PRESIDENTS CHATTER

April 2006

Thinking of a Summer of flying coming up I was reminded of the quotation: “When once you have tasted flight, you will forever walk the earth with your eyes turned skyward, for there you have been, and there you will always long to return.” Now who said that and when? For those of you who don’t know I’ll give you a bit of time to guess and figure it out. The answer might surprise you!

Registrations have come in strongly for the post Convention Flyaround in Scandinavia. This promises to be one of the most popular that we have had –although registration for all the IFFR events at the Convention including the Banquet closed on April 10 Section Chief Bo Johnsson has extended the deadline to April 30 – so if you plan to go to any of the events now is the time to get signed up. Details are available at http://www.iffr.net/

I received an invitation last month from the President of the “Aero Club De Portugal”, Manuel Silva Salta, to attend a celebratory dinner at which the IFFR Trophy would be presented for 2005. Unfortunately I was unable to attend but Portuguese Section head Richard Goldschmidt attended on our behalf. I have visited Portugal a number of times since the accident and I have to say that we have true friends there who helped us at our time of need. The Iberian and UK IFFR Sections presented the Trophy in 2002 to the Aero Club on behalf of IFFR. This recognized the support the Club gave at the time of the Portuguese accident in which four of our members were killed.  The Trophy is awarded each year to the person or persons that have contributed most to air safety in Portugal in that year. Last year it was awarded to an Air Traffic Controller who successfully guided a Canadian Airliner to safety when it ran out of fuel in Mid-Atlantic.

The 2005 winner was the Flight Safety Department of the Portuguese airline, TAP-Air Portugal. They took the pioneer initiative to use the data from the “black boxes” in their aircraft to make a systematic analysis of the data of each flight in order to identify the defective or potentially defective safety parameters. The initiative, called the Flight Analysis Program” began in 1962 with its then “Caravelle” jet fleet. Since then it has developed and is used by a number of other airlines. In 2005 ICAO recommended TAP´s procedure to all commercial aviation companies.  In view of this the Award Committee of the Club decided to make the Award for 2005 to the Flight Safety Department of TAP. They are most worthy winners.

That’s all the chatter for this month. The quotation – oh, it was Leonardo da Vinci back around 1500 – times and feelings don’t change for those who have the appetite for flight!

Safe and happy landings,

Angus Clark

World President  2004-2006