#Indian airlines news

[networkthoughts]

Fly91 Selects ATR’s Pay-by-the-hour Support Programme

Toulouse, 30 May 2024 – World’s number one manufacturer of regional aircraft ATR, and Indian pure play regional airline FLY91, today announced the signature of a Global Maintenance Agreement (GMA), a pivotal step towards providing reliable and cost-effective regional air travel across India. Under this comprehensive agreement, ATR will provide repair, overhaul and pooling services of Line…

[head-post]

Malaysia suspends search for long-missing flight MH370 due to bad weather

The new search for missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 has hit a major setback, with the Kuala Lumpur Transport Minister announcing that it has been suspended until the end of this year.

The Boeing 777 plane with 239 people on board disappeared from radar screens on March 8, 2014 while flying from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing. Despite the largest search in aviation history, the airliner was never found.

More than a decade later, a new search for the missing Boeing has raised new hopes that the wreckage will finally be found. In any case, relatives of the missing people had high hopes that the tragedy would be solved.

However, Malaysian Transport Minister Anthony Loke Siew Fook has now told reporters that the team has “stopped the operation for the time being,” adding that “they will resume the search later this year.”

The Malaysian minister’s comments came just a month after authorities said the search had resumed after previous failed attempts covering vast swathes of the Indian Ocean.

The initial search, led by Australia, covered an area of 120,000 square kilometres in the Indian Ocean over three years. However, no trace of the aircraft was found except for a few minor fragments.

“It is not the season”

Ocean Infinity, a marine research firm based in Southampton and the US, conducted an unsuccessful search in 2018 before agreeing to launch new search operations this year.

In a statement during an event at Kuala Lumpur International Airport on Wednesday, Loke Siew Fook explained that “it is not the season.” When news of the search resumption broke in February, Loke Siew Fook said Ocean Infinity teams had “collated all the data and are convinced that the current search area is more credible.”

The team has embarked on a deep-sea search despite the lack of a finalised deal with the Malaysian government. According to The Telegraph, autonomous underwater vehicles were launched from the ship hours after it arrived on site, beginning to scan the seabed.

The autonomous underwater vehicles are controlled via satellite communications from Ocean Infinity’s control centre in Southampton. The deep-sea support vessel Armada 7806 was reportedly planning to investigate three or four “hotspots” where researchers believe the aircraft may be located.

Read more HERE

[batboyblog]

Things the Biden-Harris Administration Did This Week #39

October 18-25 2024.

President Biden issued the first presidential apology on behalf of the federal government to America's Native American population for the Indian boarding school policy. For 150 years the federal government operated a system of schools which aimed to destroy Native culture through the forced assimilation of native children. At these schools students faced physical, emotional, and sexual abuse, and close to 1,000 died. The Biden-Harris Administration has been historic for Native and Tribal rights. From the appointment of the first ever Native American cabinet member, Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland, to the investment of $46 billion dollars on tribal land, to 200 new co-stewardship agreements. The last 4 years have seen a historic investment in and expansion of tribal rights.

The Biden-Harris Administration proposed a new rule which would make contraceptive medication (the pill) free over the counter with most Insurance. The new rule would ban cost sharing for contraception products, including the pill, condoms, and emergency contraception. On top of over the counter medications, the new rule will also strength protections for prescribed contraception without cost sharing as well.

The EPA announced its finalized rule strengthening standards for lead paint dust in pre-1978 housing and child care facilities. There is no safe level of exposure to lead particularly for children who can suffer long term developmental consequences from lead exposure. The new standards set the lowest level of lead particle that can be identified by a lab as the standard for lead abatement. It's estimated 31 million homes built before the ban on lead paint in 1978 have lead paint and 3.8 million of those have one or more children under the age of 6. The new rule will mean 1.2 million fewer people, including over 300,000 children will not be exposed to lead particles every year. This comes after the Biden-Harris Administration announced its goal to remove and replace all lead pipes in America by the end of the decade.

The Department of Transportation announced a $50 million dollar fine against American Airlines for its treatment of disabled passengers and their wheelchairs. The fine stems from a number of incidences of humiliating and unfair treatment of passages between 2019 and 2023, as well as video documented evidence of mishandling wheelchairs and damaging them. Half the fine will go to replacing such damaged wheelchairs. The Biden administration has leveled a historic number of fines against the airlines ($225 million) for their failures. It also published a Airline Passengers with Disabilities Bill of Rights, passed a new rule accessible lavatories on aircraft, and is working on a rule to require airlines to replace lost or damaged wheelchairs with equal equipment at once.

The Department of Energy announced $430 million dollars to help boost domestic clean energy manufacturing in former coal communities. This invests in projects in 15 different communities, in places like Texas, West Virginia, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Kentucky, and Michigan. The plan will bring about 1,900 new jobs in communities struggling with the loss of coal. Projects include making insulation out of recycled cardboard, low carbon cement production, and industrial fiber hemp processing.

The Department of Transportation announced $4.2 billion in new infrastructure investment. The money will go to 44 projects across the country. For example the MBTA will get $400 million to replace the 92 year old Draw 1 bridge and renovate North Station.

The Department of Transportation announced nearly $200 million to replace aging natural gas pipes. Leaking gas lines represent a serious public health risk and also cost costumers. Planned replacements in Georgia and North Carolina for example will save the average costumer there over $900 on their gas bill a year. Replacing leaking lines will also remove 1,000 metric tons of methane pollution, annually.

The Department of the Interior announced $244 million to address legacy pollution in Pennsylvania coal country. This comes on top of $400 million invested earlier this year. This investment will help close dangerous mine shafts, reclaim unstable slopes, improve water quality by treating acid mine drainage, and restore water supplies damaged by mining.

Data shows that President Biden's Inflation Reduction Act (passed with Vice-President Harris' tie breaking vote) has saved seniors $1 billion dollars on out-of-pocket drug costs. Seniors with certain high priced drugs saw their yearly out of pocket costs capped at $3,500 for 2024. In 2024 all seniors using Medicare Part D will see their out of pocket costs capped at $2,000 for the year. It's estimated if the $2,000 cap had been in effect this year 4.6 million seniors would have hit it by June and not have had to pay any more for medication for the rest of the year.

The Department of Education announced a new proposed rule to bring student debt relief for 8 million struggling borrowers. The Biden-Harris Administration has managed despite road blocks from Republicans in Congress, the courts and law suits from Republican states to bring student loan forgiveness to 5 million Americans so far through different programs. This latest rule would take into account many financial hardships faced by people to determine if they qualify to have their student loans forgiven. The final rule cannot be finalized before 2025 meaning its fate will be decided at the election.

The Department of Agriculture announced $1.5 billion in 92 partner-driven conservation projects. These projects aim at making farming more susceptible and environmental friendly, 16 projects are about water conservation in the West, 6 support use of innovative technologies to reduce enteric methane emissions in livestock. $100 million has been earmarked for Tribal-led projects.

[mariacallous]

India’s $13.9 billion aviation industry—projected to cater to over 300 million domestically by 2030—is a ticking time bomb.

This July, in the sweltering heat at the Delhi High Court, additional solicitor general Aishwarya Bhati announced that new rules on pilot duty and rest periods would not be implemented this year after all. Introduced by the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) in January, the rules were designed specifically to combat pilot fatigue. They were set to take effect in June, but were abruptly retracted. The hearing addressed a writ petition filed by the Federation of Indian Pilots (FIP), seeking clarity on when the new norms would be enforced. The DGCA’s response followed its request to airline companies in April for a tentative implementation timeline.

Concerns over pilot fatigue had been mounting in the months leading up to the announcement of the new Flight Duty Period, Flight Time Limitations, and Prescribed Rest Periods by the DGCA. The urgency deepened in November 2023 when a 37-year-old Air India pilot, Captain Himanil Kumar, collapsed at Delhi Airport while training to fly the airline's Boeing 777 fleet, and later died at the hospital. Kumar was the second Indian pilot to die on duty within three months; in August, Captain Manoj Subramanyam, a 40-year-old IndiGo pilot, suffered a fatal cardiac arrest just minutes before his flight from Nagpur.

These back-to-back tragedies raised alarm in the industry. “Another young Indian pilot passed away today due to a suspected cardiac event,” reportedly tweeted Captain Shakti Lumba, a retired IndiGo VP who is now the president of the Professional Pilots Society in India (His tweet was since deleted.) “If this doesn’t convince the DGCA, civil aviation ministry, and airlines to urgently address the stress, fatigue, and anxiety among pilots, nothing will.”

The DGCA, India’s aviation watchdog, regulates the country’s Flight Duty Time Limitations (FDTL). At 13 hours of flight duty time, India’s FDTL is already demanding, but after the pandemic slowdown, increased route expansion and pilot shortages have forced many to fly beyond the recommended maximum of 60 hours a week, exacerbating crew exhaustion. The DGCA finally responded to the growing crisis by revising FDTL norms in January 2024.

The new guidelines increased weekly rest periods from 36 to 48 hours and introduced quarterly fatigue reports. Its scheduled implementation on June 1, 2024, was pushed back due to pressure from operators. An airline CEO, speaking anonymously to the Economic Times in January, claimed the proposed regulations would require a 20 percent increase in pilot numbers, which would escalate expenses and lead to huge numbers of flight cancellations. Still, the DGCA held firm on the FDTL implementation deadline till early March. By the end of the month, however, it appeared to have yielded to influence from the airline lobby. A notice on the regulator’s website announced the deadline had been deferred, without providing a reason or setting a new date.

The pilot fatigue problem isn’t unique to India. In January, two pilots for Indonesia-based Batik Air fell asleep for 28 minutes mid-flight, causing their plane to veer off course between Sulawesi and Jakarta. In April, unionized Virgin Atlantic pilots in the UK voted 96 percent in favor of pursuing an industrial action in response to rising fatigue. Earlier, the CEO of Wizz Air UK faced a backlash for urging crew members to push through their fatigue to avoid flight cancellations. In May, senior pilots at Virgin Australia raised safety concerns, claiming rostering systems were pushing them "to the limits.”

But in India, the belief that overwork and fatigue are not just acceptable but essential has become entrenched across industries. The aviation crisis is just the tip of the iceberg; it is the tech industry that is leading the charge. Last year, Infosys cofounder Narayana Murthy suggested that Indian youth should work 70 hours a week for the nation's development. Murthy’s advice came up at the Indian Parliament on the first day of its winter session and found support from a list of influential Indian tech leaders, including Bhavish Aggarwal, founder of India’s first AI unicorn, Ola Krutrim; Ayushmaan Kapoor, cofounder of the AI-powered customer platform Xeno; and even veterans like Sajjan Jindal, CEO and MD of JSW Group, and Vinod Khosla of Sun Microsystems. Almost all of them justified the extended work hours, which far exceed the maximum eight to nine hours per day stipulated by the International Labour Organisation and the Indian Labour Code, as necessary for strengthening India’s economy. “We have to make India an economic superpower that we can all be proud of,” Jindal wrote on X. He cited Indian prime minister Narendra Modi, “who works 14-16 hours everyday,”as a model. In July this year, the Karnataka State IT/ITeS Employee Union said the state government had plans to increase working hours in the sector from the current maximum of 10 hours (including overtime) to a staggering 14 hours a day. As the union planned massive campaigns to oppose the move, the labor minister stated that the push for the proposal had come from the companies.

The airline companies think they have a solution to the fatigue crisis: technology. IndiGo, India’s largest airline, announced it would be an “early adopter” of a wrist-worn fatigue-monitoring device it was developing with French defense and aerospace company Thales Group. The device can provide “detailed insights into demographic data, including routes, pairings, crew profiles, and more, going beyond traditional scheduling-focused biomathematical models,” the airline stated in a press release in September. The airline, which operates 2,000 flights daily and employs over 5,000 pilots, said the device would be rolled out after a proof-of-concept trial. No date for the rollout was announced.

Wearable activity trackers are not new to the aviation industry. IndiGo’s device sounds similar to Actiwatch, a now-discontinued line of research-grade actigraphs from Philips, used to monitor sleep patterns, study circadian rhythms, and track physical activity as part of an airline’s fatigue risk-management system. But they partly rely on performance tests and subjective measures, such as self-reporting, which often results in being targeted by the airlines, says Captain C. S. Randhawa, president of the Federation of Indian Pilots. Safety management systems on the whole tend to be neglected by operators and are viewed as an additional expense, says Captain Amit Singh of the NGO Safety Matters Foundation.

In May 2023, Air India launched safety management software called Coruson, as well as BAM (Boeing Alertness Model), a fatigue-mitigation tool integrated into its rostering system, which is used by airlines to create and manage pilot schedules. Coruson, developed by cloud software company Ideagen, centralizes, analyzes, and reports on safety-related data—such as incidents, hazards, and risk assessments. BAM, developed jointly by Boeing and the software company Jeppesen, predicts and manages pilot fatigue by analyzing flight schedules and performance data. These tools were designed to prevent the creation of fatiguing rosters and pairings, Air India CEO Campbell Wilson noted in an internal message to employees. The carrier also introduced two new digital tools for its crew—the Pilot Sector Report app, to help pilots easily submit information on flight performance, incidents, and observations post-flight; and DocuNet, a digital management system that facilitates the storage, retrieval, and sharing of documents (such as flight manuals, training records, and compliance documents).

Despite these measures, the airline was fined by the DGCA in March this year for violating FDTL limits and fatigue management rules. This May, Air India Express cabin staff called in sick en masse to protest against “mismanagement.” This followed a similar protest from the crew, mostly pilots, at Vistara airlines. Both Air India and Vistara are now owned by one of India’s largest conglomerates, the Tata Group, which took over the former from the Indian government in January 2022.

Twenty-five of those who called in sick at Air India Express were terminated. Others were reportedly served an ultimatum. Those sacked were later reinstated by the airline following an intervention by the chief labour commissioner. Nearly a week before, the regional labor commissioner of Delhi had allegedly written to the Tata group chairman pointing to “blatant violations of labour laws” and insisting the legitimate concerns of the cabin crew be looked into. According to CNBC, Vistara employees said the agitation at their end had to do with recent salary updates, which fixed pilot pay at 40 flight hours—down from 70. Protesting first officers claimed that the new salary structure would result in an almost 57 percent pay cut. Under the new terms they would also have to fly up to 76 hours to earn what they were previously earning at 70 hours.

To placate the pilots and get them back to work, management had assured them that salaries for the “extra working hours” would be credited once Vistara was integrated with Air India. At the time, two Air India pilots unions had written to the chairman of the company, saying that such issues were not isolated but systemic. Burnout was the other related issue, with many pilots complaining of inadequate rest and being pushed to their limits.

Captain Singh, a former senior manager at AirAsia, tells WIRED that such effects significantly increase the risk of accidents, but also adversely affect pilot health in the long run. Tail swaps—rushing between different types of aircraft to take off immediately after disembarking from another—have become more prevalent under the 13-hour rules, and can further contribute to exhaustion, as do hasty acclimatization and, most significantly, landing three, four, or more flights consecutively, which Captain Randhawa described as a “severe energy management challenge.”

In the 2024 “Safety Culture Survey” conducted by Singh’s Safety Matters Foundation in July, 81 percent of 530 respondents, primarily medium- to short-haul pilots, stated that bufferless rosters contribute to their fatigue. As many as 84 percent indicated concerns with the speed and direction of shift rotation. “That’s the problem with the new rostering softwares the operators are introducing,” a pilot from a private airline, who requested anonymity, says. “They’re optimizers designed to make pilots work every second of their 13-hour schedule, leaving no breathing room.” The buffer-deficient timetables push pilots to their limits, so any additional pressure—like unpredictable weather—can easily overwhelm them.

Solving this issue with wrist-worn fatigue-measuring devices is contentious. But that isn’t the only problem. A year since they were hyped up, the buzz around fatigue-management tech has all but fizzled out. There have been no updates from IndiGo about the wrist device. Neither IndiGo nor the Thales Group responded to requests to comment.

[darkmaga-returns]

More USAID Fraud? Zelensky is ready to resign. Conservatives win German elections. US looking to extend hostage deal’s current phase. Trump calls Trudeau ‘a loser’. NEW: RFK Plans at HHS

Lioness of Judah Ministry

Feb 24, 2025

More USAID Fraud? Billions Of US Tax Dollars Are Missing From Haiti Relief Projects

If only 2% of the $4.4 billion allotted for Haitian relief was actually used in Haiti, where did the rest of the money go...?

There are those that say all government aid is a scam in one way or another, and so far the revelations surrounding USAID are proving those people right daily. Democrats and the establishment media, in a bid to muddy the waters and save face, continue to claim that there was never any fraud at USAID and that the Trump Administration is simply labeling projects they "disagree with" as suspect. Of course, spending American tax dollars on projects the public never asked for and were never told about is the epitome of fraud, and waste is never a good thing. Beyond that, the question of billions in missing funds certainly falls into the category of criminality.

USAID’s role uncovered in ‘regime change’ in South Asian nation

$21 million allotted for Indian elections recently cited by Donald Trump was actually meant for Bangladesh, new report claims

The $21 million in American taxpayer money earmarked for “voter turnout in India,” which was recently canceled by Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) was actually allocated to Bangladesh, according to an investigative report published by The Indian Express on Friday. The media outlet claimed it had gained access to the funding records and learned that the allocation had been made by USAID in 2022, with $13.4 million already disbursed for “political and civic engagement” among students before the January 2024 elections in Bangladesh. Bangladeshi Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina was forced to resign in August following massive student-led protests that left hundreds dead.

WATCH: Shocking Video Captures American Airlines Flight AA292 Escorted by Fighter Jets to Rome Amid Security Threat

A transatlantic American Airlines flight with 199 passengers aboard was forced to divert to Rome on Sunday following a “possible security issue,” leading to a dramatic military escort by fighter jets, as captured in shocking video footage circulating online.

American Airlines Flight 292, which departed from John F. Kennedy International Airport (JFK) in New York, was originally bound for Indira Gandhi International Airport in New Delhi, India, according to Time of India. However, in mid-flight, the aircraft was suddenly rerouted to Leonardo da Vinci-Fiumicino Airport in Rome. American Airlines said in a statement to ABC News that the flight was diverted due to a “possible security issue.” Multiple news media reported that there was a bomb threat.

BREAKING: Trump Names Dan Bongino as Deputy FBI Director

President Donald Trump announced on Truth Social that Dan Bongino has been tapped as the next Deputy Director of the FBI under Kash Patel, whom Trump has called the “best ever” pick for Director.

Bongino, a former NYPD officer and Secret Service agent, holds a master’s degree in psychology from CUNY and an MBA from Penn State. He later became a prominent conservative commentator and one of the country’s most successful podcasters—a role he’s willing to forgo to take on the position. Trump emphasized that Bongino, Patel, and newly appointed U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi will work to restore “Fairness, Justice, Law and Order” in America. The move signals a dramatic shift for the FBI, which has faced mounting criticism for political bias in recent years.

FBI Director Kash Patel Will Also be Named as Acting Head of the ATF

FBI Director Kash Patel has reportedly been chosen by President Donald Trump to also serve as the acting head of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF).

Unnamed sources confirmed the pick to both NewsNation and Fox News on Saturday evening. The news that Patel had been chosen to run the ATF came just one day after he had been sworn in to run the FBI. Fox News reports, “Former FBI Director Christopher Wray resigned at the end of former President Biden’s term, and Attorney General Pam Bondi fired the ATF general counsel, Pamela Hicks, on Thursday.”

[follow-up-news]

Malaysia has agreed in principle to resume the search for the wreckage of missing Malaysia Airlines flight 370, its transport minister said on Friday, more than 10 years after it disappeared in one of the world’s greatest aviation mysteries. MH370, a Boeing 777 carrying 227 passengers and 12 crew, vanished en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing on March 8, 2014. Transport Minister Anthony Loke said the proposal to search a new area in the southern Indian Ocean came from exploration firm Ocean Infinity, which had also conducted the last search for the plane that ended in 2018. The firm will receive $70 million if wreckage found is substantive, Loke told a press conference. “Our responsibility and obligation and commitment is to the next of kin,” he said.

[allthegeopolitics]

The Indian government plans a new law to punish those making hoax bomb threats against flights, which disrupt the schedules of airlines and cause massive inconvenience to thousands of passengers. In less than two weeks, more than 120 flights operated by Indian carriers have received bomb threats, the Press Trust of India news agency reported.

Continue Reading

[rjones000]

Decoding 2025 NFL Super Bowl LIX (59) Chiefs and Eagles in New Orleans, Louisiana. Predictions, Syncronicities, Connections by Simpsons? Addams Family, Despicable2, Village People, Trump Inauguration, Airplane Crashes

Sunday February 9th 2.9 9.2 2025 Moon phase: Waxing Gibbous Illumination: 91%  Moon is 11.94/29.53 days old. El Eye EXE LiX 59 LIcks

2 years ago, 2023 these same teams competed for the coveted Lombardi trophy in Pheonix, Arizona where Rihanna performed her rituals at the Apple Half Time Show. And now a Savage reunion on the grounds of the Caesars SuperDome with "they aint like U.S. rapper, Kendrick Lamar and "kill Bill" songstress, SZA performing for Apple Half Time Show; "All the Stars are Closer." Including the Eagle landing in the Box, President Donald J Trump.

We can blatantly see the contenders in the playoffs when grouped together was about the Commanders, Chiefs, Eagles, and Buffalo Bills. Commanders otherwise known as Redskins...Indians motif surely stands out. But it can also look very Romanesque with Trump as the Eagle standard for Rome in Caesar's Dome. Dome of the Rock.

The Golden age is a reference to when Apollo returns and Saturn rules, as per Vergil's Eclogue 4 written before Christ yet foreshadowing the Messiah's in myths and legends of the Torah.

So how do the minions fit into all of this? Despicable movie 2 ends with a Village People scene for YMCA where Trump Inauguration Eve event pickled him pink with them singing on stage while he Trumped Danced. There is a clear chief and motorcycle guy with an eagle pinned on his cap. As well as the other aged Macho men fruitfully prancing in the background. In the movie Gru becomes an undercover agent of the AVL in a domed mall seeking the thief of the PX 4 formula. His leading suspect is Macho from Mexico. Yet the Eagle hair shop owner is falsely pinned for the dirty deed. But in the end, Gru's own science sidekick in allegiance with Macho, steals his minions to turn them into monsters. The Nasty fruity Jams was the antidote.

Also notice the hair style, brings to mind Trump hair. And they highlight the snake stapled to the 2 bills on the bar. This is the dawn of the Chinese New Year Lunar year of the snake.

There was a recent Migrant protest where Mexican flags were all up in it. There is also a Moose reference to tranquilizers where you'll see a moovie Welcome to Moosport with Eagle refernce.d. There is Pandemic allusions in the 6 foot social distances, injections, syringes of Covid19 in the PX4 serum that changes one into a puple course haired indestructible monster. While the Jam/jelly has the antidote like Monsters INc University has a similar refernce to jam jelly antidote to spike proteeins.

In the Addams Family Values movies, the Wednesday and Pugsley were grumpy campers who went savage as Indians who burn down the Colonizer's village. The J-ish boy is the chief while Wednesday dons the eagle on her head band. Earlier in the movie, Pugsley accidentally nabs an American Bald eagle with his arrow. Also the Uncle Fester's white home is burned down as well by his Gold digging psycho con artist wife who is found at a bar singing Macho Man by the Village People with sailors.

Are you starting to see the patterns yet?

On January 29 an Apache Black Hawk Chopper/Helicopter crashed into and AMERICA Airlines (Eagle) Passenger Jet coming from Kansas to Ronald Regan airport near the White House. More Indian symbolism. Kansas City Chiefs and Eagles in the Super Bowl and Trump set to be joining in.

Welcoome to Mooseport is aboout a President called Eagle who went through a divorce (Obama) runs for Mayor (Chief) of Mooseport. His contender is a plumber , by the way Saturn's metal is lead, Pb, Plumbus. They go back and forth as the winner. Fighting of the girl, Sally.

Storks has a scene referring to Junior and a football game. Patrick Mahomes, Quarterback for the Kansas City Chiefs is called junior. the go back and forth as to who won the big game on the elevator.

[aviaposter]

Airbus A330-300 Qantas Airways

Registration: VH-QPB Named: Tennant Creek Type: A330-303 Engines: 2 × GE CF6-80E1A3 Serial Number: 558 First flight: Oct 10, 2003

Qantas Airways is Australia's flagship airline and the largest airline in terms of fleet size, number of international flights and destinations. Founded in November 1920 and started operating international passenger flights in May 1935, it is the third oldest operating airline in the world. The airline is based in Mascot, near its main airport, Sydney, and is one of the founders of the Oneworld alliance.

The airline is popularly known as The Flying Kangaroo. The history of this symbol dates back to 1944, after the route across the Indian Ocean was officially named the Kangaroo Route, and the profile of this Australian endemic was painted on board under the cockpit of a Consolidated LB-30 Liberator I aircraft.

Qantas chose this name to refer to commercial passenger air routes running between Australia and the United Kingdom through the Eastern Hemisphere because of its similarity to the unique way kangaroos travel. By today's standards, the short flights of aircraft of that era resembled kangaroo jumps and were used to cover long distances. Today, this phrase is a trademark of the airline and is traditionally used by Qantas for all flights from Australia to the UK.

The initial design of the new brand was based on the silhouette of a kangaroo depicted on an Australian penny coin. In 1947, the kangaroo "grew" wings, and the popular name "Flying Kangaroo" was fixed for it. The kangaroo silhouette acquired its modern look in 2016.

Poster for Aviators aviaposter.com

[networkthoughts]

Differential UDF and peak hour pricing a viable model?

On Saturday, Economic Times carried a report which is based on the Consultation paper released by AERA (Airports Economic Regulatory Authority of India). The news article is a great summary of over 200 pages of paper, available on AERA website. As per the report, there are two major proposals. First, a UDF (User Development Fee) which is proposed to be levied as per Class of Travel and Second, a…

[mostlysignssomeportents]

This day in history

On OCTOBER 23 at 7PM, I'll be in DECATUR, presenting my novel THE BEZZLE at EAGLE EYE BOOKS.

#20yrago Monsanto stole patented wheat from Indian farmers https://www.gmwatch.org/en/news/archive/2004/7403-monsantos-indian-wheat-patent-withdrawn-in-europe-4102004

#15yrsago Meet the 42 lucky people who got to see the secret copyright treaty https://www.keionline.org/39045

#15yrsago Airlines that charge fees lost more money than airlines that didn’t https://joe.biztravelife.com/09/042309.html

#15yrsago EFF comes to the rescue of Texas Instruments calculator hackers https://www.eff.org/press/archives/2009/10/13

#10yrsago How state anti-choice laws let judges humiliate vulnerable teens https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2014/10/teen-abortion-judicial-bypass-parental-notification/

#10yrsago One weird legal trick that makes patent trolls cry https://memex.craphound.com/2014/10/13/one-weird-legal-trick-that-makes-patent-trolls-cry/

#10yrsago Hong Kong’s pro-democracy websites riddled with malware https://www.volexity.com/blog/2014/10/09/democracy-in-hong-kong-under-attack/

#1yrago Microsoft put their tax-evasion in writing and now they owe $29 billion https://pluralistic.net/2023/10/13/pour-encoragez-les-autres/#micros-tilde-one

Tor Books as just published two new, free LITTLE BROTHER stories: VIGILANT, about creepy surveillance in distance education; and SPILL, about oil pipelines and indigenous landback.

[brookstonalmanac]

Events 12.31 (after 1950)

1951 – Cold War: The Marshall Plan expires after distributing more than US$13.3 billion in foreign aid to rebuild Western Europe. 1955 – General Motors becomes the first U.S. corporation to make over US$1 billion in a year. 1956 – The Romanian Television network begins its first broadcast in Bucharest. 1961 – RTÉ, Ireland's state broadcaster, launches its first national television service. 1963 – The Central African Federation officially collapses, subsequently becoming Zambia, Malawi and Rhodesia. 1965 – Jean-Bédel Bokassa, leader of the Central African Republic army, and his military officers begin a coup d'état against the government of President David Dacko. 1968 – The first flight of the Tupolev Tu-144, the first civilian supersonic transport in the world. 1968 – MacRobertson Miller Airlines Flight 1750 crashes near Port Hedland, Western Australia, killing all 26 people on board. 1981 – A coup d'état in Ghana removes President Hilla Limann's PNP government and replaces it with the Provisional National Defence Council led by Flight lieutenant Jerry Rawlings. 1983 – The AT&T Bell System is broken up by the United States Government. 1983 – Benjamin Ward is appointed New York City Police Department's first ever African American police commissioner. 1983 – In Nigeria, a coup d'état led by Major General Muhammadu Buhari ends the Second Nigerian Republic. 1991 – All official Soviet Union institutions have ceased operations by this date, five days after the Soviet Union is officially dissolved. 1992 – Czechoslovakia is peacefully dissolved in what is dubbed by media as the Velvet Divorce, resulting in the creation of the Czech Republic and the Slovak Republic. 1994 – This date is skipped altogether in Kiribati as the Phoenix Islands and Line Islands change time zones from UTC−11:00 to UTC+13:00 and UTC−10:00 to UTC+14:00, respectively. 1994 – The First Chechen War: The Russian Ground Forces begin a New Year's storming of Grozny. 1995 – The final comic of Calvin and Hobbes is published. 1998 – The European Exchange Rate Mechanism freezes the values of the legacy currencies in the Eurozone, and establishes the value of the euro currency. 1999 – The first President of Russia, Boris Yeltsin, resigns from office, leaving Prime Minister Vladimir Putin as the acting President and successor. 1999 – The U.S. government hands control of the Panama Canal (as well all the adjacent land to the canal known as the Panama Canal Zone) to Panama. This act complied with the signing of the 1977 Torrijos–Carter Treaties. 1999 – Indian Airlines Flight 814 hijacking ends after seven days with the release of 190 survivors at Kandahar Airport, Afghanistan. 2004 – The official opening of Taipei 101, the tallest skyscraper at that time in the world, standing at a height of 509 metres (1,670 ft). 2009 – Both a blue moon and a lunar eclipse occur. 2010 – Tornadoes touch down in midwestern and southern United States, including Washington County, Arkansas; Greater St. Louis, Sunset Hills, Missouri, Illinois, and Oklahoma, with a few tornadoes in the early hours. A total of 36 tornadoes touched down, resulting in the deaths of nine people and $113 million in damages. 2011 – NASA succeeds in putting the first of two Gravity Recovery and Interior Laboratory satellites in orbit around the Moon. 2014 – A New Year's Eve celebration stampede in Shanghai kills at least 36 people and injures 49 others. 2015 – A fire breaks out at the Downtown Address Hotel in Downtown Dubai, United Arab Emirates, located near the Burj Khalifa, two hours before the fireworks display is due to commence. Sixteen injuries were reported; one had a heart attack, another suffered a major injury, and fourteen others with minor injuries. 2018 – Thirty-nine people are killed after a ten-story building collapses in the industrial city of Magnitogorsk, Russia. 2019 – The World Health Organization is informed of cases of pneumonia with an unknown cause, detected in Wuhan. This later turned out to be COVID-19, the cause of the COVID-19 pandemic.

[beardedmrbean]

https://apple.news/A3f8u6tXeTaqMtF6EF6ebMw

Now isn’t that odd 🤔

A Florida man on an American Airlines flight was put in a headlock, removed from the aircraft and arrested after he called fellow passengers "blue-eyed white devils" and threatened to "take this plane down with all you motherf---ers on it."

Shail Patel, 29, was drunk when he boarded the flight from Tampa to Philadelphia on Tuesday and began "antagonizing passengers, calling flight attendants names, threatening passengers and aggressively moving through the aircraft," court documents show, according to WFLA.

The report stated he was acting hostile after he boarded and "began acting erratically, yelling and cursing at the passengers."

Patel called passengers "blue-eyed white devils" and threatened to "take this plane down with all you motherf------ on it," according to court documents. He is also accused of slapping a passenger on the hand and face and spitting on them.

Video footage of the incident showed Patel yelling an antisemitic slur at a flight attendant before he was put in a headlock by a fellow passenger and removed from the aircraft. "I'm trying to get to my home country and you people made it harder for me to get to my home country," he was heard yelling at one point in the video.

A flight attendant used the aircraft's public address system to ask if any off-duty police officers were on board who could help restrain Patel. Police said six off-duty law enforcement officers stepped in and took him off the plane.

"Prior to departure of American Airlines flight 2506 with service from Tampa (TPA) to Philadelphia (PHL), law enforcement was requested to the aircraft due to a disturbance in the cabin involving a disruptive customer," American Airlines said in a statement to Fox News Digital. "We thank our team for their professionalism and apologize to our customers for the inconvenience."

The flight had a 30-minute delay because of the incident.

Patel was arrested on two counts of battery and one count of disorderly intoxication. He is being held at the Hillsborough County Jail on a $2,150 bond. __________________________

First thought was Patel is a Indian name, was confused about the home country bit but given the fact that he was drunk it's safe to assume guys not Muslim.

Still this is the end result of DEI policies and similar programs that are just ways to pin the blame on white people for everything, Missouri AG pointing to the same thing and attaching some of the blame for that young girl that got her head bashed into the sidewalk on this nonsense.

[olowan-waphiya]

'''It's one of the biggest mysteries in modern aviation history. In March 2014, Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 took off from Kuala Lumpur International Airport en route to Beijing and lost communication about 38 minutes into the flight. Military radar tracked the aircraft as it veered off course before the signal (and the plane) disappeared somewhere over the Andaman Sea and Indian Ocean.

All 12 crew members and 227 passengers were presumed dead, and search-and-rescue efforts yielded no signs of the doomed plane apart from a few pieces of debris that washed up on coastal shores months later. Now, scientists have partially reconstructed the possible origin and drift path of that debris via a novel means: extracting data about ocean temperatures stored in shells of barnacles, according to a new paper published in the journal AGU Advances.''''

[mariacallous]

As President Donald Trump golfed in Florida over the weekend, his hefty new tariffs, which target everywhere from China to the Falkland Islands, started to go into effect, and businesses began to react to them. Jaguar Land Rover, the Anglo-Indian automaker, announced it was pausing shipments to the United States. The American company Howmet Aerospace, which builds parts for airliners made by Boeing and Airbus, also said it may halt sending products that are affected by the new duties.

On Wall Street, where stocks plunged by about ten per cent on Thursday and Friday, analysts and investors prepared for more selling. The widely followed VIX index, a measure of expected volatility, has risen to levels not seen since the early days of COVID. Financial markets often overreact, but this Trump slump is perfectly rational and explicable. Tariffs are taxes on goods, and imposing them reduces over-all buying power in the economy. On Friday, Jerome Powell, the chair of the Federal Reserve, noted that the new tariffs are “significantly larger than expected,” so the “same is likely to be true of the economic effects, which will include higher inflation and slower growth.” It is very unusual for a Fed chairman to say out loud that an Administration’s policies are bad for the economy. Also on Friday, JPMorgan Chase, America’s largest bank, predicted a recession later this year, despite the fact that the Labor Department’s employment report for March showed solid growth. “We now expect real GDP to contract under the weight of the tariffs,” Michael Feroli, the bank’s chief U.S. economist, wrote, in a note to clients.

To some extent, investors are simply anticipating the negative impact that slower growth, or an outright slump, will have on corporate profits. But there is more to it than that. Many people on Wall Street are also suffering from buyer’s remorse. From August to December of last year, the market rose by about twenty per cent. Investors, analysts, and business executives bought into the notion that a Trump Presidency would boost an economy that was already growing faster than the rest of the developed world, with a very low jobless rate. After the election, Jamie Dimon, the C.E.O. of JPMorgan Chase, said bankers were “dancing in the street.” They were also willfully ignoring Trump’s long record of recklessness in his own business dealings and his repeated pledges to upend the global trading system, on which he has now followed through.

In recent years, policy analysts on the left and the right have advocated a retreat from the hyper-globalization that reigned from roughly 1990 to 2016, and which had harmful side effects, including a hollowing out of many industrial regions, and a dependency on fragile global supply chains. Trump’s first term, in which he imposed tariffs on certain goods, including steel, aluminum, and washing machines, and on a much wider range of products from China, marked the end of the free-trade era. The Biden Administration left in place the tariffs that Trump had imposed on China and supplemented them with an ambitious industrial policy designed to boost the industries of the future, including green energy, E.V.s, and semiconductors. Although Trump dismissed these policies as the “Green New Scam,” some conservatives, such as those associated with American Compass, a think tank founded in 2020 by Oren Cass, a former aide to Mitt Romney, supported elements of them. (In an article for the Financial Times last year, Cass referred to “the essential role of public financing, subsidies and procurement in spurring innovation and production at scale.”)

But, even if these developments marked a cross-party revival of what some have termed “neo-mercantilism”—the strategic use of state power to shape trade relationships for national advantage—Trump’s new tariffs constitute a radical departure from previous policies, including his own. Rather than applying to countries that impose specific trade barriers on U.S. goods, they target any nation that runs a trade surplus with the U.S., regardless of how that surplus may have arisen. The arithmetic formula that the Administration used to determine its tariff rates simply takes the bilateral surplus in goods from a given country, divides this figure by the amount of goods imported from that country, and multiplies the resultant fraction by a half. Comically, it also includes some Greek symbols to make it look scientific, but nowhere does it include the level of tariffs that the country imposes on U.S. goods.

In other words, these are not “reciprocal” tariffs. Reciprocity involves an equal give-and-take. According to the World Trade Organization, the European Union imposes tariffs of five per cent on foreign goods, on average; Japan imposes tariffs of four per cent; and Cambodia imposes tariffs of nineteen per cent. Under Trump’s policy, the tariffs on goods from these places are twenty per cent, twenty-four per cent, and forty-nine per cent, respectively. As CNBC’s Steve Liesman noted online, Trump “straight up lied when he said the US is now charging tariffs at half the rate other countries charge.”

Immediately after Trump announced his tariffs, I noted that they represent not neo-mercantilism but a resurgence of the absolutist approach adopted during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries by European mercantilists who viewed any trade deficit as an evil. In addition to affecting established industrial powers, including China, Japan, and the E.U., the tariffs also hit Asian economic success stories, such as Vietnam and Bangladesh, and impoverished African countries, such as Lesotho and Malawi. The main reason that Lesotho runs a trade surplus with the United States has nothing to do with trade restrictions; it is because of poverty. With a per-capita annual income of less than a thousand dollars a year, Lesothans can’t afford to buy very many iPhones or Caterpillar trucks. And the new tariffs are threatening one of the country’s main sources of income: factories that make textiles for Levi’s and other Western companies.

Trump’s avowed goal is to re-shore American factories and boost manufacturing employment in the long run, but will it work even on its own terms? In making multibillion-dollar capital investment decisions, such as building a new plant in the United States that could operate for decades, companies need to be pretty sure about the future. With Trump, the only certainty is that things could change. Another factor to consider is that many imports are components for domestically produced goods, and slapping tariffs on them raises the costs to American firms that rely on these parts. A Federal Reserve Board study of the tariffs that Trump imposed on China in 2018 found that, when this factor was taken into account, the duties didn’t lead to any increase in manufacturing jobs. In fact, they led to a reduction of 1.4 per cent.

Trump’s new tariffs are so high and wide-ranging that estimating their ultimate impact, assuming they stay in place, would be largely guesswork. We do know for sure that they represent an unprecedented shock to the economy, and they are being accompanied by policies that run directly counter to the goal of promoting American economic dominance. Guided by Elon Musk and his DOGE colleagues, the Trump Administration is busy making cutbacks at the National Science Foundation and National Institutes of Health, which finance basic scientific research on which American businesses rely for their product development. It’s also cancelling grants for clean-energy projects and undermining investments in E.V. manufacturing by, for example, reversing the Biden Administration’s rules on reducing tailpipe pollution. Last week it withdrew funding for a federal program that promotes technical progress and productivity growth at small and medium manufacturing companies across the country. If this is mercantilism, it is mercantilism gone mad.

In recent history, Brexit represents the only comparable act of economic self-harm. But the fallout from the U.K.’s vote, in 2016, to withdraw from the European Union was largely limited to its own inhabitants. This is different. Since the Second World War ended, the U.S. has been the global economic hegemon. While acting in its own interest, sometimes ruthlessly, it has taken the view that promoting international trade and development will ultimately benefit Americans as well as people overseas. The Trump Administration has now formally abandoned this leadership role as a champion of open trade, but it hasn’t stopped there. At least in the short run, it has committed to a policy of inflicting damage not only on itself but on the rest of the world, too, including some of the poorest countries. That’s bad in its own right, but it’s also bad for business. No wonder markets everywhere are tumbling.

[airsllides]

airsLLide No. 6663: VT-EJG, Airbus A310-304, Air India, Geneva, February 29, 1992.

In 1987, a new management was given the task to turn inefficient and money losing Air India around and modernize the company. Prime Minister Rajiv Ghandi appointed Rajev Jetley who accepted the challenge and attempted to turn the tides at the State owened carrier. Among the visible changes was the introduction of a new, modernist livery in the omnipresent 'Eurowhite'-style, with a golden sun and 24 sunrays in the tail. It was named the 'sun class' colors and should have replaced the classic "Palace in the Sky" livery with its elaborate window ornaments and the Maharaja figure as its ambassador...

Wait, you say you just recently still saw some Boeing with those window ornaments? Yes, indeed, you are right. Mr. Jetley's revolutionary wind did not blow for very long: both within the airline as with the rather conservative, influential members of the Indian society, the old livery and logo were considered something untouchable, and thus, staff from ground handlers to cockpit crews protested repeatedly against the new corporate image, constantly making references to the old 'Maharadja' icon in announcements and still calling lounges and first class cabins Maharaja Class (officially, it was ment to be renamed 'sun class').

The new revolutionary management resigned in July 1990, and quickly thereafter, the airline reverted to an only slightly modified version of its original livery (the ornaments around the windows were a bit less elaborate now to ease paintjobs, and the red had more of a hint into a lighter orange than the original rich red).

Only ten aircraft ever wore the 'sun class' livery, four A310-300s delivered new in that scheme, a Boeing 747-300 also delivered new, and four Boeing 747-200 that were repainted into it.