Flight to nowhere

[james_tigerwoods]

For reasons that are dull, I was looking on the Humberside Airport website and saw this:



Worryingly, 15 minutes later, I saw that it had departed....



I can only imagine how many people we'd've liked to have seen on that flight...

(Posted in The Lounge as I felt it might illicit a few comments as to who we might have wanted to have been on that flight...)

Please God, don't let this be another Ambiwlans moment

[The Moose]

james_tigerwoods said:

Please God, don't let this be another Ambiwlans moment

Please God let it be!!

I thought this was related to the thread about the Air France flight

Cheers

The Moose

[Taffer]

Nothing that exciting - just a Bristow helicopters flight, probably with multiple drops so no one destination to list. Most definitely not an Ambiwlans moment!

[Mandat]

It may have been a special charter flight which takes off, flies for some time and lands back at the departure airport, which is used to treat people with flight phobias and the like.

[james_tigerwoods]

Taffer said:

Nothing that exciting - just a Bristow helicopters flight, probably with multiple drops so no one destination to list. Most definitely not an Ambiwlans moment!

I wouldn't have thought so though as there's a separate helicopter departure section off the main airport...

[The Fly Fisher]

Actually, quite a lot of people who are frequent fliers and need to earn air miles for status and'or spend, do fly to nowhere on a 'mileage run' by flying to X airport, disembarking and getting the first flight back home.

[james_tigerwoods]

The Fly Fisher said:

Actually, quite a lot of people who are frequent fliers and need to earn air miles for status and'or spend, do fly to nowhere on a 'mileage run' by flying to X airport, disembarking and getting the first flight back home.

Given where humberside flies to and from, I'd be surprised, but that makes some sense - mad, but makes sense.

[elster]

It might be going to someones house.

Nothing more complex than they wont have an ICAO code, so can't go in the system.

[Taffer]

james_tigerwoods said:

Taffer said:

Nothing that exciting - just a Bristow helicopters flight, probably with multiple drops so no one destination to list. Most definitely not an Ambiwlans moment!

I wouldn't have thought so though as there's a separate helicopter departure section off the main airport...

BHL is the code for Bristow Helicopters though - it could be that someone has just put irrelevant data on the departures board. When I worked at Glasgow airport private charter flights still sometimes showed up on the general departure boards. What you get on screen is only as good as the person putting in the data......

[mcdjl]

There was a bit of fuss a few years back when people realised that planes were taking off empty, circling round and then landing back at heathrow to keep the slots. I seem to remember seeing some airlines advertising for people to fill the planes too. I doubt thats the case here though....

[V8mate]

Taffer said:

james_tigerwoods said:

Taffer said:

Nothing that exciting - just a Bristow helicopters flight, probably with multiple drops so no one destination to list. Most definitely not an Ambiwlans moment!

I wouldn't have thought so though as there's a separate helicopter departure section off the main airport...

BHL is the code for Bristow Helicopters though - it could be that someone has just put irrelevant data on the departures board. When I worked at Glasgow airport private charter flights still sometimes showed up on the general departure boards. What you get on screen is only as good as the person putting in the data......

That's a boring answer.

I bet it's an MI5-backed, CIA extraordinary-rendition flight.

[Alfanatic]

Maybe it's a return flight, like that old Mad Magazine joke:

Customer: "Can I have a return ticket please?"
Sales assistant: "To where?"
Customer: "To here!!"

[james_tigerwoods]

V8mate said:

Taffer said:

james_tigerwoods said:

Taffer said:

Nothing that exciting - just a Bristow helicopters flight, probably with multiple drops so no one destination to list. Most definitely not an Ambiwlans moment!

I wouldn't have thought so though as there's a separate helicopter departure section off the main airport...

BHL is the code for Bristow Helicopters though - it could be that someone has just put irrelevant data on the departures board. When I worked at Glasgow airport private charter flights still sometimes showed up on the general departure boards. What you get on screen is only as good as the person putting in the data......

That's a boring answer.

I bet it's an MI5-backed, CIA extraordinary-rendition flight.

Nothing extraordinary about rendition

[escargot]

The Fly Fisher said:

Actually, quite a lot of people who are frequent fliers and need to earn air miles for status and'or spend, do fly to nowhere on a 'mileage run' by flying to X airport, disembarking and getting the first flight back home.

What? Someone pays money to fly somewhere, then immediately flies back, just to get air miles? Seriously? Do you know any of these people?

[john_p]

I can imagine that happening, you need to do 'x' flights per year to stay a gold/etc cardholder, and if you are one below the limit it's probably better to retain your status with a wasted flight than have to earn it all again..

I guess the benefit of being a cardholder outweighs the cost

[K50 DEL]

Reminds me of listening to ATC during a recent helicopter flight out of Las Vegas McLaren International.
Kept hearing callsign Janet...

Apparently Janet is an abbreviation of Just Another Non Existant Terminal - they are the staff flights for Area 51 !!

Might be a slightly long distance for a Bristow chopper to fly though!!

[TeamD]

Effectively someone fed the FIDS system the wrong information or no information. This is obviously a failing in the programming of the data entry because it should have been trapped by the validation and verification routines.

In other words.....fecking amateurs.

The fact that it made it all the way onto the internet makes it even worse.

[The Fly Fisher]

escargot said:

The Fly Fisher said:

Actually, quite a lot of people who are frequent fliers and need to earn air miles for status and'or spend, do fly to nowhere on a 'mileage run' by flying to X airport, disembarking and getting the first flight back home.

What? Someone pays money to fly somewhere, then immediately flies back, just to get air miles? Seriously? Do you know any of these people?

Yes, I do, I know a few people who did this. In fact, a few years ago I was a few hundred miles short of gold status and did a mileage-run to London and back (although I did make a weekend of it) and this meant when I travelled to Hong Kong on three connecting flights I got lounge access to all three airports and two upgrades to 1st class (worth £c. 3K). As john_p said, the benefits of silver or gold status on some frequent flier programmes often makes this very worth while for frequent fliers.

So yes it's worth it. Just look at some posts on flyertalk.com for yourself.