ThreenineRians :D

2010-08-02T20:54:00.000+08:00

Thai Airways and Singapore's Tiger to form budget carrier

On Monday 2 August 2010, 13:35 SGT

Singapore's budget carrier Tiger Airways and Thai Airways will launch a low-cost airline expected to start operations next year, they said Monday, potentially hastening a shake-up in the region.

Thai Tiger Airways will fly domestic and international flights from Suvarnabhumi International Airport in Bangkok, starting in the first quarter of 2011, the statement said.

Thai Airways and another Thai entity will hold 51 percent in the airline with the remaining 49 percent under Tiger Airways.

No details were given on the investment cost for the new budget carrier but the two partners were to hold a media conference call later Monday after signing the memorandum of understanding in Bangkok.

Thai Airways said the venture would allow it to beef up its presence in the fast-growing budget travel market in Asia.

"With its disciplined approach to the low-cost model, Tiger Airways has proven that it has the right approach to competing effectively in the growing low fare travel market in Asia," said Thai Airways president Piyasvasti Amranand.

"We believe that this move will provide revenue opportunities for Thai (Airways) and allow Thai to be more competitive in the region with the anticipated growth in the low cost market... which we expect will lead to growth in air travel in the Asian market."

Tiger Airways, partly owned by national carrier Singapore Airlines, has rapidly expanded its route network in the Asia-Pacific region since establishing operations in 2004.

The carrier flies to 37 destinations in 11 countries and has a fleet of 19 Airbus A320s, with plans to expand to 68 planes by December 2015.

Analysts from the Centre for Asia Pacific Aviation (CAPA) said the new budget carrier could potentially hasten a shake-up for the industry in the region, where some markets are still inhibited by entry barriers.

"The new joint venture... raises the bar in low cost airline operations competition in Asia and could have a major impact on the pace of airline liberalisation in the region," Sydney-based CAPA said in a commentary.

"There will be many more moves in this regional tapestry of low cost airline competition before the end game, but Tiger's announcement today should not be underestimated in scope."

2010-08-01T16:52:00.001+08:00

Close shave for SIA plane

By yahoosingapore – August 1st, 2010Email Facebook Twitter Print

A Singapore Airlines plane was involved in a minor collision after its right wing-tip struck the tail of another plane while departing from Beijing’s International Airport.

Singapore-bound SQ803, Boeing 777, was taxiing out to the runway when its wing-tip hit the tail of a stationary Air China Boeing 737 at about 9am on Saturday.

An SIA spokesman confirmed the incident to The Straits Times.

Two hours later, all 248 passengers on board the SIA flight were told to disembark.

“Engineers were inspecting the plane to see if the aircraft could be fixed immediately,” said the spokesman.

Initial investigations have put the cause down to pilot error due to poor visibility.

2010-08-01T01:32:00.000+08:00

"Black box" recovered from Pakistan crash site

Reuters - Sunday, August 1SendIM StoryPrint

ISLAMABAD - Pakistani investigators found on Saturday the data recorder from AirBlue flight 202, which crashed in heavy rain near Islamabad this week killing all 152 people onboard, officials said.

The Airbus 321 crashed on Wednesday into a steep and heavily wooded hillside overlooking the capital shortly before landing after a flight from the southern port city of Karachi.

"It has been recovered from the scene, from the tail of the plane," Interior Minister Rehman Malik told reporters near the site of the crash.

The Director General of the Civil Aviation Authority, Junaid Ameen, told the private television channel Geo that both the cockpit voice recorder and the flight data recorder -- the so-called "black box" -- had been found.

Thick fog and rainy weather are considered the most likely reasons for the worst aviation accident on Pakistani soil.

While Wednesday's crash is the worst aviation accident inside Pakistan, the state-owned airline PIA has had worse disasters. In 1979 and 1992, PIA jets crashed in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia and Kathmandu, Nepal, killing 156 and 167 people, respectively.

Within Pakistan, the last major aviation accident was in 2006 when a PIA plane crashed near the central city of Multan killing 45 people

2010-08-01T01:16:00.001+08:00

Out of pilots, Philippine airline grounds flights

AP - Saturday, July 31SendIM StoryPrint

MANILA, Philippines – Good morning, passengers, and welcome aboard. We're expecting clear skies today, but we're out of pilots.

National air carrier Philippine Airlines had to cancel at least five flights Saturday _ one to Hong Kong, the others to domestic destinations _ after several Airbus A320 pilots decamped for jobs abroad.

Brain drain _ the decamping of professionals, including teachers and nurses, for better jobs abroad _ has long plagued the impoverished Southeast Asian nation. About 10 percent of the population of 94 million works abroad, sending home the money that provides the bloodline for the economy.

PAL spokesman Jonathan Gesmundo went on TV and radio stations to apologize to the public for the cancellations, which he said were caused by the sudden departure of nearly dozen pilots for better-paying jobs overseas.

He said the pilots did not inform the management, but that this was not a group action.

"In the past few days, pilots had not been reporting for duty. This has caused problems for us," Gesmundo said.

PAL said in a statement it will be filing appropriate charges against the pilots "who chose not to report for work immediately after submitting resignation letters. Most of the pilots still owe PAL the cost of their aviation school training, which run into millions of pesos per pilot.

"The indiscriminate resignation of the A320 pilots for flying jobs whose salaries PAL is unable to match, is in violation of their contracts with PAL as well as with pertinent government regulations that require resigning pilots to give PAL six months to train their replacements," it said.

Gesmundo said the airline was adjusting its schedule and will probably bring in bigger aircraft to accommodate the stranded passengers.

The indebted flag carrier has said it would lay off some of its 8,000-strong work force because of financial losses in the third straight year.

2010-07-29T17:46:00.001+08:00

PARIS - French police have arrested an Air France stewardess on suspicion of stealing thousands of euros in cash, cards and jewelry as passengers slept on long haul flights, a newspaper reported on Tuesday.

Police investigating thefts over several months on flights between France and the Far East picked up the 47-year old attendant identified as Lucie R. after she landed from Tokyo on Friday, Le Figaro said.

"Her bank accounts showed an absurd gap between her lifestyle and her declared income," the newspaper quoted a police investigator as saying.

Police launched an investigation in January after about 4,000 euros' was stolen from five passengers. The robber took advantage of sleeping passengers, taking euros, yen, and Swiss francs as well as watches, jewels, credit cards and even cheque books.

According to the newspaper, the woman, who worked mainly in business class, began her spree in March 2009 to ease financial problems and has confessed to 26 thefts.

Since January, there have been about 140 thefts, the newspaper said. "The Japanese were ideal prey because they travel with lots of cash -- euros and yen -- instead of paying with credit cards," a police source said.

Police found travelers' cheques, blank cheques and bank card numbers at her home, the newspaper said.

2010-07-29T17:43:00.000+08:00

By Kamran Haider

ISLAMABAD - A Pakistani passenger plane crashed in heavy rain near Islamabad on Wednesday, killing all 152 people on board, officials said, in the worst aviation accident in Pakistan.

The Airbus 321, belonging to a private airline crashed into a heavily wooded and hard-to-access hillside while flying from the southern port city of Karachi.

Federal Information Minister Qamar Zaman Kaira said 115 bodies had been recovered so far but bad weather and difficult terrain above the city had hampered search efforts.

"Unfortunately, no one survived ... Many bodies are not in good shape," Kaira told a news conference.

Twelve bodies had been identified so far, but "the crash was very terrible. There was fire. It's difficult to recognise the bodies."

Passengers' remains were badly damaged in the crash and DNA tests would be used to identify the victims, he said.

Two Americans were among the victims, a U.S. embassy spokesman told Reuters. He had no further details.

While thick fog and rainy weather are considered the most likely reasons for the crash, Kaira declined to rule out sabotage and said all possibilities would be investigated.

Kaira said the plane's "black box" data recorder had yet to be recovered.

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 pilot was given directions to land either on runway I or II," Interior Minister Rehman Malik told reporters. "The plane was at 2,600 feet before landing but suddenly it went to 3,000, which was unexplained."

"If the visibility to the runway was so poor then it should have been diverted."

Defence Minister Ahmed Mukhatar said the control tower at the airport had been sealed and a team would examine the data recorder and radio traffic between the plane and the tower.

"If you look at the position of the wreckage it's clear that the plane went beyond safety margins. It should have manoeuvred within five miles of the runway but it did not happen," said Ejaz Haroon, managing director of state-run airline PIA.

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

While Wednesday's crash is the worst aviation accident on Pakistani soil, PIA has had two worse disasters. In 1979 and 1992, PIA jets crashed in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia and Kathmandu, killing 156 and 167 people, respectively.

Within Pakistan, the last major aviation accident was in 2006 when a PIA plane crashed near the central city of Multan killing 45 people.

NEW PLANE

The military sent three helicopters to the site and troops also were deployed. Prime Minister Yusuf Raza Gilani surveyed 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 in the moments after the crash, 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

2010-07-28T23:23:00.001+08:00

Singapore Airlines (SIA) chief executive Chew Choon Seng will step down at the end of this year when his contract expires, the carrier said Tuesday.

The airline said in a brief statement to AFP that an announcement on Chew's replacement would be made once the board has made a decision on the candidate.

Chew, 64, joined SIA in 1972 and rose through the ranks to become chief executive in 2003.

That year, he steered the airline during one of its worst crisis when travel demand was squeezed by the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) health scare.

SIA reported Monday a first quarter net profit of 253 million Singapore dollars (185.65 million US) as the travel industry continued to recover from the global economic slump that started in 2008.

The April-June performance was a sharp turnaround from a year ago when SIA incurred a net loss of 307 million dollars as travel demand slumped because of the downturn.

SIA is one of the world's leading carriers and is consistently voted by travellers as one of their favourite airlines

2010-07-28T23:17:00.000+08:00

By Kamran Haider

ISLAMABAD - A Pakistani passenger plane crashed in heavy rain near Islamabad on Wednesday, killing all 152 people on board, officials said, in the worst aviation accident in Pakistan.

Two Americans were among the victims, a U.S. embassy spokesman told Reuters. He had no further details.

"There are no survivors. We believe all are dead. We are recovering the remains of the dead bodies from the wreckage," Imtiaz Elahi, chairman of the state-run Capital Development Authority, a city municipal body.

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. More than 90 bodies had been recovered so far, but the bad weather was making recovery efforts difficult.

"We have suspended the air operation because of rain. It will take a long time to clear the area. There's no way to transport bodies from the site except via helicopters and even helicopters cannot land there," said Aamir Ali Ahmed, senior city government official, said.

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," police officer Bin Yameen.

The plane lost contact with the control room of the Islamabad International Airport at 0443 GMT. It was carrying 146 passengers and six crew members.

"The pilot was given directions to land either on runway I or II," Interior Minister Rehman Malik told reporters. "The plane was at 2,600 feet before landing but suddenly it went to 3,000, which was unexplained."

"If the visibility to the runway was so poor then it should have been diverted."

Defence Minister Ahmed Mukhatar said the control tower at the airport had been sealed and a team would examine the "black box" data recorder and radio traffic between the plane and the tower.

"If you look at the position of the wreckage it's clear that the plane went beyond safety margins. It should have manoeuvred within five miles of the runway but it did not happen," said Ejaz Haroon, managing director of state-run airline PIA.

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

While Wednesday's crash is the worst aviation accident on Pakistani soil, PIA has had two worse disasters. In 1979 and 1992, PIA jets crashed in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia and Kathmandu, killing 156 and 167 people, respectively.

Within Pakistan, the last major aviation accident was in 2006 when a PIA plane crashed near the central city of Multan killing 45 people.

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 surveyed 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 in the moments after the crash, 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.

2010-07-24T00:34:00.000+08:00

Emirates’ recent announcement to equip all 90 of their new Airbus A380 aircraft with Wi-Fi networks is generating a lot of buzz among travellers.

According to a Bloomberg report, the paid-for-service will be made available in June 2012 and will allow the use of devices such as laptop computers, Apple iPhones and Research In Motion’s BlackBerry smartphones while in flight.

Some responses to a question posed on Yahoo! Answers, “How will Wi-Fi networks on airplanes change your flying experience?” revealed mixed reactions.

Some respondents raised concerns, such as the possible issue of the Wi-Fi signal causing interference with the airplane’s navigation instruments, and the possibility of terrorists taking advantage of the network to create chaos.

One user, “lady”, highlighted that connectivity on the plane may not be a good thing as bosses might expect their employees to work on the plane instead of resting.

“Arnaki” also lamented that his time on the plane was “the only sanctuary I have to shut off my Blackberry”.

Despite concerns raised, the general public sentiment was positive.

One respondent, “Ricky”, emphasised that a Wi-Fi connection would be useful for businessmen and that cost would not be an issue as it would be shouldered by the company. However, he added that pricing would need to be carefully considered, to make the service attractive for ordinary travellers’ use.

Felicia Goh, 23, a public relations coordinator, agreed. “It’ll be good to stay connected with friends and family through social networks, but I don’t think I want to pay for the service as it is not a necessity.”

Undergraduate Terence Chang, 24, offered a more practical view – he would be willing to pay a reasonable price for the service if on a long-haul flight as the cost would likely only be a small fraction of the plane ticket.

So are more airlines likely to offer Wi-Fi networks on their aircraft in the near future?

Singapore Airlines spokesman Nicholas Ionides told Yahoo! Singapore: “There are no immediate plans as yet to feature Wi-Fi on our aircraft, but we do monitor trends and listen to feedback provided by our customers and we have been studying it. Should there be any changes to our in-flight product offerings, an announcement would be made.”

2010-05-30T21:11:00.000+08:00

British Airways cabin crew launch new strike

AFP - 1 hour 1 minute agoSendIM StoryPrint.LONDON (AFP) - – British Airways cabin crew started a fresh five-day strike on Sunday with little sign of a breakthrough in the long-running dispute between their union and the airline.

The latest strike by crew in the Unite union is set to disrupt travel in the half-term school holidays, with another five-day stoppage planned from June 5.

Unite, Britain's biggest trade union, said it believed the 12 days of strikes since March had already cost BA 84 million pounds (121.5 million dollars, 99 million euros).

The walkout affects flights from BA's London Heathrow hub, the world's busiest international passenger airport.

BA said it would increase its flying schedule in the coming week as more cabin crew than expected had decided to work as normal during the strikes.

Its schedule of long-term flights from London Heathrow will be increased to more than 70 percent -- up from more than 60 percent this week.

The short-haul schedule from the airport will rise to more than 55 percent of flights, up from more than 50 percent this week.

"We are very disappointed that Unite are continuing to take strike action," BA said.

"We will continue to do all we can to minimise the disruption.

"At Heathrow we plan to operate a substantial part of our longhaul schedule and there will be a number of flights to every destination across our shorthaul network."

Talks between the two sides ended without agreement on Friday, with Unite accusing BA chief executive Willie Walsh of blocking a resolution to the dispute on travel perks for cabin crew.

Unite's joint leader Derek Simpson offered to conduct talks in the "full glare" of the media so people would be able to see how "unreasonable" BA chief executive Willie Walsh was.

"I prefer these negotiations to be in front of a camera. Let the world see what this is all about. If people could see what he is doing, they would know who to blame," he told BBC television.

"It is all about confidence of management in the workforce and of workforce in the management. Clearly there has been a breakdown. If we could get the confidence back a deal is do-able."

Simpson claimed Walsh said he would only meet for further talks after Unite's annual conference, which opens Monday, in Manchester, northwest England, and continues until the end of the current strike.

This month, BA posted a record annual pre-tax loss of 531 million pounds.

The airline, which has been hit hard by the decreased demand for air travel, is slashing costs and merging with Spanish rival Iberia in a bid to return to profitability.

2010-05-26T23:00:00.001+08:00

Asian carriers dominate 2010 World Airline Awards .Fri May 21 18:33pm EmailShare
TwitterFacebookDeliciousStumbleUponIM StoryPrint.Asiana Airlines has claimed the Skytrax Airline of the Year 2010 title, ahead of Singapore Airlines and Qatar Airways.

Asiana Airlines pips Singapore Airlines to Airline of the Year Award 2010. Photo Credits - Getty Images

More than 17.9 million air travelers from over 100 different nationalities were included in this year’s survey, which recognizes the best in the global airline industry. It was certainly a good year for Asian airlines, with Cathay Pacific, Thai Airways and Malaysia Airlines also making the Airline of Year Award's top 10 list:

1. Asiana Airlines
2. Singapore Airlines
3. Qatar Airways
4. Cathay Pacific
5. Air New Zealand
6. Etihad Airways
7. Qantas Airways
8. Emirates
9. Thai Airways
10. Malaysia Airlines

Other categories airlines were voted on include “Best Low-Cost Airline,” which was won by Air Asia, ahead of Air Berlin and Virgin Blue. Dragon Air was named “World’s Best Regional Airline,” with Silkair and Bangkok Airways coming in second and third, respectively.

Singapore Airlines wins Best Cabin Staff award. Photo Credits - Getty Images

The “Most Improved Airline” award went to Garuda Indonesia, and “Best Cabin Staff” to Singapore Airlines. Ethiad’s topped the vote for “Best First Class” cabin, while fellow Middle Eastern airline Qatar Airways topped the “Best Business Class” category. Malaysian Airlines won the award for "Best Economy Class."

Emirates was named the winner of the "World's Best Airline Inflight Entertainment Award" at the 2010 World Airline Awards, with Singapore Airlines and Virgin Airways coming second and third respectively.

For the full list of categories and winners, go to Worldairlineawards.com.

2010-05-25T21:50:00.001+08:00

Fresh BA cabin crew strike takes off
AFP - Tuesday, May 25SendIM StoryPrint.LONDON (AFP) - – Thousands of air travellers faced renewed disruption on Monday as British Airways cabin crew began a five-day strike, grounding many flights to and from its main London hub.

BA said however its services were "off to a good start" despite the latest walkout in the long-running and increasingly hostile dispute between the airline and Unite, Britain's biggest trade union.

The strike, which began at midnight (2300 GMT) Sunday, affects BA's hub operations at London Heathrow, the world's busiest international passenger airport. BA flights from London's Gatwick and City airports were not disrupted.

Flights to and from Glasgow, Manchester, Amsterdam, Paris, Milan and Munich were among those most affected in a reduced timetable. Three of nine scheduled flights to New York were cancelled.

Striking workers mounted pickets outside Heathrow, many wearing badges reading "Brutish Airways" and chanting slogans attacking BA chief executive Willie Walsh.

While BA and Unite have reached broad agreement on pay, the spat is now focused on heavily discounted flights available to off-duty cabin crew -- key perks which have been taken away from striking workers.

"Our operations around the world have got off to a good start," BA said in a statement.

"The numbers of cabin crew reporting at Heathrow are currently at the levels we need to operate our published schedule.

"At Heathrow, our aim is to fly as many customers as we can during the strike period."

At 1700 GMT, BA said it had operated more than 60 percent of long-haul flights and 50 percent of short-haul flights.

It said it had leased up to eight staffed aircraft from other British or European airlines.

The airline said some of its aircraft were having a "keep the flag flying" slogan painted along their fuselages to highlight that they would continue operating throughout the strike.

Discussions broke down Saturday after dozens of leftwing protestors stormed the talks venue.

BA chief Walsh has faced accusations that he is trying to break the unions at the airline. Unite accuses the flag carrier of imposing changes on cabin crew and refusing to negotiate openly and fairly.

Walsh insists that the airline is struggling for its very existence.

The dispute soured further Monday as Tony Woodley, Unite's joint leader, accused Walsh of wanting "regime change" in the union's cabin crew branch.

Striking workers rallied near Heathrow in west London, waving flags from an open-top bus.

One 42-year-old cabin crew member from south London said: "It's personal now."

Speaking on condition of anonymity, he said: "I was happy that we were allowed to strike, but I'm devastated that we have to."

Britain's Transport Secretary Philip Hammond said the strike would not resolve the outstanding issues and urged a resumption of talks.

"The jobs of all BA staff depend on the airline's future competitiveness and the loyalty of all its customers and, in order to protect both, I now urge BA cabin crew to keep flying and keep talking," he said.

Prime Minister David Cameron "wants to see as little disruption to passengers as possible," his spokesman said.

"The best way to achieve this is for the two parties to resolve the situation as soon as possible," he told reporters.

The new strike comes after BA posted a record annual pre-tax loss of 531 million pounds on slumping sales.

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

Unite plans two more five-day strikes, starting on May 30 and June 5.

2010-05-24T23:09:00.001+08:00

Black box found after fiery India plane crash
By AIJAZ RAHI,Associated Press Writer - Monday, May 24SendIM StoryPrint.MANGALORE, India – As crash investigators pulled the black box from the charred, twisted wreckage of an Air India plane Sunday, Koolikkunnu Krishnan marveled that he escaped the crash alive.

Of the 166 passengers and crew aboard when the plane overshot a hilltop runway and plunged over a cliff at dawn Saturday, 158 were dead. Krishnan and just seven others survived.

"I've been thinking, 'Why me? Why me?' And I can only think that God wanted to give me a second life," he said from his hospital bed in Mangalore.

Investigators and aviation officials combed through the wreckage of the Boeing 737-800 strewn across a hillside to try to determine the cause of India's worst air disaster in more than a decade. They recovered the cockpit voice recorder and flight data recorder, which they hope will give them important clues, the Press Trust of India news agency reported.

A four-member U.S. forensic team also arrived in India to help in the investigation, said Harpreet Singh, an Air India spokeswoman.

By Sunday evening, 146 of the 158 bodies had been identified and were being handed to grieving relatives for burial, said Arvind Jadhav, Air India's chairman and managing director.

The cause of the crash was not clear and government officials declined to speak about the status of the investigation or any possible causes of the crash. The black box would be sent to New Delhi on Monday for decoding and further investigation, they said.

The flight from Dubai to Mangalore carried many of the millions of Indians who work as cheap labor in the Middle East back to their families for a rare visit during India's summer holiday season.

Krishnan, a 45-year-old maintenance worker in Dubai, was coming back to Kasargod, his village in southern India, for the first time in two years to see his wife and two daughters.

"I was literally counting the minutes before I would reach home, while the plane was landing," he said.

After the plane touched down at Mangalore's Bajpe airport, everything seemed to be fine, he said, but within seconds there was a shudder, the aircraft began swinging from side to side as if it had hit something and then it crashed, he said.

"People were screaming, children nearby were wailing loudly," he said.

The plane had broken apart, a fire had started and smoke was beginning to fill the aircraft, he said. Everyone was strapped into their seats.

"I struggled to open my seat belt and then climbed out of the plane. Then I hung onto the roots of a tree and crawled uphill," he said.

"I didn't think of anything at the time. All I knew was that I had to get out and get far away from the plane. The fire was spreading fast. Behind me I could feel other people jumping out but I didn't turn back to look," he said.

While Krishnan suffered shockingly minor injuries _ pulled shoulder muscles and a cut in his forehead _ many of those trapped in the aircraft were burnt nearly beyond recognition.

"I couldn't believe that he could have survived such a major crash," said Krishnan's wife, Bindu. "It's like he's been reborn."

Aviation experts said the eight survivors were seated in the center of the aircraft, near where it broke open, and they managed to get out before a fireball engulfed the plane.

"In this case it was pure luck of the draw," said Sidney Dekker, a professor of flight safety at the School of Aviation at Sweden's Lund University. "The luck of where you are in the airplane relative to how the fuselage disintegrates going into the ravine."

But most could not escape, and dozens of their relatives arrived Sunday on special Air India flights from Dubai and the southern Indian states of Karnataka and Kerala to take the bodies of their loved ones.

Mohammed Mustafa said his brother Naseem and three other relatives had taken the flight home to attend a wedding Tuesday.

"I lost them in this tragedy. Three of them, we could identify three of them yesterday. And late night, at around 12 o' clock, we found the fourth body. Now we have come for the funeral," Mustafa said.

Many of the victims were so badly burned their relatives could not identify them and experts had to be flown in to conduct DNA tests, said S. A. Prabhakarsharana, a local official.

"Since yesterday we have been trying to identify my brother's body," said K. Kushala.

One of the victims was Mahendra Kulkarni, a telecommunications company director in the Emirates, who was flying back to India with his ailing mother-in-law after she had slipped into coma, their cousin Nandit Banawalikar said.

Mohammed Siddiqui, 27, boarded the doomed flight within hours of a telephone call from his family in Kerala informing him of his father's sudden death.

He was rushing to attend the funeral on Saturday. Now his family was mourning a second time, said Abdur Rehman, a friend who was taking his body home.

The crash was the deadliest in India since a November 1996 midair collision killed 349 people. Saturday's crash happened when the plane overshot the runway, airline officials said. Aviation experts said Bajpe's "tabletop" runway, which ends in a valley, makes a bad crash inevitable when a plane does not stop in time.

Kapil Kaul, an aviation expert at the Center for Asia Pacific Aviation, said the while India's air safety record is very good, he hopes the crash will push officials to establish an independent national safety board to ensure standards remain high as the booming economy drives more traffic into the skies.

2010-05-22T22:09:00.001+08:00

By Harish Nayak

MANGALORE, India - An Air India Express airliner crashed outside an airport in southern India on Saturday, killing 158 people when it burst into flames after overshooting a table-top runway and plunging into forest below.

There were eight survivors after the Boeing 737-800, which had come from Dubai with 166 people on board including crew, appeared to skid off the runway in rain at Mangalore airport in Karnataka state, Air India director Anup Srivastava said.

At least 146 bodies had been recovered, said M. Nambiar, a top official in the Civil Aviation ministry.

"We had no hope to survive, but we survived," Pradeep, a survivor who is an Indian technician working in Dubai, told local television.

"The plane broke into two and we jumped off the plane. As soon as the plane landed, within seconds this happened."

Local television showed a fireman carrying what seemed to be the remains of a child from the smoking wreckage. Charred bodies lay in the forested terrain.

All the passengers were Indian nationals, an Air India official in Dubai said. Many were likely Indian migrant workers in Dubai. The pilot was Serbian and said to be very experienced.

Air India Express is the budget arm of the loss-ridden state-run carrier Air India, which has been fending off growing competition from private airlines.

The flight's black box has been recovered, the United Arab Emirates state news agency WAM said. But Air India official Nambiar said the search for the flight data recorder was still going on.

The crash appeared to be an accident, Indian officials said. One TV report said the plane hit a radar pole on landing.

"There was no distress indication from the pilot. That means between the pilot and the airport communication there was no indication of any problem," V.P. Agarwal, director of Airports Authority of India, told local television.

Indian officials said the plane crashed around 6 a.m. . TV images showed it struck a forested area, and flames were blazing from the wreckage as rescue workers fought to bring the fire under control.

"While landing at the airport, the plane deviated and hit something," said Krishna, another survivor. "It caught fire and we fell out. We looked up and saw some opening and came out through that route."

BOOM INDUSTRY

It was India's first major crash in a decade, which has seen a boom in private carriers amid growing demand from India's middle class.

A series of near misses at major airports, including Delhi and Mumbai, have sparked debate about how India's creaking infrastructure was failing to keep pace with an economic boom.

Indian Law Minister Veerappa Moily told CNN-IBN TV that he had opened a new runway at Mangalore airport just 10 days ago. The ill-fated Air India airliner was two years old.

Boeing said in a statement it was sending a team to provide technical assistance to the crash investigation.

The last major crash in India was in July 2000 when an Alliance Air Boeing 737-200 crashed into a residential area during a second landing attempt in the eastern city of Patna, killing at least 50 people.

With growing competition from private carriers, the Indian government agreed to inject $1.1 billion into Air India if the ailing state-run carrier came up with the same amount in cost cuts and extra revenue.

The airline lost $875 million in the fiscal year ended March 2009.

Hundreds of Air India pilots went on strike in September 2009 to protest at management plans to cut pay incentives. The strike was called off when aviation minister Praful Patel said the grievances would be dealt with.

2010-05-22T14:49:00.001+08:00

.By Alistair Scrutton

NEW DELHI - An Air India Express passenger plane from Dubai crashed outside an airport in southern India on Saturday, killing at least 160 people when it burst into flames after overshooting the runway and ploughing into a forest.

There may have been five or six survivors, local media said.

One eyewitness said the plane skidded off the runway in rain at Mangalore airport in Karnataka state.

Air India said the plane was a Boeing 737-800, with 166 people on board, including six crew members. Air India Express is the budget arm of state-run carrier Air India.

"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."

First indications are that the crash was an accident, officials say.

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.

"The plane had broken into two. I jumped out of the plane after it crashed. I saw two other people also come out," Abdullah, a survivor from the plane, told local channel TV9 from hospital.

"There was tyre-burst kind of noise. I tried to get out of the front but saw that there was a big fire. So I went back again and jumped out from there."

One television channel showed a fireman carrying in his arms what seemed to be the remains of a child. Charred bodies and an engine lay in the forested terrain.

"The flight had already landed. There was slight rain. The flight skidded off," eyewitness Mohiuddin Bava told CNN-IBN channel. "After that it caught fire. Villagers, everyone there, came to rescue. The plane wings are right in front of me now."

Air India Express is the low cost arm of Air India. The budget airline started about five years ago. This is the first crash involving an Air India Express plane, according to an Air India spokesman.

Air India is a state-run loss making carrier. The government has been trying to infuse funds to revive the airline against stiff competition from private carriers.

2010-05-18T21:47:00.001+08:00

LONDON (AFP) - – British aviation regulators bring in measures Tuesday to reduce the airspace closures fiercely criticised by airlines, as European skies were hit by new shutdowns caused by volcano ash clouds.

Plumes of thick ash from Iceland's Eyjafjoell volcano, which in April shut down much of Europe's airspace for a week last month, drifted over the continent Monday, closing major airports and cancelling some 1,000 flights.

Britain, the Netherlands and Ireland closed airspace, with London Heathrow, Europe's busiest air hub, and Amsterdam-Schiphol among those affected.

Airlines, which have lost millions of dollars due to the ash alerts, have expressed their fury with what they viewed as unnecessary restrictions introduced by overcautious safety watchdogs.

In a bid to keep the skies open for business, British aviation regulators introduce new measures from midday Tuesday that will to allow flights in thicker ash than previously permitted for a certain amount of time.

The new area -- called a "Time-Limited Zone" -- was created after discussions between regulators and manufacturers, said regulator the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA).

Experts believe high concentrations of volcanic dust can damage plane engines and even cause crashes.

But a CAA statement said: "Aircraft and engine manufacturers... have agreed that it is safe to allow operations in the new zone for a limited time.

"This means that areas of our airspace that would have previously been closed can safely open, further minimising disruption."

To operate in the new zone, airlines must present regulators with a safety case which includes the agreement of the manufacturers, said the CAA.

This had already been achieved by British airline Flybe, which will be allowed in the zones from midday.

British Airways chief executive Willie Walsh led the attack on Monday's flight restrictions, labelling them "a gross over-reaction to a very minor risk."

His criticism was echoed by KLM after the disruption to Dutch airspace.

"The closure was unnecessary. The flight control service should have first measured the concentration of ash and then took a decision," said KLM spokeswoman Joyce Veekman.

Irish airline Ryanair attacked the computer-generated projections used by safety authorities to work out the no-fly zones, saying they were insufficiently detailed.

Chief executive Michael O'Leary said: "It is frankly ridiculous that the flight plans of millions of air passengers across Europe are being disrupted on a daily basis by an outdated, inappropriate and imaginary computer-generated model and it is time that these charts were done away with."

The international airline industry body, IATA, has estimated last month's shutdown -- Europe's biggest since World War II -- cost carriers some 1.7 billion dollars (1.4 billion euros).

Eurocontrol, the intergovernmental agency coordinating air traffic control, said around 1,000 flights in Europe were cancelled by Monday's ash alert.

In the Netherlands, some 500 flights into and out of Amsterdam-Schiphol were axed after it was shut for seven hours until re-opening at 1100 GMT. Some 60,000 passengers were left stranded around the world by the closure.

London Heathrow and London Gatwick were also hit by a new round of delays and cancellations following a six-hour shutdown early Monday.

In Ireland, Dublin airport reopened at midday (1100 GMT) after a 17-hour shutdown as the cloud moved east. Almost 300 flights were cancelled, disrupting 36,000 passengers, The Irish Times newspaper said.

In Iceland, there was no sign of the volcano stopping.

The Eyjafjoell eruptions, which began on April 14, have peaked three times, with the latest surge of activity coming Friday.

"There is really no way of telling when it will stop... magma is still emerging," Icelandic geophysicist Magnus Tumi Gudmundsson said.

2010-05-13T23:40:00.001+08:00

SINGAPORE (AFP) - – Jetstar, the low-cost offshoot of Australian flag-carrier Qantas, said Wednesday it will launch long-haul flights from Singapore to Australia, North Asia and Europe to tap on growing demand.

The new budget service is expected to commence from Singapore's Changi airport late this year, Jetstar said in a statement.

"Jetstar continues to grow strongly as we build our pan-Asian presence," chief executive Bruce Buchanan said in the statement.

Company spokesman Simon Westaway said Jetstar's plans to operate the long-haul budget service out of Singapore reflects the carrier's ambitions to tap growing demand for air travel in the region.

"IATA figures say the Asian market is now the largest in the world," Westaway told AFP after a press briefing in Singapore.

"It's only going to expand. The reason that we are doing all the investment in Asia is that we want us to be an Asian success in Asia because that's where the growth is."

The International Air Transport Association (IATA) said earlier this year the Asia-Pacific region had overtaken North America as the world's largest air travel market with 647 million passengers in 2009.

Jetstar's experience from its international flights out of Australia has demonstrated that there is travel demand even in a shrinking market if the pricing is competitive, Westaway said.

He cited the Australia-Japan route as an example where Jetstar has enjoyed 35 percent growth in annual traffic even though the overall market is shrinking.

"So even in contracting markets, what's happening is that the customer base is moving towards the value-based providers because of obviously affordability," he said.

Westaway said the first long-haul flight out of Singapore is expected to take off in December but the destination has not yet been finalised and that the carrier will offer competitive fares.

"We will be very low-fare in the market. We will try to bring the overall low fares down by around 30 percent," he said.

Jetstar's fare pricing is on average 35-40 percent below that of Qantas, Westaway said.

Two new A330-200 jets will be deployed for the new service and Jetstar will be taking delivery of the first aircraft in November.

The carrier already operates long-haul services from Australia to destinations including Bali, Tokyo, Osaka, Bangkok, Phuket and Honolulu.

It's Singapore-based affiliate Jetstar Asia currently flies to short-haul destinations from the city-state.

2010-05-12T22:31:00.001+08:00

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.

2010-05-05T21:42:00.001+08:00

DUBLIN (AFP) - – Aviation chiefs grounded flights into and out of Ireland and Northern Ireland on Tuesday as ash from an Icelandic volcano drifted in, causing fresh travel chaos for thousands of passengers.

After last month's lengthy airspace shutdown across Europe that crippled air travel, Irish and British air authorities announced a new aerial closure from 0600 GMT due to the risk to plane engines from the ash.

"Ireland falls within the predicted area of ash concentrations that exceed acceptable engine manufacturer tolerance levels," said the Irish Aviation Authority (IAA).

Irish flag carrier Aer Lingus and budget carrier Ryanair cancelled hundreds of flights, throwing travel plans for air passengers into disarray.

Britain's Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) said airspace over Northern Ireland -- a British province -- would be closed from 0600 GMT.

"Airspace over Northern Ireland will also be closed from 0700 local time (Tuesday) morning," it said in a statement.

The air authority also closed down airspace over the Outer Hebrides islands off the northwest of Scotland at 1700 GMT Monday due to the ash cloud.

The new alerts should not disrupt aircraft overflying Ireland from Britain or Europe, or southern British airports including Heathrow, Europe's busiest air hub, authorities in the two countries said.

The cloud of ash came from the eruption of Iceland's Eyjafjjoell volcano, whose drifting dust was behind last month's shutdown that left hundreds of thousands of travellers stranded across the globe.

Airspace was re-opened after about a week following emergency talks between European governments, airlines and regulators.

The IAA said all flights into and out of Ireland would be grounded from 0600 GMT to 1200 GMT Tuesday due to the dangers posed by the new volcano cloud.

"The decision is based on the safety risks to crews and passengers as a result of the drift south of the volcanic ash cloud caused by the north easterly winds," said the authority in a statement.

It added that "over-flights of Ireland from the UK and Europe will not be impacted tomorrow. Flights in mainland Europe will operate normally."

Information from the London-based Volcanic Ash Advice Centre (VAAC) suggested that the no fly-zone' would affect Dublin and other airports across the country, said the IAA.

Hundreds of flights were due to depart and fly into Dublin airport throughout the day, with more from Shannon and Cork in the south of the country and Ireland's smaller regional airports.

Ryanair said it had cancelled all flights into and out of Ireland between 0500 GMT and 1300 GMT Tuesday.

"The first wave is clearly one of the busiest parts of the day so it will have a fairly significant effect on the operation tomorrow," airline spokesman Stephen McNamara told the BBC.

Irish flag carrier Aer Lingus said it had cancelled all British and European flights scheduled to depart and arrive into Dublin, Cork, Shannon and Belfast airports before 1200 GMT Tuesday.

IAA chief executive Eamon Brennan struck an upbeat note, however, saying it was hoped restrictions could be removed later Tuesday.

"We are quite optimistic that it will dissipate and we are quite optimistic for Dublin and for Shannon (airports) tomorrow afternoon but we will make a reassessment for that in the morning," he told the BBC.

The international airline industry body, IATA, said last month's shutdown cost carriers some 1.7 billion dollars (1.3 billion euros) and called on governments to pick up at least part of the cost, angered by their handling of the crisis.

Eurocontrol, the continent's air traffic control coordinator, said more than 100,000 flights to, from and within Europe had been cancelled between April 15 and 21, preventing an estimated 10 million passengers from travelling.

2010-04-28T20:13:00.002+08:00

Singaporeans are simply obsessed with eating. For the best food, they will queue endlessly, they will traverse the island, and they will eat at all hours. Many have been known to come back after migrating simply because they miss their favorite foods. Much of it is humble but insanely delicious street fare found in food centers and coffee shops throughout the island.

1. Chicken rice
It’s everywhere -- at hawker stalls, food courts, luxury hotels and even at the zoo, but Singaporeans just can’t get enough of it. Chicken rice is often called the “national dish” of Singapore. Steamed or boiled chicken is served atop fragrant oily rice, with sliced cucumber as the token vegetable. Variants include roasted chicken or soy sauce chicken. Don’t miss out on the dipping sauces -- premium dark soy sauce, chili with garlic, and pounded ginger. Play around with different combinations to discover new tastes.

If you are put off by perpetual queues at legendary Tian Tian Hainanese Chicken Rice (Stall 10, Maxwell Food Centre), you can dine in air-conditioned comfort instead at Boon Tong Kee.

Singapore food porn: Exotic hawker fare from around the world – on CNNGo .

2. Char kway teow
There is no stopping Singaporeans from indulging in this high-fat hawker favorite. Flat rice noodles stir-fried with lard (for best flavor), dark and light soy sauce, chilli, de-shelled cockles, sliced Chinese sausage, bean sprouts, Chinese chives and sometimes prawns and egg. Essential to the dish is good “wok hei” or breath of wok, the qualities and tastes imparted by cooking on a wok using high heat. Many now choose to omit the cockles but char kway teow will always be incomplete without the sinfully rich fried pork lard pieces.

One of the island’s best char kway teow is at a humble hawker center in the east. Hill Street Fried Kway Teow at Block 16, Bedok South Road, #01-187. tel +65 9042 131. .

3. Wonton or Wantan mee
The name “wonton” literally means "swallowing of cloud" in Cantonese. Indeed, the dumplings with their flowy translucent skins resemble wispy clouds when suspended in soup. Most Singaporeans prefer the dry version of the noodles. Wonton noodles look simple but the perfect one is elusive. The thin egg noodles need to be of the right texture, the sauce has to be well-balanced, and the pork or shrimp dumplings ought to be juicy and meaty. At many places, you’ll find the sliced char siew (Chinese BBQ pork) is often papery dry and red with artificial dye but that hardly deters fans of the dish who seem to prize the noodles and dumplings.

Try the cult favourite Hong Mao Wonton Mee but note they open early and close early (7am to 4pm, closed Mondays) and there is at least a half-hour wait. 128 Tembeling Road.

CNNGo lists 40 Hong Kong foods we can't live without .

4. Carrot cake (chai tow kuay)
No, not the sweet Western cake loaded with orange carrots. This "carrot" is more of a white radish (daikon). Rice flour and grated radish is mixed and steamed into large slabs or cakes. These are cut up into little pieces and fried with preserved turnip, soy sauce, fish sauce, eggs, garlic and spring onions. It’s amazingly good. You can have it “white” or “black” (with sweet dark soy sauce added). Also known as fried carrot cake or chye tow kueh, this grease-laden belly warmer is available at many hawker centers.

Look for old stalwart Heng Carrot Cake at Stall 28, Newton Food Centre, Newton Circus Road.
.

5. Chili crab
Another national signature, chili crab is one of the most requested dishes for anyone who comes to Singapore. There are more than a dozen ways to do crab (black pepper, salted egg yolk, cheese-baked, etc) but chili crab remains the bestseller. It’s certainly not something to be consumed daintily. The spicy chili-tomato gravy tends to splatter, but crab enthusiasts love it so much, they’ll mop everything up with mini mantou buns.

Roland Restaurant claims to be the creator of the dish. They are at Block 89 Marine Parade Central #06-750, tel +65 6440 8205. .

6. Bak kut tehBak kut teh, meaning "pork rib tea" is most likely of Hokkien or Fujian origin, NOT FROM MALAYSIA. Meaty pork ribs are lovingly boiled for hours with lots of garlic, pepper, medicinal herbs and spices. Early 20th century port coolies often relied on this as a tonic to strengthen bodies and health. These days, bak kut teh is simply enjoyed for its taste. There are two styles -- the clear, peppery Teochew broth and the darker, more herbal Hokkien stew. You tiao (fried crullers) are the perfect croutons for soaking up the soup, and a hot pot of Chinese tea (ideally Tieguanyin) helps dissolve or wash down the fats ever present in the meaty ribs.

For the Teochew variety, try Ng Ah Sio Pork Ribs Eating House at 208 Rangoon Road, tel +65 6291 4537. For the Hokkien version, try Sin Heng Claypot Bak Kut Teh at 439 Joo Chiat Road, tel +65 6345 8754.

CNNGo finds the best meat restaurants in Singapore
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7. Sambal stingray
Singaporeans love their seafood and they love their spices. Sambal is a versatile chili paste blended with spices, shallots, candlenuts and often belachan (fermented shrimp paste). Sambal-coated cuts of stingray are wrapped in cleaned banana leaves and grilled to smoky perfection. The sweet, tender flesh is a perfect canvas for all the complex spices and BBQ flavor.

Check out award-winning Leng Heng Seafood BBQ and enjoy your BBQ by the sea. Stall No. 6, East Coast Lagoon Food Centre, East Coast Lagoon Road. .

8. Fried Hokkien mee
Yet another dish favored by hardworking laborers of the past. Thick yellow egg noodles mixed with rice vermicelli are cooked in a rich seafood stock, and tossed with prawns, squid, small strips of pork belly and deep-fried lard pieces. A small kalamansi lime is always given should you prefer some tangy juice to cut through the greasiness of the dish.

Tian Tian Lai (Come Daily) is practically an institution, and deserves its hype. Come to Block 127 Toa Payoh Lorong 1 #02-27, tel +65 6251 8542.
.

9. Rojak
Rojak is actually a Malay word used to describe something made from a random mix of unrelated things. But any derogatory undertones are erased when one refers to the fruit salad that bears the same name. Rojak does have an odd mixture of ingredients. Bite-size pieces of fruits, vegetables, dried tofu, fried you tiao (dough fritters) and cured cuttlefish are tossed in a prawn paste sauce topped with crushed peanuts. Grated bunga kantan (pink ginger buds) add a sensuous fragrance. The result is a wild mix of sweet, spicy, sour and savory flavors.

HK-Hollywood superstar Chow Yun Fat is a fan of Balestier Road Hoover Rojak. The rojak here has jellyfish instead of cured cuttlefish. Block 90 Whampoa Drive, #01-06 Whampoa Drive Food Centre. .

10. Bak kwa
This chewy snack is like salty-sweet BBQ jerky. Bak kwa (dried meat) is made from pork although now halal versions made from chicken exist. These squarish BBQ meat sheets are popular as gifts for friends and relatives at Chinese New Year. Throngs will form at shops despite elevated prices. Bak kwa can be eaten on its own, with bread or with homecooked food.

The king of bak kwa is undisputedly Lim Chee Guan at 203 New Bridge Road, tel +65 6227 8302. Or try Bee Cheng Hiang’s spicy pork at its 28 outlets islandwide.

2010-04-22T00:23:00.001+08:00

SINGAPORE, April 21, 2010 (AFP) – Singapore Airlines said it had resumed a full service to Europe "with immediate effect" Wednesday after authorities there reopened airspace, which had been shut down due to a volcanic ash cloud.

The airline also said it had lost an estimated 40 million Singapore dollars (29 million US) due to cancellations and disruption since the shutdown on April 15.

Hotel accommodation, meals and other expenses for affected customers in Singapore and overseas cost the carrier another 10 million dollars.

"With the reopening of European airspace, Singapore Airlines is returning to a full European flight operation with immediate effect," the carrier said in a statement.

"Customers already booked on scheduled flights to and from Europe will now be able to travel as planned."

The airline operates an average 25 flights daily to Europe.

2010-04-21T22:00:00.001+08:00

SINGAPORE : The travel nightmare in the wake of the Icelandic volcanic ash cloud is easing, as airlines have started operating flights to selected airports in Europe.

Three flights by Singapore Airlines (SIA) and Lufthansa flew out of Changi Airport on Tuesday morning.

SIA said another seven flights will depart later Tuesday night and early Wednesday morning.

Travellers arriving on the first flight into Singapore from Athens on Tuesday morning were visibly relieved, as some had made a big detour just to get home.

"The only two airports that appeared to be open were Rome and Athens. So I took the train from Milan to Rome, and was able to get a flight from Rome to Athens, (stayed) overnight there and got home," said one passenger.

Airlines said they are waiting for the go—ahead from more airports in Europe to open and may be looking at increasing the number of flights.

"We will be looking to mount flights as soon as we can, and where we can, (to) operate additional services and/or use larger aircraft (so as) to be able to cater to the customers who are still here," said Nicholas Ionides, VP of Public Affairs at Singapore Airlines.

"Last night, about 600 passengers were able to return to Europe and to their destinations. And we expect full flights for the entire week. A backlog of maybe about 1,000 passengers are now on Lufthansa only. And we’re waiting for permission to fly an additional two flights on Wednesday, out of Singapore as well," said Ume Mueller, VP (Asia Pacific), Lufthansa German Airlines.

And the news cannot come any sooner for those who are running out of options.

For some passengers who have ran out of money and have no where to go, Changi Airport has stepped in to offer assistance. 36 KLM and Air France passengers are currently being put up at the Changi Airport Recreation Club, and they have been provided with inflatable mattresses, shower facilities and food.

"There isn’t a huge amount of privacy, but we cannot complain. I know of people who are in Thailand... and they have been robbed in the airports while they’ve been sleeping on the floors of terminals... We’ve got comfort and we’ve got a support network here which has been wonderful," said Sophie Harris, an Air France passenger.

And things are looking up for travellers, as Air France is flying to Paris on Tuesday night. — CNA /ls

2010-04-20T21:52:00.000+08:00

By Peter Griffiths

LONDON - European airports slowly started to return to life on Tuesday after five days cut off from the world due to a huge ash cloud, but some airspace stayed closed after reports a new plume from Iceland may be on its way.

Italy, Switzerland and France reopened their airports early on Tuesday though many flights remained cancelled, and in Italy only a handful took off in the morning, mainly domestic flights. Hungary, Slovenia and Moldova also resumed flights.

But Britain's National Air Traffic Service, which controls UK airspace, said much of Britain's airspace would remain closed to flights below 20,000 feet at the earliest after air traffic controllers warned a new ash cloud was headed for major air routes.

It said it would make another statement around 1400 GMT.

The European Union, which announced on Monday that its members had reached a deal to reduce the size of the no-fly zone from 0600 GMT on Tuesday, acknowledged that progress was slow.

"We know there are still a lot of problems for passengers on the ground," spokeswoman for the executive European Commission Helen Kearns told a briefing.

"We are faced with an unprecedented crisis. The disruption will continue over the week."

Germany said it would maintain its no-fly zone until 1800 GMT, with exceptions. Finland and parts of Sweden and Norway were also closed.

But some airlines were taking advantage of the exceptions to fly. Flag carrier Lufthansa, for example, was flying on sight, which does not require air traffic control approval, to destinations like Seoul, New York and Lagos.

"We are operating about 200 flights today. That is the bulk of our long-haul flights, and domestic and European routes are significantly expanded today," said spokeswoman Claudia Lange.

Under Monday's EU agreement, which followed enormous pressure from airlines losing an estimated $250 million a day, flights may be permitted in areas with a lower concentration of ash, subject to local assessments and scientific advice.

But exactly how national authorities would split European airspace into areas where aircraft could fly or not was not clear, and many countries were adopting a cautious approach.

Poland, which had reopened four airports on Monday, closed them again on Tuesday, as well as shutting the northern part of its airspace to transit flights.

A handful of flights took off from Scottish airports after the restrictions were eased. However, a Glasgow airport spokesman said it would close from 1200 GMT until further notice because of the spreading ash cloud.

"It's really just Scottish domestic flights, maybe a couple of international ones, there's one going to Iceland -- yes, it's ironic, isn't it?" said Glasgow airport information officer Steven Boyle.

MAKING THE BEST OF IT

The unprecedented disaster has stranded millions of people at the end of the busy Easter holiday season and one analyst estimated it could end up costing global passenger airlines and cargo companies as much as $3 billion.

Many travellers have spent the past five days desperately trying to get home for school or work by road, rail and sea.

British businessman Chris Thomas, trying to get home from Los Angeles since Thursday, flew to Mexico City and then 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."

Gillian and Craig Robertson from Kilmarnoch in Scotland were stranded in southern Turkey with their four-year-old son Jack and would likely miss a family wedding. Robertson said he feared for his family-run business.

"We're in construction -- housebuilding," he told Reuters. "So we've already been hit hard by the recession. With this on top, it's dreadful. This is sink or swim for us."

Others were making the best of a bad business.

"There are much worse places than that to be stuck so we had a pretty good time," said a visitor to Paris who only gave his name as Gabriel. He arrived last Tuesday and was supposed to fly back to New York on Friday.

"Not knowing when you would get back, that was a problem," he said at Orly airport. "Otherwise we made the best of it, had great food and great wine."

Britain was 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.

A British embassy official said on Tuesday the HMS Albion was in the northern Spanish port of Santander where it would collect 450 British soldiers and around 250 British nationals.

MORE ASH ON ITS WAY?

Britain's NATS said in an overnight statement that the volcano eruption was strengthening and a new ash cloud was spreading south and east towards Britain.

"This demonstrates the dynamic and rapidly changing conditions in which we are working," it said.

The meteorological office in Iceland said although the volcano was still erupting steadily under the Eyjafjallajokull glacier about 120 km southeast of the capital Reykjavik, it was actually emitting less ash and more lava than previously, creating a lower cloud.

The office's Gudrun Nina Peterson said the ash heading towards Britain had probably been spewed out before conditions changed.

"If there has been ash detected over England today or during the night that is going to be from about 24 hours earlier. This is not an instant thing," she said.

Experts disagree 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.

Several airlines were conducting test flights on Tuesday to gather details and data. European planemaker Airbus said it took advantage of scheduled test flights to check for the impact of ash on Monday and found nothing abnormal.

IATA officials said the economic impact on aviation of the disaster, which cut flights on Monday to an estimated third of normal volume on Monday, was greater than after the September 11 attacks on the United States.

Firms dependent on fast air freight have been feeling the strain.

South Korea's Incheon International Airport, the world's fourth-busiest cargo handler in 2008, suffered 3,216 tonnes of lost shipments to Europe from April 16-19, the country's customs agency said.

Twenty inbound and 25 outbound cargo flights had been cancelled. Among those suffering were computer chip and electronics suppliers such as Samsung Electronics and Hynix Semiconductor.

Kenya's flower exporters, which account for a third of EU imports, said they were losing up to $2 million a day.

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

2010-04-19T22:53:00.001+08:00

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.

2010-04-18T22:45:00.000+08:00

.SINGAPORE : The air travel chaos deepened at airports around the world on Sunday as the volcanic ash from Iceland continued to cloud air travel.

At Changi Airport, 120 flights between Singapore and Europe have been cancelled since Thursday, including the 38 flights that were cancelled on Sunday.

Mother and son, Janet and Joe Richardson have been camping at Changi Airport since Thursday.

They were due to fly home to Manchester in the UK on Air France after a month—long holiday in Perth.

"They (need) to get us some hotel rooms. I’ve managed to sleep because I’ve got some sleeping tablets but my mother has been awake for three days. She had 2 hours of sleep last night and that’s it," said passenger Joe Richardson.

Others who are putting up in hotels are also streaming into Changi Airport, desperate for any information.

However, they did not get very far.

"We came yesterday and there was no one here at the airlines. We came here again today and this is the first time we’ve seen any sort of notice (being put) up," said passenger Karen Smith.

Singapore Airlines managed to book hotel rooms for all its passengers in the transit areas.

But some passengers are not taking chances; they are still queuing at the information counter hoping to catch the first available flight.

"In terms of having advance bookings — that’s a challenge because it doesn’t necessarily guarantee that you are able to go. But customers who have been waiting the longest in transit are the ones that are going to be re—accommodated first when we are able to restore some of our flights," said Nicholas Ionides, VP of Public Affairs at Singapore Airlines.

The gloom of passengers is also felt by taxi drivers.

Most of them have seen a dip in their takings.

"The arrival flights are not coming. (Takings are down) roughly by 10 per cent," said one taxi driver.

But food and beverage outlets like Dome cafe at Terminal One have seen an increase in business by some 15 to 20 per cent.

"Because of the flights cancellations, (and) we do accept KLM and Air France vouchers, so that boost up our sales," said Ann Yeoh, assistant manager of DOME.

Some airlines have been offering daily meal and hotel vouchers to help affected passengers.

While travellers here are trying to find a way out, some Singaporeans who were affected by the flight disruptions in Europe have found alternative routes to return home.

One of them, Ganesh Rajaram, was supposed to fly home from Cannes in France on Saturday.

Instead of waiting, he decided to drive seven hours to Rome and catch a flight back on Qatar Airways.

"It felt quite helpless actually because there’s nothing anyone can do to help you. Every time we went to an airport, there were just cancellations. There were queues of people... European domestic travel was hit the worst, and domestic travel was non existent," said Ganesh Rajaram, senior VP at Fremantle Media (International Distribution).

"My colleagues are still there in Cannes without a way to go back. I’ve got colleagues stranded in Paris trying to get back to the US." — CNA /ls

2010-04-17T23:49:00.001+08:00

LONDON – A lingering volcanic ash plume forced extended no-fly restrictions over much of Europe on Saturday, as Icelandic scientists warned that volcanic activity had increased and showed no sign of abating — a portent of more travel chaos to come.

Scientists say that because the volcano is situated below a glacial ice cap, the magma is being cooled quickly, causing explosions and plumes of grit that can be catastrophic to plane engines if prevailing winds are right.

"The activity has been quite vigorous overnight, causing the eruption column to grow," Icelandic geologist Magnus Tumi Gudmundsson told The Associated Press on Saturday. "It's the magma mixing with the water that creates the explosivity. Unfortunately, there doesn't seem to be an end in sight."

An expansive cloud of grit hovered over parts of western Europe on Saturday, triggering extended flight bans that stranded people around the globe. Continued volcanic activity could produce more plumes if the weather patterns stay the same.

The Icelandic Meteorological Office said the amount of ash in the plume grew Saturday and that the vast ash cloud is continuing to travel south and southeast. Scientists had planned to fly over the volcano to see how much ice has melted to determine how much longer the eruption could spew ash, but the Icelandic Coast Guard said Saturday's flight had been postponed.

Aviation experts say the volcanic plume has caused the worst travel disruption Europe — and the world — has ever seen.

"I've been flying for 40 years but I've never seen anything like this in Europe," said Swedish pilot Axel Alegren, after landing his flight from Kabul, Afghanistan, at Munich Airport; he had been due to land at Frankfurt but was diverted.

Anxious passengers have told stories of missed weddings, graduations, school and holidays because of the ominous plume, which seemed likely to disrupt world leaders' plans to attend Sunday's state funeral for Polish President Lech Kaczynski and his wife Maria in the southern city of Krakow.

So far, delegations from India, Japan, South Korea, Mexico, New Zealand and Pakistan have canceled plans to attend the state funeral. President Barack Obama, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev and German Chancellor Angela Merkel still planned to attend. Slovenian President Danilo Turk decided to travel to Poland by car.

Most of northern and central Europe's airspace has been shut down, affecting airports from New Zealand to San Francisco. On Saturday, the French prime minister extended the closure of airspace in northern France until Monday morning. British airspace is closed until at least 0600 GMT Sunday, and forecasters said the ash cloud would progressively cover the whole of the U.K. later Saturday. British Airways is canceling all short-haul flights to and from London airports Sunday.

Stranded passengers reported the delays were causing financial hardships. Some had to check out of hotels and sleep in the airports.

"I have been staying in a hotel but have now checked out and do not know what I am going to do — I have limited financial resources here," said Anthony Adeayo, 45, who was due to travel from Britain to Nigeria with British Airways.

Others, desperate to return home or get to meetings, rushed to book a ride on ferries or taxis.

P&O Ferries said its ferry services from France's Calais to Britain's Dover were overbooked and there was no space left on their ferries for foot passengers, while a Virgin Holidays Cruises phone operator said dozens of people have called in to ask about transatlantic crossings to New York aboard the Queen Mary 2 cruiser.

A British taxi firm said it pocketed a fortune from driving a group of clients hundreds of miles to Switzerland.

Shoppers were warned Saturday that continued flight bans could spark shortages of imported fresh fruit and vegetables.

"There are no shortages yet, but we may start to see certain ranges affected if this carries on," said Christopher Snelling, head of global supply chain policy for the Freight Transport Association.

The Belgian and Swiss governments extended their ban until Saturday evening. Italian aviation authorities were closing airspace in northern Italy on Saturday until 1800GMT. Spain's Iberia airline is canceling most of its European flights until further notice.

In the Nordics, air space in the central and southern parts of the region was expected to remain closed at least until Sunday afternoon.

At least 45 flights between Europe and Asia were cancelled Saturday. Australia's Qantas canceled all flights to Europe, and passengers were being offered refunds or seats on the next available flight. The airline said it was not known when flights would resume. Cathay Pacific was already canceling some Europe-bound flights leaving Hong Kong on Sunday.

"The British Airways telephone message says check the Web site for updates but when you check the site it says call the customer services number," said James Kirkman, 41, who was visiting family in Australia with his two kids. "There's no information. The kids were due back at school on Monday."

Southern Iceland's Eyjafjallajokull (ay-yah-FYAH'-plah-yer-kuh-duhl) volcano began erupting for the second time in a month on Wednesday, sending ash several miles (kilometers) into the air. Winds pushed the plume south and east across Britain, Ireland, Scandinavia and into the heart of Europe.

Authorities told people in the area with respiratory problems to stay indoors, and advised everyone to wear masks and protective goggles outside.

The air traffic agency Eurocontrol said about 16,000 of Europe's usual 28,000 daily flights were canceled on Friday — twice as many as were canceled a day earlier. U.S. airlines canceled 280 of the more than 330 trans-Atlantic flights of a normal day.

The International Air Transport Association says the volcano is costing the industry at least $200 million a day.

The disruptions hit tourists, business travelers and dignitaries alike.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel had to go to Portugal rather than Berlin as she flew home from a U.S. visit. China, Japan and Russia and five other Asian nations were missing finance talks with the European Union in Spain.

The military also had to adjust. Five German soldiers wounded in Afghanistan were diverted to Turkey instead of Germany, while U.S. medical evacuations for troops in Iraq and Afghanistan had to be flown directly from the warfronts to Washington rather than to a care facility in Germany. The U.S. military has also stopped using temporarily closed air bases in the U.K. and Germany.

In Iceland, torrents of water have carried away chunks of ice the size of small houses. Sections of the country's main ring road were wiped out by the flash floods.

More floods from melting waters are expected as long as the volcano keeps erupting — and in 1821, the same volcano managed to erupt for more than a year.

Iceland, a nation of 320,000 people, sits on a large volcanic hot spot in the Atlantic's mid-oceanic ridge and has a history of devastating eruptions. One of the worst was the 1783 eruption of the Laki volcano, which spewed a toxic cloud over Europe, killing tens of thousands.

___

Associated Press Writers Naomi Koppel and Sylvia Hui in London, Geir Moulson in Berlin, Angela Charlton in Paris, Raf Casert in Brussels, Slobodan Lekic in Munich, David Nowak in Moscow and Kwang-Tae Kim in Seoul, South Korea, contributed to this report.

2010-04-16T20:58:00.000+08:00

REYKJAVIK (AFP) - – A volcanic eruption in Iceland fired ash across northern Europe forcing the closure of huge swathes of international airspace on Thursday which grounded hundreds of flights.

The eruption of the Eyjafjallajokull volcano in southeast Iceland had already melted part of a surrounded glacier causing severe floods. More than 700 people were evacuated from their homes.

A huge cloud of ash from the second major eruption in Iceland in less than a month blew eastwards across the Atlantic, closing major airports more than 1,000 miles (1,700 kilometres) away.

Britain closed its airspace to all flights. Nearly every airport in Norway, Denmark and across northern Sweden also shut down, authorities announced. There was major disruption in Belgium, France, Finland, Germany and the Netherlands.

More than 300 flights out of London's Heathrow and Gatwick airports and others in Britain were cancelled, including transatlantic services.

British airport operator BAA said: "Following advice from the Met Office, the National Air Traffic Service has introduced restrictions to UK airspace this morning as a result of volcanic ash drifting across the United Kingdom from Iceland."

Many flights from the rest of Europe to North America would have to be rerouted because they normally go through British airspace, officials said.

The ash was about five-six miles (eight-10 kilometres) in the air and could not been seen from the ground. But experts said it was a danger to jet engines and restricted visibility.

Icelandic airports remained open as wind was blowing ash away from the island.

"Flights to and from Iceland are still ok. The wind is blowing the ash to the east," Hjordis Gudmundsdottir of the Icelandic Airport Authority told AFP.

"It's amazing really," she said. "Things here should be fine for the next 12 hours at least, and we think probably all day, judging from the weather forecast."

The volcano on the Eyjafjallajokull glacier in southern Iceland erupted just after midnight on Wednesday.

Smoke coming out of the top crater stacked more than 20,000 feet (6,000 metres) into the sky, meteorologists said. Icelandic public broadcaster RUV reported that a 500-metre fissure had appeared at the top of the crater on Wednesday.

Lava melted the glacier, causing major flooding which forced the evacuation of between 700 and 800 people. Evacuees were being directed to Red Cross centres.

"We have two heavy floods coming out from the melting of the Eyjafjallajokull glacier," police spokesman Roegnvaldur Olafsson told AFP from near the site of the eruption late Wednesday.

The eruption in a remote area about 125 kilometres (75 miles) east of Reykjavik was bigger than the blast at the nearby Fimmvorduhals volcano last month.

"It is very variable how long these eruptions last. Anywhere from a few days to over a year," Magnus Tumi Gudmundsson, a professor of geophysics and civil protection advisor in Iceland, told AFP.

"Judging from the intensity of this one, it could last a long time," he added.

Olafur Eggertsson said he had been forced to evacuate his farm, which lies in the path of one of two large floods of melt water coming from the glacier.

"At around 10:30 this morning we heard a lot of noise and saw mud and soil suddenly rushing down from the mountain. Just 30 minutes later we had mud and soil and a giant flood running into our dyke above the farm," Eggertsson told AFP.

"So in just a half hour, mud and soil came cascading down the mountain, down to our farm and on to the national highway that lies just beneath our farm. That is a total of four kilometres (2.5 miles) in just 30 minutes," he said.

His family left all their animals behind in the rush to escape.

"We have 200 animals on our farm: cows and sheep who are all inside now. It takes some time for the dykes to be destroyed and I don't know yet if they are in danger, but we are extremely worried," he said.

Last month, the first volcano eruption at the Eyjafjallajokull glacier since 1823 -- and Iceland's first since 2004 -- briefly forced 600 people from their homes in the same area.

That eruption at the Fimmvorduhals volcano, which gushed lava for weeks, ended Tuesday, experts said.

2010-04-12T20:35:00.001+08:00

By Gareth Jones

WARSAW - Russian and Polish investigators struggled on Monday to identify the remains of nearly 100 people killed in a weekend plane crash in which Poland's president and many other top officials perished.

President Lech Kaczynski's coffin returned home on Sunday to a Warsaw plunged into deep mourning and awash with flowers, candles and red and white national flags, but the remains of the 95 other victims were sent to Moscow for identification.

Kaczynski's ageing Polish government Tupolev plane crashed in thick fog near Smolensk airport in western Russia on Saturday, reportedly after the pilot ignored traffic controllers' advice not to land.

While the deaths of military leaders and leading opposition figures are a huge blow to the political and military elite, the crash poses no threat to political and economic stability in Poland, a country of 38 million people firmly anchored in the European Union and the U.S.-led NATO alliance.

In Poland, the government, not the president, decides policy, though the head of state can veto laws. From the government, only three deputy ministers were on the plane.

Financial markets largely shrugged off the crash on Monday, with the zloty currency and stocks flat or slightly firmer. They were awaiting a decision on who would replace Slawomir Skrzypek, the governor of the Polish central bank who was also killed.

Acting President Bronislaw Komorowski said on Monday he would act quickly to name a new governor. The bank's Monetary Policy Council was also due to meet at 10 a.m. British time to discuss the situation.

IDENTIFYING THE DEAD

In Moscow, Russia's health minister Tatyana Golikova said the process of identifying all the bodies would take two to three days.

Her Polish counterpart Ewa Kopacz, visiting Moscow, said: "It's not an easy procedure. In many cases it's only possible to identify the dead with the help of genetic expertise."

Kopacz also expressed gratitude to the Russian authorities for their professionalism and their collaborative approach.

The crash has also shocked Russia, Poland's historic foe and communist-era overlord, which declared Monday a day of mourning.

Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin's decision to personally see off Kaczynski's coffin from Smolensk made a good impression on Poles.

Kaczynski and his entourage had been planning to mark the 70th anniversary of the massacre of Polish officers by the Soviet NKVD secret police in the nearby Katyn forest.

Poland has declared a week of mourning. Kaczynski's coffin, greeted in silence by tens of thousands of people lining its route from Warsaw's military airport to the presidential palace on Sunday, will be available for public viewing from Tuesday.

"We will delay the funeral until his wife Maria's body has been identified and has returned to Poland. There is an agreement between the government and the President's chancellery on this," Jacek Sasin from the chancellery said on Monday.

PRIDE, QUESTIONS

Millions of mourners across staunchly Roman Catholic Poland packed into churches on Sunday to pray for the dead. Houses, shops and businesses were decorated with Polish flags.

"I am proud of how the nation reacted, it is something to be proud of, but we also have to be responsible and prudent," said Lech Walesa, Poland's former president and onetime leader of the Solidarity movement that overthrew communism in 1989.

"We have to ask ourselves why this happened. It's not about arguing or placing blame on anyone, but we have to draw conclusions, lessons for the future," Walesa told Polish TV.

Kaczynski, a combative nationalist known for his distrust of both the EU and of Russia, belonged to Solidarity in the 1980s but later quarrelled with Walesa.

Kaczynski and his identical twin brother Jaroslaw, a former prime minister, had led opposition to Prime Minister Donald Tusk's pro-market reform government and its efforts to take Poland into the euro as soon as possible.

Komorowski has said he will set the date of a presidential election which had been due in October after holding talks with Poland's political parties. Under the constitution the election must now be held by late June.

Komorowski, 58, is the presidential candidate of Tusk's ruling Civic Platform . Opinion polls suggest he would have defeated Kaczynski in the election.

2010-04-11T00:50:00.001+08:00

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.

SMOULDERING FUSELAGE

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.

CENTRAL BANK CONTINUITY

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.

"I'm all broken up ... it cannot be expressed in words," said Ewa Robaczewska from outside the palace.

CLASS PHOTOSSSSSSS.

2010-03-27T17:03:00.003+08:00

THIS YEAR'S CLASS PHOTO IS HERE.

TAKE DOWN THE NAME FOR THE PHOTO YOU ONE.

FORMAL 1 & FORMAL 2 HERE.

INFORMAL 1 AND CANDID.
(note that the candid have ahmad ibrahim sec sch logo, going to complain for on mon)

PRICES ARE:

5R----- $3

8R-----$6

please write and pay by thurs (1/4/10)

those who wrote down what they want and not pay by 1/4/10,
orders will be void.

PLEASE PAY ASAP!!!

-jacqueline.

2010-03-24T21:32:00.000+08:00

SINGAPORE: Changi Airport has bounced back from third placing in 2009 to become the "World’s Best Airport" this year in Skytrax World Airport survey.

In the annual survey of travellers worldwide last year, Changi was placed third, trailing behind Seoul’s Incheon and Hong Kong. But this year, Changi overtook Incheon and Hong Kong to top the ranking. Changi also won the Skytrax award for Best Leisure Amenities.

This is the third Best Airport award Changi has received this year. Last month, the airport won the Top Worldwide Airport by Wanderlust and Best Airport in Asia Pacific by DestinAsian.

Changi has won the awards by Wanderlust and DestinAsian eight and five times
respectively.

Since its opening in 1981, Changi Airport has won more than 340 airport awards.

Changi Airport Group’s CEO, Mr Lee Seow Hiang, expressed appreciation to Changi Airport’s many stakeholders for their support.

He said: "changi’s success would not be possible without the affirmation, encouragement and feedback that we have received from our stakeholders, including the millions of passengers and visitors we serve every year.

"This has motivated us to continue to improve and innovate. We are honoured to receive these awards and thank everyone for their vote of confidence."

Mr Lee added: "In an ever—competitive operating landscape, these awards are also a testament to the hard work and tireless efforts of all airport staff and partners in the Changi community to deliver the Changi Experience. I want to thank them too for their contributions."

Mr Edward Plaisted, chairman of Skytrax, said: "This is the largest ever Skytrax airport survey with 9.8 million travellers from over 100 nationalities taking part, and underlines the unrivalled, global coverage of this study.

"Taking pride of place in being named World’s Best Airport for 2010 is Singapore Changi Airport.

"Changi has always been one of the world’s best performing airports during the 10 years of the World Airport Survey, and I congratulate them on achieving this number one position in 2010.... in what was an extremely competitive survey environment".

World’s top 10 rankings in the World Airport Awards for 2010:

1 Singapore

2 Seoul Incheon

3 Hong Kong

4 Munich

5 Kuala Lumpur

6 Zurich

7 Amsterdam

8 Beijing

9 Auckland

10 Bangkok

— CNA/ir

2010-03-24T10:46:00.001+08:00

ATHENS - Two RAF Red Arrows jets collided above the Greek island of Crete Tuesday during a training exercise, a Greek Defence Ministry official said.

One pilot was injured after ejecting from his Hawk jet while the other made an emergency landing in Crete and was unhurt.

"The pilot who ejected has broken his legs. He is being transferred to an Athens hospital," said the official.

He said the display team had been trying out new formations but had no further details.

With their trademark red, white and blue vapour trails, the Red Arrows are a familiar sight at British ceremonial occasions and international air displays. They are expected to appear at the London 2012 Olympics.

2010-03-17T01:00:00.001+08:00

LONDON (AFP) - – The world's shortest man, He Pingping, who stood just over two feet five inches tall (75 centimetres), has died, Britain's Guinness World Records said Monday. He was 21.

He -- a native of China who had a form of primordial dwarfism and measured 74.61 centimetres -- was in Rome taking part in a television show when he suffered chest problems.

He was taken to hospital, where he died over the weekend.

Craig Glenday, editor-in-chief of London-based Guinness World Records, recalled measuring He in the northern Chinese region of Inner Mongolia in 2008.

"For such a small man, he made a huge impact around the world," Glenday said.

"From the moment I laid on eyes on him, I knew he was someone special -- he had such a cheeky smile and mischievous personality, you couldn't help but be charmed by him," he said.

"He brightened up the lives of everyone he met, and was an inspiration to anyone considered different or unusual."

Guinness World Records said it would announce He's successor as the world's shortest man in due course.

Khagendra Thapa Magar, 18, from Nepal, who is reportedly 51 centimetres (20 inches) high, declared in February that he is the rightful holder of the title.

2010-03-14T21:06:00.001+08:00

PORT HARCOURT, Nigeria - A Nigerian plane carrying more than 30 disaster response officials crashed on Friday in the oil hub of Port Harcourt in what was supposed to be a mock rescue exercise, but there were only a few minor injuries.

The air force plane, carrying staff from the National Emergency Management Agency and other members of the emergency services, skidded off the runway and into bushes after landing at the city's international airport.

Rescue workers on the ground who had been ready to stage a mock exercise instead found themselves dealing with a real emergency, but all of the passengers and crew escaped, with only a few sustaining minor injuries.

"No life was lost but the aircraft was severely damaged," police spokeswoman Rita Inoma-Abbey said on Saturday.

2010-03-12T16:45:00.001+08:00

SINGAPORE: Video footage of an air rage incident that nearly threatened the safety of a Singapore Airlines flight last month has been circulating on the Internet.

26—year—old Dull Kegan William, an Australian man, was found guilty of it by Singapore’s Subordinate Court last week and sentenced to two weeks’ jail.

According to SIA, the passenger who was drunk, displayed loud and aggressive behaviour, disturbing others on the SQ377 flight from Barcelona to Singapore on 17 February.

Channel NewsAsia understands SIA’s cabin crew issued warnings to the man but he persisted in his behaviour.

He then threatened to open the emergency exit door about an hour prior to landing.

At this point, crew members, together with other passengers, tried to restrain him. But he turned violent and a scuffle broke out.

The man was later handed to the Police when the flight landed in Singapore on 18 February.

— CNA/ir

2010-03-04T23:11:00.001+08:00

International Phonetic Alphabet
Aviation has its own unique vocabulary, phraseology, and acronyms. The International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) is the controlling agency for worldwide aviation activities. To avoid miscommunications in a worldwide air transportation system, ICAO chose English as the official language of aviation.

Everything pertaining to aviation is controlled and approved by the ICAO. Radio frequencies, light colors, runway and taxiway markings, airport and airway identifiers, and navigation aids are ICAO approved.

Letter and numeral pronunciation can be so easily misunderstood (such as hearing an "S" for an "F" or a "B" for a "D"). Because of that, letters and numerals in aviation are spoken using the International Phonetic Alphabet. This alphabet substitutes an entire word to represent one letter. The first letter of the word is the letter of the alphabet it represents. It would be difficult to confuse "Sierra" (the letter "S") for the letter "F" (said as "Foxtrot"). The numeral "nine" is pronounced "niner." The accepted reasoning is that "nein" is a common German word that means no. By eliminating that pronunciation, confusion was to be avoided.

International Phonetic Alphabet

(Accented syllable in bold.)

A - Alpha ( al - fah)
B - Bravo (brah - voh)
C - Charlie (char - lee)
D - Delta (dell - tah)
E - Echo (eck - oh)
F - Foxtrot (foks - trot)
G - Golf (golf)
H - Hotel (hoh - tell)
I - India (in - dee - ah)
J - Juliet (jew - lee- ett)
K - Kilo (key - loh)
L - Lima (lee - mah)
M - Mike (mike)
N - November (no - vem - ber)
O - Oscar (oss - car)
P - Papa (pah - pah)
Q - Quebec (keh - beck)
R - Romeo (roh - me - oh)
S - Sierra (see - air - ah)
T - Tango (tang - go)
U - Uniform (you - nee - form)
V - Victor (vik - tor)
W - Whiskey (wiss - key)
X - X ray (ecks - ray)
Y - Yankee (yang - key)
Z - Zulu (zoo - loo)

2010-02-23T23:43:00.001+08:00

FRANKFURT (AFP) - – German airline Lufthansa and pilots agreed Monday to resume talks, ending a one-day strike that grounded almost one half of flights at Europe's biggest airline.

The strike will be lifted at midnight (2300 GMT on Monday), and talks would resume "immediately and without conditions" a joint statement said.

A planned four-day strike by about 4,000 members of the Cockpit pilots union was averted as cabin crew at rival British Airways (BA) voted a strike of their own against changes to their working conditions, without setting a firm date.

An air traffic controllers' strike was set for Tuesday in France, meanwhile, as Europe's airline sector tried to keep labour unrest from joining an already robust list of problems.

Lufthansa, Europe's biggest airline by passenger numbers, had asked a Frankfurt court to prevent the pilots strike from continuing past its first day, calling the action "disproportionate".

An airline spokesman told AFP the carrier had managed to assure around 960 flights on Monday from the daily average of 1,800 after the strike by pilots to press demands over job security and pay issues.

Unions representing 16,000 Lufthansa cabin crew threatened to follow the pilots' lead if the firm failed to come to terms with them as well.

A wage contract with cabin crew expires on February 28, but management has failed to make a new offer and is refusing to hold talks, UFO union spokesman Nicoley Baublies said.

Lufthansa, like most rivals, is reeling from upheaval in the global airline sector.

Worst hit by the strike were the airline's hubs in Frankfurt, Europe's third biggest airport, and Munich.

Lufthansa Cargo, one of the world's biggest freight carriers, and the firm's low-cost subsidiary Germanwings were also affected, though the cargo unit said more than 85 percent of its capacity had been covered on Monday.

Cockpit spokesman Joerg Handwerg nonetheless told AFP the strike had been "a great success."

The union says it is trying to defend the terms of a contract signed with Lufthansa in 2004.

"We have a contract and Lufthansa is breaking it" by boosting the number of flights operated by subsidiaries with lower costs, Handwerg explained.

Starting pilots at the parent group earn an annual pre-tax wage of 60,000 euros (81,600 dollars) according to its website, and one with more than 15 years with the airline told AFP his pay was double that.

With the strike announced last week and the airline informing passengers in advance, the situation at Frankfurt's airport on Monday had been orderly since many travellers had made other arrangements.

But others had to scramble, including Nigerian Hope Odia, 41, who was trying to make it back home for his father's funeral, while his nephew Chester Ade waited to see if something could be arranged.

"This is terrible," Ade told AFP. "The stress is getting greater and greater."

European airlines have been fighting for survival meanwhile as they battle with the triple challenges of low-cost airlines poaching customers, soaring fuel costs and the worst global recession in decades.

Lufthansa has nonetheless bulked up during the crisis via the purchase of a number of smaller carriers such as BMI, the former British Midland, and Swiss, formerly Swissair, and by creating its own subsidiary in Italy.

In France, a planned strike by air traffic controllers was set to disrupt a quarter of the flights from Paris' main airport Charles de Gaulle on Tuesday, authorities there said.

2010-02-08T19:49:00.000+08:00

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.

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.

2010-02-07T23:46:00.001+08:00

SINGAPORE : After a series of highs, the week—long Singapore Airshow has come to a close.

Wrapping up, organisers said over 112,000 visitors had walked through its doors.

Over 41,000 trade visitors from 122 countries and regions came to the show, while about 71,000 people showed up on the last two days, when the show was opened to the public. — CNA/ms

2010-02-03T22:13:00.000+08:00

SINGAPORE: A Singaporean couple marked Jetstar’s inaugural flight from Singapore to Shantou, China, on Tuesday by tying their nuptial knots on board the aircraft.

Alvin Lim and Rachel Chan exchanged their marriage vows in the presence of a Justice of Peace on board the budget carrier.

Rachel said: "We decided that if we could have a wedding solemnisation venue that was completely different, how nice that would be. And if we could actually solemnise our marriage in the air, that would really bring out the spirit of adventure."

Jetstar Asia is the first foreign carrier to operate international flights into Shantou Waisha Airport in China’s Guangdong province.

Shantou is Jetstar Asia’s 20th destination and second to mainland China after it began the four times weekly direct Singapore—Haikou flights in Hainan province from December 16 last year.

Jetstar will fly the new route three times weekly between Shantou Waisha Airport and Singapore’s Changi Airport. — CNA/de

2010-02-02T21:46:00.000+08:00

SINGAPORE: Asia’s largest aviation and defence exhibition, the Singapore Airshow, will take place on Tuesday.

Besides the commercial aspects, experts said defence contracts are something that will also be keenly observed.

And already the largest exhibitor, ST Engineering, has announced a S$58.8 million contract for the demilitarisation of ammunition for an African country.

The contract involves the supply of special equipment and services such as training and operations assistance. The contract is scheduled to be completed within the first half of 2012.

The company will also showcase Southeast Asia’s first—ever unmanned surface vehicle and other innovations at the event.

The VENUS Unmanned Surface Vehicle or USV can be used for naval missions and security operations. It is designed such that it can be reconfigured for maritime surveillance as well as anti—submarine warfare.

Such innovation is part of ST Engineering’s focus on customised solutions, especially with changing security needs worldwide.

Patrick Choy, executive VP, International Marketing, ST Engineering, said: "The situation that happened in Mumbai, for example, the terrorists came in from the water and created so much havoc.

"So in a sense, we are now going out to the market and say ’Look, there’s a real need to protect cities and protect all these assets.’"

It took two years for the company to develop the USV and it costs more than S$2 million, depending on various levels of customisation required. Even so, the company said there are already interested buyers.

Another innovation to be showcased at the airshow for the first time is the Trailblazer vehicle which destroys mines.

The Warthog will also make its debut at the show. Ten of the vehicles have been purchased by the UK Army for use in Afghanistan. — CNA/vm

2010-02-01T00:50:00.001+08:00

Linger

Mmm hmm, I want to linger here

Mmm hmm, a little longer here

Mmm hmm, a little longer here with you

Mmm hmm, it's such a perfect night

Mmm hmm, it doesn't seem quite right

Mmm hmm, this is our last night here with you

Mmm hmm, and when comes December

Mmm hmm, I will remember

Mmm hmm, our camping days and friendship through

Mmm hmm, and as the years goes by

Mmm hmm, I think of you and sigh

Mmm hmm, it's just goodnight and not goodbye

2010-01-31T23:09:00.001+08:00

Two held after aircraft toilet fire in China's Xinjiang Reuters - Saturday, January 30

BEIJING - Chinese police have detained two people after a domestic flight from the restless western region of Xinjiang was forced to turn around when a passenger set fire to toilet paper in the washroom, state media said on Saturday.

The official Xinhua news agency said the China Southern flight was bound for the central Chinese city of Wuhan.

"The crew of the flight CZ6939 ... discovered the passenger's behaviour some time after take-off," Xinhua said, citing Xinjiang police sources.

"Two passengers, including a man and a woman, were taken away by police after the flight landed at the Diwobao International Airport in Urumqi," it added, referring to Xinjiang's regional capital.

"The case is being investigated," Xinhua said, without elaborating.

In March 2008, Chinese officials said they stopped a plan by an ethnic Uighur woman to bring down a flight from Xinjiang.

A source with knowledge of the investigation told Reuters at the time that the woman tried to light flammable liquid smuggled in a canned drink in the plane's toilet, but aroused the suspicion of crew and other passengers.

China subsequently banned passengers taking lighters or matches aboard flights. China airport security screening is normally very strict.

Xinjiang's population of 21 million is divided mainly between Uighurs, a Turkic-speaking Muslim people long the region's majority, and Han Chinese, many of whom arrived in recent decades.

In July last year, Uighur protests in Urumqi gave way to deadly attacks that mainly targeted members of China's Han Chinese majority. Many Uighurs resent the growing Han presence in the region.

At least 197 people died in the initial riots, mostly Han Chinese, and two days later Han residents held protests and staged revenge attacks on Uighur neighbourhoods

2010-01-31T14:41:00.001+08:00

Miss Oh's Chinese class spelling test is postponed to friday.

- Calvin

2010-01-30T14:23:00.002+08:00

LOVE 4/9 TO THE VERY MAX!! <3

2010-01-29T21:40:00.000+08:00

Low-budget airline Jetstar signals big expansion

SINGAPORE (AFP) - – Qantas affiliate Jetstar on Thursday picked Singapore as its Asian hub and signed a 3.5-billion-dollar deal to use greener engines under an ambitious expansion into long-haul discount flights.

The Melbourne-based Jetstar Group, which launched operations in Australia in 2004, signed a three-year agreement with Singapore's Changi Airport Group to make the hub its main base in Asia for both short- and long-haul flights.

"The clear operational advantages of Singapore as a hub and primary access point into Asia are clear and can now be further built upon as a result of this agreement," Jetstar chief executive Bruce Buchanan said in a statement.

The Jetstar Group includes Jetstar in Australia as well as Singapore-based Jetstar Asia and Valuair.

The no-frills carrier also announced it had entered into a deal worth 3.5 billion US dollars with International Aero Engines (IAE) to supply low-emissions engines for a planned new fleet of 50 A320 aircraft.

It has options and purchase rights on up to 40 more of the planes.

The V2500 engine is made by the Swiss-based IAE consortium, of which Rolls-Royce is a major shareholder. The other partner firms are Pratt & Whitney, the Japanese Aero Engines Corporation and MTU Aero Engines.

Jetstar's Buchanan said the order showed the airline's "commitment to minimising our impact on the environment" with the V2500 proven to emit low emissions and less noise.

Peter Harbison, executive chairman of the Centre for Asia Pacific Aviation, said the move to Changi, one of the most popular transit hubs in Asia for flights from Europe and the United States, showed Jetstar's ambitions.

"Jetstar in 10 years' time will be an Asian carrier, not an Australian carrier, because the growth is in the Asian region," he told AFP.

The carrier has ordered six wide-body A330-200s for medium- and long-haul flights from Singapore to destinations in Asia and beyond, following delays in the delivery of the Boeing 787 Dreamliner, Buchanan noted.

Three of the six A330-200s will be delivered later this year and the rest in 2012, a Jetstar spokeswoman said.

Analysts expect Asia's low-cost airlines, which have weathered the global recession better than premium carriers, to reap the benefit as regional economies rebound.

At an industry conference in Singapore Thursday, executives pointed to Asia's relatively robust growth and size of its population, which is six times that of the European Union.

"My view is that the size of the travel market in this region is going to explode as the economies come back (to strong growth)," said Buchanan.

Asia's huge population offers enough room for both low-cost and traditional airlines to flourish, said Tony Davis, chief executive of Singapore budget carrier Tiger Airways.

"You have to think about the size of this market, it's three billion people," he said.

"Certainly, any scepticism about the (low-cost) model has been dismissed," Davis added.

But Harbison said Asia's airline industry must address such challenges as a shortage of pilots, and governments must speed up market liberalisation.

2010-01-27T20:25:00.000+08:00

thanks those people who went for the camp!!!
thanks for giving me such good memories.. hope that we will all stay united and happy together!!
miss all those laughters, cheerings, dancings, singings, bombings, guailan-ing, and all those stupid but fun stuffs that we did :D

love you guys!!

Mm- i want to linger
Mm- a little longer
Mm- a little longer here with you
WITH YOU WITH YOU WITH YOU~~~~~~

zishing :)

* amazing race!
* bursting balloons!
* rafting!
* tragedy hunt!
* campfire!

2010-01-27T13:52:00.000+08:00

Police allow grounded Qantas plane to depart for Sydney Channel NewsAsia - Wednesday, January 27

Police allow grounded Qantas plane to depart for Sydney SINGAPORE:

Police say a Qantas plane that was grounded at Changi Airport Terminal 1 during a stopover has now been allowed to depart for its destination.

The plane had been delayed after a white powdery substance was found on board during a flight from Frankfurt to Singapore.

The discovery was made at about 6.30pm, according to a Police statement.

When the plane landed, the substance was tested by the Airport Emergency Service and the Singapore Civil Defence Force using detectors.

It was found to be non—hazardous in nature.

All other operations at the airport continued as normal while the tests were carried out.

As at 11.10pm, passengers were boarding the flight, QF6, which is bound for Sydney.

— CNA/yb

2010-01-22T22:17:00.000+08:00

Orthodox Jew's headgear sparked plane bomb scare: source AFP - Friday, January 22Send IM Story Print

An airplane gets ready to land. An Orthodox Jew's prayer rituals, including wearing a sacred box on his head, triggered a bomb scare Thursday aboard a US passenger plane, a security source told AFP.
NEW YORK (AFP) - – An Orthodox Jew's prayer rituals, including wearing a sacred box on his head, triggered a bomb scare Thursday aboard a US passenger plane, a security source told AFP.

The Chautauqua Airlines jet bound from New York to Louisville, Kentucky, diverted to Philadelphia International Airport after what authorities described as a security incident caused by a "disruptive passenger."

"It appears that it was a misunderstanding with a religious passenger wearing a religious item and praying loudly," the source, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said.

"The flight crew deemed, I guess, his actions and his item he was using to be suspicious and diverted the airplane," the security source said.

The false alert reflected jitters throughout the US air travel network since an alleged attempt by a Nigerian man to set off a bomb on December 25 on a Northwest Airlines plane bound from Amsterdam to Detroit.

Newark International Airport was paralyzed earlier this month when a man made an unauthorized entry into a secure zone -- just to give a departing passenger a last kiss, it turned out.

Another security scare occurred at a California airport when Transportation Security Administration (TSA) agents found suspicious liquids on a passenger. The substance was later found to be honey.

Greg Soule, spokesman for the TSA, said that the passenger in Thursday's incident was questioned by law enforcement officers on the ground and that the plane was searched with "negative findings."

"There's an individual in custody," an FBI spokesman in Philadelphia told AFP. "There was a security concern but I can't comment on that."

Initial reports on CBS 3 television referred to a male passenger who'd strapped a wire from his fingers to his head.

The security source told AFP that the passenger in question was in fact wearing a phylactery, the box containing Bible verses that Orthodox Jews strap around their head as part of their rituals.

He was "praying loudly and using this device," the source said. "What we're hearing is there was a language barrier."

The misunderstanding echoed a string of embarrassing incidents involving Muslims or people of Middle Eastern appearance over recent years.

In 2006, an architect was prevented by security staff from boarding a JetBlue flight from New York to California while wearing a T-shirt with Arabic writing on the front.

Raed Jarrar, who is of Iraqi descent, said he was told by one official that "going to an airport with a T-shirt in Arabic script is like going to a bank and wearing a T-shirt that says 'I'm a robber.'"

The T-shirt actually said in Arabic: "We will not be silent," an anti-war slogan in the Middle East.

US Airways was initially reported to be the airline involved in Thursday's scare. Chautauqua Airlines operates in partnership with US Airways, as well as other major brands.

2010-01-21T21:47:00.002+08:00

Singapore airport sets passenger record in Dec

SINGAPORE, Jan 20 - Passenger traffic at Singapore's Changi Airport, Asia's fifth-biggest, hit a monthly record in December, pointing to a sustained recovery in air travel. Changi Airport Group said it handled 3.83 million passengers last month, a 9.7 percent rise from a year earlier and 9.1 percent higher than the previous monthly record set in December 2007. The December figures bring the 2009 annual passenger number to 37.2 million, down 1.3 percent from 2008. Changi ranked 19th globally in terms of passenger numbers in 2008, according to Airports Council International, an industry group. The amount of cargo handled at the airport rose for a third straight month. Airfreight was up 15.7 percent to 149,700 tonnes in December, taking the total for 2009 to 1.63 million tonnes, or 12 percent lower than 2008. The improvement came after a number of Asian airlines, such as Singapore Airlines and Cathay Pacific, said that they have seen some signs of a recovery in air travel, including in the premium segment.

2010-01-19T21:42:00.000+08:00

Japan Airlines bankruptcy filing expected Tuesday

By TOMOKO A. HOSAKA,Associated Press Writer - Tuesday, January 19

TOKYO – Japan Airlines is set to file for bankruptcy Tuesday, writing Japanese history as one of the nation's biggest corporate failures from which it could emerge a leaner, self-sustaining carrier.

The country's flagship carrier, called JAL for short, convened a special board meeting in the afternoon, where it decided to file for protection from creditors under the Corporate Rehabilitation Law _ Japan's version of Chapter 11, according to Kyodo News agency. The filing will be followed by a restructuring plan crafted by a government-backed corporate turnaround body.

President Haruka Nishimatsu is expected to resign. Leadership of the company will be handed over to Kazuo Inamori, a buddhist monk and founder of electronic components behemoth Kyocera Corp. and Japan's No. 2 mobile carrier KDDI Corp.

The government will also offer assurances that it backs the rehabilitation and intends to keep JAL flying.

"The government wants to continue to support JAL to ensure its continued stable and safe operations," said transport minister Seiji Maehara hours before the expected filing.

The day's events culminate a process that began in October when JAL _ saddled with debts of 1.5 trillion yen ($16.5 billion) _ first turned to the Enterprise Turnaround Initiative Corp. for help. Under a prepackaged restructuring strategy, it will embark on a massive overhaul to shed the fat and inefficiency that hobbled Asia's biggest airline.

Geoffrey Tudor, a principal analyst at Japan Aviation Management Research and former JAL employee, said the airline needs to be leaner and meaner.

"It wasn't commercially brutal enough in dealing with the facts of economic life," said Tudor, who spent 38 years at the Japanese carrier and now watches its collapse with a mixture of sadness and frustration.

The plan calls for about 15,600 job cuts, or a third of JAL's work force, by March 2013 and will require the airline to halve the number of its subsidiaries which span everything from hotels to credit cards, according to Kyodo. The Enterprise Turnaround Initiative Corp. will invest about 300 billion yen ($3.3 billion) in the carrier, and JAL's main lenders have been asked to waive about 350 billion yen in liabilities.

What may take longer to emerge is the winner of a fierce tug-of-war between Delta Air Lines and American Airlines for a slice of JAL's business. Despite its woes, the airline's access to Asia is a mouthwatering prize for foreign airlines.

Investors Tuesday braced for a seemingly inevitable removal of the airline's shares from the Tokyo Stock Exchange.

The issue, which has lost more than 90 percent of its value over the last week, tumbled another 40 percent Tuesday to 3 yen at one point. It finished flat at 5 yen. The company is now essentially worthless, with a market capitalization of about 13.7 billion yen ($150 million) _ the price of one Boeing 787 jet.

It's a humbling outcome for Japan's once-proud flagship carrier which was founded in 1951 and came to symbolize the country's rapid economic growth. The state-owned airline expanded quickly in the decades after World War II and was privatized in 1987.

But it soon became the victim of its own ambitions.

When Japan's property and stock bubble of the 1980s burst, risky investments in foreign resorts and hotels undermined its bottom line. JAL also shouldered growing pension and payroll costs, as well as a big network of unprofitable domestic routes it was politically obligated to maintain.

"As an airline product, it's always had a high reputation," said Peter Harbison, executive chairman of the Centre for Asia Pacific Aviation, a Sydney-based aviation market research firm. "But from a cost base, it's generally been something of an industry joke."

Inexplicable spending like chauffeuring flight crew to and from home is "an outstanding example of a culture that really shouldn't belong in the 21st century," he said.

More recently, JAL's passenger traffic has slowed amid the global economic downturn, swine flu fears, competition from Japanese rival All Nippon Airways Co. and a spate of safety lapses that tarnished its image. It lost 131.2 billion yen ($1.4 billion) in the six months through September.

Its four government bailouts since 2001 only exacerbated JAL's problems, officials now say. Maehara last week blamed previous administrations, controlled by the opposition Liberal Democrats, for propping up an ailing JAL for years without reforming the company.

Passengers seemed to agree as much.

"I guess they did not work in earnest and so fell into this situation," said Isao Sasaki, 72, who waited in line Tuesday at a JAL check-in counter at Tokyo's Haneda Airport. "Weren't they spoiled as they always had protection from the government?"

Delta Air Lines _ the world's biggest airline operator _ and rival American Airlines are courting JAL with massive financial offers as the U.S. carriers seek to expand their Asian networks.

Delta and its SkyTeam partners have offered $1 billion, including $500 million in cash to lure JAL away from American's oneworld alliance. American Airlines and its partners say they are ready to inject $1.4 billion cash into the Japanese airline, up from a previous $1.1 billion offer.

As of March, JAL's fleet consisted of 279 aircraft, mainly from Boeing Co. It served 220 airports in 35 countries and territories, including 59 domestic airports.

It carried 11.7 million international passengers last fiscal year and 41.2 million travelers domestically. International traffic was down 12.4 percent from the previous year, while the domestic passenger count fell 1.8 percent.

___

AP Writer Jay Alabaster and APTN staffer Kaori Hitomi contributed to this report.

2010-01-16T00:52:00.000+08:00

Singapore's Tiger Airways launches share offer

SINGAPORE (AFP) - – Singapore's budget carrier Tiger Airways on Wednesday launched an initial public offering (IPO) with the aim of raising 246.8 million Singapore dollars (178 million US) to fund its expansion plans.

Tiger kicked off the share sale soon after registering its prospectus with the Monetary Authority of Singapore, fixing a maximum price of 1.65 dollars a share.

"The under-developed low-fare, low-cost model in the majority of countries in the region presents opportunities for our future growth," said Tiger president and chief executive Tony Davis.

"We are now ready to embark on the next stage of growth, and believe that a listing will help fuel that growth," he said in a statement.

The firm said the move would make it the first budget carrier to list on the Singapore stock exchange.

Tiger Airways, which is 49 percent owned by flag carrier Singapore Airlines, said it would set aside 166 million dollars from the proceeds to pay for the planned purchase of new Airbus A320 jets.

It is also looking to establish new operating bases and airlines when the opportunities arise, as well as repay short-term loans.

Tiger said the region was poised to be the biggest travel market by 2020 and was aiming to expand its route network to take advantage of growing demand for air travel.

The carrier wants to expand its current fleet of 17 Airbus A320 jets to 68 by December 2015 as it plans to fly to more destinations within the region and in Australia.

"We intend to apply our proven low-cost airline model to offer domestic and/or international air travel in other Asian markets through the creation of additional operating airlines," said Davis.

"We also plan to increase frequency of flights on existing routes and expand operations by commencing new routes between the airports we now serve, as well as add new destinations from our existing bases in Singapore and Australia."

Tiger, which began its first commercial flights in September 2004, flies from Singapore to destinations across Asia including popular holiday spots such as Penang in Malaysia, and Bangkok and Phuket in Thailand.

It has also expanded into Australia where it offers domestic flights between key cities and towns across the continent.

In its prospectus, Tiger said it made a net loss of 50.8 million dollars and revenues of 378 million dollars in the financial year ended March 2009 compared to a profit of 9.9 million dollars on income of 303.8 million dollars in the previous year.

In the six months to September 2009, losses totalled 8.3 million dollars which was smaller than the 25.2 million dollars recorded in the same period the year before.

The budget carrier market has expanded rapidly in Southeast Asia, where Tiger Airways is competing against Malaysia's AirAsia and a host of other low-fare carriers.

2010-01-14T21:17:00.000+08:00

Amsterdam-Aruba flight diverted after bomb hoax Reuters - Thursday, January 14Send IM Story Print
By Ben Berkowitz

AMSTERDAM - An ArkeFly flight carrying 235 people from Amsterdam to Aruba in the Caribbean was forced to divert to Ireland on Wednesday after an unruly Dutch passenger made false bomb threats during the flight.

ArkeFly said Flight 361 landed at Shannon Airport, where the man was handed over to authorities. There were 224 passengers and 11 crew aboard the Boeing 767.

Irish police gave the all clear after conducting a search of the plane. The man, identified as a 44-year-old Dutch national, was in custody.

"He came across as a very unstable and aggressive passenger during the flight and he mentioned several times that he had planted a bomb in the airplane," an ArkeFly spokeswoman said.

There was no indication he had attempted to set off any sort of device during the flight, she said.

A spokeswoman for Shannon airport said the twin-aisle airliner was towed to a remote location for the police search.

The plane was held in a secured area until after its scheduled landing time at 1930 GMT as a precaution in case there were any timed devices on board, ArkeFly said.

A representative of Amsterdam Airport Schiphol declined to comment on the incident.

Early reports of the threat immediately raised fears of another attempted plane bombing out of Amsterdam.

A 23-year-old Nigerian man flew out of Schiphol on Christmas Day has been charged in the United States with attempting to blow up that flight as it neared Detroit.

Schiphol has since tightened security, though mainly for flights to the United States. Nonetheless its international reputation has been sullied.

ArkeFly, which is headquartered in Schiphol, primarily operates charter flights. It is a unit of the global travel group TUI Travel Plc.. Aruba, a Caribbean island that is an autonomous part of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, is a popular tourist destination during the European winter.

2010-01-13T22:22:00.001+08:00

SEVILLE, Spain (AFP) - – European aircraft maker Airbus pressed governments on Tuesday to open their wallets to save the troubled A400M military plane project, warning that the company's viability depended on it.

Airbus chief executive Tom Enders warned that the company might be forced to scrap the long-delayed programme if European clients fail to put up more money to cover cost overruns by the end of the month.

"Now it's high time for decision," Enders told reporters in Seville, Spain, adding that the "viability of Airbus as a whole" was at stake.

Airbus has 52,000 employees, with some 10,000 working on the A400M project.

"We should not accept the situation and continue this stupidity that could seriously jeopardise Airbus and its commercial competitiveness," Enders said.

Developing the high-tech A400M transport planes has proved much more costly and time-consuming than anticipated when the project was agreed in 2003 by NATO members Germany, Spain, France, Britain, Turkey, Belgium and Luxembourg.

A total of 180 aircraft have been ordered for about 20 billion euros (29 billion dollars) but clients are being asked to plough in more to cover unexpected costs and some countries have voiced unease about the extra costs.

Airbus and its parent group, the European Aeronautic Defence and Space Company (EADS), have been in discussions over cost overruns for several months with the seven partner countries.

The negotiations are to be wrapped up at the end of this month.

Deliveries are at least three years behind schedule and the project could end up costing up to 11 billion euros more than expected.

EADS has put aside 2.4 billion euros in provisions and is spending 100 million euros per month on the A400M programme, Enders said.

"I ring the alarm bell," he said.

Turkey said last week it did not want to provide more money.

France has insisted that the programme must go ahead, while Germany looks unwilling to plough more money into the project. Germany and France are the project's biggest customers, with 60 and 50 orders respectively.

"We want this programme to be completed," French Defence Minister Herve Morin said in a televised interview.

A source close to the German defence ministry was quoted last Wednesday in the newspaper Handelsblatt as saying: "It is out of the question for us to pay more than the 650 million euros extra stipulated in the contract."

According to a report in the Financial Times Deutschland last week, Enders told a group of Airbus directors he "no longer believed in pursuing the programme" and had begun to prepare for it to be terminated.

"We made a big mistake when we (entered into) contracts for this aircraft six or seven years ago," Enders said in an interview with BBC World Business Report late Monday.

"We should not again take a decision which would lead us to further problems in the years to come."

EADS chief executive Louis Gallois said the programme "cannot go on without knowing" whether it will get the necessary funds.

"Our duty is to protect the interest, the capacity and sustainability of Airbus," he told reporters in Seville.

Gallois expressed disappointment that no meeting was scheduled with the company while the client governments are scheduled to meet in London on Thursday.

"I regret there is no meeting scheduled with us," he said.

Despite its A400M project problems, Airbus said it had outperformed US rival Boeing in 2009 with 498 plane deliveries and 310 orders -- although net orders totalled 271 owing to cancellations caused by the global credit crunch.

Airbus commercial director John Leahy said the company is forecasting "between 250 and 300" orders in 2010.

But turnover dropped last year and Airbus only delivered 10 of its super-jumbo A380s in 2009 compared to 12 in 2008, company executives said.

Airbus's turnover reached 41.7 billion euros in 2009, a drop from 43.2 billion euros in 2008, according to preliminary figures. Related article: Airbus says beats Boeing

EADS shares were down 3.14 percent at 14.025 euros in midday trade in Paris.

2010-01-06T22:02:00.001+08:00

Qantas unit, AirAsia in non-equity jv to cut costs Reuters - Wednesday, January 6Send IM Story Print
* Jetstar, AirAsia form alliance to cut costs * Alliance will result in lower fares for both carriers

SYDNEY, Jan 6 - Jetstar, the budget airline owned by Australia's Qantas Airways Ltd , and Malaysia's AirAsia will form a non-equity alliance to cut costs, a sign that even budget airlines were feeling the burden of the aviation industry downturn.

Wednesday's joint announcement comes less than a month after Qantas flagged a possible tie-up between the region's two fastest growing no-frills airlines.

"The aviation market in Asia is a growth market, and has proven resilient over the past 12 months, despite the tough operating environment, with significant growth in passenger numbers forecast in the region," Qantas Airways Chief Executive Officer, Alan Joyce said.

Airlines worldwide have been grappling with falling demand, higher funding costs and volatile fuel prices.

AirAsia and Jetstar compete regionally with Tiger Airways, which is 49 percent-owned by Singapore Airlines and which has received a lukewarm response to a planned initial offering of shares.

The alliance between Jetstar and AirAsia will explore opportunities in areas including joint procurement of aircraft and pooling of inventories, the statement added.

AirAsia, the region's biggest low-cost carrier, and Jetstar have grown rapidly and now fly routes across Southeast Asia and Australia.

"With joint purchasing power it means that we can potentially work with airline manufacturers on the right configuration and design of an aircraft specifically for AirAsia and that best suits our operational needs for the future," Air Asia CEO Tony Fernandes said.

The Jetstar Group currently operates a total fleet of 60 aircraft comprising 48 A320 family aircraft, and has future orders and purchase rights for about 100 new aircraft.

2010-01-03T21:16:00.000+08:00

Remains of early 1900s plane found in Antarctica

Remains of the first airplane ever taken to Antarctica, in 1912, have been found by Australian researchers, the team announced Saturday.

The Mawson's Huts Foundation had been searching for the plane for three summers before stumbling upon metal pieces of it on New Year's Day.

"The biggest news of the day is that we've found the air tractor, or at least parts of it!" team member Tony Stewart wrote on the team's blog from Cape Denison in Antarctica's Commonwealth Bay.

Australian polar explorer and geologist Douglas Mawson led two expeditions to Antarctica in the early 1900s, on the first one bringing along a single-propeller Vickers plane. The wings of the plane, built in 1911, had been damaged in a crash before the expedition, but Mawson hoped to use it as a kind of motorized sled.

Stewart said the 1911-14 Australian Antarctic Expedition used the plane to tow gear onto the ice in preparation for their sledging journeys.

But the plane's engine could not withstand the extreme temperatures and it was eventually abandoned.

The plane, the first from Britain's Vickers factory, had not been seen since the mid-1970s, when researchers photographed the steel fuselage nearly encompassed in ice.

The foundation _ which works at Cape Denison to conserve the huts used by Mawson in his expeditions _ believed the plane would still be where it was left by Mawson, near the huts and the harbor, which is covered in ice for most of the year.

____

2010-01-03T15:21:00.001+08:00

Hello 4/9 :D
School reopen's next year and well it's time to study.
See you guys tmr and Have a wonderful 2010 ahead of you!

Sherrill

2010-01-02T13:08:00.002+08:00

changed some of the things on the blog. if anyone do not like the blog skin or prefer others, just tag on the tagbox and i will try to change :) so hope 2010 will be a good year for us! jiayous everyone! :D

zs.

2009-12-31T16:53:00.000+08:00

SINGAPORE: Segway personal transporters have made their way among the check—in rows of Changi Airport’s Terminal 3, establishing Singapore’s only indoor Segway circuit.

The ride was introduced as part of ongoing efforts by Changi to create buzz and excitement for travellers passing through the airport.

Three rounds on the circuit cost S$10. But airport visitors need to pay only S$5 for two rounds, for every S$20 spent at Changi in a single receipt.

Visitors and travellers have only until February to zip around these futuristic—looking two—wheelers.

Segway personal transporters are already available at Sentosa.

2009-12-28T20:21:00.000+08:00

SINGAPORE : Passengers flying to the US from Singapore can now expect stricter security checks, including body searches.

These are among the global stepped—up measures requested by US authorities, following a foiled bomb attack over Detroit on Christmas Day.

Singapore Airlines operates 35 flights to the United States every week.

And on Friday, security measures on—board were tightened to include — among other rules — requiring passengers to be seated during the final hour of the flight.

In—flight entertainment systems will also be shut off then, and blankets will have to be removed.

And like Hong Kong carrier Cathay Pacific and South Korea’s Korean Air, the use of cabin phones will also be restricted.

But once travellers arrive in the US, they can also expect more security checks.

On the ground, airlines worldwide have also enforced extra screening and airports have also stepped up security.

Since Saturday afternoon, all passengers flying non—stop to the US from Changi Airport have had to go through physical body checks as part of additional security measures. These checks could take a while, and queues might be expected to form, so passengers are advised to get to the airport a little earlier, to give themselves enough time.

Most passengers are taking the added measures in their stride.

One passenger said: "With regards to a male touching a female, that would be something wrong. But if it is a female in contact with a female, I am alright with it."

Another commented: "If they are having people go on the planes with potential bombs, I think it is important to make sure they get rid of any signs of that by doing...personal body checks. They do that already in Switzerland anyway."

Some passengers at Charles de Gaulle airport in Paris have also reported facing additional baggage restrictions.

They were not allowed any carry—on luggage except women’s handbags. — CNA/ir/ms

2009-12-27T13:22:00.000+08:00

DETROIT, Michigan (AFP) - – "I just jumped, I didn't think," said Dutchman Jasper Schuringa, who has emerged as a Christmas Day hero for his impulsive smackdown of a terror suspect who tried to blow up a US-bound airliner.

Witnesses and authorities have praised passengers and crew for banding together to stop the suspect, identified by US authorities as Nigerian Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, 23.

The suspect failed to fully detonate an incendiary device containing "a high explosive" that he managed to sneak past airport security and started to ignite as the jet approached Detroit.

But if Schuringa's interview with CNN is any indication, he's the one who came to the rescue of the plane's 277 other passengers and 11 crew.

"I basically reacted directly," a relaxed-looking Schuringa, clad in a gray T-shirt and with one of his hands and wrists bandaged, told the news network Saturday.

"When I saw the suspect he was getting on fire and I freaked of course, and without any hesitation jumped over the seats and jumped to the suspect because I was thinking, like, he's trying to blow up the plane."

Schuringa was seated on the right of the Northwest Airlines Airbus 330, a few rows behind Abdulmutallab who was in a window seat on the left. He said he "reacted on a bang," and when smoke and flames started billowing from the suspect's lap he clamored over fellow passengers and tackled him.

"When you hear a pop on a plane, you're awake, trust me. So I just jumped, I didn't think, and I just went, went over there and tried to save the plane, I guess."

As terrified passengers screamed and the cabin filled with smoke, the level-headed Schuringa and alert crew dragged the suspect to the front and contained him, while others put out the mini-blaze with a fire extinguisher.

"We took him to first class and there we stripped him and contained him with handcuffs and made sure he had no more weapons or bombs on him."

The Dutchman, who US media reported was a video director and producer, said that "absolutely nothing" about Abdulmutallab suggested he would try anything sinister.

"He looked like a normal guy," he said. "It was just hard to believe that he was actually going to, trying to blow up this plane."

Schuringa's effort is the latest act of mid-air bravery in the United States, some of which has reached iconic status.

For many the epitome of aviation heroism is represented by Chesley Sullenberger, the unflappable captain who landed his crippled US Airways jet in the Hudson River last January, saving everyone aboard.

For others it is the efforts of those aboard United Airlines Flight 93, which was hijacked on September 11, 2001.

Passengers on that flight, having learned of earlier attacks that fateful day on the World Trade Center and Pentagon, mounted an assault to try and overpower the hijackers. The jet plowed into a Pennsylvania field, killing all aboard, and passengers were lauded for stopping what experts conclude was a terrorist attack in the making.

Senior US politicians, while not mentioning Schuringa by name, hailed the passengers and crew on the Christmas Day flight who apprehended the would-be Detroit airline bomber.

"We are forever indebted to the heroic passengers and flight attendants who sought to subdue the suspect," said Bennie Thompson, chairman of the homeland security committee in the House of Representatives.

Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano said in a statement that she was "grateful to the passengers and crew aboard Northwest Flight 253 who reacted quickly and heroically to an incident that could have had tragic results."

Several witnesses said a passenger tackled Abdulmutallab and helped drag him to the front of the plane.

Schuringa said he burned his hands as he struggled to get the burning material out from between Abdulmutallab's legs.

"I pulled the object from him and tried to extinguish the fire with my hands and threw it away," said Schuringa, described by the New York Daily News as a Dutch video producer and director from Amsterdam.

"I had to... damp the fire, because it was growing, and fire on a plane is not good."