category of being the ONE exception to all the rest of mankind.
Well, I'm sorry, but it just isn't true. Yes, there are LOTS of problems with Muslims, the same as there have been lots of problems with Jews, blacks, Irish, untouchables or whatever other group you choose to look down on.
But they are NOT all on welfare. They are NOT all extremists. They do NOT all refuse to assimilate. They are NOT all to a man worse than the rest of us.
There are all kinds of decent, well-educated, assimilated muslims. This is not being politically correct. This is not saying there are no problems with Muslims. But you just can't make blanket statements about entire populations, no matter how irritating they might be.
That's what Hitler did. Surely we know better today.
This is what Do-Re-Mi meant when she said, "Replace the word Muslim with Jew and we're back in the thirties."
Posted by: Maggie | 9 Dec 2009 15:12:27