Flying? The safest form of transport!!

Pilots of two aircraft trying to land were forced to circle for 40 minutes because the controller at the airport had fallen asleep.  The two planes flying in from Greece were attempting to land on the Greek island of Lesbos but couldn't get in contact with the airport controller in order to land safely.  After several attempts, the airport's secondary control service assisted the Olympic Airlines and Slovenian Airlines planes to safety.

Mao Zedong's plane has generated complaints from local storekeepers, which made the owner of the plane decide to sell it to make room for parking lot construction, reports the World Journal. Former Chinese President Zedong's plane has been parked in the city of Zhuhau, Guangdong Province for nine years. Zedong's plane was one of the three planes that the Chinese Air Force purchased from Pakistan in 1969. It has been used exclusively by the former president and became a display item in Beijing after Zedong died. Zhuhai East Group Company bought it in 1999 and moved it to Zhuhai City.

Dortmund Airport says an Airbus A321 passenger jet rolled off a runway early Friday, forcing the evacuation of 168 passengers aboard.  A spokesman for the airport says the Air Nouvel flight was in Dortmund on a layover between Berlin's Schoenefeld airport and Tunisia when it rolled off the end of the runway on takeoff.  Nobody was hurt.

The spokesman says air traffic was halted for more than an hour while crews worked to free the airplane from soggy grass.  The plane was freed Friday afternoon and travelled on to Tunisia later in the day.

A Chinese airport shocked passengers and crew — by sending 30 workers to push a faulty aircraft for 1km off a runway.

It took workers at Zhengzhou’s airport nearly two hours to push the CRJ7, with 69 passengers and seven crew members on board, to a side lane.

“Thank goodness it was only a 20-ton medium-sized airplane. If it had been a big plane, it would have knocked us out,” reported one man, who said he had never experienced anything like it in 10 years at the airport.

Officials said the aircraft’s front hydraulic system was faulty and it could not be attached to a tow truck.

BRASILIA, Sept. 25 (Xinhua) -- A plane operated by Italy's Alitalia made an emergency landing at an international airport in northeastern Brazil Thursday. No one was injured in the incident.

    The plane, a Boeing 777-200, landed at the Guararapes International Airport in the city of Recife at around 2:15 a.m. (0515 GMT), the Brazilian Airports Authority (Infraero) said.

    According to Infraero, the plane, with 295 people on board, had left Rome for the Argentine capital of Buenos Aires.

    Some mechanical problems forced its pilots to make the emergency landing in Brazil.

    All passengers and crew members have been taken to local hotels, where they are waiting for another plane to take them to Argentina, Infraero said.

    Alitalia, which presented a bankruptcy report last month, has been operating under a six-month provisional license since Sept. 2.

MADRID, Spain (AP) — A Spanish judge on Thursday ordered a cleanup of the site of last month's plane crash in Madrid in which 154 people died, after a newspaper ran photos of clothes and personal effects still strewn on the ground there.

The photos in El Mundo show a red-and-yellow Spanish soccer jersey and other items of clothing in at least one area of the crash site. A story accompanying the shots said there are also scorched books, muddied photos and many other personal effects that spilled out of the Spanair MD-82's cargo holds.

El Mundo said the photos were taken Wednesday, more than a month after the Aug. 20 crash of the plane, which was bound for the Canary Islands.

Judge Juan Javier Perez, who is leading into a probe into the possibility of criminal liability in the accident, said the general state of the site "apparently ... does not correspond" with the pictures in El Mundo, according to a statement released by the Madrid Superior Court of Justice.

The Development Ministry, which overseas a civil aviation panel staging a separate probe on what caused the accident, said that from the time of the crash until Sept. 12, the judge had barred crews from removing any personal effects from the crash site. It said this was to allow experts combing through the wreckage to do their work.

On Sept. 12 the judge lifted this ban, but Spanair immediately asked him to reinstate it so the company could have an expert of its own examine the site, and the judge agreed, a ministry official said. The official spoke on condition of anonymity in line with ministry rules.

Perez has now ordered a cleanup because that examination by Spanair has concluded, the court statement said.

The Spanair plane crashed on takeoff, hitting the ground tail-first and bouncing three times as it skidded across a grassy area next to the runway, then exploded in flames and largely disintegrated.

No cause has been established, but a preliminary report by the crash probe panel says the plane tried to take off without deploying its wing flaps — which provide extra lift on takeoff — and the pilot did not know this because a cockpit alarm that was supposed to warn of this problem failed to go off.

In the aircraft skin requires special care, especially if its length is more than 4 hours. The main problem is dehydration and that the relative humidity inside the plane was low and the air very dry. This affects not only the dryness of the skin, but also in the mucous membranes like the eyes (which is why it is recommended not wearing contact lenses).
 
 What do you suggest? 

•  Apply an exfoliating facial mask and then moisturizing cream or a few hours before boarding the plane.
•  Take a small travel requirements including: cleansing wipes, a moisturizer light, thermal water spray, eye contour, lip balm and eye drops (preferably based on physiological saline).
•  Dressed in clothes not very lean and comfortable shoes.
•  Drink water often during the flight, for example, a glass of water every half hour and avoid coffee and alcohol for their drying effect. This is what you have found the so intense thirst of the hangovers.
•  Regularly walks around the plane (every hour, if possible) to prevent the so-called 'economy class syndrome' which consists of the occurrence of venous thrombosis maintained by immobility.

An El Al flight from Paris landed in Tel Aviv without incident on Wednesday after having been the subject of a bomb threat — days before it took off, Israeli television reported.   Public television reported that the Israeli airline had received an email saying a bomb would be on board Flight 324 leaving Charles de Gaulle airport in Paris on Wednesday.  It said that after consultations between El Al and Shin Beth, Israel’s security service, a decision was taken not to cancel the flight.  It added that, before takeoff, the Boeing 767 and its 237 passengers were subjected to stepped-up security checks and that the French authorities, who had been informed of the threat, ordered an escort of fighter planes.  Italy and Greece also ordered escorts as the plane passed over their territory before being intercepted by Israeli fighters and escorted to Tel Aviv’s Ben Gurion airport.  After landing, the plane was subjected to further checks, and no bomb was found.  Officials at El Al were not immediately available for comment on the report.

American Airlines and Lufthansa are the latest to jump on the in-flight Internet bandwagon. American Airlines has signed up with Aircell to start offering broadband access at 30,000 feet sometime next year. It will initially begin rolling out the service on trans-Atlantic flights on its fleet of 767s. Annoyingly, prices for the service were not announced yet, which is what we laptop-addicted users want to know.

Meanwhile, Lufthansa is working with T-Mobile to bring back Wi-Fi to its planes. The German airline previously offered Internet through Connexion, but the service failed because, surprisingly, not enough people were using it (and Boeing decided to stop footing the bill). Lufthansa will also be offering text messaging, e-mail, and data access for cell phones, but not phone calls.

Having the battery of an electronic item you take on board a flight, short-circuit and then burst into flames, doesn't even come to your mind when you think about plane accidents.

Earlier this month, a wheelchair stored in the hold of a First Choice flight carrying 229 passengers, let out blue sparks while being offloaded from the plane. The minute it was placed on a vehicle to be transported at Manchester Airport, it caught fire and exploded. Luckily, no one was injured. Thank goodness it didn't happen on the plane. A similar incident happened in February last year, where a fire started aboard a plane because a camera battery short-circuited while in the overhead compartment

A Turkish pilot for an airline called Anadolujet has been fired for letting a 15-year-old take control of the aircraft while he went to use the bathroom!  Well, that's at least the official line the airline is giving. The captain says he merely let the boy sit in his seat while he went to the restroom; the co-pilot was actually the one in control of the plane.

The teen was apparently a plane junky, had practiced on a flight simulator, and asked if he could observe the captain and ask him questions. The pilot agreed and invited him back to the cockpit.  The captain landed in trouble after he snapped a picture of the kid sitting in his seat. You guessed it: the picture went on the Internet.

It was touch and go for Blink 182 drummer Travis Barker and DJ AM who survived a fiery plane crash in Columbia, S.C. on Friday. Barker and AM are recovering but four others were killed in the catastrophe.

The link between rock stars and fatal plane crashes is long lasting. In 2006, Blender examined the 10 worst Rock & Roll disasters. The names are some of the biggest in the business Otis Redding, Patsy Cline … With the recent news of Barker and AM’s crash, I thought it would be a good time to revisit their list.

• Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valenes, J.P. “The Big Bopper” Richardson died in a plane crash in Iowa in 1959.
• Patsy Cline died in a plane crash in Tennessee in 1963.
• Otis Redding died a plane crash in Wisconsin in 1967.
• Jim Croce died in a plane crash in 1973 in Louisiana.
• Ronnie Van Zant, guitarist Steve Gaines and vocalist Cassie Gaines of Lynyrd Skynrd were all killed in a plane crash in 1977 in Mississippi.
• Crew members from Ozzy Osbourne’s band were killed in 1982. 
• Rick Nelson died in a plane crash in Texas in 1985.
• Stevie Ray Vaughan died in a plane crash in 1990 on the way to Chicago.
• John Denver in a plane crash in 1997 in Monterey Bay.
• Aaliyah died in a private jet crash in 2001 on the way to Florida.

The moral of this story is....  If you insist on being a rock star, don't buy a private jet!!

Sky news states:

Iberia is suspending its flights between Madrid and Gibraltar at the end of the week for economic reasons, the Spanish airline says. It will leave the British territory without any air links to Spain. "The last flight will be on September 28," a spokeswoman for the Spanish flag carrier said.

Iberia started daily flights on December 16, 2006. This was followed by British Airways in May 2007, but BA withdrew from the route in September that year due to what it said were operating restictions at both airports. The decision will be a blow to the tripartite talks, as the resumption of the air link between Gibraltar and Spain was seen as a visible symbol of the success of the talks.  The only air links remaining are with British airports, serviced by British airlines.