St Pancras

This week it was Paris and unusually for me no flying! One of the nice things about Paris is that I get the chance to visit St Pancras Station. The restoration of the station has been spectacular and it’s a real pleasure to spend some time walking around and just taking in the space.

The Eurostar departures and arrivals all use the undercroft so outside the morning and evening rush hours the station is relatively empty and this emphasises the feeling of space. At the front of the station is a 9 meter statue entitled “The Meeting Place” by British artist Paul Day, it’s a really impressive structure. Perhaps more impressive though it the smaller statue of Sir John Betjeman by Martin Jennings. Sir John Betjeman campaigned to preserve the station from demolition in the 1960’s. I am great believer in demolition but it is also important to preserve the past and preserve it well

Lost in translation

One wonders what this job entails.... or indeed what the person who came up with the job title was thinking

Release 2

I was recently at an IT company conference where the hosts were doing a “show and tell” on their “generation 2” program for working out the centre of gravity on aircraft. If and aircraft is incorrectly balanced it will not fly and since the 1980’s computers have worked out the safety calculations to ensure that the aircraft will not crash. The Aviation IT Industry is engaged on a big upgrade where the various suppliers are moving from “green screen” DOS programming to windows “drag and drop technology”. This particular company is currently running about 18 months behind on the original timetable for the upgrade and release 1 has been rescheduled for June 2011. All the questions from the audience were about the new functionality and almost every response from the supplier was “that will be in release 2”.

After about an hour of this it occurred to me that I could have done much better in school if when handing in my homework I said “don’t worry the rest of it is in release 2!”

GPS tracking of staff

This is an interesting subject that I am looking into at the moment. The current generation of smart phones contain a GPS chip which, when activated, allows the user to be pinpointed and tracked. There are software applications that allow for the signal to be overlaid on a map giving the base station an even more information about the individual. The tracking software can be set to send alerts via e-mail or screen pop ups if an individual goes to a certain location of breaks the speed limit whilst driving a company car.

I imagine most readers are now reacting with horror about a world where your every move is being tracked. E-mail’s are being sent to the office every time you break a speed limit and if you go for an interview your boss gets an alert that you have entered competitor’s premises.

There is however another side to this.....

As an employer I have a duty of care to my staff several of whom work overseas in all sorts of places for three weeks or more at a time. These staff members subcontract to one of my customers who move them about the world as they require.

In this case the GPS signal can send an alert direct to our corporate insurance company should they go into an area like Afghanistan saying when they have arrived and when they have departed. The software is fitted with a feature where, if any key is depressed for three seconds, the camera and speaker automatically come on and relay what they can see and hear direct to the base station to allow them to call for help immediately

So the question is ..... is GPS tracking “big brother” or “duty of care”?

Sumary of the year

Well this has been a very busy year, I have taken 127 flights totalling just over 360 hours of flying. I have flown into 56 different airports in 19 different countries two British Overseas Territories and one Sovereign base area apart from the number of hours on an aircraft which was higher than usual due to an increase in long haul flying this was a very typical year. The work highlights would be getting Air Seychelles started on the Falklands service for the MOD in a record breaking three weeks, looking after the airport Logistics for the Circ Du Soleil during their European tour and being a speaker at an international aviation software conference.

2011’s flying starts on the 5^th January with a visit to Paris and already has a number of trips planned including France Germany and Malaysia so it looks like being just another year much like the last

The Magic of the Seychelles

What’s a difference a day (and a Hotel) makes. I have never really seen the magic of the Seychelles until this visit.

I have been here four times now and with one exception stayed in the Beau Vallon Bay Hotel. This hotel was built in the 1970’s and is to be honest a little tired, its simple things like the quality of the door on the hotel rooms, the dark corridors, architecture and the fact that the electricity supply does not always provide enough juice to charge your phone and laptop.

This time after one night in at Beau Vallon we were transferred to the Constance Ephelia Hotel on the far side of Mahe this is a new property which was only opened in February 2010, it is outstanding, the rack rate on the rooms varies from €250-€2500 per night dependant on the season and room quality. On arrival you are met and you luggage is taken from you then you proceed to the bar where they take your passport and credit card whilst you have a drink. A few moments later they reappear with your room key and when you are ready you can go to the room where your bags are waiting. The hotel is low rise and built to fit in with the surroundings, the entry level rooms are junior suits built in blocks of seven spread over the site, if you don’t fancy the walk between your room and the hotel building then you ring reception and they send a golf cart.

The Hotel is a luxurious 5 star affair, very spread out and low rise, nothing is above two stories or treetop height. It is very low density and you hardly see anyone except for when you are in the main building. The entry level rooms are stunning, well lit with high quality furniture, a bathroom big enough to accommodate the standalone bath, the rooms have patio windows running round over half the room and lead to a balcony. In order to hide the hotel from the sea the rooms do not have a sea view but this is not a problem.

The Hotel has three beaches, one of them is OK for swimming but the other two are on a lagoon where the water depth is only about 75cm at high tide, it is these two that were my favourite. They almost always totally deserted and are one of the most breathtaking places I have been on the planet. Access to the second beach is by wading round a rock outcrop where the fish are swimming round your feet. Walking around the grounds you can hear the wildlife all around in the enormous amount of greenery there is. That said I am still not a beach person and an hour a day after the conference finished was enough for me and all I wanted to do on the last day was come back home!!!

As CNN would say though there is a “back story” The Hotel has been unpopular with the locals as it has blocked access to a beach they used to use for Barbeques, the Hotel still say they can swim on the beach and eat in the restaurant if they want but few locals could afford to step foot in the place. It was a staff member from the hotel that told me this and I have to say its quite unusual to find this sort of stuff out, I am told that whenever there is news in the Seychelles that they don’t want the tourists to read it is published in Creole only. Apparently this was the case a while ago when a tourist was shot in the head.