Mad Mike Magee’s Musings

FOR WHAT IT’S WORTH, there’s a tale going the rounds that the big cockup at Heathrow’s Terminal 5 was caused by, er, masking tape on the sensors.

The story goes like this. The software for the luggage sensing was thoroughly checked out prior to the opening, the hardware was all in place and everything was ready to go-go.

When everything started going belly up on the first day, the engineers were mystified as all seemed to be in order. That is until someone started walking round and noted that some of the sensors still had masking tape covering them.

Seems unlikely - surely the guys throw some real bags onto the conveyor belt before launch to do a dummy run? ♦

IT WAS ONLY a nib in the Times of London,  but it was a good nib (news in brief), if not a great NIB. It’s so small it’s not on Times Online.

A KLM fright, according to The Thunderer today,  couldn’t figure out where to land in Hyderabad because it didn’t know where the airport was. Heck, when we were in Bengaluru a few weeks ago, this was the burning question of the day.

This is the situation. Apparently Sonia “Mother of India and Italy” Gandhi opened the new Hyderabad airport only for it to be closed the day after because everything wasn’t quite ready. In rival South Indian city Bangalore, the airport was supposed to open on the 31st of March but it won’t open until the 11th of May because there are some things like connections to sort out yet.

According to apocryphal reports from Inverness, a Dan Dair pilot once landed his jet on what used to be the Inverness airport, only to find itself bogged down in a field. These things happen. I still maintain, however, that compared to Heathrow, Mumbai International is a dream place to fry out of. The domestic airport is fine too - it’s the transit system between domestic and international that’s bogged up. At least you don’t get thrown into a communal shopping area, a la Terminal Five, ‘Eefrow. ♥