Airplane Watching

More cracks found in Airbus A380 wings

2012-01-19T08:20:00.000-08:00

PARIS | Thu Jan 19, 2012 8:27am EST

(Reuters) - Airbus (EAD.PA) said on Thursday it had discovered more cracks in the wings of two A380 superjumbo aircraft but insisted the world's largest jetliner remained safe to fly.

The announcement comes two weeks after tiny cracks were first reported in the wings of the 525-seat, double-decker aircraft, which entered service just over four years ago.

"Airbus confirms that some additional cracks have been found on a limited number of non-critical brackets ... inside the wings of some A380s," the planemaker said in a statement.

"Airbus emphasizes that these cracks do not affect the safe operation of the aircraft."

The European Aviation Safety Authority (EASA) confirmed it would issue a bulletin Friday mandating precautionary checks.

The latest cracking problem was discovered in two aircraft during a routine two-year inspection, an Airbus spokeswoman said. She declined to name the operators of the aircraft.

EADS subsidiary Airbus has so far delivered 68 superjumbos, starting with Singapore Airlines (SIAL.SI) which took the first aircraft in December 2007, followed by Dubai's Emirates and Qantas Airways (QAN.AX) of Australia.

Other operators include Air France (AIRF.PA), Germany's Lufthansa (LHAG.DE), Korean Air (003490.KS) and China Southern (600029.SS).

The latest problems were discovered in the same type of part as the earlier set of cracks, an L-shaped bracket which connects the wing's exterior to the internal "rib" structure.

A380 wings are manufactured in Broughton, north Wales, and shipped to Airbus headquarters in Toulouse, France, for final assembly.

Industry journal Air Transport Intelligence said the brackets, known as rib feet, had been stressed during the manufacturing process and that this was being fixed.

The A380 -- developed at an estimated cost of 12 billion euros and built in Britain, France, Germany and Spain -- has enough room on its wings to park 70 cars and a wingspan of 79.8m (261ft 10in).

(Reporting by Tim Hepher, Cyril Altmeyer, Harry Suhartono, Dave Cutler; Editing by James Regan and Christian Plumb)

Singapore superjumbo forced to return to Hong Kong

2011-06-06T21:48:00.001-07:00

AFP News – Mon, Jun 6, 2011

A Singapore Airlines (SIA) A380 was forced to return to Hong Kong shortly after taking off because of a landing gear problem, the carrier said Monday.

There were 400 passengers onboard the Singapore-bound plane when the incident happened Sunday, SIA said in a statement.

The plane landed at Hong Kong International Airport at 4:45 pm (0845 GMT) and alternative arrangements were made for passengers to be transferred to other flights, it said.

No one was injured.

Faulty readings ahead of 2009 Air France crash

2011-05-29T22:44:00.000-07:00

PARIS (AP) — Confronted with faulty instrument readings and alarms going off in the cockpit, the pilots of an Air France jetliner struggled to tame the aircraft as it went into an aerodynamic stall, rolled, and finally plunged 38,000 feet into the Atlantic Ocean in just 3½ minutes.

But the passengers on that doomed Rio de Janeiro-to-Paris flight were probably asleep or nodding off and didn't realize what was going on as the aircraft fell nose-up toward the sea, the director of the French accident investigating bureau said after releasing preliminary black-box data on the June 1, 2009, disaster.

All 228 people aboard the Airbus A330 died.

The brief, highly technical report by the BEA contains only selective remarks from the cockpit recorder, offers no analysis and assigns no blame. It also does not answer the key question: What caused the crash?

But several experts familiar with the report said the co-pilot at the controls, at 32 the youngest of the three-man cockpit crew, Cedric Bonin, may have responded incorrectly to the emergency by pointing the nose upward, perhaps because he was confused by the incorrect readings.

The plane's external speed sensors, called Pitot tubes, have long been considered a likely culprit in the disaster, with experts suggesting they may have been iced over. And the BEA investigators found that two sets of instruments on the plane gave different speed readings, with the discrepancies lasting less than a minute.

Since the accident, Air France has replaced the speed monitors on all its Airbus A330 and A340 aircraft.

An official at Airbus said the aircraft's nose should have been pointed slightly downward to enable the plane to regain lift after it had gone into an aerodynamic stall.

"This is part of the general pilot training for any aircraft," said the official. He was not authorized to speak on that subject and asked not to be identified by name.

Other aviation experts concurred. In an aerodynamic stall, a plane most often loses lift because it is traveling too slowly, and begins to fall out of the sky. Pointing the nose downward enables the aircraft to pick up speed, gain lift and pull out of the stall.

Pulling the nose up is "an inappropriate way to respond" to an aerodynamic stall, said Paul Hayes, director of air safety for aviation consulting firm Ascend Worldwide Ltd. "He either misidentified what was happening or became confused."

He cautioned that Friday's report was brief and that it was still unclear how the series of events started.

The flight data recorder and cockpit recorder were dredged from the ocean in early May, along with some bodies.

They showed, in addition to inconsistent speed readings, two co-pilots working methodically to right the plane manually after autopilot stopped. Captain Marc Dubois returned from a routine rest to the cockpit amid what moments later became an irretrievably catastrophic situation.

After the plane went into a stall, warnings sounded, the autopilot and autothrust shut off as designed, and the co-pilot not at the controls "tried several times to call the captain back," the BEA report said. The captain returned one minute and 10 seconds later, when the plane had climbed to 38,000 feet.

"During the following seconds, all of the recorded speeds became invalid and the stall warning stopped," the report said, but added that the plane never came out of its aerodynamic stall.

"The airplane was subject to roll oscillations that sometimes reached 40 degrees," the report said. The engines never stopped operating and "always responded to crew commands," the BEA said.

"The pilots never panicked," BEA director Jean-Paul Troadec said on RTL radio, adding that they maintained professionalism throughout.

The passengers, he suggested, probably fell to their deaths without knowing they were doomed.

Dinner had been served and "you can imagine that most passengers were already asleep or nodding off," Troadec said. He said the cabin crew never contacted the cockpit to see what might be wrong.

"It seems they didn't feel more movements and turbulence than you generally feel in storms, so we think that till impact they did not realize the situation," said Jean-Baptiste Audousset, president of a victims' solidarity association, "which for the family is what they want to hear, they did not suffer."

He was among a group of representatives of families who met with BEA officials to be briefed on their findings.

At least one expert disagreed with the theory of a soft descent.

Data from the flight recorders shows the plane was falling almost 11,000 feet per minute (124 mph, or 200 kilometers per hour), its nose slightly tilted upward.

"Eleven-thousand feet a minute is a huge rate of descent," said Ronan Hubert, who runs the Aircraft Crashes Record Office in Geneva. "I would say some of the people on board would have lost consciousness."

The crew had feared turbulence, and more than eight minutes before the crash the co-pilot at the controls advised the cabin crew "you should watch out" for turbulence ahead. He said the plane could not climb out of the cloud layer where the turbulence was happening because it was not cold enough.

Turbulence caused the pilots to make a slight change of course, but was not excessive as the plane tried to pass through the clouds.

Four minutes later, the plane's autopilot and autothrust shut off, the stall alarm sounded twice and the co-pilot at the controls took over manual control. A second co-pilot, David Robert, 37, was also in the cockpit.

Pilots on long-haul flights often take turns resting to remain alert. After Dubois returned to the cockpit, he did not take back the controls.

Just over two minutes before the crash, Bonin is heard to say, "I don't have any more indications." Robert says: "We have no valid indications."

Just over two minutes before the crash, Bonin is heard to say, "I don't have any more indications." Robert says: "We have no valid indications."

Michael Barr, who teaches aviation safety at the University of Southern California, said the atmosphere in the darkened cockpit would have been chaotic: lights flashing, loud alarms, frequent messages.

He compared the pilots to emergency-room doctors struggling with a sudden influx of seriously injured patients: They were bombarded with problems that they had to quickly prioritize.

On top of that, they were completely dependent on the information the plane's computers gave them.

"You have to rely on your instruments," Barr said. "That's why when the instruments aren't telling you the truth, you have a hard time deciding what to do. Which ones are right and which ones are wrong?"

Air France said in a statement that, based on the report, it appears "the initial problem was the failure of the speed probes which led to the disconnection of the autopilot" and loss of pilot protection systems.

The airline defended the captain, saying he "quickly interrupted his rest period to regain the cockpit."

Independent aviation analyst Chris Yates said the report appears "to raise more questions than it answers."

"It would seem to me, reading between the lines, that the cockpit crew weren't confident of the information that was being presented to them on the data displays," Yates said. "Maybe — and it's only a maybe — they took some action that led to the stall warning, and the plane stalling and then being unable to correct it."

A new, but not final, report with some analysis is to be issued in July.

___

Cecile Brisson and Frank Jordans and APTN in Paris, Joan Lowy in Washington and David Koenig in Dallas contributed to this report.

Boeing unveils latest 747

2011-02-14T03:13:00.000-08:00

WASHINGTON (AFP) - – US aerospace giant Boeing unveiled its 747-8 Intercontinental, a longer and more fuel efficient update of its emblematic jumbo jet, which it hopes will compete with Airbus A-380.

"Look at this marvelous flying machine, it's our future," Pat Shanahan, Boeing's vice president and general manager of commercial airplanes division, said at the unveiling ceremony at the company's plant in Everett, Washington near Seattle.

Jim Albaugh, president of the commercial aviation division, added: "We think our customers will value the low operating costs and passengers will enjoy the comfort of the striking new interior."

Boeing took all by surprise in unveiling a new color scheme -- red and orange -- a departure from its standard blue, in honor of the cultures of Asian clients for whom the colors symbolize prosperity and good fortune.

An estimated 10,000 people attended the unveiling, which was broadcast on the company's website.

The 747-8 keeps its predecessor's humped shape, but is longer to allow for more seats and cargo space.

The new model, Boeing's largest, can carry 467 passengers and is designed for long haul routes. The Airbus A-380 has 525 passenger seats.

Its cost per seat is six percent lower than that of the A-380, according to Boeing.

Boeing has orders for 33 -- including from Lufthansa and Korean Air -- of its 747-8 Intercontinental, which is the passenger version. It has 74 orders for the freight version.

Lufthansa, which has ordered 20, will be the first to receive the new model, according to Boeing, likely in early 2012.

"We are looking forward to welcoming this new aircraft to our fleet next year as it adds to our ongoing fleet modernization and environmental efforts," said Nico Buchholz, executive vice president, Lufthansa Group Fleet Management.

The 747-8 uses some technological innovations from Boeing's troubled 787 Dreamliner, whose completion is three years late because of technical problems. The Dreamliner should be delivered late this year.

The 747-8's interior was inspired by that of 787, with a rounded staircase to the upper deck, higher ceilings and elongated windows.

The Dreamliner was heralded as a new generation of highly fuel-efficient mid-sized aircraft, but Boeing has encountered difficulties in bringing the plane to market due to its use of composite materials as well as integrating production at various sites.

In December, Boeing said it had installed updated power system software and conducted rigorous reviews to confirm flight readiness after it had to halt tests due to an electrical fire that forced an emergency landing.

'Burn marks' on Singapore Airlines A380 wiring

2011-02-03T19:00:00.000-08:00

AFP - Thursday, February 3

SINGAPORE (AFP) - – Singapore Airlines (SIA) said Thursday it found burn marks on electrical wiring in an Airbus A380 superjumbo after smoke entered a lavatory during a flight earlier this week.

The flight crew activated an extinguisher after smelling smoke coming from one of the aircraft's toilets while the plane was approaching Changi Airport from Hong Kong, said S. Supramaniam, an airline spokesman.

"When the plane landed, our ground crew inspected the aircraft and they discovered some burn marks on some electrical wirings underneath the lavatory, on the cargo hold," he told AFP.

"Airbus and SIA are investigating the matter. We have also inspected all the other A380s and nothing was found."

Supramaniam said there was no fire and the plane landed safely without incident.

SIA became the first airline in the world to commercially fly the double-decker A380 in October 2007. It has 11 A380s in its fleet.

In November last year, an explosion ripped through one engine of an A380 operated by Qantas shortly after takeoff from Singapore with 466 people aboard, forcing it to turn back and make an emergency landing

Boeing halts test flights of delay-plagued 787 Dreamliner

2010-11-11T09:00:00.000-08:00

AFP - Thursday, November 11

SEATTLE, Washington (AFP) - – US aerospace giant Boeing on Wednesday halted test flights on its new 787 Dreamliner, dealing a fresh setback to a program already running about three years behind schedule.

Boeing announced the decision after a fire aboard a test plane on Tuesday forced an emergency landing.

At a news conference in Seattle in the western US state of Washington, Boeing spokeswoman Loretta Gunter said the fire was the most serious incident since test flights began in December 2009.

"I don't know how long the suspension will last," Gunter said, adding that the focus would be on ground testing until the incident was understood and that it was unclear if the fire would further delay the program.

The 787 Dreamliner, launched in April 2004, has suffered a series of setbacks, many of them from challenges in the international production of parts for the mid-size plane.

Boeing says the high-tech 787, made essentially from composite materials, will deliver a 20 percent reduction in fuel consumption compared with planes of similar size flying today.

The first 787 was initially promised to Japanese launch customer All Nippon Airways (ANA) in the first half of 2008. Delivery has now been put back to around February 2011.

Smoke filled the ZA002, one of Boeing's six test 787s, on Tuesday, forcing an emergency landing in Laredo, Texas.

"There was a fire on board the airplane, which created the smoke in the cabin area," Gunter said, stressing that the investigation was of "an incident, not an accident.

"We don't know where it started. We need to analyze all the data," the Boeing spokeswoman said, adding that the fire was not in the main cabin and had been extinguished before the plane landed.

Shares in Chicago-based Boeing plunged 3.15 percent to close at 67.07 dollars in New York.

"The most likely outcome is a modest delay to the flight test with a potential multi-week slip in first delivery, which is well within the range of investor expectations," Barclays Capital analysts said in a client note.

The troubled plane was painted in ANA livery and like three other 787 test planes was equipped with a Rolls-Royce Trent 1000 engine. The remaining two have General Electric GEnx engines.

"Right now we don't see any connection with the engine," Gunter said.

The British firm has been in the spotlight after a spate of mid-air mishaps.

In early November, a Qantas Airbus A380 superjumbo was forced to make an emergency landing after a Rolls-Royce Trent 900 blew out.

In a separate incident, a Qantas Boeing 747 had to turn back to Singapore after another model of Rolls-Royce engine failed in mid-air.

In August, Boeing pushed back the 787 delivery schedule from a target of the early weeks of 2011 due to a delay in the availability of a Rolls-Royce engine.

Gunter said a Rolls-Royce engine had exploded during ground tests in September.

It was the second time Boeing has halted 787 test flights, suspending them for "a couple of days" in June, she said, without explaining the reason. US media reported problems with the plane's tail stabilizers.

Boeing has 55 customers from six continents that have placed orders for 847 Dreamliners to date, valued at 147 billion dollars, the most successful launch of a new commercial airplane in its history.

But it has faced cancellations and compensation claims for some delays.

Last week Aviation Week, citing industry sources, reported Boeing has warned Korean Air, Air India and Japan Airlines of delays of up to 10 months.

2010-11-11T03:41:00.001-08:00

Qantas B747 plane "experienced engine problems" after takeoff

2010-11-05T07:20:00.001-07:00

By Lynda Hong | Posted: 05 November 2010 2214 hrs

SINGAPORE: A Qantas aircraft experienced engine problems on Friday evening.

Qantas said that shortly after takeoff, QF6 operating from Singapore to Sydney "experienced an issue with its number 1 engine".

Qantas added that as a precautionary measure, the captain of the Boeing 747 aircraft sought priority clearance to return to Singapore.

The aircraft landed safely.

There were 412 passengers on board, along with three flight crew and 16 cabin crew.

- CNA/ir

Qantas fears engine design fault after A380 drama

2010-11-05T07:16:00.000-07:00

Posted: 05 November 2010 1333 hrs

SYDNEY: Qantas said Friday a mid-air drama involving a flagship A380 superjumbo may have been caused by a design fault in its Rolls-Royce engines, raising questions over the giant long-haul craft.

Chief executive Alan Joyce said early investigations pointed to a "material failure or a design issue" in the Airbus plane's engines after one exploded minutes after take-off from Singapore, prompting an emergency landing.

However, Joyce said Qantas' five other A380s -- the world's biggest passenger jet -- could be back in action within days, after safety checks by Rolls-Royce and Qantas engineers in Los Angeles and Sydney.

"This is an engine issue and the engines were maintained by Rolls-Royce since being installed on the aircraft," Joyce told reporters at the Australian flag-carrier's Sydney headquarters.

"We believe that this is most likely some kind of material failure or a design issue... we don't believe this is related to maintenance in any way."

The comments are the first to shed light on Thursday's events, when engine casing rained down on an Indonesian town and the superjumbo with 466 people on board dumped fuel before returning to Singapore.

He said that a second engine, next to the one that exploded, would not shut down after the landing, raising further concerns.

Rolls-Royce urged airlines to carry out "basic precautionary checks" on its Trent 900 engines after the incident.

Some 37 of the giant planes are currently in use around the world.

Qantas has grounded its fleet of six A380s but Joyce said they could return to the skies within 48 hours if they come through eight hours of safety checks.

Since its 2007 launch, fuel and computer glitches have grounded several A380s and one Air France flight was forced back to New York after problems with its navigation system in November 2009.

In April, a Qantas A380 damaged tyres on landing from Singapore in Sydney, causing a shower of sparks. Joyce said tyres also burst during Thursday's incident, but described that as "not significant".

Shares in Qantas fell 1.04 per cent to 2.86 Australian dollars in Friday trade. - AFP/fa

Rolls-Royce recommends engine checks after A380 incident

2010-11-05T06:56:00.001-07:00

AFP - Friday, November 5

LONDON (AFP) - – Rolls-Royce on Thursday recommended that "basic precautionary checks" are carried out on its Trent 900 engines, after an engine made by the firm caught fire on a Qantas A380 Airbus.

The Qantas flight with more than 450 people on board made a dramatic forced landing in Singapore on Thursday, trailing smoke from a blackened engine, in the superjumbo's first mid-air emergency.

"Since Qantas QF32 suffered an engine failure and returned safely to Singapore Changi Airport we have been working closely with our customer and the authorities," Rolls said in an official statement on Thursday.

"In situations like these Rolls-Royce has well established processes to collect and understand information relating to the event and to determine suitable actions."

It added: "As always the safe operation of our products is our number one priority.

"The in-service fleet of Trent 900 engines is small and relatively new, and the group feels that it is prudent to recommend that a number of basic precautionary engine checks are performed. This process is now underway."

Rolls-Royce added that it would work closely with its customers to probe the incident, but stressed that the matter was at a "very early" stage.

"We will continue to work closely with our customers as the investigation moves forward.

"This is at a very early stage and it would be inappropriate to draw any conclusions at this time."

In reaction to the latest news, Rolls-Royce shares slumped 4.75 percent to 622 pence in afternoon London trading on London's benchmark FTSE 100 index of leading shares, which was up 1.99 percent.

Qantas plane makes emergency landing in S’pore

2010-11-04T01:27:00.000-07:00

By Ewen Boey – November 4th, 2010

Agence France Presse

A Qantas A380 made a dramatic emergency landing in Singapore Thursday, trailing smoke from a damaged engine, in the first mid-air emergency involving the Airbus superjumbo.

The double-decker plane, which had taken off from Singapore bound for Sydney carrying 433 passengers and 26 crew, dumped fuel over Indonesia before returning to the city-state’s Changi Airport.

According to a Changi Airport Group spokesperson, the A380 Qantas flight QF 32 departed Singapore Changi Airport at 0956 hours today. For technical reasons, the aircraft turned back to Changi and landed safely at 1146 hours.

Changi Airport Group’s Airport Emergency Service (AES) responded with six fire vehicles, in accordance with standard operating procedure for such incidents. In response to the pilot’s request, checks were conducted on the aircraft by AES.

Once the checks were completed, passengers and crew began disembarking from the aircraft at Runway 2. Buses were arranged to ferry them to the airport terminal. Disembarkation of all 469 passengers and crew on board was completed by 1340 hours.

When contacted, a Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade spokesperson from the Australian consulate in Canberra told Yahoo! Singapore, “The flight has landed safely at Changi Airport and there are no passengers or crew injured.”

“Australian consular officials are at Changi Airport ready to assist passengers if required. Qantas has arranged meals and accommodation for passengers and is urgently making arrangements for affected passengers to fly on to Sydney,” she added.

The Qantas Airbus A380 plane surrounded by fire engines after landing safely at Changi Airport.
One of the engines on the four-engined plane’s left wing was blackened and its rear casing was missing when it landed at Changi Airport.

Plane debris including what appeared to be part of a Qantas jet was found in the Indonesian town of Batam, after a mid-air explosion was heard on the ground.

“I didn’t see a plane crash but I heard a loud explosion in the air. There were metal shards coming down from the sky into an industrial area in Batam,” witness Noor Kanwa told AFP

Qantas CEO Alan Joyce says the airline is suspending all flights of its six Airbus A380 jetliners after a mid-air engine problem on a flight from Singapore.

Joyce told a news conference in Sydney on Thursday the suspension would remain in place until Qantas was satisfied that it was safe for its A380s to fly.

Joyce said “we will suspend those A380 services until we are completely confident that Qantas safety requirements have been met.”

Australian flag-carrier Qantas, which prides itself as the world’s safest airline with no fatal jetliner crashes in its 90-year history, blamed an “engine issue” for the incident but gave no further details.

“In line with procedure, the pilot sought priority clearance for its return to Singapore,” the airline said.

In light of Qantas grounding its entire A380 fleet, a Singapore Airlines spokesperson told Yahoo! Singapore, “There are no plans as of now to ground our A380 aircraft, and operations are continuing as normal. It is premature at this point to speculate and we will await advice from the aircraft and engine manufacturers as the investigation progresses.”

Debris photo on Indonesian TV (Twitter photo courtesy of @RodrigoBNO)
The A380′s very first commercial flight operated by SIA was on the same Singapore-Sydney route in October 2007.

Since then, fuel and computer glitches have grounded several A380s and at least one Air France flight was forced to turn around and land in New York after problems with its navigation system in November 2009.

And in April, a Qantas A380 superjumbo damaged tyres on landing from Singapore in Sydney, showing sparks and scaring passengers.

The plane is the largest passenger jet in operation, with 50 percent more floor space than Boeing’s veteran 747 jumbo. The A380 can carry up to 853 passengers in an all-economy configuration.

Qantas said on its website it has taken delivery of six of its 20 Airbus A380-800 aircraft, which it said represents the second-largest A380 order of any airline in the world.

Qantas said the A380 operates selected flights from Sydney and Melbourne to Los Angeles, Singapore and London.

Remembering SQ006: 10 years on

2010-10-29T01:40:00.000-07:00

By Ion Danker – October 29th, 2010

From “surviving to winning” – that’s how former Singapore Airlines (SIA) pilot Cyrano Latiff describes how he’s turned his life around since surviving Singapore’s worst-ever aircraft disaster.

Then a First Officer with Singapore Airlines, Cyrano was one of three pilots in the cockpit of SQ 006, the SQ Boeing 747-412 jet that crashed on a rainy night at Taiwan’s Chiang Kai-Shek airport on 31 October, 2000.

83 of the 179 passengers on board died after the Singapore flight that was bound for Los Angeles ploughed into a cluster of heavy construction equipment as it tried to take off from a runway in bad, stormy weather. The plane broke into several pieces upon impact as explosions ripped through the aircraft’s entire middle section.

Among the dead were 26 Taiwanese, 24 Americans and 12 Singaporeans and Indians.

Speaking to Yahoo! Singapore in an exclusive interview ahead of the 10th anniversary of the crash this Sunday, Cyrano described the entire experience as “humbling”.

“After going through this, you realise everyone is important to you,” said the 46-year-old Singaporean, who had been flying with SIA for six years before the night of the tragedy.

After having his contract terminated by SIA in 2002, Cyrano joined Lufthansa as an aeronautical consultant for two years. He then ventured into the food and beverage industry before becoming a lecturer for the Diploma in Aviation Management & Services at Temasek Polytechnic’s (TP) Engineering School in 2008.

Latiff Cyrano became a lecturer at Temasek Polytechnic, teaching Aviation Management & Services since 2008.
Life for the married father of four since the crash has been anything but smooth.

Recalling that fateful day ten years ago and the immediate scenes of panic and chaos that ensued after the crash, he said, “The fire was like flames of a furnace from the lower deck as I started to call everyone to jump from the upper deck to evacuate the burning plane.”

“So I assessed the situation, and tried to kick the burnt slide. I thought if I jumped on it first, it might ‘untangle’. After I took the plunge, everyone saw it was possible to make it down to the tarmac so we started getting people to jump,” said Cyrano, who was the flight’s co-pilot.

As the remaining passengers made it to safety, Cyrano described what he saw when he glanced sideways.

“I was stunned when I saw the plane lying on its belly without the landing gears. The aircraft had broken up and its skin was burning away. But the most important thing was making sure everyone was evacuated safely,” he said, as he showed the scar he suffered from a deep gash during the jump.

Firefighters putting out the blaze on SQ006 ten years ago. (AFP Photo)
Cyrano and the other two pilots, Captain Foong Chee Kong and First Officer Ng Kheng Leng, were made to stay in Taiwan as investigations got underway after the crash. They were kept away from the Taiwanese media throughout that period as anger and bitter finger-pointing reached fever-pitch.

Said Cyrano, “We stayed in different locations and moved around, as the Taiwan media were trying to track us down and each day, the tabloids ran big stories of the accident. It came to a point where security personnel were assigned to us.”

The “scary” moment came after 52 days when the pilots were finally allowed to leave Taiwan and return to Singapore.

“We had to slip through Taiwan customs as if we were tourists. I remembered our bodyguards left us after entering the first door of the airport and the three of us went our separate ways to avoid being recognised by the local and international media,” he said.

Describing what happened next at the immigration counter, he said, “As our passports were burned from the accident, I gave a substitute travel document to the Taiwanese immigration officer who looked at it before holding up the letter and loudly proclaiming, ‘Is this your document?’.”

“The next thing I knew, a large group of people came charging forward from behind the pillars, cameras appeared out of nowhere and I thought to myself, ‘How could these guys manage to get into this restricted area?’” said Cyrano, who revealed his sense of helplessness after realising the Taiwanese media were on a witchhunt to find someone to blame for the crash.

He added that the reporters and photographers started surging forward, following him all the way to the boarding area, before he boarded his flight back to Singapore.

Worse was to follow when he returned to Taipei two years later after investigations into the crash concluded.

After being briefed by airport officials on the plane before arriving in Taiwan, he said, “The area was cordoned off for us to leave the plane but you could see the media lunging forward. It came to a point where the media came rushing towards us and I remember our bodyguards signaling us to follow them while the rest came to shield us as we fought our way to the vehicle.”

Crash investigators inspecting the remains of SQ006. (AFP Photo)
The final investigation report issued by the Taiwan Aviation Safety Council (ASC) on 24 April 2002, blamed the flight crew for not taking off from the correct runway, despite having all the relevant charts. As a result, the report said the pilots were unaware the aircraft had entered the wrong runway, which then had an area under construction.

However, Singapore officials disputed ACS’ report and said that it failed to present a complete account of the incident, as it appeared to pin full responsibility on the SQ 006 flight crew and played down equally valid contributing factors.

According to reports, the team from Singapore that participated in the investigation felt that the lightings and signages at the airport did not measure up to international standards. It added that critical lights were missing or not working, and no barriers or markings were placed at the start of the closed runway, which would have alerted the flight crew that they were on the wrong runway.

Is he still troubled by what happened ten years ago?

“I don’t think I am, even though I do still think about it. It was an accident. My conscience is clear and I managed to turn things around by positioning things differently,” he said.

“Moving ahead, I am keen to get back into the cockpit, pick things up after ten years and experience commercial flying again.”

Read more about Latiff Cyrano’s remarkable story and how he rebuilt his life since the crash in Part 2 of “Remembering SQ006: 10 years on” on Monday.

Miracle as 36 survive Venezuelan plane crash

2010-09-14T00:46:00.000-07:00

AFP - 56 minutes ago

CARACAS (AFP) - – Fifteen people died in a plane crash in eastern Venezuela, but 36 others miraculously survived after the pilot alerted air traffic control that something was wrong moments before disaster struck.

The plane, carrying 47 passengers and four crew Monday from the Venezuelan Caribbean resort island of Margarita, burst into flames as it hit the ground near a steel works owned by Sidor, in mainland Bolivar state.

"In total we have 36 survivors and 15 dead. The survivors are being looked after," said Transport and Communications Minister Francisco Garces.

"Given the condition of the plane, I think we were very lucky."

Most of the survivors had sustained burns and were traumatized by the event, but none was in life-threatening condition, Garces said.

The Conviasa Airlines ATR-42-300 plane went down about six miles (10 kilometers) from Puerto Ordaz, on the Orinoco River. It broke in two and caught fire as it hit the ground. The cause of the crash was not immediately clear.

Officials said the quick response by the emergency services after the pilot warned air traffic control that the flight was in trouble prevented a higher death toll.

Rescuers arrived at the scene quickly with medical helicopters to fly the wounded to local hospitals that had been placed on alert. A burns unit was also on stand-by to treat those caught in the blazing wreckage.

"There's been a miracle here," said Bolivar state Governor Francisco Rangel Gomez.

President Hugo Chavez issued a statement expressing his "deepest... condolences and solidarity" with the victims of the crash.

"All of us in Venezuela are in mourning, heavy with sadness for this tragedy," he said, and announced three days of official mourning across the South American country.

The plane went down at a site mostly used by Sidor to store scrap industrial material. None of its employees was injured in the crash, but they were among the first at the scene helping rescue passengers, Rangel Gomez said.

The governor said the pilot appeared to have "lost control" of the plane and radioed a control tower to warn that the flight was having technical difficulties.

A spokesperson for ATR, the aircraft manufacturer, said the firm was investigating the accident.

"We are working in close cooperation with the company (Conviasa) and authorities to understand the causes of the accident. At the moment we do not know what caused it," a spokesman in Paris told AFP.

ATR aircraft like the one that crashed Monday are made by a European consortium composed of EADS and Alenia.

The firm, based in Toulouse, France, employs some 850 people and is considered a global leader in the manufacture of small turbo-propelled planes with 50-75 seats, with some 52 percent of the market.

It has received over 1,000 orders from 150 companies in 80 countries since its creation, and made around 1.1 billion euros in 2009.0

Conviasa is a state-owned airline started in 2004 that flies to destinations as varied as Tehran, Damascus, Buenos Aires and several Caribbean nations.

The last major air accident in Venezuela was in February 2008 and also involved an ATR-42-300, which crashed in the Andes, killing 46.

Three years earlier, 160 people were killed in a Venezuelan crash that was one of the world's deadliest ever.

The flight was en route to Martinique and the majority of those killed -- 152 of the passengers -- were from the small Caribbean island. An investigation into the disaster later concluded human error was to blame.

In a separate case of transport trouble involving Margarita, Venezuela's busiest resort destination, authorities also said Monday they rescued 21 passengers who went missing over the weekend on three small watercraft.

Interior Minister Tareck El Aissami said authorities however were still searching for 10 people on one of the three boats that had gone missing Saturday on crossings from Los Testigos an island group north of Margarita.

Air France staff protest move to separate kids from adults

2010-08-30T22:19:00.001-07:00

Posted: 31 August 2010 0104 hrs

PARIS: Air France cabin crew fear a new rule to protect children from paedophile passengers could expose youngsters to greater risk in the event of an accident, labour unions said Monday.

The airline issued instructions in February that unaccompanied minors must not sit next to adults unless a plane is fully booked, following complaints from parents that some had been molested in flight.

But the UNAC and Alter unions, which represent Air France cabin crew, said this rule contradicts previous advice that children must sit near responsible persons who can help them don oxygen masks if the cabin depressurises.

"This flies in the face of child safety," said Alter official Guillaume Pollard. "In an emergency or a depressurisation an adult should remain seated and fit a child's mask. How can they do this if they're across the aisle?"

A copy of the seating rules, seen by AFP, says children travelling without a parent or guardian must be given a block of seats on their own, with an adult in the next section across the aisle to keep an eye on them.

Several cabin crew, speaking on condition of anonymity, told AFP that they suspect Air France is more concerned about the possibility of lawsuits linked to alleged child abuse than by more general in-flight safety.

Contacted by AFP, Air France would not say how many cases of alleged molestation had been reported. - AFP/fa

43 dead in China plane crash: state media

2010-08-24T22:04:00.000-07:00

Posted: 24 August 2010 2345 hrs

BEIJING: A Chinese airliner crashed and burst into flames while attempting to land in northeast China on Tuesday, killing 43 people on board, state media reported.

The Henan Airlines plane overshot the runway while trying to touch down at an airport in the city of Yichun in remote Heilongjiang province, the official Xinhua news agency said.

Hua Jingwei, an official with the Communist Party in Yichun, told Xinhua that 43 bodies had been recovered from the wreckage and 53 survivors taken to hospital for treatment.

Hua said the plane broke into two pieces as it approached the runway, Xinhua reported, and some passengers were thrown out of the cabin before the jet hit the ground.

There were 91 passengers, including five children, and five crew on board, Xinhua said, citing a source at the Civil Aviation Administration of China (CAAC).

The crash occurred shortly after 9:30 pm (1330 GMT) near Yichun's Lindu airport, around 40 minutes after the plane took off from Harbin, the provincial capital, Xinhua said.

Television images showed teams of firefighters using hoses to douse the blazing wreckage of the aircraft.

Wang Xuemei, the vice mayor of Yichun who oversaw the rescue efforts, said most of the survivors taken to hospital had suffered broken bones.

The aircraft was an ERJ-190 jet, Xinhua said, a passenger aircraft manufactured by Brazilian aerospace conglomerate Embraer.

A spokesman for the constructor said the company did not yet have "an official position" on the accident.

The cause of the crash was still unclear and work teams searched through the wreckage for the plane's black box flight data recorder.

But Xinhua said Chinese carriers using ERJ-190s had reported technical problems in the past and the CAAC called a workshop last June to discuss the issues.

Notes from the meeting - which involved Kunpeng Airlines, as Henan Airlines was previously known - showed that breaks of the turbine plates and flight control system errors were among the problems, Xinhua said.

Chinese Vice Premier Zhang Dejiang led a team of transport, safety and security officials to Yichun to deal with the aftermath of the crash and begin investigation work, Xinhua said.

The CAAC has also sent a 20-strong group of technicians and officials to the scene, it said.

Lindu airport is in a forest around nine kilometres outside of central Yichun, a city of one million inhabitants around 150 kilometres from the border with Russia.

Henan Airlines, based in the central province of the same name, launched the Yichun-Harbin service a year ago and operated the route three times a week, Xinhua said.

The carrier is run by Shenzhen Airlines, based in the southern city of the same name.

Xinhua said CAAC records showed Tuesday's crash was China's first major air disaster in more than five years, since a China Eastern Airlines jet crashed in Baotou City in Inner Mongolia, killing 53 people on board and two on the ground.

The Yichun crash came a week after a North Korean military aircraft came down on a house in Liaoning province, also in China's northeast, killing the pilot.

- AFP/ms/de

Jetliner crashes on Colombian island; 1 killed

2010-08-16T07:29:00.000-07:00

BOGOTA, Colombia – A Boeing 737 jetliner with 131 passengers aboard crashed on landing and broke into three pieces at a Colombian island in the Caribbean early Monday. The region's governor said it was a miracle that only one person died.

Colombian Air Force Col. David Barrero said officials were investigating reports the plane had been hit by lightning before crashing at 1:49 a.m. (3:49 a.m. EDT; 0649 GMT) while landing at San Andres Island, a resort island of 78,000 people about 120 miles (190 kilometers) east of the Nicaraguan coast.

San Andres Gov. Pedro Gallardo said 125 passengers and six crew members had been aboard, but the only person killed was Amar Fernandez de Barreto, 65. At least five people were reported injured.

"It was a miracle and we have to give thanks to God," the governor said.

Barrero, commander of the Caribbean Air Group, said by telephone from San Andres that "the skill of the pilot kept the plane from colliding with the airport."

Barrero said the 7,545-foot (2,300-meter) runway had been closed because parts of the plane were still scattered across it.

The Aires jet had left the Colombian capital of Bogota at about midnight.

Police Gen. Orlando Paez said by telephone that a group of police officers who had been waiting at the airport for the plane to take them back to the Colombian mainland aided in rescuing the victims.

(This version CORRECTS source on injured as governor sted colonel.)

bkk

2010-08-07T02:31:00.000-07:00

No survivors likely in Pakistan passenger plane crash

2010-07-28T05:37:00.000-07:00

Reuters - 2 hours 11 minutes ago
By Augustine Anthony

ISLAMABAD - A Pakistani passenger plane crashed in heavy rain near Islamabad on Wednesday, killing at least 90 people and officials said it was unlikely that there would be any survivors among the 152 people on board.

The Airbus 321, belonging to private airline Airblue, crashed into a heavily wooded and hard-to-access hillside while flying from the southern port city of Karachi. Rescue workers were scouring the site for bodies, officials said.

"Most of the bodies are charred. We're sending body-bags via helicopters. It's a very difficult operation because of the rain," said Aamir Ali Ahmed, a senior city government official.

"We can pray and hope but what experts are saying is that there's no chance of any survivors," he added.

Earlier reports that five survivors had been pulled from the wreckage were wrong, said Imtiaz Elahi, chairman of the state-run Capital Development Authority, a city municipal body.

"It would be a miracle but we're not expecting any survivors," said another official, who declined to be named.

Rescuers said they had to dig through the rubble with their bare hands, with fire and thick smoke hampering their work. The fire has since been extinguished, but access to the hillside remained limited to pedestrians and helicopters.

"You find very few intact bodies. Basically, we are collecting bodies parts and putting them in bags," Bin Yameen, senior officer in the Islamabad police, told Reuters from the scene of the crash.

"I don't know the exact death toll but one can imagine not many could survive in such a bad situation.

The plane lost contact with the control room of the Islamabad International Airport at 5:43 a.m. British time. It was carrying 146 passengers and six crew members.

The crash site is on the Margalla Hills facing Islamabad, about 300 meters up the side of the hills. Smoke could be seen from some districts of the city after the crash.

"It was raining. I saw the plane flying very low from the window of my office," witness Khadim Hussain said. Heavy monsoon rains have lashed the area for the past few days.

NEW PLANE

The military said it had sent three helicopters to the site and troops had also been moved there. Prime Minister Yusuf Raza Gilani was surveying rescue operations from the air and the government declared Thursday a day of mourning for the victims.

Airblue began operations in 2004 with a fleet of Airbus A320 and A321 aircraft, according to its website www.airblue.com. It flies primarily domestic routes as well as to the United Arab Emirates, Oman and Manchester in Britain.

Spokesman Raheel Ahmed said this was the first crash for the airline and that an investigation was being launched.

"It's too early to speculate," he said about the cause of the crash. "The civil aviation authorities will also be involved."

Airbus confirmed one of its planes was involved in the Airblue crash.

"We regret to confirm there has been an accident with an Airbus aircraft and we will provide more information when we have more confirmed data available," said Airbus spokesman Stefan Schaffrath.

At Islamabad's international airport, passengers in the departure lounge scanned the television screens for news.

"I'm not surprised something like this has happened," said Ahmed Fairuz, a passenger awaiting departure. "The weather is just too bad for flying."

Aviation industry sources in Europe said the aircraft was leased from International Lease Finance Corp, the leasing unit of U.S. insurance giant AIG

Los Angeles-based ILFC was not available for comment and there was no immediate confirmation of these details.

The A321 is the largest of the A320 family of single-aisle jets produced by EADS subsidiary Airbus. This particular type of aircraft, which can seat up to 185 passengers, has been in service since 1994.

Forty-five people were killed when a passenger plane belonging to Pakistan International Airlines crashed near the central city of Multan in 2006.

Including the 2006 incident, PIA has had 11 crashes since 1957, according to AirDisaster.com.

Boeing's Dreamliner completes first flight outside US

2010-07-18T05:48:00.000-07:00

AFP

FARNBOROUGH, United Kingdom (AFP) - – Boeing's 787 Dreamliner jet, whose delivery to clients faces fresh delay, landed in Britain on Sunday after its first flight outside of the US ahead of the Farnborough International Airshow.

The test plane landed at Farnborough airport at 9:08am (0808 GMT), watched by journalists from around the world, ahead of the major week-long trade show that begins on Monday, where aircraft makers are hoping to secure major orders.

"It's such a nice plane," Mike Bryan, the pilot who flew the Dreamliner to Britain from the United States told reporters after landing.

"I can't find a pilot who doesn't love it. I'm privileged enough to fly it."

Last week, US aircraft maker Boeing said it may be forced to delay the delivery of its first fuel-efficient Dreamliner to 2011 from late this year -- a date that was already more than two years behind schedule. It has secured 860 orders so far.

Last month, Boeing said it had detected a "workmanship issue" with the horizontal stabiliser of the aircraft, whose innovative structure and manufacture across more than 100 sites has created many technical problems.

The company is hanging its future hopes on the mid-sized plane -- Boeing's first new model in more than a decade -- which draws on huge advances in aviation technology and is capable of flying long-haul routes with up to 20 percent less fuel.

The fuel efficiency is largely down to the fact that up to half the twin-aisle Dreamliner is made of lightweight composite materials, such as carbon fibre-reinforced resin, according to the company.

Boeing launched the programme in April 2004 and initially had planned to deliver the first plane to Japanese carrier All Nippon Airways in the first half of 2008 -- a deadline which may now be pushed back until the start of 2011. The plane can seat up to 330 passengers.

Boeing's fierce European rival Airbus is meanwhile working on a new long-haul plane of its own -- the A350 XWB (Extra Wide Body). Another big project for Airbus is its long-delayed A400M military transport plane.

The head of Airbus parent company EADS, Louis Gallois, said on Sunday that he expected contracts with clients for the A400M to be signed in the European autumn later this year.

"I expect it will be at fall," Louis Gallois told reporters.

The client countries for the Airbus transporter are France, Germany, Spain, Britain, Belgium, Luxembourg and Turkey.

The seven states, after tense negotiations in the face of production difficulties with the A400M, reached an agreement in March with EADS on sharing out 5.2 billion euros (6.4 billion dollars) in cost over-runs.

The European Aeronautic Defence and Space Company plans to deliver the first A400M to France in early 2013.

Gallois meanwhile added on Sunday that he expected the military plane market to face a tough few years as governments look to slash their defence spending in a bid to reduce massive state deficits.

"We think that we have ahead of us three or four years that will be difficult," said Gallois.

On the civilian side, any new orders for aircraft at Farnborough -- one of aerospace's biggest events -- are likely to be dominated by airlines from emerging economies across Asia and the Middle East where air traffic is growing rapidly.

Boeing and Airbus meanwhile head to the show facing increased competition for their mid-sized civilian jets from smaller manufacturers, such as Brazil's Embraer and Bombardier of Canada.

Top 5 Airlines 2009

2010-07-05T04:11:00.000-07:00

The top 5 airlines from from 81 to 118.3 Billion Passenger Kilometres

1) Emirates 118.3 Billion Passenger Kilometres

2) Lufthansa

3) Air France-KLM

4) Singapore Airlines

5) Cathay Pacific 81 Billion Passenger Kilometres

Russia to buy 50 Boeing 737s worth four billion dollars

2010-06-24T18:52:00.001-07:00

AFP - Friday, June 25

WASHINGTON, USA (AFP) - – President Barack Obama on Thursday said that Russia was buying 50 Boeing aircraft valued at four billion dollars that could create 44,000 jobs in the struggling US economy.

Obama, speaking after White House talks with Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, said the order was part of a broad array of trade and investment deals between the two countries.

"Consistent with my administration's national export initiative, this includes the sale of 50 Boeing aircraft worth four billion dollars that could add up to 44,000 new jobs in the American aerospace industry," Obama said.

In a statement released after Obama's comment, Boeing said that it had signed a document with the Russian state corporation Rostechnologii "confirming the decision by Rostechnologii to place an order for 50 Boeing Next-Generation 737 airplanes."

The document was signed during Medvedev's official visit to the United States, the aerospace giant said, without providing further details.

"Rostechnologii's selection of Boeing airplanes demonstrates its commitment to deploying the optimal solution for the market needs," the Chicago-based company said.

Touting "the economic benefits and operating efficiencies" of the Next-Generation 737, Boeing said the planes would "directly support Rostechnologii's plan to provide Russian airlines with efficient and reliable airplanes that will help them to consolidate and grow their domestic and international operations."

"We look forward to continuing our long-term partnership with Rostechnologii and finalizing the contract," the company said.

Jim Proulx, spokesman for Boeing Commercial Airplanes, said in an interview with AFP that the 50 Next-Generation 737s were worth "3.6 billion dollars at current list price."

Commercial aircraft are often sold below list value.

Proulx noted the agreement signed was for the Russian state firm to purchase the planes, but further details needed to be worked out for a firm contract, such as which airlines would be taking the planes, delivery dates and deposit amounts.

The US company briefly announced at the end of May that the Russian state firm had selected the Next-Generation 737 for its aviation business development.

Boeing currently has an order backlog of 2,000 for the planes.

Last week Boeing announced a second production rate increase on the Next-Generation 737 program, taking the rate from the rate of 34 airplanes per month, previously announced in May, to 35 planes in early 2012, citing continued strong demand.

Spending Spree by Emirates Shakes Up Airline Business

2010-06-24T18:50:00.001-07:00

By STEVE ROTHWELL and ANDREA ROTHMAN
Published: June 23, 2010
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LONDON — Emirates, the international airline, is rattling rivals in Europe and Asia with a growth splurge that may be as game-changing for long-distance carriers as the expansion of Ryanair and Southwest Airlines was over shorter routes.

Emirates, a 25-year-old company, is building up a fleet of 90 Airbus A380 superjumbo aircraft with a total of 45,000 seats and operating costs that the manufacturer says are 12 percent lower than those for Boeing’s latest 747.

That is a threat to European carriers that specialize in the same long-distance transfer traffic, the chief executive of British Airways, Willie Walsh, said during an interview.

Emirates’ latest order, for 32 A380s worth $11 billion, was announced this month. It will give the airline 70 more superjumbos than any other airline, funneling price-sensitive passengers through its Dubai hub in a challenge to network carriers including Lufthansa, Air France-KLM and Singapore Airlines. Competitors say that the company is benefiting from government ownership and that they cannot compete with its purchasing power.

“It’s a miracle that Emirates already has more intercontinental seats than Air France and British Airways combined,” said Wolfgang Mayrhuber, the chief executive of Lufthansa. “It took us 40 years to get 30 747s in the air in one of the biggest global economies, so one must assume that this is an investment for the world.”

Emirates ranked only 24th among international airlines as recently as 2000, putting it on a par with Sabena, the state-owned Belgian carrier that failed a year later. In the intervening period the Gulf carrier has increased traffic sixfold, overtaking Lufthansa last year to become the biggest carrier for international flights. British Airways, ranked No.1 in 2000, now is fourth.

“We always planned to grow,” Maurice Flanagan, the founding chief of Emirates and current executive vice chairman, said during an interview. “We were just never able to put our finger on how quickly. Now we’re short of capacity all the time.”

Rivals should follow the Emirates example in buying more large planes to reduce expenses per head, he said.

“I can’t understand why other airlines have been so slow to pick up on the A380,” Mr. Flanagan said. “The economics are fantastic.”

Emirates, which reported net income of $964 million for the year ended March 31, has reached the top spot while remaining outside the three main airline groupings, choosing instead to build Dubai into a transfer hub to compete with alliance bases in London, Frankfurt, Amsterdam, Paris, Singapore and Hong Kong.

Chris Tarry, an independent analyst who has followed the airline industry for two decades, said the model was largely the result of improved jetliner range and Dubai’s fortuitous location midway between Europe and Asia.

“First, there’s now the technological capability to join any two places on the globe with just one stop,” Mr. Tarry said from London. “Second, Dubai is very well placed to capture those intercontinental traffic flows from North America to Asia and Europe to Asia and Australia and so on.”

Emirates has 14 daily routes from six British airports, including five from Heathrow, the busiest European hub, and three from London Gatwick. Starting in September, one of two daily flights from Manchester in northern England will handle the A380, the plane’s first service to a secondary city.

Weight reductions and improved fuel loads should allow the superjumbo to reach the West Coast of the United States from Dubai by 2014, Mr. Flanagan said. The chief salesman for Airbus, John Leahy, predicted that more airlines would buy the plane to defend market share from Europe to Asia and across the Pacific.

While Mr. Flanagan estimates that 40 percent of traffic from Britain connects to other cities via Dubai, Mr. Walsh, the British Airways chief, says that the Gulf carrier is a bigger threat to Lufthansa and Air France-KLM because of the greater proportion of transfer passengers who travel through Frankfurt, Paris and Amsterdam.

“It’s definitely going to have an impact on the business,” Mr. Walsh said last week. “It’s challenging a segment of the market that is important for B.A. But there are other European hubs where the reliance on transfers is bigger.”

The British carrier’s Oneworld alliance partner, Cathay Pacific, will aim to counter the expansion of Emirates with “enhanced connectivity” from its own hub in Hong Kong, a spokeswoman said in an e-mail message.

The Emirates model is eroding network carriers’ long-distance traffic in the same way that discount airlines have eaten into short-haul operations.

The effect could be even greater, since much of the success of Ryanair, which has increased revenue eightfold, to €3 billion, or $3.7 billion, in a decade to become the biggest European low-cost airline, came from linking cities with no air service, whereas Emirates is confronting established carriers more directly on some of their most profitable routes.

Basic to the strategy is the use of so-called sixth-freedom treaties that permit flights between two nations by an airline from a third via its home country. The model works best on long-distance routes requiring refueling, on which Emirates does not lose out to competitors by stopping in Dubai, and for passengers who care more about ticket prices than the duration of a journey.

Andrea Rothman reported from Paris.
Bloomberg News

Berlin Air Show takes off with record 'superjumbo' order

2010-06-09T04:22:00.000-07:00

AFP - Wednesday, June 9

BERLIN (AFP) - –
The 100th edition of the Berlin Air Show took off with a roar Tuesday as Dubai-based airline Emirates snapped up 32 Airbus A380 superjumbos, hailed as the largest order ever for commercial aircraft.

In the year's first order for the massive A380 plane, Emirates splashed out 11.5 billion dollars, providing a much-needed boost to Airbus and a headline-grabbing start to the Show.

"It's the largest order ever placed for civil aircraft by dollar value based on catalogue prices in aviation history," said a delighted John Leahy, chief commercial officer at Airbus.

Airbus also announced that TAM Airlines of Brazil had ordered 20 A320 planes and five of its new long-haul A350-900 aircraft, with the deal worth around 2.9 billion dollars (2.43 billion euros) at catalogue prices.

And in another boost for Airbus, France, Germany and Spain pledged cash to help the firm develop the A350 XWB wide-bodied aircraft.

Paris would stump up 1.4 billion euros, Berlin 1.0 billion euros and Madrid 350 million euros, representatives of the various governments said at the Show.

Running until June 13, the Berlin Air Show (ILA) was set to attract about 1,150 exhibitors from nearly 50 countries presenting all manner of planes, helicopters, rotors, motors and other technology to around 200,000 visitors.

The ILA this year was opened by Chancellor Angela Merkel who hailed the special role played by the aviation industry in Germany's economy.

"Aviation is, as it has always been, an area of the economy that pushes forward the development of technology in general," she said.

"Therefore, for a business location such as Germany, aviation technology has an influence that goes far beyond its own domain," added the chancellor.

With the annual gathering of the International Air Transport Association (IATA) also taking part in Berlin at the same time, almost all of the high-fliers in the aviation world were to be found in the German capital.

However, while the aircraft suppliers were feting Merkel at the ILA, on the other side of town, their main customers at the IATA meeting were attacking her after she announced Monday a new tax on passengers leaving German airports.

The tax, which Merkel outlined Monday as part of a multi-billion package of belt-tightening measures, is set to run until the carbon-emissions trading scheme that has already been agreed comes into effect for air travel in 2012.

It is expected to bring in about one billion euros annually.

IATA's director general, Giovanni Bisignani, called for the tax to be scrapped immediately, saying it threatened to bring airlines down just when they were starting to see a recovery after several years of massive losses.

"This is the worst kind of short-sighted policy irresponsibility. It's a cash-grab by a cash-strapped government," he told reporters in Berlin.

"If this is related to the environment ... I would like the chancellor to say to us, where is the investment? How many trees is she planting with this one billion?" he said.

"This is not the time to burden the aviation industry with more taxes ... this tax is a body blow to the weak economy and a fragile industry," he added.

IATA had earlier revised up its forecasts for this year, projecting the industry's first profit since 2007.

Thousands flee Ecuador, Guatemala volcanos

2010-05-29T05:13:00.001-07:00

GUATEMALA CITY : Thousands of people were evacuated and airports were closed as two volcanos erupted in Guatemala and Ecuador Friday, choking major cities with ash, and leaving two dead, officials said.

Guatemalan President Alvaro Colom declared a 15-day state of emergency around the Pacaya volcano, 50 kilometres (31 miles) south of the capital.

The volcano erupted again Friday after first bursting back to life Wednesday, killing two people, including a television reporter covering the event.

In Ecuador, the Tungurahua volcano exploded into action Friday, forcing the evacuation of at least seven villages and closing down the airport and public schools in Guayaquil, the country's largest and most populated city.

As the 2,552 metres (8,372 feet) Pacaya volcano exploded anew on Friday, with billowing clouds of ash and dust, Colom said La Aurora International Airport, in Guatemala City, would remain closed until Saturday "because we've got to clean the runways and surrounding areas" of ash.

The airport closures were reminiscent of the massive blanket of ash Iceland's Eyjafjoell volcano spewed out last month causing the biggest aerial shutdown in Europe since World War II, affecting more than 100,000 flights and eight million passengers.

President Colom said the eruptions of Pacaya since Wednesday had killed two people, injured 59, left three children missing and destroyed 100 homes.

The Emergency Management Coordinator said between 1,700-1,900 people have been evacuated from their homes to nearby shelters in three departments affected by the emergency decree.

The education ministry also suspended classes in the emergency area.

On Friday, the volcano was rocked by constant explosions and spewed bright-colored plumes into the air.

Guatemala City was covered in a blanket of ash and dust, as people evacuated from the danger zone wandered the streets darkened by the ash cloud and the city's two million inhabitants tried to cope with the catastrophe.

The head of the national seismological institute warned more eruptions could take place "in the coming days" at the most active volcano in Central America.

The Pacaya volcano has been active for 49 years and has experienced six large eruptions.

The head of the national seismological institute Eddy Sanchez said the volcano had accumulated a lot of energy over several years. "Like a pressure cooker, it will release the pressure violently," he told reporters.

He warned that lava would continue to spew out at high altitudes.

The charred body of television journalist Anibal Archila was found near the volcano by a colleague, who said the victim could not escape the raining rocks and other projectiles thrown out when the volcano exploded late Thursday.

"We decided to stay a few minutes longer taking more photographs. Suddenly, we heard rumblings and rocks began falling all around so we had to get out running," a driver for one of the reporters covering the scene with Archila told the Nuestro Diario newspaper.

The second eruption-related fatality was that of a 22-year-old man who fell to his death as he cleaned volcano ash from the roof of a school.

Colom vowed government action to clean up the gray mess.

"The people must feel confident that the state is responding," the president said as he announced he would travel to the most affected municipalities to work with emergency committees.

Within a 100-kilometre (62-mile) radius of the volcano, locals armed with brooms and shovels scrambled to remove sand and ash from the roofs and courtyards of their homes.

"We've only cleaned the backyard so far and we've already filled a large garbage bag," Isabel Estevez told AFP. She and her husband began cleaning the sediment dumped by the volcano, up to five centimetres (two inches) thick in some places.

In Ecuador, meanwhile, the Tungurahua volcano experienced one of its biggest eruptions Friday, spewing columns of ash and rock prompting evacuations of at least seven surrounding villages.

"Certain measures have been taken, including the closure of Guayaquil airport until further notice and the suspension of classes in Guayas province, as we make a new assessment" of the situation, said Yuri De Janon, regional coordinator of risk management.

He said the ash fallout from the volcano was affecting Guayaquil and four other towns in Guayas.

Hugo Yepes, director of Ecuador's Geophysical Institute, noted that the volcano was at one point spewing molten rocks and large clouds of ash and gas 10 kilometres (33,000 feet) into the sky. But he said the volcanic activity had since decreased. - AFP/jy

Guatemala volcano forces airport closure, kills one

2010-05-28T07:01:00.001-07:00

GUATEMALA CITY : Guatemalan President Alvaro Colom has declared a state of emergency after a powerful eruption at the southern Pacaya volcano killed one person and forced the international airport to close.

Ash blanketed the region as rocks and lava spewed from the volcano 50 kilometers (31 miles) south of the capital, as Colom late Thursday issued the emergency decree lasting at least 15 days for the three departments nearest the eruption, which began Wednesday night and has since built in intensity.

The La Aurora International Airport was closed to ensure planes were not flying through the volcano's hazardous ash cloud or landing on the ash-strewn runway, said spokeswoman Monica Monge. Incoming flights were being diverted to airports in other parts of the country, she told reporters.

Some 1,600 people were evacuated from the slopes of the volcano, which rises 2,552 meters (8,372 feet) above sea level in the tropical Central American nation.

The burnt body of Guatemalan television journalist Anibal Archila was found near the volcano by a colleague, who said the reporter had been unable to escape the raining rocks and other projectiles thrown out in the eruption.

Three children aged seven, nine and 10 are also missing in the area, officials said.

There are 288 volcanoes in Guatemala, eight of which are active.

- AFP /ls

Confessions of a frequent-flier program skeptic

2010-05-23T19:20:00.000-07:00

Christopher Elliott, Tribune Media Services
May 18, 2010 -- Updated 1637 GMT (0037 HKT)

(Tribune Media Services) -- Call me a frequent-flier program skeptic.

I take a dim view of any scheme that promises you the world in exchange for all your business. Not that I don't like sitting in first class, staying in a suite or being treated like a movie star. I mean, who doesn't?

Having covered the travel industry for most of my career, I just don't believe in "win-win" propositions. I think there's a steep and often hidden price to be paid when you collect miles. The game can easily turn into an obsession that disables your common sense, compelling you to make completely irrational purchasing decisions.

Fact is, offers of "free" products, perks and preferred status in exchange for racking up points through travel or credit card purchases aren't for everyone. They probably aren't for you.

I won't suggest that loyalty programs are morally wrong and that they divide travelers into haves (the ones who get to board anytime on the red carpet) and have-nots (the unlucky schlubs wedged into the middle seats), even though I could probably write an entire column on that topic.

When I say I don't believe in "win-wins" I'm not even referring to the recent precipitous devaluations in mileage programs. For example, at the beginning of this year, Hilton "updated" its award levels for free stays, increasing the number of points you need. An exasperated reader in Philadelphia sent me the notice with the following advice for his fellow frequent guests: "Use your points -- now!"

Nor am I talking about the onerous "co-pays" that some airlines recently added for mileage redemption, like the one Perry Bird had to shell out when he recently tried to book an upgrade on a flight from Dulles International Airport to St. Martin. It used to cost 60,000 miles for a bump to business class on United Airlines. "Now, United wants my 60,000 miles and an additional $1,400 for the same upgrade," he told me. "Puhleese!"

I don't even have a problem with the maddening terms and conditions that stipulate that the points and miles don't belong to you and that companies reserve the right to change the rules anytime without notice. I'm not making this up. Here's an excerpt from American Airlines' terms and conditions: "Accrued mileage credit and award tickets do not constitute property of the member. . . . American Airlines may, in its discretion, change the AAdvantage program rules, regulations, travel awards and special offers at any time with or without notice."

No, in my view, the winners obviously are the travel companies that have seduced their best customers with creature comforts that they probably ought to be giving everyone, and the losers are the elite-level lemmings, who have become blindly brand-loyal.

Don't bother sending me hate mail. When word got around that I -- a loyalty-program atheist -- was working on a story about the value of reward programs, it didn't take long for the true believers to offer me a piece of their mind.

"Of course they're worth it," snapped Charles Owen, a college professor in East Lansing, Michigan. "You look at the costs and the benefits. The only cost associated with collecting miles is our decision to have a SkyMiles American Express with the associated fee. Other than that, they just accumulate, and every now and then we use them."

And use them he has, to visit Europe and the Caribbean. Owen said he takes two "free" flights a year, thanks to a credit card that allows him to collect miles, which is also known as an affinity card. Apart from the annual fee on a card, these programs appear to have no downside. Sure, there are blackout dates and restrictions, and award seats aren't always available. But it's a free ticket, right?

Not right. There's more to loyalty programs than meets the eye, according to consumer advocate Jo Anne Shumard. "Cards that offer perks to consumers often do so at a premium interest rate," she warned. "I even have one for airline miles, but it's almost three times the interest rate of my lowest credit card interest rate."

Who should participate in a loyalty program?

If you're a managed frequent business traveler, you have my blessing. By "managed" I mean that your company works with preferred vendors, and you fly, drive and stay with a set of companies whether you want to or not.

Your loyalty isn't for sale. Your points are just a byproduct of your business trips, and you're far less likely to participate in irrational point-collecting or making silly mileage runs at the end of the year to qualify for coveted elite status, which entitles you to extra-special treatment when you're on the road.

For instance, "Chairman's Preferred"-level frequent fliers on US Airways get priority check-in, security lanes and early boarding, unlimited free upgrades in the United States, up to three free checked bags and complimentary airport club membership. Alas, to reach that level, you have to fly 100,000 miles within a calendar year (other terms also apply).

Christina Pappas, a Boston-based marketing consultant and frequent traveler, thinks it's important that you control the miles, not the other way around. "All things being equal, I'll try to remain loyal when possible," she told me. "But there are times when it doesn't make sense for me to make two connections just to get my points."

If you're an unmanaged frequent business traveler, and you want to collect points, you're playing a dangerous game. Falling in with the wrong crowd on FlyerTalk, a popular hangout for frequent travelers, isn't the biggest risk to you. It is, instead, making purchasing decisions that are in the interests of your program, but not you.

Bernard Pollack, a frequent traveler and loyalty program member who lives in Dakar, Senegal, and is an elite-level frequent traveler with US Airways, United, Hilton and Starwood, thinks that programs warp your perspective, often enticing you to spend more on travel or ignore better prices with a competitor.

"I don't believe people should choose, and certainly not pay more for, certain airlines, hotels and cars because of the loyalty programs," he said.

What if you're traveling for pleasure? If your trips are infrequent, you should stay on the sidelines, says Allison Danziger, director of TripAdvisor Flights. "One specific case is where a traveler would fly less often than the frequent flier mile expiration window for their program," she added.

"Frequent flier miles on most carriers expire after one to three years of inactivity." In other words, your miles would expire before you could use them, obviously negating any benefit.

If you're a frequent leisure traveler, then sure, go for it, but with the same caveat I offered the unmanaged business travelers: Don't get addicted and don't let it control you.

Look, I could spend a couple of paragraphs talking up loyalty programs in an effort to convince you that I can be balanced on this subject. And while it's true that these schemes aren't without benefit, I figure that they have enough apologists already. Besides, that's not my department; I handle the complaints.

Speaking of complaints, here's a cautionary tale for anyone thinking of offering their loyalty to a travel company. It comes to us by way of Robin Forman, a retired librarian in Miami and a frequent leisure traveler.

She used some of the American Airlines miles that she'd collected by flying and making purchases with a Citibank MasterCard to upgrade on a flight from Brussels to Chicago. But when the flight was canceled after the recent volcanic eruption, the carrier pocketed a $350 "service charge" for using the miles.

Forman asked for a refund. "Service charges are necessary to help offset the costs associated with these transactions," an airline representative told her in an e-mail rejecting her request. "I'm sorry my response couldn't be more positive."

Yeah, me too.

Mileage addicts may argue that people like Forman should double down and focus their loyalty on a single company. After all, top-tier elites don't have to pay a lot of the fees that garden-variety frequent travelers do. But I see her story as a reason to reconsider loyalty programs entirely. Not to pick on American Airlines -- a lot of the legacy airlines have these annoying fees for ticket awards -- but if this is loyalty, what's the point?

And that's the thing: The harder you look at so-called "rewards" programs in travel, the harder it is to believe in them. They successfully entice travelers to drive, fly and stay with a particular company, giving them a level of service the companies should offer every customer.

But more often than not, the loyalty goes only one way.

(Christopher Elliott is the ombudsman for National Geographic Traveler magazine. You can read more travel tips on his blog, elliott.org or e-mail him at celliott@ngs.org).

British Airways reports record annual loss of 531m

2010-05-22T10:56:00.001-07:00

LONDON (AFP) - – British Airways on Friday posted a record annual pre-tax loss of 531 million pounds (609 million euros, 765 million dollars) on slumping sales but forecast it would break even this year.

BA, which faces a cabin crew strike next week, said its net loss widened to 425 million pounds in the 12 months to March from 358 million pounds in the previous year. Revenues tumbled 11.1 percent to 7.99 billion pounds.

"This is our second consecutive year of record losses but we take heart from the fact that, while our revenue has fallen by one billion pounds, so have our costs," Chairman Martin Broughton said in a statement.

Market expectations had been for a larger pre-tax loss of 600 million pounds after the group had a smaller shortfall of 401 million pounds in the previous 2008/2009 financial year.

The airline, which is slashing costs and merging with Spanish rival Iberia in a bid to return to profitability, has been hammered by the global economic downturn which has hurt demand for air travel.

Other airlines have also suffered badly, with peer Air France-KLM earlier this week announced record losses of 1.55 billion euros in its year to March.

BA said Friday that it cut almost 3,800 jobs, or about 9.4 percent of its total workforce, during the 2009/2010 financial year. Since September 2008, it has axed more than 6,000 positions in total.

British Airways said it was aiming to break even in the current 2010/2011 financial year.

"Market conditions are showing improvement from the depressed levels in 2009/10," the company said.

"Cargo is showing significant signs of improvement. Passenger revenue is recovering, with increased corporate activity, particularly across the Atlantic.

"On the basis of these market improvements, we are targeting revenue growth of some six percent and breakeven at the profit before tax level."

BA cabin crew plan to go ahead with a five-day strike next week after a court upheld their right to stage the action on Thursday, according to officials at the Unite trade union.

The strike is set to begin Monday. Two further five-day strikes, starting on May 30 and June 5, will also go ahead if the dispute is not settled.

Unite won an appeal on Thursday against a court injunction which had blocked a planned stoppage in the long-running row over pay and conditions.

Group chief executive Willie Walsh lashed out at Unite.

"Returning the business to profitability requires permanent change across the company and it's disappointing that our cabin crew union fails to recognise that," he said in the results statement.

"Structural change has been achieved in many parts of the business and our engineers and pilots have voted for permanent change."

But joint Unite leader Derek Simpson fought back, telling BBC radio on Friday that there was a "total lack of confidence" in BA management.

Cabin crew staged walkouts in March which were marked by sharp disagreements between the union and BA over the impact of the industrial action.

Walsh added Friday that the Iberia merger was on track to complete in late 2010 and would lead to annual cost savings of 400 million euros after five years.

The combined company will be known as International Airlines Group, with both BA and Iberia retaining their separate operations and brands.

The results did not show the impact of the volcano ash chaos which occurred after the end of BA's financial year.

BA said earlier this month that passenger numbers fell by almost one quarter in April as a result of travel chaos sparked by a huge ash cloud from an Icelandic volcano.

"The current financial year could hardly have had a worse start with the unprecedented closures of UK airspace following the eruption of the volcano in Iceland," Walsh said.

"This added to the aviation industry's current financial woes while highlighting its crucial contribution to the economy.

"We are pleased that the European Commission has agreed that national governments can compensate airlines for the losses incurred."

Airspace across Europe was closed for up to a week last month after Iceland's Eyjafjoell volcano began spewing a cloud of ash on April 14. The shutdown was the biggest in Europe since World War II.

At least 160 dead in India plane crash

2010-05-21T21:45:00.000-07:00

Reuters - 52 minutes ago

NEW DELHI - An Air India Express passenger plane from Dubai overshot a runway and crashed outside an airport in southern India on Saturday, killing at least 160 people in one of the worst air accidents in India in years.

The accident occurred near Mangalore airport in Karnataka state. There may have been five or six survivors, local media said.

Air India said the plane was a Boeing 737-800, with 166 people on board, including six crew members. Earlier estimates of the number of people on the plane had varied slightly.

Air India Express is a budget airline ran by state-run carrier

"At least 160 passengers have died in the crash," V.S. Acharya, home minister of the southern state of Karnataka, told reporters. "At least five to six people have been taken to hospital, their condition is not known."

Television channels said the plane crashed around 6.30 a.m. . TV images showed it struck a forested area. Flames were seen blazing from of some of the wreckage as rescue workers fought to bring the fire under control.

One television channel showed a fireman carrying in his arms what seemed to be the mangled remains of a child.

"The aircraft has broken up into pieces and fire has engulfed the aircraft. There is lot of smoke," said Gopal Hosur, a senior police officer in Mangalore.

"The plane apparently overshot the runway and has crashed. We have news that the plane caught fire after crashing," said Rohit Katiyar, a top airport security official.

Boy survivor of Libya air crash 'stable but confused'

2010-05-16T00:08:00.001-07:00

AFP - Friday, May 14

TRIPOLI (AFP) - – A Dutch boy who miraculously survived a Libyan plane crash that killed 103 people including his parents is confused but stable, a doctor said Thursday, as relatives arrived in Tripoli to comfort him.

The boy, identified only as "Ruben" by the Dutch foreign ministry but more fully named by the Dutch media as nine-year-old Ruben van Assouw, has come round after surgery to his smashed legs, the doctor treating him in a Tripoli hospital said.

"He woke up (late Wednesday night) and is in good condition," the doctor said, while stressing that the boy, the sole survivor of Wednesday's disaster, was confused and "still is not reacting well to his surroundings."

"The child underwent several rounds of surgery to his legs. He had simple fractures and double fractures," the doctor said on Libyan state television, which also showed pictures of Ruben's legs in casts.

A Dutch foreign ministry spokesman said an uncle and an aunt arrived in Tripoli Thursday on a Netherlands government plane and were taken to the hospital "to make sure that Ruben will see family faces next to his bed." Facts:Deadly plane accidents in the past five years

According to the Dutch NOS public broadcaster, the boy recognised his family and smiled when they entered his hospital room.

Ruben would be flown back home "as soon as his medical condition allows," the spokesman said.

Ministry spokesman Christoph Prommersberger told AFP that Ruben was doing "reasonably well."

"A colleague from the embassy (in Tripoli) was able to speak with him. He told her he was Ruben, nine years old, from the city of Tilburg," Prommersberger said. "He is not in a critical condition."

Dutch newspaper Babants Dagblad said the boy was likely Ruben van Assouw from Tilburg in the southern Netherlands who had been on safari in South Africa with his mother Trudy, 41, father Patrick, 40, and his brother Enzo, 11.

Also on board the Dutch government plane to Tripoli were forensic experts, consular staff and transport ministry staff, the foreign ministry said.

Libya's Transport Minister Mohammed Ali Zidan said a total of 103 people -- 92 passengers of nine nationalities and an 11-strong Libyan crew -- died when an Afriqiyah Airways Airbus A330 coming from Johannesburg disintegrated on landing at Tripoli airport.

The Dutch ministry said on Thursday that 70 Dutch nationals were among the dead, while a diplomat said family members from the Netherlands have been flown in to Libya courtesy of Afriqiyah to identify the bodies and prepare their repatriation.

The ministry added in a statement that "the family of the nine-year-old Ruben, the sole survivor of the disaster", were among those who perished.

Johannesburg private Talk Radio 702 reported on Thursday that at least 10 South Africans died in the crash.

Libya's transport minister said the rest of the dead included two Germans as well as passengers from Britain, France, Finland, the Philippines and Zimbabwe, although he could not give a breakdown of their numbers.

With the plane's black boxes recovered, investigators from manufacturers Airbus and France where the plane was built have also flown to join the inquiry led by Libya, which has ruled out terrorism as the cause of Wednesday's crash.

Witnesses spoke of the aircraft inexplicably breaking up as it came in to land in clear weather.

"It is too soon to know the causes of the accident," Sabri Shadi, the chairman of the board of Afriqiyah Airways, said about the probe into the crash.

"Several committees have been set up to investigate and we need some time before we can draw any conclusions," he said.

"A preliminary report should be published in the next few days but definitive results will not be know for several days, even weeks," the chairman added.

Shadi said that after a first meeting which grouped the team that US investigators were to join the probe on Friday. The crash scene, meanwhile, has been placed under police guard.

Boy survives as 103 killed in Libya plane crash

2010-05-12T08:05:00.000-07:00

AFP - 1 hour 47 minutes ago

TRIPOLI (AFP) - – A Libyan plane arriving from South Africa disintegrated on landing at Tripoli airport Wednesday, killing 103 people but leaving an eight-year-old boy as the sole miracle survivor, officials said.

Sixty-one Dutch citizens were killed in the crash, the Dutch tourism federation ANWB said, while Libyan Transport Minister Mohammed Ali Zidan listed "Libyans, Africans and Europeans" as among the dead.

Zidan told a media conference that an inquiry was under way to determine what caused the Afriqiyah Airways Airbus A330 to break up massively as it was landing, but he ruled out terrorism.

Libyan television showed teams of emergency workers wearing face masks sifting through the wreckage of the plane, which was scattered in a wide arc across the landing area.

"There were 104 people on board -- 93 passengers and 11 crew members," Zidan said, adding that the remains of 96 victims had already been recovered.

There was only one survivor, an eight-year-old Dutch boy who was being treated in hospital, he said.

The Dutch foreign ministry said the boy was undergoing surgery at a Tripoli hospital for broken bones.

"He is being operated on for fractures from the crash," ministry spokeswoman Ozlem Canel told AFP in The Hague.

"We don't know how serious his injuries are. We know he is being operated on for fractures," she said.

Canel said the government could not confirm that the boy was, indeed, Dutch.

"We don't know for absolutely sure that he is a Dutch citizen," she said. "Hopefully when the operation is over and we are able to see the boy, then we will be able to confirm that he is a Dutch citizen."

Last June, a 12-year-old girl was the sole survivor of a Yemeni plane crash off the Comoros.

Witnesses spoke of the Afriqiyah Airways plane inexplicably breaking up as it came down to land in clear weather at around 6:00 am (0400 GMT).

"It exploded on landing and totally disintegrated," one security official told AFP, speaking on condition of anonymity. Another official said the plane had burst into flames just before landing.

Bongani Sithole, an official of Afriqiyah Airways at Johannesburg airport, said the crash happened "one metre (yard) away from the runway."

Minister Zidan said no terrorism was involved.

"We have definitely ruled out the theory that the crash was the result of an act of terrorism," he said, adding that the two black boxes of the aircraft had been recovered.

The plane was new and had only been acquired by the airline in September.

Afriqiyah Airways listed 93 passengers and 11 crew members on board its flight 8U771 from Johannesburg, which was reportedly due to fly on from Tripoli to London's Gatwick airport.

"Sixty-one Dutch people were killed in the accident," ANWB spokesman Ad Vonk told AFP.

The passengers had been in two separate organised tour groups on their way to Brussels and Dusseldorf, with a stop-over in Tripoli, he added.

A South African aviation official said most of the passengers on the plane were making connections to Europe.

Seven passengers were booked to connect to Gatwick in London, 32 to Brussels, 42 to Dusseldorf in Germany, and one to Charles de Gaulle in Paris, said Nicky Knapp, spokeswoman for Airports Company South Africa.

Britain said it was "urgently" investigating reports that Britons were on board the plane.

Afriqiyah Airways said in a statement on its website that it will offer transportation, assistance and accommodation to relatives of victims of the crash wishing to get to Tripoli.

Wednesday's crash was the deadliest air accident in Libya since December 22, 1992 when a Libyan Arab Airlines plane crashed near Tripoli airport killing 157 people. Related article: Recent deadly plane accidents.

Twenty-two people were killed in an oil company plane crash in January 2000.

In other major accidents, 79 people were killed when a Korean Air crashed in Tripoli in July 1989. And 59 people died in a Balkan Bulgarian Airlines crash near Benghazi in December 1977.

Afriqiyah started operations with five leased planes and signed a contract with Airbus at an exhibition in Paris in 2007 for the purchase of 11 new planes.

It was founded in April 2001 and at first fully owned by the Libyan state. The companys capital was later divided into shares to be managed by the Libya-Africa Investment Portfolio.

United, Continental forge world's biggest airline

2010-05-04T09:06:00.000-07:00

AFP - Tuesday, May 4

WASHINGTON (AFP) - – United and Continental sealed a three-billion-dollar merger to become the world's biggest airline, in a deal forged to help them navigate strong economic headwinds.

The deal would fuse United's strong Asian presence with Continental's extensive links to Europe and Latin America, a tectonic shift in an industry battling to survive recession.

Airlines around the world are struggling with fallout from the worst recession in a generation, terrorism and costs brought on by an Icelandic volcano which forced the suspension of thousands of flights.

The new airline will fly under the United Airlines name and will hold around seven percent of global airline capacity. It has a market value of around 6.75 billion dollars.

Jeff Smisek, the Continental chief executive who moves to the same position in the new company, said the merger would create "a stronger, more efficient airline, both operationally and financially, better positioned to succeed in a highly competitive global aviation industry."

The companies said they hoped to generate annual savings and new revenues of up to 1.2 billion dollars by 2013.

The deal needs approval from shareholders of the two carriers and US anti-trust authorities, who turned down a United-US Airways deal in 2001.

But Smisek told reporters: "We are confident. There are no material anti-trust concerns. We are increasing competition, we are not reducing competition, with more consumer choice, better consumer choice."

The economic crisis and the rise of low-cost carriers has driven airline alliances and steep cost cutting.

The deal is the latest step to consolidate the US airline sector after Delta's 2008 takeover of Northwest.

British Airways is tying up with with Spanish carrier Iberia to avoid being sidelined by European rivals Air France-KLM and Lufthansa.

United and Continental both had a turnover of more than three billion dollars in 2009 but both reported losses.

"Together, we will have the financial strength necessary to make critical investments to continue to improve our products and services and to achieve and sustain profitability," Smisek argued.

Glenn Tilton, president and chief executive of United parent UAL Corporation, will serve as non-executive chairman of the new United Continental Holdings Inc board until the end of 2012.

He called the deal "a merger of equals to create a world-class and truly global airline with an unparalleled network."

A statement announcing the merger said the boards of both airlines had unanimously approved the deal.

Under the accord, Continental shareholders will receive 1.05 shares of United stock for each Continental share. United shareholders would own approximately 55 percent of the equity in the new company and Continental shareholders 45 percent.

The companies said they expected to complete the transaction by the end of 2010.

The merged giant will maintain United's base in Chicago as its headquarters, while Continental's home city of Houston, Texas will be the number one air hub, the statement said.

Texas Governor Rick Perry clearly thought the headquarters should have been in Houston.

"While we disagree with the decision to locate the headquarters in Chicago, we are encouraged by the company's commitment to Texas and its stated intent to create more jobs for Texans in the future," he said in a statement.

No announcement of job cuts was made, although pilots' unions for both carriers demanded job security and pension guarantees.

United pilots said they would take a "wait-and-see" approach, but believe the format is in place for such a combination to work.

The companies said the new airline will serve more than 144 million passengers per year with 370 destinations in 59 countries.

The combined company promised to offer enhanced service to Asia, Europe, Latin America, Africa and the Middle East from its 10 US hubs.

They said there were no international route overlaps and only "minimal" domestic copying.

US Airways broke off merger talks with United last month, but said it expected consolidation of the fragmented airline sector in the near future.

"It remains our belief that consolidation makes sense in an industry as fragmented as ours," said US Airways chairman Doug Parker.

Few market watchers expected mergers to end with the one announced Monday, and rumors are swirling about a possible American Airlines tie-up with US Airways.

SIA reinstates full European flight schedule

2010-04-21T07:10:00.000-07:00

Channel NewsAsia - 39 minutes ago

SINGAPORE : Singapore Airlines (SIA) has reinstated its full European flight schedule.

The airline said in a statement that customers who had booked on scheduled flights to and from Europe will now be able to travel as planned.

"At this point, we are able to resume operations as scheduled, as all airspace at destinations to which we operate has opened. We are also looking into the possibility of mounting additional flights, and using aircraft with larger capacity on certain routes, where possible," it said.

It added that customers who had their previous flights cancelled will be re—booked on departing flights, subject to availability.

Priority will be given to special needs or elderly customers, and those with infants or young children. Following that, customers who have the earliest original departure dates will be assigned seats on the flights.

It advised customers to proceed to airports only if they have confirmed tickets.

SIA said any changes or updates will be provided through its website.

Airlines lost '$1.7 bln' from ash chaos

2010-04-21T04:38:00.001-07:00

AFP

BERLIN (AFP) - – The grounding of European flights from volcanic ash cost airlines 1.7 billion dollars in lost sales alone, the head of their main industry body said Wednesday, calling for "urgent" government help.

"For an industry that lost 9.4 billion dollars (7.0 billion euros) last year and was forecast to lose a further 2.8 billion dollars in 2010, this crisis is devastating," Giovanni Bisignani, chief of the International Air Transport Association (IATA), said in Berlin.

At its height, "the crisis impacted 29 percent of global aviation and affected 1.2 million passengers a day. The scale of the crisis eclipsed 9/11 when US airspace was closed for three days," he added.

For a three-day period from April 17-19, when disruptions were greatest, lost revenues reached 400 million dollars per day, he said, calling an earlier IATA estimate of 200 million dollars per day "conservative."

In addition to the loss in revenues, and despite paying less for fuel, carriers had to pay for accommodation for stranded customers as well as food and alternative modes of transport to get them home, he said.

"We've seen a week without revenue but that has not stopped the costs," Bisignani, whose organisation represents some 230 airlines worldwide, said.

Bisignani urged governments to look at ways to compensate airlines for the "extraordinary" crisis, something he said was exacerbated by "a poor decision-making process by national governments."

In the aftermath of the attacks on the United States on September 11, 2001, the US government provided five billion dollars to compensate airlines for the costs of grounding the fleet for three days, he said.

"I am the first one to say that this industry does not want or need bailouts. But this crisis is not the result of running our business badly," he said.

"The airlines could not do business normally. Governments should help carriers recover the cost of this disruption."

He also called for "urgent" government measures like relaxing airport slot rules, lifting night flight restrictions and addressing "unfair" regulations whereby airlines have to pay for stranded travellers' hotels and meals.

"This crisis is an act of God, completely beyond the control of airlines. Insurers certainly see it this way," he said. "It is urgent that the European Commission finds a way to ease this unfair burden."

He also called for Europe to develop more quickly a unified policy on regulating its airspace.

"The chaos and economic losses of the last week are a clarion call to Europes political leaders that a Single European Sky is critical and urgent," Bisignani said.

Europe's airspace reopened for business on Wednesday after all its major airports resumed operations, with three-quarters of flights scheduled in Europe expected to take place.

European flights resume, new cloud on horizon

2010-04-19T18:37:00.000-07:00

Reuters - 2 hours 29 minutees ago
By Greg Roumeliotis

AMSTERDAM - Flights from large parts of Europe are set to resume on Tuesday under a deal agreed by the European Union to free up airspace closed by a cloud of ash hurled into the sky by an Icelandic volcano.

However, with the cloud still spreading and only sketchy details of how the authorities would split European airspace into areas where aircraft could fly or not, other countries are adopting a more cautious approach.

"From tomorrow morning we should see more planes flying," EU Transport Commissioner Siim Kallas told reporters on Monday after EU transport ministers held a video conference.

The deal brought relief to some of the millions of passengers whose travel plans have been disrupted worldwide since Thursday, and offered hope to frustrated airlines worldwide losing $250 million a day from the shutdown and seeing their shares tumble.

"I'm so happy," said one man with tears in his eyes as he ran for his flight from Schiphol Airport on Monday night, one of three bound for New York, Shanghai and Dubai from Amsterdam with almost 800 passengers on board.

Dutch Transport Minister Camiel Eurlings promised weary travellers that the Netherlands was "taking a lead" in getting Europe moving, but said its airspace could be closed again if ash levels rose.

But neighbouring Germany will mostly maintain its no-fly zone until 1200 GMT, and in Britain, where some northern airports excluding London's international hubs will reopen from 0600 GMT, National Air Traffic Services warned ominously:

"The volcano eruption in Iceland has strengthened and a new ash cloud is spreading south and east towards the UK."

The cloud brushed up against Canada's eastern seaboard on Monday, but Environment Canada said it was diffuse, moving slowly and should not affect Canadian airports.

AIRLINE LOSSES

The EU deal was reached under pressure from the airline industry, which says it is losing $250 million in revenue a day. The global freight supply chain is also beginning to sag.

Under the agreement, which Kallas said would go into force from 0600 GMT, the area immediately around the volcano will remain closed.

But flights may be permitted in a wider zone with a lower concentration of ash, subject to local safety assessments and scientific advice, the European aviation control agency Eurocontrol said in a statement.

Airlines had declared numerous test flights problem-free over the past days, but experts have disagreed over how to measure the ash and who should decide it is safe to fly. A British Airways jet lost power in all four engines after flying through an ash cloud above the Indian Ocean in 1982.

France said it was reopening some airports to create air corridors to Paris. Italian airspace will open from 0600 GMT.

Eurocontrol said it expected up to 9,000 flights to have operated in Europe on Monday, just a third of normal volume.

"The scale of the economic impact head Giovanni Bisignani said.

"We must move away from this blanket closure and find ways to flexibly open air space, step by step."

Worldwide, industry losses for passenger airlines and cargo companies could reach as much as $3 billion from the cloud, Helane Becker, an analyst with Jesup & Lamont Securities, told Reuters Insider on Monday. For U.S. airlines, she estimated the impact at $400 million to $600 million.

TRAVEL MISERY

Firms dependent on fast air freight were feeling the strain.

Kenya's flower exporters said they were already losing up to $2 million a day. Kenya accounts for about a third of flower imports into the European Union.

"Everything pushed back down the pipeline," said Greg Knowler, editor of Cargonews Asia in Hong Kong. "The freight forwarders are actually sending stuff back to the factories ... One German forwarder that's based here reckons they have 4,000 tonnes of backlog in Hong Kong."

Millions of people have had travel disrupted or been stranded and forced to make long, expensive attempts to reach home by road, rail and sea, as well as missing days at work and school at the end of the busy Easter holiday season.

British businessman Chris Thomas had been trying to get home from Los Angeles since Thursday, when the air shutdown began.

He first flew to Mexico City. From there, he aimed to fly to Madrid and spend $2,000 to rent a car for the 14-hour drive to Paris. He was booked on the Eurostar Channel tunnel train to London, and then planned to drive four hours to Wales.

"It's all a bit crazy but you have to err on the side of caution," Thomas said. "Nobody wants to be on the first plane to go down in a volcanic cloud."

In sport, soccer's European Cup holders Barcelona set off on a two-day road trip of nearly 1,000 km on Sunday to play Inter Milan in a Champions League semi-final on Tuesday.

Businesses have had to find alternative ways of operating. Communications provider Cisco Systems said companies were turning to videoconferencing to connect executives.

"We have seen a huge spike in usage," said Fredrik Halvorsen, head of Cisco's TelePresence Technology Group.

Britain is deploying three navy ships including an aircraft carrier to bring its citizens home from continental Europe. The British travel agents' association ABTA estimated 150,000 Britons were stranded abroad. Washington said it was trying to help 40,000 Americans stuck in Britain.

About 25,000 travellers are stranded in the Philippines. "Lucky for me, I have my laptop and I could still do some work," David Hampson, a humanitarian worker from Manchester, England, told reporters at Manila's international airport.

Volcano cloud pushes European airlines to the brink: analysts

2010-04-19T05:01:00.000-07:00

AFP - Monday, April 19

PARIS (AFP) - – The volcanic ash hanging over Europe has mushroomed into a dark 1.5 billion dollar cloud with no hope of a silver lining, analysts warned.

Airlines and other travel industry sectors already face a huge bill from the four-day closure of European airspace and there will be growing pressure for the European Union to give financial aid, analysts said.

And the longer the disruption goes on the bigger the threat to the European economies struggling to come out of recession, they added.

European carriers such as KLM, Lufthansa and Air Berlin are stepping up pressure to get passenger carrying jets back in the air. They have questioned experts who state the mineral dust blown over Europe from an Icelandic volcano is a threat to jet engines.

While the European Union is investigating the extent of losses, Brussels Airlines has already called for government help to survive. Many of their counterparts are also in a desperate state.

"After the banks, we will now be expected to help the airlines," one European Union official told AFP, speaking on condition of anonymity.

Crisis advisory company Lewis PR estimated that the shutdown has so far cost the European travel industry more than 1.0 billion pounds (1.2 billion euros/1.5 billion dollars) in cancelled flights, lost hotel rooms and empty cruise liners.

It has warned the disruption could go on for another two weeks.

Paul Charles at Lewis PR said: "Airlines alone are facing a massive bill from lost revenues and the enormous costs of reaccommodating and repatriating stranded passengers.

"Travel and transport firms have faced a double-whammy of disruption this year, with snow-related cancellations and now the ash cloud crisis, and several firms are at breaking point."

The International Air Transport Association has said the travel mayhem was costing airlines more than 200 million dollars (230 million euros) a day at a "conservative and initial" estimate.

John Strickland, aviation analyst at the JLS consultancy, said the final losses are "an unknown quantity".

"A lot of people were being quite dismissive, but we are now running to three, four, five days' worth of disruption," he said, highlighting the "enormous losses" the airline industry is already struggling with.

"Airlines have got the closed sign up and are hemorrhaging revenue every day. It started having a major impact for UK carriers but now it's become pretty well a Europe-wide phenomenon."

Accountancy firm Deloitte said "the big concern" will be if the volcano keeps sending the sulpherous cloud toward Europe for a prolonged time.

"Following one of the worst years for financial performance the aviation industry has ever seen, a prolonged period of losses for an industry that is already in a difficult financial position could have serious repercussions."

Charles at Lewis PR said there would be a fallout for the wider economy.

"The wider implications will add further costs to the economy, in terms of staff not being able to get back to work because they are stranded and cargo, such as fresh food and vital medicine supplies, not being delivered," he said.

Howard Archer, chief European economist at IHS Global Insight consultancy, said the impact on the economy would be limited as long as the chaos is quickly controlled.

"Obviously though the longer that the problem does persist, the more serious will be the economic repercussions.

He said the pharmaceutical industry may be "hit significantly" as many of its products are moved by air to be meet tight delivery schedules. "Individual companies could also be affected if they need spare parts or inputs brought in quickly from overseas."

EU transport ministers are to hold a teleconference on Monday on the crisis, with talk inevitably turning to aid for the stricken airlines.

Spanish Finance Minister Elena Salgado said that so far no country has proposed giving aid.

But European Commission official Francisco Fonseca said that aid is possible. "In exceptional circumstances, the commission will study the situation, in its own time," he said.

Passenger plane skids off runway in Indonesia

2010-04-13T03:41:00.000-07:00

AFP

MANOKWARI, Indonesia (AFP) - – A routine domestic flight almost ended in disaster Tuesday when a jet carrying more than 100 passengers broke apart on landing in Indonesia, injuring about 20 people, officials said.

The Merpati airline Boeing 737 bounced off the tarmac at Rendani domestic airport in Manokwari, West Papua, hurtled into trees and skidded into a shallow river, director general of civil aviation Herry Bhakti Singayuda told AFP.

"All the passengers were in a total panic, some even screamed and cried," said passenger Zainal Hayat, 52, who crawled out of a crack in the fuselage and was being treated at hospital with facial injuries.

"We flew safely and the plane touched down smoothly on the runway but it just didn't stop. It skidded very fast and I felt it hit something twice before it stopped and tumbled down."

"I got out through a crack in the plane near my seat."

Singayuda said the plane came to a halt with its tail section in the river about 200 metres (220 yards) from the end of the landing strip.

"All 103 passengers and six crew members are safe. Some are injured. They have been rushed to hospital," he said.

Heavy rain and fog were suspected of playing a part in the crash, he added, although expert investigators had yet to arrive at the scene.

Manokwari Hospital emergency unit nurse Benget Hutagalung said "about 20" people had been brought in with shattered limbs and head injuries.

Witnesses said the left wing broke off as the plane smashed into the trees at the end of the runway. The cockpit was also almost completely separated from the rest of the fuselage.

The plane was flying a routine domestic route from Sorong, also in West Papua province, to Manokwari, a distance of about 340 kilometres (210 miles).

Transport ministry experts from the capital Jakarta were on their way to the rugged province in the far east of the country to investigate the crash, an official said.

The state-run Antara news agency reported that the plane was believed to have experienced engine trouble, but this was not confirmed.

Merpati corporate secretary Sukandi suggested that rain played a part in the crash and ruled out pilot error.

"It was raining when the plane landed. The pilots followed all the safety procedures regarding landing in wet conditions," he said.

The vast archipelago of Indonesia relies heavily on air transport but has one of Asia's worst air safety records.

The European Union banned all Indonesia-registered aircraft from flying over its airspace in June 2007, acting on a report from the International Civil Aviation Organization which criticised the country's safety standards.

Four airlines including national carrier Garuda Indonesia were taken off the list in July last year due to safety improvements, but Merpati, which flies only domestic routes, remains banned.

Polish president, top officials killed in plane crash

2010-04-10T09:14:00.000-07:00

Reuters - 1 hour 51 minutes ago
By Lidia Kelly

SMOLENSK, Russia - Poland's President Lech Kaczynski, its central bank head and the country's military chief were among 97 people killed when their plane crashed in thick fog on its approach to a Russian airport on Saturday.

Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk described the crash as "the most tragic event of the country's post-war history." Ashen-faced and wearing a black suit and tie, Tusk told a news conference he would fly to the crash site.

Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin talked to Tusk by telephone and has also gone to the scene of the crash, a spokesman said.

The death of Kaczynski, who with his twin brother was a dominant force in Polish politics, brings political uncertainty. A presidential election had been due in October but now must be held within two months, according to the constitution.

The president's wife and several other high-ranking government officials were also aboard the aged Tupolev Tu-154, which plunged into a forest about two km from the airport in the western Russian city of Smolensk.

Pilot error was a possible reason for the crash, said Andrei Yevseyenkov, spokesman for the Smolensk local government. Local officials said the plane had clipped treetops on its way down.

Thousands of mourners gathered outside the presidential palace, laying flowers, lighting candles and saying prayers. Church services in the predominantly Catholic country were hastily arranged.

Kaczynski, 60, was a one-time ally of Solidarity hero Lech Walesa and a co-founder of the rightist Law and Justice party with his brother. He resigned from the party when he became president in 2005 but continued to support it.

A party source said his twin Jaroslaw Kaczynski was not on board the plane that crashed.

Kaczynski's death, along with the that of many high-ranking members of Law and Justice who were also on the plane, at a stroke changes the nature of Polish politics by decimating the opposition.

"The political consequences will be long-term and possibly will change the entire future landscape of Polish politics," said Jacek Wasilewski, professor at the Higher School of Social Psychology in Warsaw.

While the president's role is largely symbolic, the holder can veto government legislation. Lech Kaczynski infuriated the government of Tusk several times by blocking legislation including health sector reform.

The speaker of the lower house of parliament, Bronislaw Komorowski, has been named acting president, as the constitution stipulates. Komorowski is also Tusk's presidential candidate in the centrist Civic Platform party.

Russian television showed the smouldering fuselage and fragments of the plane scattered in a forest. A Reuters reporter saw a broken wing some distance from the rest of the aircraft.

The plane was one of two Tupolev TU-154M's in the Polish government fleet, both about 20 years old. Government officials had complained about the age of Poland's official fleet.

Russia's Emergencies Ministry said 97 people were aboard the government plane, including 88 members of a Polish delegation en route to commemorate Poles killed in mass murders in the town of Katyn under orders from Soviet leader Josef Stalin in 1940.

Earlier reports had said 132 people were aboard. Smolensk regional governor Sergei Antufyev and Polish state news agency PAP said there were no survivors.

A Russian mission control official who had been present during conversations with the pilot told Reuters the pilot had ignored advice.

"The pilot was advised to fly to Moscow or Minsk because of heavy fog, but he still decided to land. No one should have been landing in that fog," he said, on condition his name was not published.

Polish Justice Minister Krzysztof Kwiatkowski said he would order a special inquiry into the crash. Russian President Dmitry Medvedev said Russian investigators would cooperate with the Polish side.

Among the other casualties of the crash were Kaczynski's wife Maria, along with Slawomir Skrzypek, 47, who had been central bank governor since 2007, the chief of Poland's military Franciszek Gagor and Deputy Foreign Minister Andrzej Kremer.

Analysts said Polish markets would not be severely jolted. "Although tragic, we do not believe that this event threatens political and financial stability in Poland in any fundamental way," Goldman Sachs said in a research note.

Some relatives of victims of the Katyn massacres were also on board the plane, said a Polish government official in Smolensk.

Thousands of Polish prisoners of war and intellectuals were murdered at Katyn by Soviet forces in spring 1940 in an enduring symbol for Poles of their suffering under Soviet rule.

The government declared a week of national mourning.

Guanzhou BaiYun airport

2010-03-18T22:00:00.001-07:00

Departure gates
The way to immigration clearance for international departures
Departure hall
View of departure building

Hong Kong International Airport-Ferry Terminal

2010-03-17T06:18:00.000-07:00

From HKIA one can take a ferry to the cities in the Pearl River Delta region like Macau, Nansha or shekou

Hong Kong International Airport

2010-03-17T06:12:00.000-07:00

Hong Kong International airport is the home base of Cathay Pacific and subsidiary Dragon Air

Dead man found in landing gear of US jet in Japan

2010-02-08T05:08:00.000-08:00

AFP - Monday, February 8

TOKYO (AFP) - – Japanese authorities have found the body of a man in the landing gear of a Delta airliner that arrived in Tokyo from New York and said Monday they were seeking US help in identifying him.

The man, who was of dark complexion and dressed only in blue jeans and a long-sleeved shirt, was carrying no passport or personal belongings.
AFP - Monday, February 8

A mechanic found the body in the landing gear bay of the Boeing 777 after Delta Flight 59 landed at Tokyo's Narita International Airport at about 6:05 pm local time Sunday, a Chiba prefecture police spokesman said.

"Doctors say he probably froze to death and that he suffered a shortage of oxygen at an altitude of more than 10,000 metres (about 30,000 feet)," said another police official, Narita airport station spokesman Yoshimi Ichihara.

"We found no passport, no bag and no personal belongings. If he carried any luggage, it must have all dropped out when the airplane opened up the hatch of the landing gear bay above the ocean before it landed."

Japan was seeking help from US police to identify him, he said.

Ethiopian plane crashes near Beirut

2010-01-25T05:06:00.000-08:00

Reuters - Tuesday, January 26
By Nadim Ladki

BEIRUT - An Ethiopian Airlines plane with 90 people on board crashed into the sea shortly after taking off from Beirut in stormy weather early on Monday and the airline's chief executive said there was no word of survivors.

The Boeing 737-800, heading for Addis Ababa, disappeared off the radar some five minutes after taking off at 2:37 a.m. during a thunder storm and heavy rain. Lebanese President Michel Suleiman said he did not think the plane had been brought down deliberately.

"As of now, a sabotage act is unlikely. The investigation will uncover the cause," Suleiman told a news conference.

Fourteen bodies have so far been recovered near the crash site three-and-a-half kilometres west of the coastal village of Na'ameh. Eighty-three passengers and seven crew were on the flight, Transport Minister Ghazi al-Aridi said at the airport.

Ethiopian Airlines CEO Girma Wake said he had spoken with Lebanese authorities who did not confirm there were survivors.

Fifty-four of those on board were Lebanese, 22 were Ethiopian, two were British and there were also Canadian, Russian, French, Iraqi and Syrian nationals.

Marla Pietton, wife of the French ambassador to Lebanon Denis Pietton, was on the plane, the French embassy said.

The Lebanese government declared a day of mourning. Prime Minister Saad al-Hariri visited the airport to meet distraught relatives waiting for news of survivors, some of whom were angry that the plane was allowed to take off in bad weather.

"They should have delayed the flight for an hour or two to protect the passengers. There had been strong lightning bolts and we hear that lighting strikes at planes especially during take offs," a relative of one of the passengers told a local television station.

Lebanese army patrol boats and helicopters were searching a small area off Na'ameh, 10 km south of Beirut.

The military spokesman for U.N. peacekeepers in Lebanon, Colonel Diego Fulco, said two ships from its maritime task force were at the crash site and a third was on its way. Two U.N. helicopters were also at the scene, he said.

A Cypriot police helicopter and another from the British military stationed in Cyprus were also involved in the search.

According to one source, residents on the coast saw a "ball of fire" crashing off Na'ameh.

State-owned Ethiopian Airlines has positioned itself as a major player in international air traffic in Africa and has recently expanded its Asian network.

It has regular flights to Lebanon, catering for business clients and the hundreds of Ethiopians who work there as domestic helpers. Lebanese aviation sources said some of the passengers had been en route to Angola.

Last Friday the airline announced an order for 10 of Boeing's Next-Generation 737-800s for a total price of $767 million .

The last major incident involving Ethiopian Airlines was in November 1996 when 125 of the 175 passengers and crew died after a hijacked Boeing 767 crashed into the sea off the Comoros Islands.

JAL bangkruptcy

2010-01-19T07:07:00.000-08:00

TOKYO (AFP) - – Japan Airlines went bankrupt Tuesday with 26 billion dollars of debt in one of the country's biggest ever corporate failures, beginning a painful overhaul involving more than 15,600 job cuts.

JAL, a once-proud flag carrier now worth less than a jumbo jet, reassured passengers its flights would not be interrupted during the bankruptcy, which is similar to the process used to revive ailing US auto giant General Motors.

Asia's biggest airline, which carries more than 50 million passengers every year, will slash 30 percent of its workforce and receive almost 10 billion dollars of public funds and emergency loans under a three-year turnaround plan.

JAL said it aimed to "be reborn as a leading airline group".

But transport minister Seiji Maehara warned the government would not keep bailing out JAL indefinitely, saying it would have pulled the plug on the group if it were not such an important company.

Once-proud JAL victim of Japan's economic decline

"JAL will have to fly on its own after three years," he said. "Looking to the future for the aviation industry, we have to determine if two mega-carriers should exist or not."

Japan's top carrier has fared much worse than smaller rival All Nippon Airways in recent years.

Its shares plunged to an all-time low of just three yen (three US cents) at one point earlier Tuesday, reducing the market value of the group to about 90 million dollars -- far less than even the cost of a new Boeing jumbo.

The stock will be delisted from the Tokyo Stock Exchange on February 20 or earlier, a move expected to wipe out shareholders' investments.

Even so, analysts said bankruptcy appeared to have been the best option.

"Filing for bankruptcy protection was done in a quick and transparent way, and this is positive for JAL's business outlook," said Mitsushige Akino, fund manager at Ichiyoshi Investment Management Co.

The approach of the four-month-old government contrasts with the approach of previous conservative administrations which simply "threw money at JAL to keep it afloat", he said.

The ups and downs of Japan Airlines

JAL made no announcement regarding its tie-up talks with American Airlines and Delta Air Lines, which are in a bidding war for a slice of the Japanese carrier, eyeing its lucrative Asian landing slots.

Delta said it and the SkyTeam airline alliance "fully support Japan Airlines and stand ready to provide assistance and support in any way possible", Delta said Tuesday.

JAL potential saviour: management guru and monk

American Airlines issued a statement saying JAL's bankruptcy would not affect the Japanese carrier's current relationship with the oneworld alliance.

The government has tapped Kazuo Inamori, a 77-year-old entrepreneur and ordained Buddhist monk, to run the stricken airline during its overhaul, replacing Haruka Nishimatsu who resigned as president Tuesday.

Inamori is one of Japan's most respected business executives and management gurus, having founded both electronic parts maker Kyocera Corp. and a company that later became part of KDDI Corp., now Japan's number two telecoms firm.

The collapse of the carrier, once a pillar of Japan Inc., has raised concerns among Japanese about the broader woes of their economy, which is back in deflation and set to be overtaken by China as the world number two.

Crew, passengers fret about future of JAL

"With JAL's bankruptcy, people are becoming increasingly gloomy about the economy," Hideharu Seiyama, a 43-year-old regular JAL passenger, told AFP at Tokyo's Haneda Airport.

"JAL carried the country on its back and it was known the government would foot the bill, so it was managed on the assumption it would never fail."

JAL went bust with debts of about 2.32 trillion yen (25.7 billion dollars), becoming one of the highest profile victims of Japan's long economic malaise.

It is the country's biggest ever bankruptcy outside the financial sector.

The airline is expected to post a massive operating loss of about 2.9 billion dollars in the current financial year to March, according to the state-backed body overseeing its turnaround efforts.

Creditors will forgive 730 billion yen of debt and the airline said it was confident it could swiftly revitalise its business under the Corporate Rehabilitation Law -- Japan's version of Chapter 11 in the United States.

The group has been hit hard by industry turbulence unleashed by the September 11, 2001 terror attacks in the United States, the Iraq war and the global financial crisis, as well as global health scares in the past decade.

It aims to retire its 37 gas-guzzling Boeing jumbo 747-400s and switch to more fuel-efficient aircraft.

Japan Airlines 'may stop international flights'

2009-12-31T06:40:00.000-08:00

AFP - Friday, January 1

The Japanese government is discussing an option to strip debt-ridden Japan Airlines (JAL) of its international operations to enable it to survive as a domestic carrier, a newspaper reported on Thursday.
TOKYO (AFP) - – Japan Airlines (JAL) may stop flying international routes under a plan being discussed by the government to try to keep the debt-ridden company in the air, a report said Thursday.

The plan calls for rival All Nippon Airways (ANA) to take over JAL's international flights as part of what would be a drastic downsizing scheme for Asia's biggest airline, the Mainichi Shimbun newspaper said.

The scheme was apparently on the table when key cabinet officials, including Transport Minister Seiji Maehara, met on Wednesday to discuss JAL's rehabilitation programme.

The transport ministry has strongly opposed the plan to turn JAL into a domestic carrier despite growing calls for a drastic restructuring of its international operations where losses weigh heavily, the newspaper said.

"(JAL) will be a good company if it abandons international routes and concentrates on domestic flights," an unnamed JAL executive was quoted by Mainichi as saying.

Immediate confirmation of the report was not available.

In a related move, Maehara held talks with vice Prime Minister Naoto Kan and other officials Thursday and agreed that the state-run Development Bank of Japan will offer further loans to JAL.

The DBJ has already disbursed just over half of a 100 billion yen (1.08 billion dollar) credit line extended in November. "On top of the remaining 45 billion yen, (DBJ) is to expand the limit," Maehara told reporters.

Cabinet officials said they would discuss details of further loans to JAL on Sunday before making an official announcement, while local media reported that DBJ is likely to double its credit line to 200 billion yen in total.

JAL, battered by the global recession and swine flu pandemic, is scrambling to slash costs and is seeking its fourth government bailout since 2001 to keep flying in the face of mounting losses.

Shares plunged to a record low on Wednesday as media reports that bankruptcy is one option for the cash-strapped carrier spooked investors.

The Tokyo stock market was closed for a holiday on Thursday.

Local media have reported that the state-backed Enterprise Turnaround Initiative Corp., which is overseeing JAL's restructuring, is considering the possibility of the carrier filing for protection from creditors.

It has also been offered financial assistance by both American Airlines and Delta Air Lines, who are competing to take a minority stake in the Japanese carrier, eyeing its coveted Asian landing slots.

JAL, which lost about 1.5 billion dollars in the six months to September, has said it plans thousands of job cuts and a drastic reduction in routes as part of its efforts to return to profitability.

The global economic downturn has dealt a heavy blow to JAL's efforts to recover from a long period of financial turbulence stretching back to its privatisation more than two decades ago.

Half of stranded Air Comet passengers rescued

2009-12-26T18:24:00.000-08:00

By Agence France-Presse, Updated: 12/26/2009
Special charter flights have rescued nearly half of the 7,000 passengers left stranded by the collapse of Air Comet, according to information released Saturday by Spain's airport authority.

Half of stranded Air Comet passengers rescued
Special charter flights have rescued nearly half of the 7,000 passengers left stranded by the collapse of Air Comet, according to information released Saturday by Spain's airport authority.

Spain suspended Air Comet's operating licence on Tuesday after the airline filed for protection from creditors and laid off all of its 666 employees.

Thousands of travellers were left stuck at airports in Spain and Latin America, and the Spanish government said Wednesday it had chartered four planes to take them to their destinations.

A 400-seat charter flight took off from Madrid's Barajas airport for Lima on Saturday, according to a spokesman for Aena, Spain's publicly-owned airport management company.

The Spanish infrastructure ministry, which is responsible for transport, said Friday the charter flights had already transported 2,905 passengers.

According to Spanish national radio, around 100 Air Comet passengers, mostly immigrant workers from Peru and Ecuador who had hoped to travel home for Christmas, were still protesting at Barajas to demand more rescue flights.

Air Comet said its troubles came to a head when a British court ordered nine of its aircraft to be impounded at the request of German bank Nordbank which said the airline had failed to make aircraft lease payments.

Saturday's edition of El Pais newspaper reported that Air Comet could have kept going temporarily through mediation between the Spanish government and Nordbank, but refused, choosing to "ditch 7,000 passengers".

Spain's Infrastructure Minister Jose Blanco confirmed the report, saying the Air Comet management had preferred to shut down operations.

The Ecuadorian government and several Spanish consumer groups are planning legal action against Air Comet for fraud.

Blanco said Saturday the airline would be "punished according to the law and the case against it".

Madrid said it expected to spend 6.3 million euros (9.0 million dollars) to transport passengers affected by the collapse of the debt-ridden airline, which focused on flights from Spain to South America.

Air Comet has a fleet of 13 planes and carried 1,500 passengers a day on flights from Madrid to South American cities including Bogota, Buenos Aires, Havana, Lima and Quito.

At the beginning of December, the airline's workers staged partial strikes before the company agreed to cover unpaid wages, which in some case went back eight months.

Air Comet is controlled by Spanish travel group Marsans, whose president Gerardo Diaz Ferran is the head of Spain's employers federation CEOE.

Ferran blamed the closure of the airline on the British court's decision -- which he called "disproportionate" -- as well as a drop in bookings due to the global economic downturn.

US plane incident was 'attempted act of terrorism'

2009-12-25T20:02:00.000-08:00

WASHINGTON (AFP) - – A passenger aboard a trans-Atlantic flight attempted to ignite an explosive as the plane was landing in Detroit in an incident US officials called an attempted terrorist attack.

President Barack Obama was informed of the incident and ordered increased security for air travel, the White House said.

The incident was "an attempted act of terrorism," a senior US official told AFP.

The incident unfolded around noon local time (1700 GMT) on Friday aboard Northwest Airlines Flight 253, enroute from Amsterdam to the US city of Detroit.

The passenger "was immediately subdued and Delta is cooperating with authorities," a spokeswoman for Northwest's parent company Delta, Susan Elliott, told AFP.

The passenger was a 23-year-old Nigerian who "definitely has terror connections," US Representative Peter King told Fox News.

King said the man attempted to light a "fairly sophisticated device" aboard Northwest Airlines Flight 253, which was carrying 278 passengers and arriving from Amsterdam.

"This could have been catastrophic," said King, the senior Republican on the House of Representatives Homeland Security Committee.

Obama discussed the incident in a secure conference call with his Homeland Security and Counter-terrorism Advisor John Brennan, and National Security Council chief of staff Denis McDonough, the White House said.

Obama "instructed that all appropriate measures be taken to increase security for air travel," the White House said.

"The president is actively monitoring the situation and receiving regular updates," the statement read.

Sandra Berchtold, an FBI spokeswoman in Detroit, told AFP the incident was under investigation and US media reported that the passenger had told investigators he was affiliated with Al-Qaeda.

CNN and other broadcast outlets, citing a federal bulletin, said the man told investigators he had acquired the explosive device in Yemen, along with instructions as to when it should be used.

The incident drew comparisons with the case of the "shoebomber" Richard Reid, who attempted to bomb a trans-Atlantic flight in 2001 by igniting explosives he smuggled aboard in his shoes.

In the Netherlands, anti-terrorism officials said the suspect US agents detained in Detroit was not a Dutch national or resident.

The man arrived at Amsterdam-Schiphol airport on a connecting flight, said Judith Sluiter, the spokeswoman for the Netherlands' anti-terrorism coordinator.

Sluiter however was unable to specify from which country the man had arrived to the airport but King told Fox News the man "boarded the plane in Nigeria and then connected on in Amsterdam to Detroit."

The US Transportation Security Administration said they were rescreening the plane after it landed in Detroit.

"All passengers deplaned and out of an abundance of caution the plane was moved to a remote area where the plane and all the baggage are currently being rescreened," the agency said in a statement.

"A passenger is in custody and passengers are currently being interviewed," the statement added.

Obama, on vacation in Hawaii, has not changed his schedule. "The president is actively monitoring the situation and receiving regular updates," the White House said.

QANTAS DENIES 'TONGUES OF FIRE' FROM ENGINE FORCED RETURN

2009-12-18T08:24:00.000-08:00

Bernama - Saturday, December 19
MELBOURNE, Dec 18 (Bernama) – A Qantas jumbo jet was forced to return to Singapore when one of its engines surged, but the airline has denied reports of a fire.

Flight QF10 was less than two hours into a journey from Singapore to Melbourne when the engine surged and had to be shut down about 9.20pm (local time) Thursday, the Australian Associated Press (AAP) reported.

Passengers reportedly described seeing "tongues of fire" shooting from the engine and feeling the plane convulse and lose power.

But a Qantas spokeswoman said there was no fire and passengers were never at risk.

"At approximately 31,000 feet, the engine surged and the flight crew followed procedures and shut down the engine and then they returned back to Singapore. The safety of the passengers was not threatened in any way," the spokeswoman told AAP.

-- MORE

QANTAS-FLIGHT 2 (LAST) MELBOURNE

"According to official reports there was no fire and there was no smoke. "What they could have seen might have been a flare from the engine but definitely no fire."

The plane, carrying 354 passengers and 19 crew, returned to Singapore's Changi Airport powered by three of its four engines.

Emergency services were waiting but the plane landed without incident.

Passengers were given accommodation for the night and were expected to experience a 23-hour delay before departing for Melbourne.

The Qantas spokeswoman said the jumbo would be grounded while the engine was replaced.

The incident is being investigated.

-- BERNAMA

Boeing's Dreamliner in maiden flight

2009-12-16T05:29:00.000-08:00

Wednesday, December 16
EVERETT, Washington (AFP) - – Boeing's cutting-edge 787 Dreamliner has taken its milestone first flight that the US aerospace giant hopes will prove a "gamechanger" for the global aviation industry.

The Dreamliner's first flight, more than two years behind schedule, marked the beginning of a world-spanning flight test program expected to deliver the first airplane to Japanese launch customer All Nippon Airways (ANA) in the fourth quarter of next year, the company said.

"Today is a great day for the Boeing Company," Scott Fancher, vice president and general manager of the 787 program, said at a news conference following the flight Tuesday.

"I assure you the 787 will be the gamechanger that it was meant to be," he said.

The mid-size, twin-aisle Dreamliner is Boeing's first new model in more than a decade. The company has based its revolutionary design on lightweight composite materials instead of aluminum to improve fuel efficiency and reduce maintenance costs. Facts: Boeing 787 Dreamliner

About half the Dreamliner is made of composite materials, such as carbon fiber-reinforced resin, compared with 12 percent for its predecessor, the Boeing 777, which made its first flight in 1994.

The Dreamliner will use 20 percent less fuel than today's airplanes of comparable size and provide airlines with up to 45 percent more cargo revenue capacity, the company said.

For passengers, the 787 means larger windows, better lighting, more storage space and cleaner, more humidified air than current airplanes, it said.

Boeing sees the 787 as the future for the industry, as well as for its commercial strategy. The 787 "will set the bar for years to come," Fancher said.

"We build things that fly so airlines can put people on board," Russ Young, a Boeing spokesman, told AFP.

The Dreamliner is an opportunity "to provide a superior flying experience at lower cost to them, which is good for their industry."

Boeing thinks the use of composites "will only grow," Young said . "It's a bold step on our part" but Boeing has done its homework and "we realize composites are ready for these kinds of applications."

Clad in Boeing test-flight blue livery, 787 emblazoned on its tail, the Dreamliner took off under overcast skies at 10:27 am (1827 GMT) at Paine Field near Boeing's Everett plant in Washington state and landed at 1:33 pm at Seattle's Boeing Field.

Chief Pilot Mike Carriker and Captain Randy Neville said they tested some of the airplane's systems and structures in the nearly three-hour flight, as on-board equipment recorded and transmitted real-time data to a flight-test team at Boeing Field.

"We smoked it," Carriker said at the news conference, calling the 787 "a great jet."

"It felt like I flew into the future of the Boeing Company."

Neville said the 787 had delivered "no surprises" and brought "back the joy of flying."

The pilots took the airplane to an altitude of 15,000 feet (4,572 meters) and an air speed of 180 knots, or about 207 miles (333 kilometers) per hour, "customary on a first flight," the company said.

The first Boeing 787 will be joined in the flight test program in the coming weeks and months by five other 787s, the company said.

Chicago-based Boeing is vying with European rival Airbus for commercial supremacy. Airbus, a unit of the European Aeronautic Defence and Space Company, is developing a new long-haul A350 plane aimed at competing with the Dreamliner which is expected to fly in mid-2013.

Boeing launched the Dreamliner program in April 2004 and initially had planned to deliver the first airplane to ANA in the first half of 2008, a delivery now set for fourth-quarter 2010 as production problems forced the company to announce a series of delays.

The delays contributed to a 1.6-billion-dollar loss in the third quarter and Boeing has slashed this year's earnings guidance by more than a third.

Boeing says it has 840 orders on its books from 55 customers for the cutting-edge plane, which it claims is the "fastest-selling all-new jetliner in aviation history."

United Airlines announced last week it would buy 25 Dreamliners, as well as 25 A350s, with the option to buy 50 more of each aircraft.

Asked if Boeing expects phones to ring off the hook with orders after the Dreamliner's first flight, a beaming Fancher said: "Everybody's going to want to have one."

Glitch forced super-jumbo to return to New York

2009-11-30T18:24:00.000-08:00

AFP - Tuesday, December 1

PARIS (AFP) - – An Air France A380 was forced to turn around and land in New York on Friday after problems with its navigation system, only days after the airline began flying the super-jumbo across the Atlantic.

The double-decker Airbus made a U-turn 90 minutes after take-off from New York and landed safely at Kennedy Airport in the early hours on Saturday, an Air France spokesman told AFP on Monday.

"The plane is new and is still getting into its stride. It was a minor computer problem that made navigation a little imprecise," he said.

The plane was carrying about 530 people on the New York to Paris flight when it was forced to change its flight plan. Following repairs in New York, it took off again three hours later.

It was the second time that an A380, the world's largest passenger plane, was forced to turn around in mid-flight.

A Singapore Airlines super-jumbo returned to Paris on September 27 after one of its four engines failed during a routine flight to Singapore.

The Air France spokesman described last week's problem as a "minor" glitch, and said the airline had taken immediate steps to respond to the defect.

"It was a minor glitch, but we do apply a principle of absolute caution and as soon as there is the slightest concern, we come back, we fix it and the plane takes off again," he said.

"It was a problem with the in-flight computer but it did not at all affect air speed," he added.

European plane-maker Airbus has come under scrutiny since an A330 passenger plane crashed in the Atlantic in June, killing all 228 people on board.

Investigators found the plane's air speed sensors were defective, but that the Air France crash was caused solely by the faulty monitors.

The giant plane made its maiden flight for Air France 10 days ago, taking off from Paris en route to New York with 538 passengers on board.

Air France is the first European airline to use the super-jumbo, but it made its first test flight in April 2005 and has been in service for paying customers of Singapore Airlines since October 2007.

The super-jumbo can carry 525 people in the standard three-class layout and up to 853 with all-economy seating.

Gulf-based Emirates airlines and Australia's Qantas are also flying the A380, which has enjoyed some commercial success despite initial production delays.

Singapore Airlines has ordered 19 A380s in all, and plans to have 11 carriers in service by March 2010. Air France is planning to fly 12 super-jumbos, with three others to be delivered by June.

Air France plans to begin super-jumbo flights to Johannesburg and Tokyo in the coming months.

3 Americans die in cargo plane crash in China

2009-11-28T10:30:00.001-08:00

By EUGENE HOSHIKO, Associated Press Writer Eugene Hoshiko, Associated Press Writer

SHANGHAI – A Zimbabwe-registered cargo plane crashed in flames during takeoff from Shanghai's main airport Saturday, killing three American crew members and injuring four others on board.

The accident closed two runways at the Pudong airport in China's largest city for several hours. More than 30 international flights were delayed, leaving about 4,000 travelers stranded on planes or in airport lounges, the official Xinhua News Agency said.

The MD-11 cargo plane, operated by Zimbabwe-based Avient Aviation, was heading to Bishkek, the capital of Kyrgyzstan, Xinhua said. Avient's chief operating officer, Simon Clarke, refused to say what cargo it was carrying.

The aircraft's tail struck the ground on takeoff, China Central Television reported, and Xinhua said the plane veered off the runway and burst into flames. Footage showed black smoke billowing from the wreckage.

Three Americans on the seven-member crew died and a fourth was injured, U.S. Embassy spokesman Richard Buangan told The Associated Press. He did not give their names, saying the embassy had not yet asked their families for permission to release the information.

Shanghai television showed what it called a 61-year-old American co-pilot in a hospital bed, conscious and saying, "Thank you" to staff and officials.

The TV report said the other crew members were from Indonesia, Belgium and Zimbabwe.

Clarke said the crash was Avient's first.

"We're trying to ascertain the facts and the circumstances," he said. "It would be premature to release any information before that."

The company's site says it is "fully trained to move most categories of dangerous goods," but it adds, "as a company policy we do not carry any arms and/or ammunition."

In March, another MD-11 cargo plane crashed and exploded while landing at Japan's largest international airport, killing its two American pilots. Xinhua said another MD-11 with Korean Air crashed shortly after takeoff 10 years ago at Shanghai's Hongqiao Airport.

The Pudong airport, located by the East China Sea, opened a cargo facility in March 2008 that officials said was aimed at making Shanghai the cargo hub of Asia by 2010.

Recent crashes in China include two Chinese air force jets colliding in June 2008 in Inner Mongolia, with both pilots parachuting to safety. In June 2006, a Chinese military plane crashed in eastern Anhui province, killing all 40 people aboard.

___

Associated Press writers Cara Anna in Beijing and Angus Shaw in Harare, Zimbabwe, and Paisley Dodds in London contributed to this report.

First Air France A380 reaches New York

2009-11-20T19:49:00.000-08:00

AFP - Saturday, November 21

NEW YORK (AFP) - – The world's largest airliner, an Air France A380, touched down in New York on Friday after completing the superjumbo jet's first Atlantic crossing from Europe to the United States.

The Airbus plane, carrying 538 passengers, left Paris earlier in the day and landed at 1:07 pm (1807 GMT) at J.F. Kennedy Airport, several minutes ahead of schedule, under crisp blue skies.

Two fire engines met the plane with a watery salute from their hosepipes as it taxied to its gate.

Air France is the first European airline to put the giant aircraft into service, but the fourth worldwide after Singapore Airlines, Gulf-based Emirates and Qantas of Australia.

Passengers included 380 people who bought their tickets in an Air France auction to benefit disadvantaged children.

Air France will launch regular A380 flights across the Atlantic on November 23. The fleet of 12 huge planes will also serve Johannesburg, starting in February, and then Tokyo.

But major production and delivery delays mean the commercial success of the A380, the pride of Airbus and parent company EADS, has yet to be secured.

On board, passengers were treated to free champagne and, for the inaugural flight, a three-member jazz band.

"A fantastic flight," said one passenger, Bernard Boluvi, 39. "It's a very quiet and stable plane. You hardly feel the takeoff and landing."

Michel Schmitt, 45, also praised the lack of noise aboard and said the double-decker felt more roomy than other jumbos. "It doesn't feel like one big cinema, because the plane is well divided into different sectors," he said.

But Gerard Jouany, 64, a journalist specializing in aviation, said he found the plane rather cramped and emphasizing the bus aspect of Airbus. "Air France chose the most dense configuration," he said.

UA pilot charged with being over alcohol limit

2009-11-11T07:16:00.000-08:00

By RAPHAEL G. SATTER,Associated Press Writer - Wednesday, November 11
LONDON – A United Airlines pilot who was pulled from his trans-Atlantic flight to Chicago shortly before takeoff has been charged with having too much alcohol in his system, British police said Tuesday.

Scotland Yard said that 51-year-old Erwin Vermont Washington, of Lakewood, Colorado, was arrested after officers were called to United Airlines Flight 949, which was already full of passengers and due to leave London's Heathrow Airport just after noon on Monday.

BAA, Heathrow's operator, said the plane had been due to leave imminently. A BAA spokesman quoted by Britain's Press Association news agency added that the pilot had been reported to authorities by another member of United's staff. BAA did not immediately return a call from the AP seeking comment late Tuesday.

It was not immediately clear how much alcohol Washington was accused of having consumed. Under British law, pilots are forbidden from having any more than 20 micrograms of alcohol for each 100 milliliters of blood in their system, or .02 percent. For most average-sized men, that is the equivalent of having just had about half a glass of regular strength beer.

Scotland Yard said that Washington, who has been released on bail, would have to appear at a court in northwest London on Nov. 20. If convicted, he faces up to two years in prison, a fine, or both.

United Airlines spokeswoman Megan McCarthy said Washington, who she did not identify by name, has been removed from service pending an investigation. She said her airline had strict rules on alcohol "and we have no tolerance for violation of this well-established policy."

She declined to say how long Washington had worked for the airline.

McCarthy said that the flight was canceled and that the plane's 124 passengers were put on other flights.

Monday's incident bears a strong resemblance to the arrest in May at Heathrow of an American Airlines pilot _ also scheduled to fly a plane to Chicago _ after he failed a breath test. Airport security staff had alerted airport police about the pilot.

In January, Southwest Airlines put a pilot on leave after passengers at a security checkpoint in Columbus, Ohio, told authorities that he smelled of alcohol. The pilot ran into a restroom and changed out of his uniform jacket and called in sick.

Union leaders say pilots are under increased scrutiny by security agents and passengers because of high-profile cases involving drunk pilots.

___

Associated Press Airlines Writer David Koenig in Dallas contributed to this report.

Australian pilots suspended over landing gear miss

2009-11-05T01:25:00.000-08:00

AFP - Wednesday, November 4Send IM Story Print

Australian pilots suspended over landing gear miss
SYDNEY (AFP) - – Two Australian pilots have been suspended for preparing to land a passenger plane without the correct landing gear, in what air safety investigators Wednesday labelled a "serious incident".

The Qantas flight from Melbourne was forced to do a second lap above Sydney airport on October 26 after a cockpit alarm went off as the Boeing 767 prepared to touch down, the Australian Transport Safety Bureau (ATSB) said.

"Passing 700 feet on approach into Sydney, the crew commenced a missed approach due to the aircraft being incorrectly configured for landing," the bureau said.

ATSB air safety spokesman Ian Sangston said the "too low gear" alert sounded because the landing gear had not been lowered, but said it was too early to speculate on the cause.

Qantas said flight safety was never at risk but it had stood the pilots down pending the bureau's inquiry into whether human error was to blame.

"This is an extremely rare event, but one we have taken seriously," the airline said in a statement.

"The flight crew knew all required procedures but there was a brief communication breakdown. They responded quickly to the situation... the cockpit alarm coincided with their actions."

The incident follows the revocation last week of the licences of two US pilots who overshot their destination by some 150 miles (240 kilometres) while distracted.

Sangston said the ATSB was also investigating an incident in which the autopilot briefly disconnected on board a Jetstar flight between Japan and the Gold Coast as it passed through stormy conditions on October 29.

"My understanding is that there was some sort of problem with the information being provided to the pilots," Sangston said.

Qantas' budget offshoot Jetstar said early indications were that the Airbus A330's airspeed sensing system was momentarily impaired, and several parts had been replaced on the aircraft before it was allowed to resume flying.

The error messages were similar to those reported from an Air France Airbus A330 jet which mysteriously plunged into the Atlantic in May, taking the lives of all 228 people on board.

But Sangston said the ATSB was yet to examine the black box data from the craft or interview the crew and it was "only conjecture" to draw parallels.

Wayward pilots say they were busy using laptops

2009-10-26T16:56:00.000-07:00

By JOAN LOWY, Associated Press Writer Joan Lowy, Associated Press Writer – 26 mins ago
WASHINGTON – Not sleeping, the pilots say. They were engrossed in a complicated new crew-scheduling program on their laptop computers as their plane flew past its Minneapolis landing by 150 miles — a cockpit violation of airline policy that could cost them their licenses.

They were so focused on the scheduling — quite a complicated matter for the pilots after Delta Air Lines acquired Northwest Airlines a year ago — that they were out of communication with air traffic controllers and their airline for more than an hour. They didn't realize their mistake until contacted by a flight attendant about five minutes before the flight's scheduled landing last Wednesday night, the National Transportation Safety Board said Monday.

By then, Northwest Flight 188 with its 144 passengers and five crew members was over Wisconsin, at 37,000 feet.

The pilots — Richard Cole of Salem, Ore., the first officer, and Timothy Cheney of Gig Harbor, Wash., the captain — denied they had fallen asleep as aviation experts have suggested, the safety board said in recounting investigators' interviews with the men over the weekend.

Instead, Cole and Cheney said they both had their laptops out while the first officer, who had more experience with scheduling, instructed the captain on monthly flight crew scheduling.

A number of aviation experts — and people wondering about their next airline flights — have been suggesting it was more plausible that the pilots had fallen asleep during the San Diego-to-Minneapolis flight than that they had become so focused on a conversation that they lost awareness of their surroundings for such a lengthy period of time.

Air traffic controllers in Denver and Minneapolis repeatedly tried without success to raise the pilots by radio. Other pilots in the vicinity tried reaching the plane on other radio frequencies. Their airline tried contacting them using a radio text message that chimes.

Authorities became so alarmed that National Guard jets were readied for takeoff at two locations and the White House Situation Room alerted senior officials, who monitored the airliner as the Airbus A320 flew across a broad swath of the mid-continent out of contact with anyone on the ground.

"It's inexcusable," said former NTSB Chairman Jim Hall. "I feel sorry for the individuals involved, but this was certainly not an innocuous event — this was a significant breach of aviation safety and aviation security."

Delta said in a statement that using laptops or engaging in activity unrelated to the pilots' command of the aircraft during flight is strictly against the airline's flight deck policies. The airline said violations of that policy will result in termination.

There are no federal rules that specifically ban pilots' use of laptops or other personal electronic devices as long as the plane is flying above 10,000 feet, said Diane Spitaliere, a Federal Aviation Administration spokeswoman.

"I think it depends upon how it's being used," Spitaliere said.

The Air Transport Association, a trade group that represents major U.S. airlines, expects pilots to comply with federal regulations and airline policies, but hasn't taken a position on the use of electronic devices by pilots while in the cockpit, ATA spokeswoman Elizabeth Merida said.

Delta has suspended the two pilots pending an investigation into the incident. FAA is also investigating and has warned Cheney and Cole their pilot licenses could be suspended or revoked.

Pilots' schedules are tied to their seniority, which also determines the aircraft they fly. Those at the top of the list get first choice on vacations, the best routes and the bigger planes that they get paid more for flying. Following Delta Air Lines' acquisition of Northwest, an arbitration panel ruled that the pilot seniority lists at the two carriers should be integrated based on pilots' status and aircraft category.

Cheney and Cole are both experienced pilots, according to the NTSB. Cheney, 53, was hired by Northwest in 1985 and has about 20,000 hours of flying time, about half of which was in the A320. Cole, 54, had about 11,000 hours of flight time, including 5,000 hours in the A320.

Both pilots told the board they had never had an accident, incident or violation, the board said.

The pilots acknowledged that while they were engaged in working on their laptops they weren't paying attention to radio traffic, messages from their airline or their cockpit instruments, the board said. That's contrary to one of the fundamentals of commercial piloting, which is to keep attention focused on monitoring messages from controllers and watching flight displays in the cockpit.

"It is unsettling when you see experienced pilots who were not professional in flying this flight," said Kitty Higgins, a former NTSB board member. "This is clearly a wakeup call for everybody."

Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., called the incident "the ultimate case of distracted driving, only this time it was distracted flying."

___

AP Airlines Writer Harry R. Weber contributed to this report from Atlanta.

___

On the Net:

National Transportation Safety Board: http://www.ntsb.gov

Pilot who overshot airport denies crew was napping

2009-10-25T05:26:00.000-07:00

By STEVE KARNOWSKI and BRAD CAIN,Associated Press Writers - Sunday, October 25

MINNEAPOLIS – The first officer of the Northwest Airlines jet that missed its destination by 150 miles says he and the captain were not sleeping or arguing in the cockpit but he wouldn't explain their lapse in response and the detour.

"It was not a serious event, from a safety issue," pilot Richard Cole said late Friday in front of his Salem, Ore., home. "I would tell you more, but I've already told you way too much."

Air traffic controllers and pilots had tried for more than an hour Wednesday night to contact the Minneapolis-bound flight. Officials on the ground alerted National Guard jets to prepare to chase the airliner, though none of the military planes left the runway.

The jet with 144 passengers aboard was being closely monitored by senior White House officials, White House spokesman Nick Shapiro told The Associated Press on Saturday. He didn't say if President Barack Obama was informed.

Many aviation safety experts and pilots say the most likely explanation is that the pilots fell asleep along their route from San Diego. NTSB spokesman Keith Holloway said fatigue and cockpit distraction are factors that will be looked into.

"We were not asleep; we were not having an argument; we were not having a fight," Cole said, but would not discuss why it took so long for him and the flight's captain, Timothy B. Cheney, of Gig Harbor, Wash., to respond to radio calls.

"I can tell you that airplanes lose contact with the ground people all the time. It happens. Sometimes they get together right away; sometimes it takes awhile before one or the other notices that they are not in contact."

The FAA said Friday letters had been sent informing the pilots they are being investigated by the agency and it is possible their pilot's licenses could be suspended or revoked.

Investigators were in the process Saturday of scheduling interviews with the pilots, Holloway said, and audio from the cockpit voice recorder was downloaded at NTSB headquarters on Friday.

But they may not glean much from it. While new recorders retain as much as two hours of cockpit conversation and other noise, the older model aboard Northwest's Flight 188 includes just the last 30 minutes _ only the very end of the flight after the pilots realized their error over Wisconsin.

The NTSB recommended a decade ago that airlines be required to have two-hour cockpit voice recorders. The standard has been 15- to 30-minute recorders.

Last year, the Federal Aviation Administration issued a rule requiring airplanes and helicopters seating 10 or more people to have the 2-hour audio recordings, but gave the industry time to comply. Aircraft made after March 2010 must come equipped with longer recorders, though many manufacturers have already been including them. Existing planes have until March 2012 to comply.

The FAA rule doesn't require cockpit video recordings, which the NTSB had also recommended. Pilots opposed the video recordings.

Northwest, which was acquired last year by Delta Air Lines, is also investigating the incident. Cheney and Cole have been suspended. Messages left at Cheney's home were not returned.

The pilots passed breathalyzer tests and were apologetic after the flight, according to a police report released Friday. Cheney and Cole had just started their work week and were coming off a 19-hour layover, the Minneapolis Star Tribune reported Saturday, citing an internal Northwest document it said was described to the newspaper.

The police report said that the crew indicated they had been having a heated discussion about airline policy.

___

AP Writers Joan Lowy in Washington and Amy Forliti in Minneapolis and AP Airlines Writers Joshua Freed in Minneapolis, Harry R. Weber in Atlanta and Dave Koenig in Dallas contributed to this report. Cain reported from Salem, Ore.

___

On the Net:

FlightAware.com tracking of Northwest Flight 188: http://bit.ly/2QV9hX

National Transportation Safety Board http://www.ntsb.gov

A380 engine failure

2009-09-28T01:54:00.000-07:00

PARIS, Sept 27 - A Singapore Airlines A380 was forced to turn round mid-flight and head back to Paris on Sunday after one of its four engines failed, the head of the airline's French operations said.

The doubledecker A380 took off from Paris at 12.30 p.m. with 444 passengers aboard and headed for Singapore, but had to turn round after 2 hours 45 minutes because of the engine problem, airline director Jerry Seah said.

The plane landed safely back in France at 5.45 p.m. (1545 GMT) and the passengers were sent to hotels as the airline tried to lay on an alternative flight for them.

Seah told Reuters he believed it was the first time the plane had suffered such a problem since it had started operating the Singapore-Paris route earlier this year.

The giant jet, built by Airbus , is designed to continue flying with only three engines, but came back to Paris as a safety precaution.

The engines on the Singapore A380s are built by Britain's Rolls Royce Group . (Reporting by Jean Baptiste Vey, writing by Crispian Balmer; editing by Elizabeth Fullerton)

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KL Low Cost Carrier Terminal

2009-08-17T06:44:00.000-07:00

Air Asia operates a hub at the Kl LCC

Another Plane crash in Iran

2009-07-25T17:47:00.000-07:00

AFP - Sunday, July 26 TEHRAN (AFP) - - An Iranian airliner which overshot the runway and hurtled into a perimeter wall killing 16 people appears to have hit the tarmac too fast, an aviation official said on Saturday

"This plane should have landed at a maximum speed of 165 miles per hour but it in fact landed at around 200 mph," acting Iranian Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO) director Mohammad Ali Ilkhani told state television.

He said the licence of Aria Airlines, whose plane was involved in Friday's deadly accident in the northeastern city of Mashhad, had been revoked.

The official IRNA news agency cited ICAO spokesman Reza Jafarzadeh as saying a total of 16 people were killed -- 13 crew members and three passengers.

Nine crew members were from Kazakhstan while the other four were Iranians, Jafarzadeh said. The three passengers who lost their lives were all Iranians.

"The plane was carrying 153 passengers, and 31 were wounded in the incident," Jafarzadeh said, adding that the plane belonged to Kazakhstan but was chartered to Iranian carrier Aria Airlines.

"We just heard a boom then the plane swerved to the right and then all I can remember were people praying to God," one survivor, a man with his head covered in bandages, told Iranian state run television.

An old woman, lying on bed in hospital in a gown said people from a nearby village were first on the scene.

"It took the paramedics around 20 minutes to reach us; the ordinary people came first to our aid," she said.

Mashhad, Iran's second city, is a Shiite Muslim pilgrimage destination as it was the burial place of the eighth Shiite Imam, Reza.

Iranian media reported that the managing director of Aria Airlines, Mehdi Dadpey, was among those killed in the accident.

A senior transport official said on Friday that the incoming aircraft had overshot the runway.

"Instead of landing at the beginning of the tarmac, the plane landed in the middle of the runway," the ISNA news agency quoted deputy transport minister Ahmad Majidi as saying.

"Because the tarmacs length is short, it went off the tarmac and crashed into the opposite wall.

The crash came just 10 days after another air disaster when a Caspian Airlines plane crashed near the city of Qazvin, northwest of Tehran, killing all 168 on board.

Iran has been under years of international sanctions hampering its ability to buy modern Boeing or Airbus planes and it has suffered a number of aviation disasters over the past decade.

Its civil and military fleets are made up of ancient aircraft in very poor condition due to their age and lack of maintenance.

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Air crash in Iran

2009-07-15T04:38:00.000-07:00

By ALI AKBAR DAREINI, Associated Press Writer Ali Akbar Dareini, Associated Press Writer – 51 mins ago

TEHRAN, Iran – An Iranian passenger plane carrying 168 people crashed a quarter-hour after takeoff Wednesday, smashing into a field northwest of the capital and shattering to pieces. State television said all on board were killed.

The impact gouged a deep trench in the dirt field, which was shown littered with smoking wreckage in footage shown on state TV. It showed a large chunk of a wing, but much of the wreckage appeared to be in small pieces, and emergency workers and witnesses picked around the shredded metal for bodies.

The Russian-made Caspian Airlines jet was heading from Tehran to the Armenian capital Yerevan near the village of Jannatabad outside the city of Qazvin, around 75 miles northwest of Tehran, state television said. It crashed at about 11:30 am, 16 minutes after taking off from Tehran's Imam Khomeini International Airport, TV reported.

The Qazvin emergency services director Hossein Bahzadpour told the IRNA news agency that the plane was completely destroyed and shattered to pieces, and the wreckage was in flames. "It his highly likely that all the passengers on the flight were killed," Bahzadpour said.

Iranian Civil Aviation Organization spokesman Reza Jafarzadeh told state television that 153 passengers and 15 crewmembers were on board. State TV said all were killed.

A Caspian Airlines representative told AP in Yerevan that most of the passengers were Armenians, and that some Georgian citizens were also on board. The representative spoke on condition of anonymity because she was not authorized to talk to the press.

Also among the passengers were eight members of Iran's national youth judo team, along with two trainers and a delegation chief, who were scheduled to train with the Armenian judo team before attending competitions in Hungary on Aug. 6, state TV said.

Caspian Airlines is a Russian-Iranian joint venture founded in 1993. Iran has frequent plane crashes often because of bad maintenance of its aging aircraft. Tehran blames the problem in part on U.S. sanctions that prevent Iran from getting spare parts for some planes. Caspian Airlines, however, uses Russian-made Tupolevs whose maintenance would be less impaired by American sanctions.

In February 2006, a Russian-made TU-154 operated by Iran Airtour, which is affiliated with Iran's national carrier, crashed during landing in Tehran, killing 29 of the 148 people on board. Another Airtour Tupolev crashed in 2002 in the mountains of western Iran, killing all 199 on board.

The crashes have also affected Iran's military. In December 2005, 115 people were killed when a U.S.-made C-130 plane, crashed into a 10-story building near Tehran's Mehrabad airport. In Nov. 2007, a Russian-made Iranian military plane crashed shortly after takeoff killing 36 members of the elite Revolutionary Guards.

AP writer Avet Demourian in Yerevan, Armenia, contributed to this report.

Air France Crash

2009-07-02T23:23:00.000-07:00

By GREG KELLER and EMMA VANDORE,Associated Press Writers AP - Friday, July 3

LE BOURGET, France - Air France Flight 447 slammed into the Atlantic Ocean, intact and belly first, at such a high speed that the 228 people aboard probably had no time to even inflate their life jackets, French investigators said Thursday in their first report into the June 1 accident.

Likening the investigation to a puzzle with missing pieces, lead investigator Alain Bouillard said that one month after the crash, "we are very far from establishing the causes of the accident."

Problematic speed sensors on the Airbus A330-200 jet that have been the focus of intense speculation since the crash may have misled the plane's pilots but were not a direct cause, Bouillard said, while admitting that investigators are still a long way from knowing what did precipitate the disaster.

"The investigation is a big puzzle," said Bouillard, who is leading the probe for the French accident agency BEA. "Today we only have a few pieces of the puzzle which prevents us from even distinguishing the photo of the puzzle."

The plane was flying from Rio de Janeiro to Paris when it went down in a remote area of the Atlantic, 930 miles (1,500 kilometers) off Brazil's mainland and far from radar coverage.

The BEA released its first preliminary findings on the crash Thursday, calling it one of history's most challenging plane crash investigations. Yet the probe, which has operated without access to the plane's flight data and voice recorders, appears so far to have unveiled little about what really caused the accident.

The speed sensors, called Pitot tubes, are "a factor but not the only one," Bouillard said. "It is an element but not the cause," Bouillard told a news conference in Le Bourget outside Paris.

Other elements that came under scrutiny in the immediate aftermath of the crash, such as the possibility that heavy storms or lightning may have brought down the jet, were also downplayed in the BEA's presentation.

Meteorological data show the presence of storm clouds in the area the jet would have flown through, but nothing out of the ordinary for the equatorial region in June, Bouillard said, eliminating the theory that the plane could have encountered a storm of unprecedented power. Other flights through the area shortly after Flight 447 disappeared didn't report unusual weather, Bouillard said.

"Between the surface of the water and 35,000 feet, we don't know what happened," Bouillard acknowledged. "In the absence of the flight recorders, it is extremely difficult to draw conclusions."

Representatives of families of the victims said they learned little new and vowed to continue to push for more information.

Charles-Henri Tardivat, lawyer representing victims' families said now that the phase of grief had passed, he expected families to be "even more motivated in trying to get answers and there's going to be significant pressure put on the authorities to continue feeding the facts and the answers that are necessary in this case. "

A burst of automated messages emitted by the plane before it fell gave rescuers only a vague location to begin their search, which has failed to locate the plane's black boxes in the vast ocean expanse.

The chances of finding the flight recorders are falling daily as the signals they emit fade. Without them, the full causes of the tragic accident may never be known.

One of the automatic messages indicates the plane was receiving incorrect speed information from the external monitoring instruments, which could destabilize its control systems. Experts have suggested those external instruments might have iced over.

The Pitots have not been "excluded from the chain that led to the accident," Bouillard said.

Analysis of the 600-odd pieces of the jet that have been recovered indicate the plane "was not destroyed in flight" and appeared to have hit the water intact and "belly first," gathering speed as it dropped thousands of feet, he said.

He also said investigators have found "neither traces of fire nor traces of explosives."

Shortly after the crash, aviation experts indicated that fractures revealed during autopsies of the victims along with the large pieces of wreckage pulled from the Atlantic strongly suggested the plane broke up in the air. There was no immediate explanation for the apparent contradiction between the BEA's findings and those viewpoints.

Bouillard said air traffic controllers in Dakar, Senegal had never officially taken control of Flight 447 after its last radio contact with Brazilian flight controllers at 1:35 a.m., and it wasn't until up to seven hours later that flight controllers in Madrid and Brest, France, raised an alarm. He said the delay was being investigated but was not a cause of the crash.

Brazilian Air Force Col. Henry Munhoz said all required information on the plane's flight plan was passed to Senegalese air controllers.

Some members of the crash victims' families said that without a clear cause to blame the accident on, the interim report held little significance.

Marco Tulio Moreno Marques, a 43-year-old lawyer in Rio de Janeiro, lost both his parents in the crash. He did not bother watching the French investigators' public presentation, saying that without the black boxes, he was skeptical of any findings.

"I think it is difficult that they will ever find out what happened," he said. "They can say a flying saucer hit the plane, but if they don't find the black boxes we will never know for certain what happened."

Kieran Daly, editor of Air Transport Intelligence, said although investigators seem to know very little about what happened due to "a horrendous lack of evidence," it is significant that the plane landed the right way up.

"It suggests they were in some kind of flight attitude," he said.

But he warned that "without finding the black boxes it's going to be phenomenally difficult, maybe impossible, to determine what happened."

Bouillard said life vests found among the wreckage were not inflated, suggesting passengers were not prepared for a crash landing in the water. The pilots apparently also did not send any mayday calls.

He said there was "no information" suggesting a need to ground the world's fleet of more than 600 A330 planes as a result of the crash.

"As far as I'm concerned there's no problem flying these aircraft," he said.

Air France said all elements of the investigation "will be fully and immediately taken into account by the airline" and that it is continuing to cooperate with the investigators with "a commitment to total transparency with regard to the investigators, its passengers and the general public."

The black boxes _ which are in reality bright orange _ are resting somewhere on an underwater mountain range filled with crevasses and rough, uneven terrain. Bouillard said the search for them has been extended by 10 days through July 10, while his investigation would run through Aug. 15.

Bouillard said French investigators have yet to receive any information from Brazilian authorities about the results of the autopsies on the 51 bodies recovered from the site.

But a spokesman for the Public Safety Department in Brazil's Pernambuco state _ in charge of the autopsies _ denied that.

"French medical examiners are working together with Brazilian medical examiners and they have full access to all the information obtained from autopsies," the spokesman said on condition of anonymity according to department rules.

Families of the victims met with officials from BEA, Air France and the French transport ministry before the report was released. An association of families addressed a letter to the CEO of Air France, Pierre-Henri Gourgeon, demanding answers to several questions about the plane.

Investigators should have an easier time recovering debris and black boxes in the crash of a Yemeni Airbus 310 with 153 people on board that went down Tuesday just nine miles (14.5 kilometers) north of the Indian Ocean island-nation of Comoros.

Vandore reported from Paris. Associated Press writers Cecile Brisson at Le Bourget, Angela Charlton in Paris, Marco Sibaja in Brasilia, Bradley Brooks in Rio de Janeiro and Stan Lehman in Sao Paulo contributed to this report.

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Yemenia crash

2009-06-30T03:18:00.000-07:00

Reuters - Tuesday, June 30 By Ahmed Ali Amir

MORONI - An Airbus A310-300 from Yemen with 153 people on board crashed into choppy seas as it tried to land in bad weather on the Indian Ocean archipelago of Comoros Tuesday, officials said.

Two French military planes and a French ship left the Indian Ocean islands of Mayotte and Reunion to search for the Yemenia aircraft that was carrying nationals from France and Comoros.

An official from the Yemeni state carrier said the plane had 142 passengers, including three infants, and 11 crew on board. It was flying from Sanaa to Moroni, the capital of the main island of the Comoros archipelago.

"We still do not have information about the reason behind the crash or survivors," Mohammad al-Sumairi, deputy general manager for Yemenia operations told Reuters.

"The weather conditions were rough; strong wind and high seas. The wind speed recorded on land at the airport was 61 km an hour. There could be other factors," he said.

It is the second Airbus to plunge into the sea this month. An Air France Airbus A330-200 crashed into the Atlantic Ocean killing 228 people on board on June 1.

In 1996, a hijacked Ethiopian Airlines Boeing 767 also crashed into the sea off the Comoros islands in 1996, killing 125 of 175 passengers and crew.

"Two French military aircraft have left from the islands of Mayotte and Reunion to search the identified zone, and a French vessel has left Mayotte," said Hadji Madi Ali, director General of Moroni International Airport.

COMING INTO LAND

"The plane has crashed and we still don't know exactly where. We think it's in the area of Mitsamiouli," Comoros Vice-President Idi Nadhoim told Reuters from the airport.

Ibrahim Kassim, a representative from regional air security body ASECNA, said the plane had probably come down 5 to 10 km from the coast, and civilian and military boats had set off to search the rough waters.

"We think the crash is somewhere along its landing approach," Kassim told Reuters. "The weather is really not very favourable. The sea is very rough."

ASECNA -- the Agency for Aviation Security and Navigation in Africa and Madagascar -- covers Francophone Africa.

The town of Mitsamiouli is on the main island Grande Comore.

Interior Minister Hamid Bourhane told Reuters the army had sent small speedboats to an area between the village of Ntsaoueni and the airport.

"At the moment we don't have any information about whether there are any survivors," he told Reuters.

A medical worker in Mitsamiouli said he had been called in.

"They have just called me to come to the hospital. They said a plane had crashed," he told Reuters.

A United Nations official at the airport, who declined to be named, said the control tower had received notification the plane was coming into land, and then lost contact with it.

Yemenia is 51 percent owned by the Yemeni government and 49 percent owned by the Saudi Arabian government. Its fleet includes two Airbus 330-200s, four Airbus 310-300s and four Boeing 737-800s, according to the company Web site.

The Comoros covers three small volcanic islands, Grande Comore, Anjouan and Moheli, in the Mozambique channel, 300 km northwest of Madagascar and a similar distance east of the African mainland.

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Air France Crash

2009-06-22T05:59:00.000-07:00

By STAN LEHMAN,Associated Press Writer AP -

Monday, June 22 SAO PAULO - Medical examiners have identified the first 11 of 50 bodies recovered from the Air France flight that plunged into the Atlantic three weeks ago, officials said Sunday.

Five bodies were identified as Brazilian men, five as Brazilian women and one as a "foreigner of the male sex," the Public Safety Department of the northeastern state of Pernambuco said in a statement. The department did not reveal the nationality of the non-Brazilian victim.

Dental records, fingerprints and DNA samples were used to identify the bodies, the statement said. Investigators are reviewing all remains, debris and baggage at a base set up in Recife, capital of Pernambuco.

The families of the Brazilian victims and the embassy in Brazil representing the foreigner's home country have been notified, but the identities will not be publicized in keeping with the families' wishes, the statement said.

Air France Flight 447 fell into the ocean off the northeast coast of Brazil on the night of May 31, killing all 228 people aboard.

Thus far, 50 bodies have been retrieved from the ocean.

Searchers from Brazil, France, the United States and other countries are methodically scanning the surface and depths of the Atlantic for signs of the Airbus A330, which crashed after running into thunderstorms en route from Rio de Janeiro to Paris.

Still missing are the plane's flight data and voice recorders, thought to be deep under water. French-chartered ships are trolling a search area with a radius of 50 miles (80 kilometers), pulling U.S. Navy underwater listening devices attached to 19,700 feet (6,000 meters) of cable. The black boxes send out an electronic tapping sound that can be heard up to 1.25 miles (2 kilometers) away.

Brazilian and American officials said that as of Sunday evening no signals from the black boxes had been picked up.

Without the black boxes to help explain what went wrong, the investigation has focused on a flurry of automated messages sent by the plane minutes before it lost contact. One of the messages suggests external speed sensors had iced over, destabilizing the plane's control systems.

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Male International Airport

2009-06-18T06:32:00.000-07:00

SQ451 Boeing 777-200

Malaysia Airline

Male airport lounge

2009-06-16T09:54:00.000-07:00

They serve sandwiches, cakes and biscuits

SQ 451 to Singapore

2009-06-15T22:20:00.001-07:00

Stir fried noodles

Chicken and vegetables

The menu for the return flight

Appetiser

Waldorf salad
apple and celery salad

Main course

Cayenne pepper flavoured stewed chicken, seasonal vegetables and potatoes

or

Chinese stir fried egg noodles with beef and vegetables

Dessert

Chocolate mousse

SQ 452 to Male

2009-06-13T05:54:00.001-07:00

Roast chicken

Pan fried fish

Here's the menu for dinner served on 11 June 09 in the Economy class

Appetiser
Smoked Salmon with Asian slaw and creamy sesame dressing

Main courses

Pan fried fish with lemon dill sauce, buttered vegetables and potatoes
or
Oriental roast chicken with Chinese greens and fragrant rice

Sats Premier Lounge Changi Airport Terminal 2

2009-06-12T09:40:00.000-07:00

Debris likely from Air France plane found in Atlantic

2009-06-02T14:58:00.000-07:00

AFP - Wednesday, June 3 RIO DE JANEIRO (AFP) - - Search aircraft found debris on Tuesday believed to be from an Air France flight that disappeared over the Atlantic with 228 people on board, but officials say what brought down the plane remains a mystery.

Brazilian air force aircraft located a seat from a plane, an orange buoy and jet fuel slicks floating 1,100 kilometers (680 miles) off Brazil's northeast coast -- in a remote stretch of the Atlantic Ocean where the flight from Rio de Janeiro bound for Paris disappeared early on Monday.

But an air force spokesman, Colonel Jorge Amaral, cautioned that no item with a serial number or other identification had yet been found that could confirm the debris was from missing Air France flight AF 447.

"The search is continuing because it's very little material in relation to the size" of the Air France Airbus A330, he said.

He added that there was no chance of survivors being found among the debris.

Brazilian navy vessels and a French ship carrying two mini-submarines were on their way to the zone. The submarines are capable of operating at depths of 6,000 meters (19,700 feet), which is also the limit aircraft black boxes can survive.

The zone's average depth is estimated between 4,000 and 5,000 meters (13,100 and 16,400 feet) but has crevasses up to 8,000 meters (26,200 feet) deep, according to Brazilian and French oceanographic experts.

Three cargo ships nearby, two Dutch-flagged and one French, have been asked to go where the debris was found and should arrive "in the next few hours," a Brazilian navy official, Lieutenant Henrique Afonso Lima, said.

If it is confirmed that all aboard flight AF 447 perished, it would be the deadliest civilian aviation accident since 2001 and the worst in Air France's 70-year history.

The possible discovery of what was left of the airliner held the promise that the enigma of what brought the plane down might be solved if its black boxes could be recovered from the bottom of the ocean.

The plane vanished Monday four hours into its 11-hour flight, as it was beyond the reach of radar midway over the Atlantic between South America and Africa, in an area known for its tropical storms .

The pilots issued no mayday. But automatic data signals -- received from the zone where the debris was discovered -- told of multiple electric and pressurization failures.

Air France suggested the four-year-old plane could have been struck by lightning -- a fairly common hazard that by itself should not knock out a modern airliner, but coupled with other problems such as violent turbulence it could be dangerous.

Other theories advanced by experts include pilot error or even the remote possibility of terrorism.

"No hypothesis is being favored at the moment," French Prime Minister Francois Fillon said Tuesday.

"Our only certainty is that there was no distress call sent by the plane, but regular automatic alerts sent over three minutes indicated the failure of all systems," he said.

Air France chief executive Pierre-Henry Gourgeon said Monday the succession of data messages was a "totally unprecedented situation" and that it was "probable" the plane crashed into the ocean shortly afterwards.

More than half of those traveling in the full plane were either French or Brazilian. The others came from 30 countries, mostly in Europe.

The 216 passengers included 126 men, 82 women, seven children and a baby. The crew comprised 11 French nationals and one Brazilian.

Nineteen passengers were employees and partners of a French electrical firm who had won a holiday for hitting sales targets.

Another three were Irishwomen in their 20s who trained together as doctors, including a former member of the famed Riverdance dance troupe.

A 25-year-old descendant of Brazil's long-defunct royal family was also on the passenger manifest.

The French captain, whose name has yet to be released, was 58 and an Air France pilot since 1988 with a great deal of experience, the airline said.

Ten Brazilian aircraft have been deployed to continue searches of the Atlantic, while other aircraft from France, Spain and the United States have also been dispatched to help.

France's defense ministry has asked the United States to focus its spy satellites on the zone.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy and others have held out very little hope of survivors but vowed to keep up the search for as long as necessary.

French Environment Minister Jean-Louis Borloo, whose brief includes the transport portfolio, said that, if they so wished, relatives of the missing could be flown to the search zone to watch.

Air France and French consular officials were providing counseling and other assistance to the distraught relatives, who were being kept in hotels in Brazil and France closed to journalists.

Prayer services were to be held in Catholic and Muslim temples in Paris on Wednesday for the passengers on the doomed plane. Sarkozy was to attend the ceremony in Notre-Dame cathedral.

Macau International airport

2009-05-09T22:09:00.001-07:00

The runway here is actually located offshore. Here is a sequence of shots showing an Air Asia plane on its way from the runway to the gates

To Macau on Tiger Airways

2009-05-03T05:28:00.001-07:00

This All Nippon Airways plane just landed

A Singapore Airline's Boeing 777 plane getting airborne

Cathay Pacific plane on its way to the arrival gates

A Fedex frieghter taking off

The Republic of Singapore Air Force uses the runway at Changi Airport for takeoff. Here a tanker is on its way back to Changi Air Base West after landing

A Tiger Airways plane getting ready for departure at Changi airport's budget terminal

Budget Airlines in the Middle East

2009-04-06T19:38:00.000-07:00

DUBAI (AFP) - - Dubai appeared to shrug off a slowdown in global air travel and its own financial crisis, announcing on Monday the launch of its first budget carrier, a sister company to high-flying Emirates airline.

Flydubai will take to the skies in two months, with flights to Beirut on June 1 and to Amman on June 2, company chairman Sheikh Ahmed bin Saeed al-Maktoum told reporters.

The company's website listed Dubai-Beirut-Dubai fares starting from 170 dollars, compared to the standard return ticket price of 1,800 dirhams (490 dollars) with Emirates.

"We are committed to bringing a new option to the market and to growing the region's budget air travel business," said Sheikh Ahmed, also chairman of Emirates.

"This will benefit our economy, our people, and tourism business as a whole."

Despite a global economic slowdown whose effects are being felt in the oil-rich Gulf, Sheikh Ahmed said: "There is a lot of potential in this region... and we have a lot to do."

The Gulf emirate first announced the establishment of flydubai in March 2008, with a start-up capital of 250 million dirhams (67 million dollars).

"We set the date long time ago. We never really thought of delaying (the launch)... we think that the market is there," Sheikh Ahmed told AFP.

Flydubai will operate two next-generation Boeing 737-800 aircraft on the Beirut and Amman routes, and have four aircraft by the end of the year, he said.

Dubai owns the largest Middle East carrier, Emirates, and has the busiest airport in the region which handled more than 37 million passengers in 2008, a nine percent increase from 2007.

The new airline will be based at Dubai Airport. It was first expected to use Dubai's al-Maktoum International airport, but the new hub is running behind schedule and is now expected to open in 2010 instead of this year.

It joins an increasing number of budget airlines in the region.

The neighbouring emirate of Sharjah operates Air Arabia, while Kuwait's Jazeera Airways operates from Dubai and Kuwait, Bahrain Air flies from the neighbouring Gulf archipelago, and Nas from oil-rich Saudi Arabia.

Air Arabia is the Middle East's first and largest no-frills carrier, which carried 3.6 million passengers in 2008 and saw annual profit surged 35.6 percent to 138.9 million dollars.

"Nobody can stop competition. It will always be there, whether in your home ground and anywhere else," Sheikh Ahmed told AFP.

Dubai's once-booming economy was hard-hit by the global economic crisis, which tightened the noose on finance available for Dubai businesses, especially the massive real estate sector -- once the main engine of growth.

The central bank of the United Arab Emirates came to Dubai's help in February by subscribing to 10 billion dollars in bonds issued by the emirate to finance a foreign debt burden exceeding 74 billion dollars.

But Middle East air travel appears to be bucking a global slowdown, as the region's carriers saw a rise of 0.4 percent in international traffic in February, compared to the same period a year earlier, according to the International Air Transport Association (IATA).

IATA reported a sharp decline in air travel in February, as global passenger numbers nosedived 10.1 percent from the year before while freight traffic fell by 22.1 percent.

US Airways 1549 Hudson crash landing

2009-02-14T06:45:00.000-08:00

Quoted from Wikipedia

US Airways Flight 1549 was a commercial passenger flight from New York City's LaGuardia Airport bound for Charlotte, North Carolina that ditched in the Hudson River on January 15, 2009. All 155 on board survived.

While in the flight's initial climb out about two minutes after taking off at 3:25 p.m. EST (20:25 UTC), the Airbus 320 struck a flock of Canada Geese[6] at about 3,000 feet resulting in an immediate loss of thrust from both engines. When the pilots concluded that their airliner would be unable to safely reach any airfield from their altitude and location near the George Washington Bridge, they turned south and headed down the river looking for a place to ditch. After gliding for about eight miles in essentially unpowered flight, the aircrew set the airliner down intact in mid-river at 3:31 pm near the USS Intrepid Museum (Pier 86, North River) in midtown Manhattan. All 150 passengers and 5 aircrew safely evacuated the cabin and were rescued from the partially submerged plane by the crews of nearby commercial and rescue watercraft.

The entire crew of Flight 1549 was later awarded the Master's Medal of the Guild of Air Pilots and Air Navigators. The award citation read, "This emergency ditching and evacuation, with the loss of no lives, is a heroic and unique aviation achievement

The downed US Airways Flight 1549 floating on the Hudson River
Incident summary
Date January 15, 2009 (2009-01-15)
Type Multiple bird strikes, controlled ditching
Site Hudson River between New York City near 48th Street and Port Imperial at Weehawken, New Jersey, United States
Passengers 150[1]
Crew 5
Injuries 78[2] (mostly minor)
Fatalities 0
Survivors 155 (all)
Aircraft type Airbus A320-214
Operator US Airways
Tail number N106US

While in the flight's initial climb out about two minutes after taking off at 3:25 p.m. EST (20:25 UTC), the Airbus 320 struck a flock of Canada Geese[6] at about 3,000 feet resulting in an immediate loss of thrust from both engines. When the pilots concluded that their airliner would be unable to safely reach any airfield from their altitude and location near the George Washington Bridge, they turned south and headed down the river looking for a place to ditch. After gliding for about eight miles in essentially unpowered flight, the aircrew set the airliner down intact in mid-river at 3:31 pm near the USS Intrepid Museum (Pier 86, North River) in midtown Manhattan. All 150 passengers and 5 aircrew safely evacuated the cabin and were rescued from the partially submerged plane by the crews of nearby commercial and rescue watercraft.

The entire crew of Flight 1549 was later awarded the Master's Medal of the Guild of Air Pilots and Air Navigators. The award citation read, "This emergency ditching and evacuation, with the loss of no lives, is a heroic and unique aviation achievement."

The captain was Chesley "Sully" Sullenberger, 57, a former fighter pilot who had been an airline pilot since leaving the Air Force in 1980. He is also a safety expert and a glider pilot. The first officer was Jeffrey B. Skiles, 49.[17][20][21] The flight attendants were Donna Dent,[22] Doreen Welsh, and Sheila Dail.

The aircraft was an Airbus A320-214 (US Registry: N106US), powered by two GE Aviation/Snecma-designed CFM56-5B4/P engines manufactured in France and the U.S.[25] One of 74 A320s then in service in the US Airways fleet,[26] it was built by Airbus Industrie with final assembly at its facility at Aéroport de Toulouse-Blagnac in France in June, 1999. Delivered to the carrier on August 2, 1999, the airliner was registered to Wells Fargo Bank Northwest, NA, as owner/lessor[27] with AIG listed as the lead insurer.[28]

The mechanical energy of the two engines is the primary source of routine electrical power and hydraulic pressure for the aircraft flight control systems.[30] The aircraft also has an auxiliary power unit (APU), which can provide backup electrical power for the aircraft, including its electrically powered hydraulic pumps; and a ram air turbine (RAT), a type of wind turbine that can be deployed into the airstream to provide backup hydraulic pressure and electrical power at certain speeds.[30] According to the NTSB, both the APU and the RAT were operating as the plane descended into the Hudson, although it was not clear whether the RAT had been deployed manually or automatically.[30]

The Airbus A320 also has a "ditching" button that closes valves and openings underneath the aircraft including the outflow valve, the air inlet for the emergency Ram Air Turbine, avionics inlet, extract valve and flow control valve. It is meant to slow flooding in a water landing.[31] The flight crew did not activate the "ditch switch" during the incident

At 3:27:36,[34] using the call sign "Cactus 1539 [sic]",[36][37] the flight radioed air traffic controllers at New York Terminal Radar Approach Control (TRACON)[38] "Hit birds. We lost thrust in both engines. Returning back towards LaGuardia." Passengers and cabin crew later reported hearing "very loud bangs" in both engines and seeing flaming exhaust, then silence from the engines and the odor of unburned fuel in the cabin.[8][39][40] Responding to the captain's report of a bird strike, controllers gave Sullenberger a heading to return to LaGuardia and told him that he could land to the southeast on Runway 13 (heading 135.5°).[38] Sullenberger responded that he was unable.[38] Unofficial radar returns show that the flight reached at most 3,200 feet (980 m) before beginning its descent.

FlightpathSullenberger asked if they could attempt an emergency landing in New Jersey, mentioning Teterboro Airport (Bergen County, New Jersey) as a possibility;[41][38][42] air traffic controllers quickly contacted Teterbero and gained permission for a landing on runway 1.[41] However, Sullenberger told controllers that "We can't do it",[33] and that "We're gonna be in the Hudson," making clear his intention to bring the plane down on the Hudson River due to a lack of altitude.[43] Air traffic control at LaGuardia reported seeing the aircraft pass less than 900 feet (270 m) above the George Washington Bridge.[44] About 90 seconds before touchdown, the captain announced, "Brace for impact,"[44] and the flight attendants instructed the passengers, via the PA system, how to brace themselves and keep their heads down.[45]

The plane ended its six-minute flight at 3:31 pm with an unpowered ditching while heading south at about 150 miles per hour (130 kn; 240 km/h) in the middle of the North River section of the Hudson River roughly abeam 50th Street (near the Intrepid Sea-Air-Space Museum) in Manhattan and Port Imperial in Weehawken, New Jersey. The pilot in command said in an interview on CBS television that his training was to choose a ditching location near operating boats so as to maximize the chance of rescue. The location was near three boat terminals: two used by ferry operator NY Waterway on either side of the Hudson River and a third used by tour boat operator Circle Line.[13][46] The ditching location was approximately 40°46′10″N 74°00′17″W / 40.769498°N 74.004636°W / 40.769498; 74.004636Coordinates: 40°46′10″N 74°00′17″W / 40.769498°N 74.004636°W / 40.769498; 74.004636.[47] After coming to a stop in the river, the plane began drifting southward with the current.[48]

Immediately after the plane came to a stop, the captain issued the order to evacuate and the three flight attendants began evacuating the passengers through the four emergency window exits over the wings and into the inflatable, floating slides deployed from the two front passenger doors. Two flight attendants were in the front, one in the rear. Each flight attendant in the front opened a door and inflated a slide. One rear door was opened by a panicked passenger, causing the aircraft to fill more quickly with water. The flight attendant in the rear attempted to close the rear door, but was not successful, she told CBS News.[51] She also urged passengers to move forward by climbing over seats to escape the rising water within the cabin. One passenger was in a wheelchair. After the plane had been evacuated, the captain twice walked the length of the cabin to confirm that no one remained inside before becoming the last person to leave his plane.Evacuees, some wearing life-vests, waited for rescue on the partly submerged slides, knee-deep in icy river water. Others stood on the wings or, fearing an explosion, swam away from the plane.

The FDNY sent four marine units and rescue divers.[60] On land, FDNY declared a level III (All Hands) emergency and mobilized their Major Emergency Response, Logistical Support Units and had 35 ambulances ready for patients coming off the flight.[61][62] About 140 FDNY firefighters responded to docks near the crash.[60] The NYPD sent squad cars, helicopters, vessels, and rescue divers from the Aviation Unit and Harbor Unit.

The downed plane being recovered from the Hudson River during the night of January 17.At 4:55 p.m. (21:55 UTC) fire crews began to stand down. At 5:07 p.m. (22:07 UTC), Doug Parker, CEO of US Airways, issued an official statement during a press conference in Tempe, Arizona, in which he confirmed that the flight had been involved in an accident.[70]

The flight crew, particularly Captain Sullenberger, were widely praised for their actions during the incident including by New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg and New York Governor David Paterson who opined, "We had a 'Miracle on 34th Street.' I believe now we have had a 'Miracle on the Hudson'."[66][71][72][73] Outgoing U.S. President George W. Bush said he was "inspired by the skill and heroism of the flight crew," and he also praised the emergency responders and volunteers.[74] Then President-elect Barack Obama said that everyone was proud of Sullenberger's "heroic and graceful job in landing the damaged aircraft," and thanked the plane's crew (which he invited to attend his inauguration as President in Washington, D.C., five days later) and those on the scene in New York who helped ensure the safety of all 155 people aboard.[75] [76]

Following the rescue, the plane remained afloat though partially submerged, and was quickly moored to a pier near the World Financial Center in Lower Manhattan, roughly 4 miles (6 km) downstream from where it had ditched.[45] The left engine had detached from the plane during the ditching and was recovered several days later from the river bottom, 65 feet (20 m) below the surface.[77] The right engine was initially thought to have detached, but was later found to be still attached to the aircraft although much of its nacelle was missing.[78] On January 17, the aircraft, which was written off,[79] was removed from the Hudson River and placed on a barge.[33][80][81] The aircraft was then moved to New Jersey for examination.[82]

[edit] Accident investigation
Shortly after the event, FAA spokeswoman Laura Brown said that the plane may have been hit by birds.[83] A National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) Go Team (typically comprising specialists in fields relating to the incident), led by Senior Air Safety Investigator Robert Benzon, was dispatched to New York.[84] The preliminary report of the incident, published on January 16, states that the aircraft went down following a bird strike.[85] This conclusion, and the simultaneous loss of thrust in both engines, was confirmed by preliminary analysis of the Cockpit Voice Recorder and the Flight Data Recorder which were both recovered from the airframe by the NTSB when it was lifted out of the river on January 18.[50]

The next day, reports surfaced that the same airplane and same flight had experienced a similar but less severe compressor stall on January 13. During that flight, passengers were told they might have to make an emergency landing.[86][87] However, the affected engine was restarted and the flight continued to Charlotte. The NTSB later reported that this engine surge had been caused by a faulty temperature sensor, which was replaced, and that the engine was undamaged by the event, which allowed the plane to return to service.[88]

Feather found in left (#1) engineOn January 21, the NTSB noted that organic debris, including a single feather, as well as evidence of soft-body damage, was found in the right engine.[89][90] The left engine was recovered from the river on January 23 and, like the right engine, was missing a large portion of its housing.[91] On initial examination the NTSB reported that while missing obvious organic matter, it too had evidence of soft body impact, and "had dents on both the spinner and inlet lip of the engine cowling. Five booster inlet guide vanes are fractured and eight outlet guide vanes are missing." Both engines were to be sent to the manufacturer's Cincinnati facility for teardown and examination.[92] On January 31, the plane was moved to a secure storage facility in Kearny, New Jersey, for the remainder of the investigation. The NTSB confirmed that bird remains had been found in both engines,[88][93] and through DNA testing were later identified as Canada Geese (Branta canadensis). The typical weight of these birds is well above the threshold the engines were designed to withstand on impact.

Flight 1549 is the fifth take-off/departure phase accident involving a commercial air carrier at LaGuardia since the field opened in 1939 which resulted in the write off of the accident aircraft.[96] Of those, it is also the third involving the hull loss of a US Airways/USAir plane.

2009-01-17T23:41:00.001-08:00

'Horrifying' year for SAS ends with losses, layoffs
AFP - Wednesday, February 4STOCKHOLM (AFP) - - Beleaguered Scandinavian carrier SAS, which slumped into the red for 2008, said Tuesday it would step up restructuring, lay off thousands, sell subsidiaries and cut 40 percent of its routes.

STOCKHOLM (AFP) - - Beleaguered Scandinavian carrier SAS, which slumped into the red for 2008, said Tuesday it would step up restructuring, lay off thousands, sell subsidiaries and cut 40 percent of its routes.

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The airline reported a net loss of 6.32 billion kronor (590 million euros, 760 million dollars) in 2008, after a profit of 636 million kronor in 2007 and a loss of 2.77 billion kronor in the fourth quarter.

The news sent the share price crashing down almost 17 percent to 35.80 kronor on the Stockholm stock exchange.

"Horrifying," said chief executive Mats Jansson of the company's losses at a press conference.

"2008 will probably go down in history as one of the most challenging and turbulent years that the entire aviation industry has ever experienced," he said earlier in a press release.

Already weakened in 2007 by technical problems which led to the grounding of its short-haul Dash-Q400 planes, SAS in 2008 faced plummeting demand due to the global economic downturn and a deadly crash in Madrid.

A plane operated by Spanair, an SAS unit, crashed in August in the Spanish capital, killing 154 people.

Out of SAS' 6.32-billion-kronor loss last year, 4.89 billion was attributable to Spanair which the Scandinavian company finally sold to a consortium of Spanish investors last week for a single euro.

To overcome its dire financial difficulties, SAS said Tuesday it would launch a new restructuring programme involving a share issue to raise 6.0 billion kronor and a fresh 14-plane reduction in its fleet.

An additional 3,000 employees would also be laid off while a further 5,600 workers would be taken off its books through outsourcing.

The restructuring programme has already received the thumbs-up from the Swedish, Danish and Norwegian governments, which together control 50 percent of the airline, as well as from its major private shareholders.

The carrier at the end of 2008 employed 24,635 people, having announced the lay-off of 2,500 workers in August. It had also cut back on its fleet by 33 aircraft, 15 of which belonged to Spanair.

Some 40 percent of the company's routes will be cut and a number of subsidiaries, including British Midlands, Estonian Air, Air Greenland and Skyways airlines, will be sold, SAS said.

Jansson, who has headed the company since January 2007, said the plan unveiled Tuesday would help streamline operations and save 4.0 billion kronor between 2009 and 2011.

The programme, he said, "will lead to SAS becoming a more focused and less complex company.

"SAS's market position remains strong. Our brand stands for quality, reliability and stability," he said, stressing that "in light of the fundamental crisis that is going on around the world, the losses remain at a manageable level."

Jansson also said the airline aimed to refocus its business on the Nordic market, which he said remained fairly healthy and showed potential for growth.

Swedish Industry Minister Maud Olofsson hailed the plan and said she had faith in SAS' management. Despite the dire news, she said she did not believe the company was on the verge of bankruptcy.

"I wouldn't say that. But there is a lot of competition in the airline industry and each company needs to run a very efficient operation to be profitable," she told news agency TT.

Unions representing both SAS's cabin crew and pilots said meanwhile they supported management's restructuring plan.

"We think it's good, it's a return to the old SAS and a smaller company that hopefully can be competitive," a union representative for SAS cabin crew, Pelle Gustafsson, told TT.

SAS, established in 1946 and today comprising SAS Denmark, SAS Norway and SAS Sweden, as well as low-cost airlines Blue 1 and Wideroe, has a 40 percent share of the northern European civil aviation market.

Germany's leading airline Lufthansa has long been mentioned as a rescuer for the Scandinavian company, which carried more than 29 million passengers last year, not including Spanair.

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One World members

2009-01-16T00:46:00.001-08:00

Sky Team members

2009-01-14T19:33:00.000-08:00

Star Alliance members

2009-01-14T19:29:00.002-08:00

Air traffic at Chitose airport

2009-01-14T19:29:00.001-08:00

Air traffic at Kansai Airport

2009-01-14T19:28:00.003-08:00

Aerial view of Chitose as we approach the airport

2009-01-14T19:28:00.001-08:00

Kansai airport

2009-01-14T09:49:00.000-08:00

View of Kansai airport from the air

Departure Gates

Departure Hall

Japan Airlines economy class configuration

2009-01-12T03:09:00.000-08:00

We flew on flight JL720 from Singapore to Kansai on a Boeing 767-300

Aer Lingus rejects 748-mln-euro bid from Ryanair

2008-12-01T18:19:00.000-08:00

Aer Lingus has rejected a bid by Ryanair. It will be interesting to see how long the unions can fight the economic realities.

AFP - Tuesday, December 2DUBLIN (AFP) - - Irish airline Aer Lingus rejected Monday a 748-million-euro (950-million-dollar) cash takeover offer from Ryanair, Europe's biggest budget airline, saying it was way below its real value.

"The board rejects this new offer and Aer Lingus shareholders are strongly advised to take no action in relation to the offer," the former national carrier's board said in a statement.

"Aer Lingus remains a strong business with significant cash reserves and a robust long-term future. The board believes that the offer significantly undervalues Aer Lingus," it added.

The offer represented a premium of about 25 percent compared with the closing price for Aer Lingus shares on Friday but was only half the 1.48 billion euros that Ryanair offered for its Irish rival in an unsuccessful takeover attempt in October 2006.

Unveiling the new offer, Ryanair chief executive Michael O'Leary said the deal "will form one Irish airline group with the financial strength to compete with Europe's three major airline groups -- Air France, British Airways and Lufthansa.

"The world has changed dramatically over the past two years, as high oil prices and deep recession have caused a flood of airline bankruptcies, consolidations and capacity cutbacks," he added in a statement.

Ryanair, which already owns almost 30 percent of Aer Lingus, offered 1.40 euros per outstanding share and said that following any merger it planned to operate both airlines as separate companies with "distinctive brands."

Ryanair added in the statement: "Over the past two years, the management of Aer Lingus have failed its shareholders, customers and staff. Its shares have fallen from over three euros, to less than one euro recently."

Aer Lingus shares surged on news of the offer, with the bid from an airline renowned for keeping costs to a minimum getting an angry reception from unions.

"For our members and workers in the airline industry it would be a nightmare if Ryanair ran the show," said Teresa Hannick, assistant organiser of the Aer Lingus branch of the trade union SIPTU.

Aer Lingus posted an operating loss of 22.3 million euros for the first six months of 2008, compared with an operating profit of 2.6 million euros a year earlier.

In October, it announced plans to save 74 million euros a year by cutting costs, including making savings on staff.

Ryanair's 2006 bid was strongly opposed by major Aer Lingus shareholders, including the Irish government, company employees, pilots and their pension fund. It was ultimately blocked by EU anti-competition regulators.

Analysts however gave the new bid a better chance of success.

"We see this bid as having a better chance of approval given the flow of mergers and approvals of state aid within the sector, as well as recent combinations of businesses in financial services that would never have passed competition authority scrutiny only three months ago," said Royal Bank of Scotland analyst Andrew Lobbenberg.

Jim Power, chief economist of the Friends First financial services group, told RTE radio: "I think Ryanair is taking the view that the environment has changed dramatically across Europe over the last six months and the EU Commission might now take a different view."

In London trade, shares in Aer Lingus ended the day 13.6 percent higher at 1.27 euros. Ryanair lost 4.8 percent at 2.79 euros, roughly in line with a much weaker overall market.

Tiger Airways news

2008-10-31T16:17:00.000-07:00

Reuters - Saturday, November 1SINGAPORE, Oct 31 - Tiger Airways, a budget carrier partly owned by Singapore Airlines , said on Friday it is sticking to its growth plans despite financial market turmoil, with seven additional planes expected within the next two years.

CEO Tony Davis said that despite the global economic slowdown he still saw good passenger demand, but said airfares would come under pressure.

"I still want to travel, I still want to have my holiday, I still want to see my family, but I'm looking for a cheaper fare," said Davis at an aviation conference in Singapore.

The low-cost carrier expects a total of 60 additional planes by 2016, five times the amount it operates currently.

Weakening consumer sentiment has led regional airlines to cut back routes, layoff staff and post losses. Singapore Air holds a 49 percent stake in Tiger.

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Cathay Pacific news from Reuters

2008-10-31T16:14:00.000-07:00

Cathay sheds 5 jets from fleet, sees tough outlook

Reuters - Saturday, November 1* To leave fleet over 2 yrs

* Revenue from passenger services, cargo below targets

* Industry outlook remains very challenging

By Joanne Chiu

HONG KONG, Oct 31 - Cathay Pacific <0293.HK>, scrambling to cut costs in a worsening travel and aviation environment, said it planned to shed five jets from its fleet and warned of slowing bookings.

Asia's fifth-largest airline said the planes would be replaced eventually and it would continue to grow its fleet, although at a slower pace, according to a report posted on Cathay's internal websit on Friday.

Chief Executive Tony Tyler said in the report that cash from a disposal of five Boeing 777-200 aircraft would be useful, but added the airline was not certain a deal could go through in the current climate.

A Cathay spokeswoman confirmed the internal report had been posted on the website.

"The outlook remains very challenging with continued stress on the premium segment and weakening demand in the economy cabin. This means consistently weaker forward bookings for the rest of the year compared to 2007," Tyler said in the report.

Cathay also said that in the week ended Oct. 25, net revenue from passenger services, cargo and mail and excess baggage was 4.4 percent below target. The target was not specified.

Cathay, which owns regional carrier Dragonair and has an 18.1 percent stake in mainland carrier Air China <0753.HK><601111.SS>, posted a January-June net loss of HK$663 million , its first interim loss in five years, on soaring fuel costs.

Despite global oil prices falling more than half to $64 per barrel this week from a record $147 in July, Cathay may not benefit as much as expected.

"First, we will inevitably see a reduction in fuel surcharges soon. Second, the hedging protection we benefit from when prices rise has to be paid for by benefiting less when prices fall," the report said.

Aviation analysts warned this week that Asian airlines will fail as tourism in the region slows and a worsening global economic outlook leads carriers such as Singapore Airlines to cut back flights. [ID:nSIN353347]

The financial crisis is moving into the real economy as layoffs hurt consumer sentiment, leading airlines from China to India to post losses or lay off staff and hoteliers to focus on budget travellers as the luxury market takes a hit.

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A380 celebrates one year of service with SIA

2008-10-30T09:40:00.000-07:00

Delta and NW merger

2008-10-29T21:24:00.001-07:00

Delta airline and Northwest Airlines have merged to become the biggest airline in the world

2008-10-29T21:03:00.000-07:00

Flying over the coast of the Gulf of Thailand

suvanau is located among aquaculture ponds

Our plane on its way to the runway

Taking off

Air Asia Airbus A320 landing at Changi airport

2008-10-28T10:08:00.000-07:00

2008-10-19T05:49:00.000-07:00

Departure hall

Departure gate

Suvanabumi airport Bangkok

2008-10-19T05:45:00.001-07:00

Exterior view of Bangkok airport

Qantas mid-air plunge

2008-10-11T05:37:00.000-07:00

About 50 passengers were taken to hospital after a Qantas A330-300 plunged nose down during a Tuesday flight from Singapore to Perth. Investigators from the Australian Transport Safety Bureau (ATSB) were quoted as sayting on Wednesday that instruments aboard flight QF72 had warned pilots of a glitch in the stabilisation system just before the accident. The plane was carrying 303 passengers and 10 crew members when the incident happended at 11,000m. The jet made an emergency landing at Learmonth about 1,100km north east of Perth.

Airlines brace for credit-card processor demands

2008-10-09T10:09:00.000-07:00

Reuters - Tuesday, October 7 By Kyle Peterson

CHICAGO, Oct 6 - U.S. airlines, struggling to find stability in a time of unprecedented economic turbulence, are bracing against possible trauma that could be inflicted by credit-card processors made skittish by the credit crisis.

In recent months, top carriers like AMR Corp's American Airlines and UAL Corp's United Airlines have topped off their cash positions or changed deals with credit-card processors -- defensive moves triggered by fears that processors may demand bigger cash holdbacks.

"People are trying to get out in front of this because they don't want to be in the position that Frontier was," said airline consultant Robert Mann.

Frontier Airlines Holdings Inc filed for bankruptcy in April after its credit-card processor, First Data Corp, surprised the low-cost carrier with higher withholding requirements that put a strain on Frontier's liquidity. Other airlines aim to avoid that fate.

"It's going to continue to be an issue as long as the credit markets are in disarray," Mann said.

Credit-card processors take payment from airline customers who book travel weeks or months before a flight. Processors then pass that money to the carrier. But in doing so, they take on the risk that the airline could go under and fail to reimburse the money for travel not provided. In that event, the card processor would be left with that obligation.

To avoid or limit that risk, processors often require airlines to put a percentage of their advance booking proceeds aside for use should reimbursement be necessary.

Depending on its agreements with airlines, a processor that doubts the ability of an airline to provide travel or repay its debts may require a higher percentage of advance ticket revenue to be withheld.

In Frontier's case, First Data demanded that 50 percent of credit-card funds from advance purchases be withheld.

"Most credit card processing agreements include some kind of minimum liquidity requirement," said Bill Warlick, analyst at Fitch Ratings.

Warlick noted actions by American Airlines parent AMR and United parent UAL.

Last month, AMR said it would draw down its $225 million revolving credit facility to add to its liquidity pool and reduce the amount of potential credit-card holdback reserves. The company has said only one of its agreements gives the processor the right to hold back proceeds.

"t is possible that we could have holdbacks in place by the end of the year to the tune of about $200 million to $300 million," AMR Chief Financial Officer Thomas Horton said in July.

In June, UAL reached a deal with credit-card processors reducing reserves that United is required to maintain under a credit-card processing agreement.

In August, Delta Air Lines Inc borrowed the full amount of its $1 billion revolving credit facility to bolster its cash position. The company also amended its Visa/MasterCard processing agreement, which has no cash holdback requirement.

In June, Continental Airlines Inc amended a card processing deal to remove a minimum earnings-to-fixed-charges ratio as a trigger that could require the airline to post additional collateral. The agreement, however, requires the airline to maintain a minimum level of cash as well as a minimum rating on senior unsecured debt.

Fitch's Warlick said the U.S. airline industry, which in recent years has gone through a massive reorganization, is somewhat insulated from the credit crisis. The companies have restructured their debt and have less need for major purchases as they downsize.

But the risk that they might face higher cash holdback requirements remains a wild card.

"It's definitely one of the key liquidity issues that we're focused on right now," he said.

Qantas A380

2008-09-21T00:51:00.000-07:00

AFP - 1 hour 33 minutes ago SYDNEY (AFP) - - Qantas landed its first A380 superjumbo here on Sunday, hopeful that its arrival will boost the Australian carrier, which has recently faced a series of mechanical problems including a mid-air blast.

The arrival of the first of the giant Airbus A380s, the world's largest passenger jet, in Australia comes as Qantas also battles rising fuel costs and global financial uncertainty.

"We are witnessing an exciting new era for Qantas but also for Australian aviation," executive general manager John Borghetti said after the plane landed at Sydney airport cheered by hundreds of Qantas staff and their families.

Borghetti said the A380s, which run on four Rolls-Royce engines and have a wingspan of about 80 metres (264 feet), were quieter and more fuel-efficient than other planes while the interiors would redefine the customer experience.

"It's so exciting. It gives the whole industry a boost, particularly so given the economic climate that we are in," Borghetti told AFP.

Borghetti said the arrival of the 350-million-dollar (290 million US) dollar A380 -- delivered to the airline in France on Friday -- would allow Qantas to keep its position at the forefront of world aviation.

Asked about the recent mechanical problems encountered by the airline, Borghetti said only: "Qantas' engineering excellence is legendary."

In July, Qantas faced a storm of negative publicity after an oxygen cylinder exploded on a flight from Hong Kong to Melbourne in July, forcing an emergency landing in Manila.

The incident was one of several that prompted the Australian aviation watchdog to urge Qantas earlier this month to improve maintenance.

Qantas was the first airline to order the A380s, committing to the double-decker craft in 2000, but delivery has been slowed by delays and budget overruns in production in Toulouse, France.

The airline's first commercial A380 service will operate between Melbourne and Los Angeles on October 20. It hopes to have taken delivery of three of the aircraft by the end of the year.

Airbus has said the aeroplane can seat 853 passengers, all in economy class. Qantas has configured its A380 to seat 450 passengers in four classes.

Alitalia Unions given deadline

2008-09-17T17:56:00.000-07:00

ROME (AFP) - - Alitalia's trade unions were warned Wednesday they had less than 24 hours to accept a deal on a rescue plan for the ailing airline, ANSA news agency reported.

"The reply must come in by 3:50 pm (1350 GMT) on Thursday, or 10 minutes before the consortium behind the plan meets to decide whether to save Alitalia from bankruptcy," ANSA quoted government official Gianni Letta as saying.

Roberto Colaninno, the head of the Italian Air Company (CAI) consortium, for his part threatened that "without a consensus, I will withdraw the offer," ANSA reported.

They were speaking at a meeting between CAI and the nine unions, which was also attended by Labour Minister Maurizio Sacconi.

Sacconi said the time for negotiations was over, though Sky TG 24 television said five unions were to make counter-proposals at Wednesday's meeting.

The other four unions signed a draft agreement Monday, but the move sparked attacks from pilots and cabin crews, and continuing strike action by some employees on Wednesday forced the cancellation of nearly 100 Alitalia flights.

Some 1,000 people also demonstrated at the Rome-Fiumicino airport in support of the strike.

The plan has divided the unions, with holdout syndicates continuing to air doubts about it.

Renata Polverini, general secretary of the Uil Transport union which signed the draft agreement, appealed to the pilots' union, in particular, to be more flexible.

"I think at this time, we all need to make an extra effort to get out of this situation in the best way possible," Polverini said.

But Massimo Notaro, president of the UP pilots' union, judged the takeover offer "very weak and leaves us extremely skeptical."

And the country's leading CGIL syndicate said was prepared to reject the deal "if nothing changes," its national secretary Fabrizio Solari said.

Still the government offered an upbeat take on the negotiations.

"I have been and I remain confident," said transportation minister Altero Matteoli. "Nobody today has said no."

The potential buyers, who are ready to put one billion euros (1.4 billion dollars) on the table, have proposed a plan that would reduce the number of workers by 3,250 to 12,500.

CAI administrator Rocco Sabelli said the consortium was prepared to leave wages untouched, but on condition that working hours and productivity are increased.

The CAI plan also provides for a foreign airline taking a minority stake in the new Alitalia. Sacconi said British Airways, Air France-KLM and Lufthansa were all interested, and would not be looking to buy the company.

Alitalia employs a total of 20,000 people, but certain offshoots, such as maintenance and freight operations will be hived off.

Alitalia's collapse would be a political embarrassment for Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, who had promised before the last elections that he would keep it flying under Italian control.

He said on Monday that unions holding out against the rescue deal should recognise that there is no alternative.

"The moment has come to appeal to the sense of responsibility of all those who hesitate and seem not to realise that the alternative is bankruptcy and the loss of 20,000 jobs," said Berlusconi, quoted by ANSA.

The minority union that called Wednesday's strike, CUB Trasporti, bitterly criticised the scheme to restructure the airline, saying it would reduce Alitalia to little more than a domestic carrier.

The government currently holds a 49.9 percent share in Alitalia, a national symbol for Italians since it was founded in 1946, which has lurched for years from crisis to crisis, and from restructuring plans to the latest takeover rescue scheme.

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Airplane crash in Russia

2008-09-13T23:10:00.000-07:00

MOSCOW, (AFP) - - A Boeing-737 jet crashed near Russia's city of Perm in the central Ural mountains killing all 82 passengers and six crew on board, including 21 foreigners, the jet's owner Aeroflot said Sunday.

"The Boeing-737 carried 82 passengers on board, including seven children, and six crew... All passengers were killed," Aeroflot said in a statement.

"There are foreign citizens among the victims, including nine from Azerbaijan, five from Ukraine, and one each from France, Switzerland, Latvia, the United States, Germany, Turkey and Italy," the statement said.

Earlier the company denied that any foreigners were killed in the accident.

"As the plane was coming in for landing, it lost communication at the height of 1,100 meters and air controllers lost its blip. The airplane was found within Perm's city limits completely destroyed and on fire," the statement added.

Earlier, investigator Vladimir Markin was quoted by the RIA Novosti news agency as saying that "there were 82 passengers plus a baby and five crew on board, and by preliminary information, they are all dead" as the airplane "fell into a ravine near the city limits."

However, a ministry source quoted by RIA Novosti said that the plane fell just meters away from apartment houses, and that the entire area was cordoned off by police to help investigators.

An emergency situations ministry source quoted by RIA Novosti also claimed it was possible that three people who bought a ticket for the ill-fated flight 821 to Perm did not get on board.

The wreckage was strewn over some four square kilometers, officials said, adding that the flames had been completely put out.

The cause of the accident was not immediately clear, though a source quoted by RIA Novosti suggested that an engine failure could have sparked flames on board and led to the crash.

One of the airplane's two black boxes was found among the wreckage, officials quoted by RIA Novosti said, adding that it was already handed over to experts for decoding.

Aeroflot set up a crisis center for the victims' relatives both in Moscow's Sheremetyevo-1 airport and in Perm, including psychological aid, the company said.

The airline also pledged to pay "compensation on obligatory accident insurance in full, which would make up to two million rubles (some 80,000 dollars) per victim," the company's statement said.

Emergency Situations Minister Sergei Shoigu reported the accident to Russia's President Dmitry Medvedev, the Kremlin press service said.

An investigative group headed by Transport Minister Igor Levitin was due to fly out to the site.

The emergency situations ministry considered sending a rescue team to the site from Moscow, but later reported that "Perm had sufficient resources to deal with the search and rescue mission and decided to delay sending out experts from Moscow."

The Trans-Siberian Railway, which was damaged in the accident, had been cut off on the stretch between Perm and Yekaterinburg, and all trains put on detour, local police officials said.

The airplane had been leased by Aeroflot from a Dublin-based company Pinewatch Limited in late July until March 2013, Aeroflot said.

Last year, the 33 Russian aviation accidents that left 318 dead -- a sixfold increase over 2005 -- raised serious concerns about Russia's civil aviation, with experts pointing at major faults in the professional training of crews as well as Russia's aging fleet of passenger jets.

An air safety commission announced in January that the average age of the country's international airliners was 18, and its regional jets 30 years.

Take off at Changi Airport

2008-09-11T09:19:00.001-07:00

Managed to take a couple of shots of planes taking off at Changi

A Singapore Airlines Boeing 777 gaining altitude

A RSAF fokker 50 from the next door Changi Air Base West

Airlines that land in Singapore

2008-09-04T06:40:00.000-07:00

Indonesian budget carrier Lion Air

Turkish Airlines

KLM

Royal Brunei Airways

Malaysian Air System

Japan Airlines

Emirates News

2008-08-30T18:54:00.000-07:00

AFP - Sunday, August 31DUBAI (AFP) - - Dubai's Emirates airline on Saturday took delivery of two long-range Boeings, a 777-200LR and 777-300ER, bringing the carrier's all wide-bodied passenger fleet to 111 aircraft.

Costing more than 500 million dollars, the two new airliners will be used on routes to and from north and south America, the United Arab Emirates' WAM news agency reported.

It quoted Emirates group chairman Sheikh Ahmed bin Saeed Al-Maktoum as calling the 777 "the mainstay of our ultra long-range operations."

The carrier has 63 Boeing 777s, and is set to become the world's largest 777 operator with another 39 of the airliners on order, worth 10.1 billion dollars at list prices.

Emirates is also the biggest customer for the huge European Airbus A380 manufactured by Boeing's main rival, with 58 firm orders for the A380 out of a total of 198 placed with manufacturer EADS.

In July, Emirates received the first of its 58 Airbus 380s on order, and earlier on Saturday an Emirates spokeswoman said delivery of the second may be delayed by several weeks.

Airbus did not confirm the delay, which was first reported in the French daily Le Figaro. A spokesman for the aircraft manufacturer told AFP it is "in discussions with Emirates to determine a delivery date" for the second A380.

The Middle East's biggest airline put its first giant A380 into service on August 1 with a direct flight from Dubai to New York.

Airplane goes off runway in Madrid

2008-08-20T07:36:00.000-07:00

Spanair flight 5022 on its way to Las Palmas in the Canary Islands goes off runway resulting in over 100 deaths

JAL reports loss

2008-08-14T18:43:00.000-07:00

The August 8 issue of the Financial Times reported Japan Airlines, Asia's Largest carrier by revenue slid into a quaterly loss of Yen 3.4 billion (US$31m).