Welcome to a new trial service from BAV. News and Views. I thought it might be a good idea to have an area for BAV members to quickly check out what’s going on around the aviation world as a whole without having to surf lots of different sites. It will also be a place for you to send me any thoughts or comments that you would like to be posted in this new area. Perhaps a gripe with some software? Perhaps and experience that you want to share with us all.

I hope you like the idea and if you have any ideas or comments they can be fed back to me in person or in a more public manner on the forums. Enjoy…..

Lee Shand

PMDG 744 Service Update - How do you think PMDG treat their customer base?

VATSIM Europe - Eurobook - At Eurobook you can lookup planned flights, booked ATC, book your own flights and thus increase the chances that ATC will be available for your flight: let people know that you will fly! Its a great service and something you might consider using more?

Bargain Basement - If you are looking for a bargain take 5 mins to browse the items for sale in the bargain bucket. Remember to read the rules first.

Knowing when (and who) to contact ATC - John Sealy posted an interesting thread asking when you should be contacting ATC during your flight. For those who are unsure there is a lot of great information in this thread.

As you know we have a great Monthly BAV magazine called Focus. A great deal of hard work goes into this publication on a monthly basis with some great articles to be found. I thought I would just give you a round up of the last issue.

1. For those of you who love the Netherlands there is a great review of NL-2000 a freeware scenery pack
2. My opinion is that nobody should be flying without a copy of ActiveSky. It is that good. Read the review of the latest version ActiveSky VE in last months focus.
3. It's old, it does not fly and probably never will but we still cant get this bird from under our skin. An excellent review of the SSTSIM Concorde can be found in last month edition.
4. If you like listening to my good self spouting on about nothing, then you may just enjoy my latest article called "Why?"

Once again, thanks to Tim and the Team for putting Focus together on a monthly basis .

British Airways today announced plans to re-structure its business with a 35 per cent reduction in the number of its 1,715 managers by March 2008.

The figure comprises a 50 per cent reduction in senior managers, from 414 jobs to 207, and a proposed 30 per cent reduction in middle managers from 1,301 jobs to 911 jobs.  This brings the total number of job cuts to 597. You can read the full press release here.