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Iain Archer[_2_] · January 15th 16, 01:22 PM posted to uk.transport.london

wrote on Fri, 15 Jan 2016 at 07:10:52:
In article ,
(Recliner) wrote:

On Fri, 15 Jan 2016 06:35:42 -0600,
wrote:

In article

-septemb
er.org, (Recliner) wrote:

The Real Doctor wrote:
[snip]

"Flight level - "A fancy way of telling you how many thousands of
feet you are above sea level. Just add a couple of zeroes. Flight
level three-three zero is 33,000 feet.""

Is that wrong? [Yes, I know it's the barometric altitude, but that's
not something that's normally mentioned.]

Count the numbers of zeros.

So isn't FL330 33,000 feet as it says?

And the number of zeros in a thousand?

I don't think "tellling you how many" has to be read as expressing the
same specificity as, say "states how many". Would anyone object if it
had said "A fancy way of telling you how many feet you are above sea
level"? Or even "miles"? OTOH, I would object to "telling you how
many tens of feet you are above ..." -- too specific an implication
that it was providing a definition of FL -- or if the actual example
hadn't been given to make the usage clear and to demonstrate that the
writer wasn't confused.

It's also the case that it's only used in a context where the distance
referred to _will_ be in the range of thousands, and that "thousands" is
the conventional unit used in conversation to express flying height.
--
Iain Archer