For this eleventh leg of the flight simulation world tour, we depart from Padderborn Lippstadt Airport (EDLP) for Helgoland, Germany.
As our sponsor has an unlimited budget, we’ll be flying in an Airbus H160 Luxury helicopter. En route to the destination, we’ll be stopping off at Bremen airport (EDDW).
Airbus H160 helicopter over Bremen airport in MSFS 2020
For aviation buffs, the route from Bremen reads: EDDW DCT DO DCT DW271 DCT DW285 DCT WSN DCT NDO DCT EDXH (Helgoland). I use the following software: Navigraph, Simbrief, FSLTL and the MSFS 2020 flight simulator. The flight is carried out in real weather (injected via the Internet).
After take-off, we fly over some of Bremen’s industrial facilities.
H160 Airbus helicopter over Bremen industrial installation in MSFS2020
I have a co-pilot to help me with the job when I’m taking photos. I can’t say she’s very chatty, but the main thing is to get to the airport safely.
View from the cockpit in the Airbus H160 helicopter
As we approach the North Sea, the coastline is briefly laden with low cloud and visibility diminishes. A few raindrops fall, while a double rainbow forms and a little turbulence is felt.
Precipitation isn’t really a problem, as it doesn’t last long. But with an outside temperature of -5 C, we have to watch out for icing.
Rainbow and updrafts before reaching the North Sea from Bremen in flight simulation
The weather returns to VFR and we head out over the water towards Helgoland.
Airbus H160 Luxury helicopter over Germany heading to Helgoland aiport
Helgoland has changed ownership many times over the decades, as a result of armed conflicts. The site has belonged to Great Britain, Denmark and is now part of Germany. It was a strategic military site whose installations were dynamited (and solidly!) by the British at the end of the Second World War.
H160 helicopter arriving to Helgoland in flight simulation
We look out over the cliffs of Helgoland before heading for the destination of our trip, the small island of Düne, in the background in the photo below.
The cliffs of Lummenfelsen at Helgoland, Germany, in flight simulation
Although not sporty, the landing requires a few precautions due to gusts of 23 knots. On landing, the aircraft floats for a few seconds, behaving like a boat on rough water. But in the end, all goes well.
Landing of a virtual Airbus H160 at Helgoland, Germany with MSFS
The next virtual flight will be to an oil platform located in Denmark in the North Sea. For those who’d like to try the landing, the code name is EHFD F3-FB-1A.
Frédéric Pierucci is a senior executive at Alstom, a gigantic French energy company. Thanks to a US extraterritorial law (FCPA Foreign Corrupt Practices Act) which allows the US government to prosecute any foreign firm targeted for corruption, he was arbitrarily arrested in 2013 as he got off the plane in New York.
Pierucci had not received any money from these operations, but he was aware that Alstom was targeted for embezzlement and that the company used “intermediaries” to secure contracts. He was incarcerated for months, and Alstom finally abandoned him, believing that the Americans would be satisfied with the imprisonment of this high-ranking executive. Pierucci must now try to extricate himself from the quagmire into which he has been plunged.
A page of the graphic novel “Le piège américain”.
Even if he is not directly implicated in the bribes, the American justice system wants to pressure Pierucci into revealing details that would incriminate Alstom’s management, including CEO Patrick Kron. Pierucci’s harsh judicial treatment is also intended to intimidate the firm’s other top executives, showing them what awaits them if they do not cooperate in rectifying past mistakes.
The primary aim seemed to correct unfair schemes that were damaging American companies and, by the same token, to obtain very substantial monetary compensation. The operation was a success: the effects of Pierucci’s arbitrary arrest paved the way within a few years for the sale of a strategic Alstom subsidiary to General Electric, its main competitor.
Back cover of the graphic novel “Le piège américain”.
The maneuvers also allow to obtain information that would otherwise remain confidential. This U.S. extraterritorial law works well and is used to attack numerous corporations around the world, including the German international group Siemens. Each time, the offender is obliged to pay substantial fines and must submit internal documents considered confidential or even secret to the prosecutor.
It’s hard to know who exactly will have access to these documents. Is it possible that agents (we won’t call them “spies” for the sake of politeness) are passing on trade-secret information to people working outside the U.S. Justice Department? Such actions would enable American companies to improve their competitiveness at little cost. But these are questions that the executives of the targeted companies are asking themselves.
Be that as it may, not everything in this story is squeaky clean. Author Matthieu Aron writes: “In autumn 2018, after Frédéric [Pierucci] was finally released, we finished our book. But again, it was not without difficulty. The day after we sent our manuscript to our publisher, my home was ‘visited’ and my computer disappeared. Simple burglars, spooks, or action by a foreign service? We’ll probably never know.”
The graphic novel “Le piège américain”, prix littéraire nouveaux droits de l’homme 2019.
My view on the subject.
China is watching and learning.
The effectiveness of this American extraterritorial law has not escaped the attention of China, which is planning to devise a similar law that would allow it to lay its hands on otherwise inaccessible information and archives.
Faced with these two behemoths, the United States and China, Europe has fallen behind, and it too will have to create its own law enabling it to extend its judicial power outside the continent. For no one is fooled: bribes to obtain contracts involve multiple countries. Prosecutions under extraterritorial legislation give access not only to large sums of money, but also to documents containing important data and possibly industrial secrets.
Another book on the graphic novel “Le piège américain”.
The Alstom experience will at least have had the effect of better preparing France for the moment when, a little later, the giant Airbus was targeted for malfeasance by the same American law. Airbus manufactures not only airplanes, but also many strategic military products protected by secrecy. This time, the widespread collection of the company’s confidential information was refused, without a French citizen being named as intermediary and the documents handed over to the Americans being reviewed to ensure that they did not contain military secrets or other information not directly related to the corruption charges.
Today, Airbus is a great success, selling more aircraft each month than Boeing, which is experiencing difficulties with the way it builds its aircraft. And we have every right to believe that senior management at Airbus has improved its business practices.
