Poverty in Switzerland?

In the last few weeks I keep reading about "poor people" in Switzerland, almost on a daily basis. If you want to hear my opinion, these articles are a slap in the face of people living in countries such as Laos, Myanmar etc. There is no such thing as "poverty" in Switzerland. If one has pure water, hot and cold and roof over the head, one belongs to the 10% privileged people in the world already. If you tell some farmer in Laos he can have a tap with water coming out day and night in mineral water quality and he can chose whether it's hot or cold he would do ANYTHING for it. Of course there are people on the lower end of the income scale in Switzerland and they face the issues like high health insurance fees, high rents and generally relatively high cost of living. But that is not poverty. If people continue to think that a 50 inch flatscreen, a surround system, a DVD recorder and a playstation are basic needs for manhood, well then of course they will have a problem. But I am kind of fed up to see people complain who have really not much to complain about. People should learn again to understand what is a basic need and what is luxury.

Training year 2010 completed

92 Students in different courses coming from 18 different countries (provided I haven't forgotten one...). I have visited 12 different countries, some of which 4 times (Japan) or 3 times (France). I have spent 18 weeks on the road for various things and it was the only year in the last 7 that I haven't been in Canada. The southernmost point I visited was Singapore, the northernmost was Amsterdam. I have spent about 6 full days on board of aircraft (not counting ground time...). Probably another couple of days hanging around at airports.
So this is my slightly different review of 2010. One question remains: Why doe the Germans not understand that Beat is a male name?
So my best wishes for the holiday season, don't eat to much :-)

Tuition fees now published in CHF

I am sorry but the unstable Euro forced me to finally change all the published course fees to Swiss Francs (CHF). There is a currency converter available on the website, so no hassle. You can convert right there to any currency you would like (even good old Pesetas...).
If anybody would like to get invoiced in Euro, or USD, that is not a problem. We will invoice the amount based on the exchange rate of the invoice date. Please note that any other currencies are NOT invoiced.

Practical Geomatics on May 17/18

This is to announce the course dates fro the course "Practical Geomatics" with Dr. Martin Rayson. The course will take place on May 17/18 in Interlaken Switzerland.

The course will endeavour to deliver the practical aspects of geomatics with respect to the treatment of geo-spatial aviation data. The industry is reliant upon the use of coordinate based data to ensure safety management of aircraft movement in and around airports / airspace. This has particular relevance to ICAO Annex 14, Annex 15 and AIXM. Ensuring that the geospatial data has the relevant integrity is of vital importance for locating terrain and obstacle data plus navigation aids and airport facilities.
This course will provide the attendees with a series of practical case studies that will introduce the fundamental principles of geodesy and cartography. Geo-spatial data can be obtained from numerous sources referenced to numerous coordinate reference systems. Achieving a final homogeneous dataset from the original data is of significant importance if the data is to provide the correct meaning to procedure designers and thus aircrew.


You can download a course brochure here.


Would be great to welcoming you in Interlaken

Amendments to PANS-OPS

Dear All,

You may or may not be aware that there is an amendment to PANS-OPS. You can get it here.
The folder contains Amendment 3 to volume 2 and Amendment 4 to volume 1.
For those who have seen the State Letter last year or have been in one of my Advanced Courses you will notice that surprisingly the Helicopter PinS Departures haven't made the amendment. I do not know why this was withheld but I will find out and let you know.