Testing Times for British (Ground) Transport

The first Boeing 787 Dreamliner was delivered to All Nippon Airways yesterday, 26th September.

Its first commercial service with passengers is scheduled to be just a month later on 26th October on a charter from Tokyo to Hong Kong. Normal scheduled domestic services begin on 1st November.

Meanwhile down on British soil, today's Evening Standard reveals that the first of Boris Johnson's new Routemaster buses for London will be delivered in December but not in service until late March despite the fact that a prototype has been running since last May.

The same pattern is repeated on the rails. New trains, even of existing designs already operated by another company, take months from delivery to being in service.

In addition training drivers how to cope with even minor differences in operating techniques is nothing like as quick and straightforward as for example a differences course between different models/generations of Boeing 737s or between 757s and 767s. Even learning what would appear to be simple things like how to operate the doors in selective door operating mode (ie when some are kept closed when short platforms are being used) seems to take for ever. Even at the outset of their careers, UK train driver training takes longer,-18 months,-than the 14 months minimum for an ab initio pilot's frozen ATPL. Incidentally ,once qualified, their starting pay of £40k upwards, often involving inflexible shift lengths and,-incredibly,-not making Sunday working compulsory, is higher than for many new First Officers, particularly on turboprops.

Whether ground transportation's problems are international v domestic, aviation being highly competitive and the earthlings not very, union influence, domestic legislation including the infamous tripall "Health and Safety" or other factors is not clear .On the face of it it does though say something favourable about the highly complex, high technology based, aviation industry compared with its earthbound cousins,- at least in the UK.