More general incoherent ramblings of a silly old duffer.

I had to sign on again this week and what a complete difference to the last time, a friendly face, chatty advisor and all done with good grace and a smile, it was almost a pleasure !!!
Its just a shame that they still havn’t sorted out my claim for JSA yet.

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Much has been said and written about the proposal to allow ‘night time flying’ at Manston Airport.
When you remove all the hysterical ranting, ill informed tosh, opinion from misguided folks who claim to be experts on just about every subject under the sun, wild exaggeration and hyperbole carefully designed to create false impressions and spread fear you are left with one inescapable fact there will be four flights a week arriving between 6 and 7 in the morning all the others will be arriving and departing during normal operating hours.
Infratil have said that they will emphasis to the carrier that arrivals should be on Runway 10 (west to east) and departures on Runway 28 (east to west) I would hope that if indeed it is the carrier that has been mentioned but not yet confirmed, their Pilots would be of sufficiently high calibre that they would adhere to the rules. Unless we have a prolonged period of adverse weather most of the arrivals should avoid Ramsgate altogether.
Following the accident in America this morning some folks are already using that as a reason to claim that the Airport should shut completely as there may be a plane crash, following that logic no-one should get in their car, cross the road, go up a ladder as they may have an accident, no doubt there have been several car accidents, pedestrians run over and builders fallen off ladders already today. Lets all just stay indoors and go nowhere and do nothing in case we have an accident, and be careful don’t boil the kettle in case you burn yourself!! Every time we carry out some activity we are subconsciously doing a risk assessment the only difference between that and flying operations is the level at which that assessment is carried out. Accidents rarely just happen they are usually caused by sudden mechanical failure, human error or more usually plain stupidity. SEE HERE FOR DETAILS.
At the risk of upsetting some air freight operators I would suggest that the touted operator has very high standards of aircraft maintenance, their pilots are very well trained and probably not subject to acts of stupidity while in charge of an aircraft.

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No doubt ECR is creaming his Gucci jeans at the fact that one of his many obsessive postings has reached 97 replies as I write, no doubt it will creep above three figures this evening as the anonymous ‘ I’ve got a job’ posters get to work posting their bile, vitriol and general corruption of the facts.
To correct some false statements, I DID NOT mention Pilots when listing the jobs that may become available at KIA when speaking, I spoke about semi skilled jobs that people could be trained for locally, I also mentioned the fact that when Infratil originally took over the airport they were using an Aberdeen based recruitment agency to get staff. Incidentally at that time there were only 7 full time employees of the Airport all the others were agency staff recruited locally but employed via this agency in Aberdeen. That practice has now ceased and about 100 staff are directly employed by Infratil at KIA. The point I was making was that that should not happen again and that any jobs created should use local labour recruited by the local Job Centre or a local agency.

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Much indignation emerges from members of KIACC about all sorts of things that Infratil and the Council have or haven’t done, before criticising others may I suggest that they take a closer look at themselves and see what, if anything they have done to comply with THESE GUIDLINES They may also wish to consider joining this organisation. Oh ! silly me, the present criterion for membership of the Liaison Group is that an airport should have a passenger throughput of 0.6. mppa or more, given the present attitude of KIACC that is not likely to happen for many years although that is not to say that they (KIACC) couldn’t or shouldn’t approach them for help and advice.