Pan Am 103: Unaccompanied bag from Malta: Evidence?

[Rolfe]

Court judgement. PA103A left Frankfurt for London at 16.53. That has got to be local time, to correlate with a Heathrow landing time of 17.40. There's no way in aviation a plane leaving Frankfurt at 16.53 GMT could get to Heathrow by 17.40 GMT.

This is paragraph 29, which describes all the baggage movements at Frankfurt, and there's nothing at all to suggest that the times quoted aren't all in local time. That includes the "beginn 13.04" and "ende 13.10" (disputed) from Koca, and the note of the wagon of baggage from KM 180 in position at 12.48 and arriving at 13.01 for coding. (BTW, I think that must be the other document referred to by Coleman, the one he said was typewritten. There are only three documents referred to in court, which tie in perfectly with what Coleman reported in 1994 about the Frankfurt police only handing over three documents. I find this extraordinarily interesting.)

I repeat here the whole of paragraph 30, which is all that's said about Bogomira.

Mrs Bogomira Erac, a computer programmer employed at the airport, was on duty on 21 December 1988. She heard of the loss of PA103 during the evening of that day and realised that PA103A had departed during her period on duty. She was interested in the amount of baggage on the Frankfurt flight, and on the following morning she decided to take a printout of the information as to baggage held on the computer in case it should contain any useful information. She did not at once identify any such information, but retained the printout, which later was given to investigators. The printout is production 1060, and includes the following entry:-

Container no. Flight no. Counter no. Time leave store Time at gate
B8849 F1042 S0009+Z1307 TO HS33+Z1517 B044+Z1523

The document itself contains no column headings, and those set out above are derived from the evidence showing how the printout is to be interpreted, by reference to the codes in operation at the time. The document therefore bears to record that an item coded at station 206 at 1307 was transferred and delivered to the appropriate gate to be loaded on board PA103A.

So, it doesn't say she made the printout the following day, it's open to conclude that on the following day she took a printout that was already available. But the motivation stated does conflict with what she said on The Conspiracy Files.

I'm going for local times. The printout was made half an hour before PA103 blew up. It could not have been made in response to the disaster. Why would any system mandate the printing out of such data more than an hour and a half after the plane in question took off, only for it to be thrown away the following day? And yet that's what we're supposed to believe.

Bogomira simply put the printout that already existed in her locker. Either because she thought it might be useful for evidence, or as her own personal memento.

Take it from here.

Rolfe.

 

[Rolfe]

Next question. Where did the other two documents come from?

Three documents, neatly annotated to show how this mystery bag had come through to PA103A from KM180, were given to the Scottish police in August, by the BKA. One was the Erac printout, and we know how they're supposed to have got that. One was Koca's worksheet from station 206, with the ambiguous finish time on it that could have been 13.10 or 13.16. The third was Andreas Schreiner's interline writer's sheet (I'm assuming that's Coleman's "typewritten document"), "That bears to record one wagon of baggage from KM180, in position at 1248, arriving at V3 at 1301."

So, where did these latter two come from?

The police had them. When did they get them? Bogomira didn't keep those. I would guess the answer has to be in their visit to the airport within a few days of the crash.

How did they know they should seize or keep documents relating to KM180? I presume they had no way to know that, so the implicaton has to be that they kept all similar documents - handwritten worksheets and interline writers' sheets.

All of this was missing when Phipps and Jones showed up, on 23rd January. They said that the documents couldn't have been taken by the police, because it would have been SOP for PA to have retained copies of these documents. What they don't say is what, if anything, the airport staff told them had happened to the documents and why there were no copies.

I can't see any other explanation but that the police did in fact take these documents, and who knows what else. Maybe the really important stuff, the computer records, weren't avaliable because the tape had been wiped, and Bogomira threw away all the printouts except the PA103A one. So maybe the documents they did have (worksheets and so on) made no sense, and only became useful when the printout showed up.

Maybe they kept schtumm about all this until August for the same reason as Henderson wouldn't involve the FBI team in tracing the origin of the timer fragment. Because this was their baby and they were damn well going to hold it close.

But hang on. It's not unreasonable that the search for the timer manufacturer took so long. They had no clue where to look. The BKA had only a limited amount of paper. How long was it going to take to go through that, for pity's sake?

Let's assume they had that short loading printout, plus the worksheets and so on for the whole airport. So they have to look at every piece of luggage on the printout, see where and when it was coded, and collate that with the worksheets to see which plane it came off. Presumably they also collated that with the passenger list for PA103A to match bags with passengers, to come to the conclusion that this one bag, apparently from KA180, was unaccompanied because no passenger was booked to make that transfer. (Not surprisingly, because there was about a 4-hour gap between those planes - passengers on KM180 who were really going to New York went on an earlier flight and arrived safely.)

How long does all that take, guys? A huge terrorist outrage, and you take seven months to work this out?

Then you only hand over these three documents, and you don't show your working?

Somewhere else I read criticism of the Scottish police, saying they were wrong to accept the BKA's investigation into the baggage records and that they sbould have carried out their own. Boy, I wonder what that would have revealed? At least, ask to see the reconciliation for the rest of the bags, so be satisfied that all of these have come either from the Frankfurt checkin desks or from flights which had passengers booked for transfer to PA103A.

But no. Trust us, DC Scotland, we've been through all this and that's the bag you're looking for. Oh thanks, BKA, that's great.

Rolfe.

 

[Rolfe]

Can someone explain the printout a bit better for me?

There seem to be about 121 items recorded.

The BKA estimate that 'about' 135 bags were sent through to the baggage room below the departure gate of Flight 103A, some belonging to the 79 passengers whose journey ended in London and the rest to the 49 who were going on to New York. There were no records of luggage sent directly to the departure gate, nor of interline luggage taken directly from one aircraft to another, nor of bags belonging to first-class passengers.

So that's about 14 more bags put on the plane that weren't on Bogomira's printout.

Of the 49 passengers bound for New York and beyond, 28 began their journey in Frankfurt, and 21 transferred from other connecting flights.

So, only 21 passengers of the 128 transferred through from another flight to PA103A and then to PA103. I note that 22 items on the printout have an extra 2-letter code in the lines, making them stick out to the right. The mystery item is one of these.

I've been wondering what that signifies. It's obvious that a lot of the items on that list must originate from the Frankfurt checkin desks, as it includes a lot of luggage from passengers who began their journeys at Frankfurt. Surely it can't be as simple as the ones with the extra letters being the ones from connecting flights? (I'd have expected there to have been more, as my guess would be that some of the passengers on PA103A who didn't transfer to PA103 would also have come off connecting flights, so more than 21 or 22.)

Thinking about it, it seems to me that more documentation must have been available to the court. Paul Foot reports the defence advocate spending a lot of time going through this evidence trying to show that the mystery bag could have come from somewhere else, such as Warsaw or Damascus. I don't have it here, but there was other information such as half a container of Damascus luggage that could have been coded at 206 although most of it was coded somewhere else.

So perhaps the BKA really did produce the rest of the worksheets and so on in court.

I'm massively suspicious of all this, especially the 7-month delay to accomplish what should have been a relatively simple exercise. Even if they wanted to hand it over to the Scottish police all neatly wrapped up with a ribbon round it, why wasn't that done within a couple of weeks?

Rolfe.

 

[Rolfe]

You want to know what I'm thinking? (For now, anyway.)

The BKA showed up at the airport within a few days of the crash and got the lot. Worksheets, interline documents, the computer tape along with any backups, and the routine printouts. And they didn't let anyone keep copies. And nobody in the airport was keen to talk about this, because it was all about concealing shenanigans in the airport, which was to their own advantage.

The police promptly sat on the lot, and denied there was anything of any importance. (What I don't know is who, apart from Jones and Phipps, asked any questions about where the records had gone, and if so what answers they got.)

Then, in about August, as part of an exercise to draw attention away from items introduced at Heathrow and Frankfurt, it was decided to produce evidence that a suspicious item had come through the Frankfurt system from another airport. At this stage, sufficient of what had been seized was produced to support that proposition, but anything that might confuse the issue or suggest another explanation was not produced. Hence the continuing absence of the loading records for PA103A itself.

The crucial pieces of evidence were the computer baggage records, which existed in printed form as well as computer tape, the coder's worksheet, and the interline record. There was no problem releasing all or most of the coders' worksheets and interline documents that had been seized, however there was a problem with the crucial computer record. Only the PA103A listing was to be revealed, not those for any other flight. Thus Mrs Erac was somehow co-opted to "find" the relevant printout in isolation, and the tapes and the rest of the printouts could be concealed. She did this, but tended to get a bit forgetful as to exactly what story she'd decided on to explain the find.

Whether anything was actually falsified, I'm not speculating at the moment.

This is probably wrong, somebody probably has a link to something proving it couldn't have been like that, but hey, I'm trying here.

Rolfe.

 

[Buncrana]

Court judgement. PA103A left Frankfurt for London at 16.53. That has got to be local time, to correlate with a Heathrow landing time of 17.40. There's no way in aviation a plane leaving Frankfurt at 16.53 GMT could get to Heathrow by 17.40 GMT.

Possibly inconsequential, but having flown Glasgow-Amsterdam, considered to be a 1hr 35 to 1hr 50 journey, and London-Paris given as anywhere between 1hr 10 and 1hr 30, on several occassions both are usually considerably shorter, if congestion is avoided. Still, as you state, I would also find Frankfurt to Heathrow in 45mins a stretch, especially given the time of year we discussing, but not entirely impossible.

This is paragraph 29, which describes all the baggage movements at Frankfurt, and there's nothing at all to suggest that the times quoted aren't all in local time. That includes the "beginn 13.04" and "ende 13.10" (disputed) from Koca, and the note of the wagon of baggage from KM 180 in position at 12.48 and arriving at 13.01 for coding. (BTW, I think that must be the other document referred to by Coleman, the one he said was typewritten. There are only three documents referred to in court, which tie in perfectly with what Coleman reported in 1994 about the Frankfurt police only handing over three documents. I find this extraordinarily interesting.)

I repeat here the whole of paragraph 30, which is all that's said about Bogomira.

Mrs Bogomira Erac, a computer programmer employed at the airport, was on duty on 21 December 1988. She heard of the loss of PA103 during the evening of that day and realised that PA103A had departed during her period on duty. She was interested in the amount of baggage on the Frankfurt flight, and on the following morning she decided to take a printout of the information as to baggage held on the computer in case it should contain any useful information. She did not at once identify any such information, but retained the printout, which later was given to investigators. The printout is production 1060, and includes the following entry:-

Container no. Flight no. Counter no. Time leave store Time at gate
B8849 F1042 S0009+Z1307 TO HS33+Z1517 B044+Z1523

The document itself contains no column headings, and those set out above are derived from the evidence showing how the printout is to be interpreted, by reference to the codes in operation at the time. The document therefore bears to record that an item coded at station 206 at 1307 was transferred and delivered to the appropriate gate to be loaded on board PA103A.


So, it doesn't say she made the printout the following day, it's open to conclude that on the following day she took a printout that was already available. But the motivation stated does conflict with what she said on The Conspiracy Files.

I'm going for local times. The printout was made half an hour before PA103 blew up. It could not have been made in response to the disaster. Why would any system mandate the printing out of such data more than an hour and a half after the plane in question took off, only for it to be thrown away the following day? And yet that's what we're supposed to believe.

Bogomira simply put the printout that already existed in her locker. Either because she thought it might be useful for evidence, or as her own personal memento.

Take it from here.

Rolfe.

From the language carefully chosen in the judgement (my bold), it conveys to me that she initiated printing it from the computer the following day, as the judges assert. To me, the wording implies that the information was still only contained within the computer and she decided (before it was purged) to take/make a copy. However, the printout being generated the following day as indicated by the judges, and by my interpretation of their phraseology, does not then tie-up with the time and date stamp on the printout, however we wish to define them.


Indeed, as you mention it wouldn't make sense for documents to be printed on an evening relating to flights earlier that day, only to be destroyed the following day. Although, listening to one story that is what we're led to believe that was the case. Quite why, if she thought of the possibility of saving any "useful information" pertaining to 103/103A, she would then decide to put it in her locker while she goes on holiday - not for a day or two - for 3 or 4 weeks? Together with the knowledge that irrelevant of the cause of the disaster, ablsolutely any and every piece of documentation and records relating to the associated 103 flight from Frankfurt will be eagerly sought after by all investigators. Even initial reports indicated the possibility of something other than just structural damage had caused the crash.

I'm interested if this would be an airport system automatically generated these printouts - even allowing for the puzzling time lapses - or if it's a printout that would have to be manually retrieved from the computer?

1932 would indicate an automated printout generated, which Mrs Erac managed to track down the following day, before being dumped, and retain it in her locker. In her latter account however, where she intimates that apparently no one had shown any interest in documentation relating to 103A, even the day following 103's crash, and despite the judges claims that Erac had immediately concerned herself with luggage records on hearing of the 103 crash, she says "..I was just about ready to do that with this one, when, on the spur of the moment, I just picked it up and put it on the table..". Which, of course, directly opposes the judges summation of the events which led to the printout being generated, and in addition, noticed and retained for a specific purpose.

Finally (for the moment), many happy returns!

 

[Caustic Logic]

I forgot that today would be Friday. Aplogoies for making a big deal of "being right" and then shown maybe not quite well, and now no time to tackle the gap. (extra work on Fri). Rolfe, run on ahead, as you have, as you're probably right having heard my whole case and being sure here after that. But my previous view made so much sense to me I'll have to take time and double check some things before I can join back up, and no comment yet on anything past that.

Adam

 

[Buncrana]

Just a moment Mrs Erac.

You have your wits about you to realise on hearing the news of the crash of 103 over Lockerbie, that the Frankfurt feeder flight 103A had been loaded during your shift that day, and your job being an airport technician for Frankfurt, decided to take a record of the baggage details, as one would expect an airport technician to do?

And inadvertently placed this document in your locker?

As an airport technician for Frankfurt, who's primary role as is to maintain required airport records, the significant implications you yourself had realised, and with the knowledge that Pan Am 103 had been the victim of a bomb, you then kept this document undisclosed for a further X weeks?

 

[Rolfe]

I forgot that today would be Friday. Aplogoies for making a big deal of "being right" and then shown maybe not quite well, and now no time to tackle the gap. (extra work on Fri). Rolfe, run on ahead, as you have, as you're probably right having heard my whole case and being sure here after that. But my previous view made so much sense to me I'll have to take time and double check some things before I can join back up, and no comment yet on anything past that.

Adam

Not to worry, I was having a "don't want to work I'm tired and it's my birthday" morning.

I'd never in my life heard of GMT or UTC being recorded as "Z" time. I didn't have a clue what you were on about. Now I have, I can see what you mean, but I just don't find the point convincing. I don't see any evidence that an airport-based system (as opposed to an aircraft or aircraft controllers) would use anything but local time. The comment about the coders probably writing down the times from looking at their watches rather than the computer clock rather supports that, as it seems unlikely that baggage handlers would, or should need to, alter their watches when going on-shift.

To Buncrana's point. Indeed, sometimes planes do make up time. However, doing a 1 hour 40 minute flight in less than 50 minutes is pushing it! I can't honestly see it over the distance involved. Also, the plane is said to have landed later than scheduled. If the pilot shaved almost an hour off the advertised flight time, how late did it leave for goodness sake? Given that the advertised flight time is 1 hour 40 minutes (actually, that's both the standard and the fastest as far as I could see - one or two were 1 hour 50 minutes), and we have a choice of flight times of either 1 hour 47 minues (local time at Frankfurt) or 47 minutes (GMT at Frankfurt), which do you think is the more likely?

Also, since everyone who flies at all knows that flight times are always advertised as "local time", don't you think there would have been some clarification by the judges if all these Frankfurt times were actually GMT?

Rolfe.

 

[Rolfe]

Here's something else, maybe nothing. Looking at the Erac printout, a four digit number I'm wondering about. In the upper left, under KIK (which was I think Bogomira's station). 1932. It's to the left of a date, so is it a time?

1653 departure, 22 minutes after the last two items arrived for loading at the second gate, B041. So it's not a time relating to the flight pulled up as 1042. Is it the time of data retrieval or printing? That's been said to be the next morning, but 1932 is evening. And the DATEI next to that, on the same data line, is 881221, not 1222. So if not access/print time and date, then what else might these represent?

Let's get back to that bloody printout for a minute.

Caustic Logic first noticed the apparent time-and-date. However, in his blog, he points out that "DATEI VON:881221" signifies data from 21st December 1988, not the date the printout was made. I think he's right about that,

So are we even right about the "1932" being the time the printout was made? I would have expected such a time, if recorded, to be accompanied by the date. But if the date beside it isn't the date the printout was made, then it isn't.

It's certainly essential that the "211288" be on that printout. Otherwise it could be PA103A for any damn day you like. It's not essential to have the date the printout was made, and indeed now this has been clarified, I don't see another date that might be it. So why is 1932 the time of the prinout?

I think we might be making a false assumption here, and it may be that we have no idea at all when that printout was made.

Which makes Bogomira's actions and fluctuating account the interesting bit.

This is even weirder than the two page 51s.

Rolfe.

 

[Dan O.]

I can chime in a bit on the time issue. From the fact that the current baggage system is running under OpenVMS, it is reasonable to assume that the original system was also running the VMS operating system (and probably a DEC VAX780 being a common platform for realtime systems in that era). VMS until quite recently did not understand timezones. Changing the computer time twice a year required changing the computers real time clock which would wreak havoc on scheduling realtime events based on that time. The best option is to leave the system in the same timezone year round and since there exists one universal time zone that is already unambiguous, UTC is the obvious choice.

I talked to a DEC engineer that was responsible for this part of the system back in the '90s and they too would have liked to change the way the system handled time but the current structure was too ingrained throughout the system and was going to require a major restructuring of the code to make the change.

 

[Caustic Logic]

I can chime in a bit on the time issue. From the fact that the current baggage system is running under OpenVMS, it is reasonable to assume that the original system was also running the VMS operating system (and probably a DEC VAX780 being a common platform for realtime systems in that era). VMS until quite recently did not understand timezones. Changing the computer time twice a year required changing the computers real time clock which would wreak havoc on scheduling realtime events based on that time. The best option is to leave the system in the same timezone year round and since there exists one universal time zone that is already unambiguous, UTC is the obvious choice.

I talked to a DEC engineer that was responsible for this part of the system back in the '90s and they too would have liked to change the way the system handled time but the current structure was too ingrained throughout the system and was going to require a major restructuring of the code to make the change.

Okay... I'm starting here because I'm still at the decision point and will catch up with intervening points after.

So Dan O., How do you know so much? Would you agree then that a computer system like this would normally run in GMT time? I think Rolfe's made a good case why this is likely local - from what you know how plausible is that?

Now on the flight time - 100 min. is about standard flight time from Frankfurt to London. Do we know this is actual flight time, or does it include loading, taxiing, etc.? Is it a loose estimate to allow for possible delays?

On the Z, I think Zeit makes sense, if a bit redundant. The second one you proposed, goal, makes no sense next to a time. I still just feel that Zulu is the most obvious candidate, IF it fits the facts, and zwieback is probably the least likely. Also some minor points I saw - if 103A landed at Heathrow 5:40 you stated it had 20 min to switch its load over, but 103 had to take off around 6:25 to make 7:03 38 min later, right? So that would be 45 minutes.

Okay, now the case for local time sounds good but a little iffy, so I checked if we could just rule out a 727 (which 103A was) making the short time that I've proposed without realizing it. If it's impossible or unlikely enough, then that's that. Here, you can follow my work:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_727
.81 mach cruising speed, .9 mach top speed. This site also clarifies the speed applies to both 727-100 and 727-200 class, which is good cause I don’t know which this was. Converting mach to mph looks complicated. Can we just get that in mph please?
http://www.boeing.com/history/boeing/727.html
Top speed: 632 mph. Cruising speed: 570 mph. But is this statute or nautical mils?
http://www.aerospaceweb.org/aircraft/jetliner/b727/
cruise speed: 570 mph (915 km/h) at 24,600 ft (7,530 m)
km doesn't change, so pulling up conversions
http://www.nodc.noaa.gov/dsdt/ucg/
1 km= 0.539612 nm, would yield 494 nm/hr
1km = 0.621371 sm, would yield 568.5 mph
It’s statute. So, it normally flew at about 570 statute miles/hr, cruising speed at cruising altitude, and could edge up as high as 600 plus if need be. To simplfy then, I’ll use a steady 570 with no extra gas, and presume a straight-line flight. According to Google maps, a straight line from Frankfurt to London is almost exactly 400 statute miles.

Flight time: 42 minutes.

I actually didn't expect such a different time. I know this can't mean that's how long it would take, we have various courses possible, and "winter" may have had some effect (or not, depending on precise conditions) but it gives us an idea of what's plausible, and in fact I'm having a hard time seeing how from wheel up to wheels down they could or would want to make this -routinely - take over twice as long as necessary?

So in my scenario, 103A pushed off from gate at 1652GMT, was behind schedule and perhaps given immediate clearance and let's just presume it was off the runway at 1700, or 5:00 GMT. 40 minutes to make the time to Heathrow. It's a tight fit, not so plausible it's obvious, not unlikely enough to rule out. Would adding an hour to flight time make it more or less realistic? I dunno. I call for calling this unresolved and checking other aspects. Can I get an amen?

 

[Caustic Logic]

Caustic Logic first noticed the apparent time-and-date. However, in his blog, he points out that "DATEI VON:881221" signifies data from 21st December 1988, not the date the printout was made. I think he's right about that,

So are we even right about the "1932" being the time the printout was made? I would have expected such a time, if recorded, to be accompanied by the date. But if the date beside it isn't the date the printout was made, then it isn't.

Obviously I decided date and time of printing first, then decided "file of" meant ... data for ... well, it's not contradictory anyway, it doesn't say it ISN'T 1221. I should consider that more carefully. What else would that time be? Data file close-and-save? Again, two hours late? Are retrieval time and day unknown? Hmmm... Is 1932 not even a time, just a file reference number for the file of 881221 that happens to resemble a time?

flight times are always advertised as "local time",

Advertising is a "ground-based" function of the airline industry, to which GMT reference is not necessary.

Next question. Where did the other two documents come from?

Three documents, neatly annotated to show how this mystery bag had come through to PA103A from KM180, were given to the Scottish police in August, by the BKA. One was the Erac printout, and we know how they're supposed to have got that. One was Koca's worksheet from station 206, with the ambiguous finish time on it that could have been 13.10 or 13.16. The third was Andreas Schreiner's interline writer's sheet (I'm assuming that's Coleman's "typewritten document"), "That bears to record one wagon of baggage from KM180, in position at 1248, arriving at V3 at 1301."

So, where did these latter two come from?

Yeah, that probably would be Schreiner's paper. They'd probably have a computer at V3 intake. It was probably on the central computer too and oonly didn't show up on ol' 1060 because THAT was all about stuff destined for 103, which only became known at the coding station. (I think, don't quote me). Might then be a printout rather than done on a typewriter.

Until I see reason to suspect them, I'd guess these papers originated with the FAG (airport authority), respective stations.

From what I gather of the system there, if the central data of what went where disappeared, all input-output paperwork would become about meaningless. They may have even not counted the bags at the plans, relying on coding station returns and the whole central data to extrapolate a rough number. If that's too stupid to be true, okay, it's just a thought I had. Anyway, with tons of stations saying they accepted bags, others saying they sent some one, and nothing between, such papers were probably just left there. Until the Erac printout surface, pointed to station 206 as the source of an item w/no passenger, THEN that paperwork suddenly means something and is taken into custody, presumably on Feb 2 1989.

More later...

 

[GlennB]

...

Flight time: 42 minutes.

I actually didn't expect such a different time. I know this can't mean that's how long it would take, we have various courses possible, and "winter" may have had some effect (or not, depending on precise conditions) but it gives us an idea of what's plausible, and in fact I'm having a hard time seeing how from wheel up to wheels down they could or would want to make this -routinely - take over twice as long as necessary?

However, for a short flight such as this quite a high proportion of the journey is spent climbing and descending at relatively low speed. Then the flight paths out of Frankfurt and into Heathrow might swing around the cities, they'll certainly swing around the airport itself, planes might well be directed to 'holding stacks' while being scheduled for landing, and the main cruising flight corridor(s) are unlikely be one straight line from A to B.

Heathrow easterly arrivals map (2.4mb PDF download)

But published flight times are padded somewhat. This allows for delays at departure while still allowing the aircraft to arrive punctually. But taking off punctually and arriving an hour early? I've never seen that happen.
When all is said and done, an actual flight time of 47 minutes vs. a published time of 1:47 simply isn't right.

 

[Caustic Logic]

However, for a short flight such as this quite a high proportion of the journey is spent climbing and descending at relatively low speed. Then the flight paths out of Frankfurt and into Heathrow might swing around the cities, they'll certainly swing around the airport itself, planes might well be directed to 'holding stacks' while being scheduled for landing, and the main cruising flight corridor(s) are unlikely be one straight line from A to B.

Heathrow easterly arrivals map (2.4mb PDF download)

But published flight times are padded somewhat. This allows for delays at departure while still allowing the aircraft to arrive punctually. But taking off punctually and arriving an hour early? I've never seen that happen.
When all is said and done, an actual flight time of 47 minutes vs. a published time of 1:47 simply isn't right.

Thanks, dude! Good to have your input here again. These are the details that add, of course. Also, sometimes Frankfurt floats a little closer or further from London. Kidding, not even sarcasm just weird. I haven't flown much, and don't pay enough attention to say what percent - 120, 150, 200, 300% of ideal time is usually attained. All I've shown is that GMT times still are too close to plausible to toss aside just yet. Of course when considering these things, remember 570 still leaves a full 60mph roof above it before top speed, AND reportedly it was behind out of Frankfurt. Just to make the ideal 42 minites, as you say some parts it has to go slover, so it'd have to over 570 part of the time to maintain a 570 average. And it'd have to floor it for a longer time to beat that time to allow for a little circling and descent by 5:40.
Ideal ideal, top speed part way, 570-600 part, under that as little as possible, average 600mph, straight line, possible but unlikely: 40 minutes. Crap, not much different. Computer clock - off by prob 2-3 minutes, not sure if ahead or behind... struggling to maintain this position...

and I'm not sure why. It's all academic, especially if the printout was faked and all this is over what time it was made to appear printed, or saved, or...
Argh!

ETA: Awesome map! It shows actual tracks over time, pretty steady at a few small loops a couple miles wide. Unless they slow waaaaay down here, that can't add much.

 

[GlennB]

ETA: Awesome map! It shows actual tracks over time, pretty steady at a few small loops a couple miles wide. Unless they slow waaaaay down here, that can't add much.

They do. This is anecdote as I don't know the actual speeds involved, but I used to work at Aldgate on the eastern fringes of The City of London. The East End, more or less. We smokers would nip out onto a high roof garden for a puff and, in a clear crisp winter's twilight, watch a whole train of aircraft lights circling in from the Thames estuary/Essex direction, then north over The City to continue over N London towards Heathrow. You could track an individual plane for several minutes. They're on their approach by then, and flying directly over a heavily populated area to boot.
A quick google suggests approach speeds in the 180-200 mph region and a touchdown speed a good chunk less than that.

I'll read back here somewhat on the printout story (I find the sheer volume of detail hard to handle - as do you all I'll bet) but having spent 20 years in I.T. as programmer, analyst, database designer and whatall I find it mysterious that such printouts could not be regenerated for a long time afterwards, as data archiving to tape prior to deletion is standard procedure. OK, this baggage loading system is probably not subject to sudden raids by auditors or irate customers chasing invoice queries, but bags do go missing, and I dare say performance might need analysing?

Meanwhile, the lazy gits at UEFA are not answering my email about kickoff times in those 2 football matches between AS Roma and Dynamo Dresden. The football forums aren't interested either But again, that's small detail.

 

[Dan O.]

So Dan O., How do you know so much? Would you agree then that a computer system like this would normally run in GMT time? I think Rolfe's made a good case why this is likely local - from what you know how plausible is that?

I just know that's how I've run mine (except when some middle manager can't understand the time difference and insists that it be changed). If they used local time, they would have uninterpretable results every fall when the time zone shifts back an hour.


The computer's clock on a VAX is usually accurate to within 1 or 2 seconds per day. There is however a deficiency in the timekeeping routine that causes the system to loose time when it is swamped by high priority interrupts. Correctable ECC memory errors could cause a VAX system clock to fall behind by a couple of minutes a day as could a poorly designed interrupt handler for custom hardware. Nothing but a poorly calibrated clock would cause the system to gain time.

 

[GlennB]

I just know that's how I've run mine (except when some middle manager can't understand the time difference and insists that it be changed). If they used local time, they would have uninterpretable results every fall when the time zone shifts back an hour.

I don't really understand this. Not at all, in fact.

I worked on DEC systems for years (PDP's and VAX's) in the UK. Twice a year the time would change. Some idiot would just go in there at a convenient time (in our case on a Sunday when the users were mostly 'dormant', they'd be warned and then killed if not ) and reboot with the correct current time. When we acquired remote access it could be done from home.

I've probably missed the point about 'time zones' here.

 

[Dan O.]

I've never found it necessary to reboot a VAX to change the time. Although I did kill one in '99 by setting the date forward 1,000 years And there is a problem with the 16 bit hardware "TOY" clock that will forget what year it is if you don't reboot or set the time for over 18 months. But this has nothing to do with the problem they would have here.

The problem at Frankfurt is that if there were bags moving through the system during the hours before and after the time change and you see a printout that says the time was 0123, it could be standard time or daylight savings time and there is no way to tell which.

 

[GlennB]

The problem at Frankfurt is that if there were bags moving through the system during the hours before and after the time change and you see a printout that says the time was 0123, it could be standard time or daylight savings time and there is no way to tell which.

But this applies to any place that has a daylight saving system. What's special about Frankfurt, and what does it have to do with time zones? Frankfurt is in one time zone and will ever remain so.

 

[Rolfe]

While I hear all that's being said, I'm really having difficulty seeing how the computer clock could be set to a different time zone from everybody else at Frankfurt, and nobody even mentioning this in Court. Here are three extracts that mention the time-keeping on the system.

The baggage control system contained its own clock, and there was a tendency for the time recorded by that clock to diverge from real time. The baggage control clock was therefore reset at the start of each day, by reference either to the main computer clock or to the employee’s watch. The divergence was progressive and by 4.00pm or 5.00pm the discrepancy might be as much as two or three minutes. Times entered in other records were obtained by the staff from the airport clock or from their own watches.

In the first place, it was submitted that there was room for error because the computer time could diverge from real time and because the times entered by the operators could be inaccurate, either because the clock or watch relied on was inaccurate or because the entries were not correctly made.

We accept that the possibilities of error exist, but the computer clock was reset at the start of each day (although the precise time at which it was reset was not stated) and there was an interest in accurate time-keeping since one of the purposes of keeping records was to be able to trace baggage consignments through the system.

In particular, there is a mention of staff resetting the baggage control clock against their own watches. Surely, if any part of the system wasn't set to local time, this complication would have been referred to?

Then again, the latest times out of store for baggage on that list are 16.31 (the bags either side of the mystery item, as it happens). This correlates reasonably with the stated departure time of the flight, given as 16.53 in the Court judgement. I have flown a lot between London and Glasgow, a fairly similar distance to the London/Frankfurt hop, and frankly the idea that you could realistically cover that distance in 47 minutes doesn't seem sensible to me. Which has to imply that the times of all the Frankfurt part of the story are in local time, to allow a realistic flight time. I don't think BA are telling me right now that the flight takes between 1 hour 50 minutes and 1 hour 40 minutes if they can regularly do it in less than an hour.

Advertising is a "ground-based" function of the airline industry, to which GMT reference is not necessary.

And indeed, so is baggage handling. If the flights are all advertised as departing in local time, to have the baggage handling system an hour off from this seems quite counter-intuitive.

I'm not sure the daylight saving change would be such a problem. Most airports I've encountered don't run continuously for 24 hours - there usually seems to be a shut-down (at least of the passenger handling facilities) for about 3 or 4 hours in the middle of the night. I'd have imagined they'd deal with the clock-change during that time.

I simply think that if it was more complicated, and some of the clocks being referred to in court weren't on local time, someone would have mentioned it.

Rolfe.