Thread by @garius

Been seeing a lot of tweets about the Union Jack on Johnson's plane being the wrong way up.

It is. But no one is really explaining why.

So let's talk planes, flag codes, sloppy copy/paste of French aircraft tail designs and blitz-fire-damaged aviation ensigns #thread

So the Union Jack has a right way up. The white stripes are the clue. Here's a handy guide from WikiHow.

Hanging it upside down is an international sign of distress. This is presumably why so many garden flagpole racists get it wrong. It's their subconscious crying out.

"Ahhhh!" You say, if you're one of those annoying tweeters with too many numbers in your name, "but there's no flagpole on a plane, is there?! QED Boris is awesome something something angry snowflakes."

Well you're wrong. Because this isn't Vietnam. There are rules.

This is one of those things the WHOLE WORLD pretty much agrees on. Next time you're waiting for a flight look out the window and you'll spot it.

(At Gatwick, I recommend doing it in @NandosUK. One of only two in the UK that does Nandos breakfasts. They're fucking amazing)

The rule is pretty simple: On a plane's tail fin, the flagpole is the LEADING EDGE of the fin.

And the subsequent logic is pretty simple too: If that's the flagpole, then any flag flying from it will be:

1) Horizontal
2) TRAILING IN THE WIND

So it should be BACKWARDS.

Honestly, I'm not making this up. Admittedly this isn't as obvious on European planes, as we don't go in for flags everywhere (or at least big obvious ones). Find an American plane though and it's pretty obvious, because they're ALWAYS all:

'Yeah bro! MURICA! Flag! Woooo!'

In fact here's the American Army talking about it in one of their rules books, back in the eighties: books.google.fr/books?id=P7ctA…

And here's OUR OWN national guidelines for flags on plane tails. flaginstitute.org/wp/british-fla…

In fact you can ALSO see this in play on the A330 used by the French who are the only European nation almost as ridiculously self-obsessed as ourselves (okay, maybe the Swedes too). There the flag trails the...

...Oh. Oh waiiiit. That tail design looks a bit familiar doesn't it?

Our new national plane basically copy/pastes the French design and then we STILL manage to screw up the tail flag orientation.

Our new 900k national tail fin is based off a Friday phone-it-in, copy-paste photoshop that nobody bothered to even run against the design guide.

And don't even get me STARTED on how the design makes it look like the flag is flapping around like a ragged, floundering wet rag attached to the angle-of-attack vane.

Problems with which was what kept downing 737 MAXes. There's a fucking metaphor for you.

So what SHOULD they have done? Well that's what's super annoying. If we MUST be flagwavingly nationalistic on the damn thing then at least get it right.

We've got a Civil Air Ensign, for god sake. And it's bloody lovely. Paint that on the damn tail.

In fact it's so bloody lovely that LOADS of countries copied it. Prime Minister Blondy McShagsALot could have stood in front of it and gone on about how it was a symbol of Britiain giving stuff to the world while dropping Imperial subtexts for the racists and little englanders.

He could even talk about how the original prototype first flew proudly over Parliament House throughout the Blitz.

It's now in a museum, fire and water damaged from the constant battle against incendiaries.

The boomers LOVE a blitz story. They like to pretend they were there.

But no. Because this government cannot be arsed to do detail. Stick something out there, half arse it, make noises about how people who argue with you are somehow unpatriotic and move on quickly to the next self-created crisis.

They can't even be arsed to get the history right when it works in their favour. If it's not a statue of Churchill they can wank over or a castle they can visit to test their eyesight, they don't give a shit

History is a blunt force instrument for them, not a thing to learn from

Anyway, there you go. That's why this whole flag plane thing has annoyed me way ,way more than it fucking should have. It's just crapness. More crapness and laziness on every level from a bunch of arseholes grinding this country's reputation into the ground.

And before all the tweeters with loads of numbers and union jacks in their usernames jump into the replies on this, remember:

IF YOU HAVE A FUCKING UNION JACK IN YOUR FUCKING USERNAME. YOU SHOULD FUCKING CARE THAT THE GOVERNMENT GETS IT RIGHT ON A FUCKING PLANE.

Ahem. Anyway. If you've enjoyed this, you can always by me a lockdown coffee (or beer!) here: ko-fi.com/garius

And if you want my proper, non-sweary aviation writing, You may enjoy 'Twelve Minutes Over Jakarta' my look at the design flaws and pilot mistakes that caused the 737 MAX disasters medium.com/@garius/twelve…

ADDENDUM: I should have explained this better. Because people are rightly pointing out that if you squint a bit it's sorta hanging right according to the rules, if you look at the right way.

And yeah, in fact that's one of the reasons I wanted to do this thread.

Because I'm JUST as annoyed at the LOL bad flag LOL stuff coming out of critics who don't understand how flags are meant to work on tail fins.

My main issue with this is that even if you take the 'Squint and it's right' approach, it becomes a flag that has to deny the laws of physics, and the whole POINT of showing flags backwards on tails, to do it.

It's just SUCH A SHIT and lazy design. Like, if you're going to do this, do it PROPERLY.

This is a problem the French version also almost has, by the way, but JUST ABOUT dodges.

But whoever did this version didn't even understand that the french were dodging ths problem, so they've just mindlessly copied it.

Extra short version of whole thread:

Pretty much EVERYONE talking about this on twitter is failing to understand how flags should work on tail fins.

And I'm going to go and sit in the dark and wibble quietly to myself for a bit.

https://twitter.com/garius/status/1276481448975966209