Thaksin wins two in a row

28 June 2009

Two weeks; two by-elections. Two wins for the Thaksin backed Puea Thai party - the latest incarnation of TRT/PPP.

The Sri Sa Ket by-election was seen as a big political test. Puea Thai's win implies a significant drop in people's satisfaction with the government, it gives increasing momentum to Thaksin fever after a big turn out in the rain at Saturday#s rally in Bangkok and it provides moral support to the "red shirts". It also suggest that Newin Chidchob miscalculated his defection from Thaksin's alliance to join with the Democrats.

Thaksin's sister, Yingluck, helped to run the Puea Thai campaign in Constituency 3 of the lower Northeast province of Si Sa Ket.

The by-elections were a key test of political strength in the Isan (Northeast) region. Local political powerhouse Newin Chidchob, from nearby Buri Ram province, had put his prestige on the line in the two by-elections in a bid to boost the Bhum Jai Thai Party, which he took into the Democrat-led coaliation government early this year.

In the short-term the results of the last two weeks strengthen the Democrats. They are less of a hostage to Chidchob's Bhum Jai Tha faction. For now none of the government's  coalition parties want a general election as they are all collectively worried about Thaksin. There is unlike to be any snap election.

But now some coalition MPs may shift their support to Puea Thai like "rats deserting the sinking ship".

This has always been the yellow short argument - elections dont work for Thailand - people do not vote as the establishment wants them to . In 2005, in 2006, and in 2008 the people of the North East voted for Thaksin. They still do; even after a coup, the dissolution of TRT and PPP and the yellow shirt closure of the country that led to the installation of the Democrat led coalition. The reality is that Thai society remains deeply divided.

The Gulf can�t deal with Iran until Iran deals with itself
From the National - Sultan Al Qassemi

28 June 2009

"Since the 1979 revolution Iran has tried its best to maintain a sense of normality. But it is a classic example of a country that has not come to terms with itself, and that poses a challenge for the Gulf countries in trying to decipher how to deal with its northern neighbour.

For instance, while the Iranian government is all too happy to refer to the former US secretary of state Madeleine Albright�s historic apology in 2000 for the CIA�s role in removing the Iranian prime minister, Mohammad Mossadegh, in 1953, the latter is not honoured and is in fact ignored by the Islamic regime.

For us in the Gulf it is crucial that the transition occurring in Iran today, from a single clerical managed dictatorship to possibly a multi-clerical managed semi-democracy, happens in a peaceful manner. None of us knows the extent of the Iranian nuclear development programme, a threat that outweighs any other to the Gulf states in economic, environmental and security terms.

Iran is not a small state with inhabitants who can be easily managed by controlling the media and enforcing clerical rule. The problem was that the ruling clerics felt so at ease with themselves within their own borders that they started meddling in the affairs of Arab states by financing non-state movements in the Arab world while ignoring the powderkeg within their own country � disenfranchised youth.

The truth is that citizens of the Arab Gulf states � like their fellow Iranians, whether they support Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Mir Hossein Mousavi, or neither of them � don�t understand why the Islamic Republic is involving itself with Arab issues. They see Iran financing Hamas and Hizbollah while their own people are left in poverty.

Iran may be excused for worrying about Iraq and Afghanistan, since they are bordering states, but it remains a mystery why Tehran meddles in the affairs of Lebanon, Syria, Egypt, Bahrain, Yemen � and even Morocco, which severed relations with Iran this spring. It would do better to look after �legacy issues� within its own borders, such as the neglected Baluchi, Kurdish and Arab minorities.

The Gulf states � in keeping with their recent splits on various issues, including the common currency and relations with Iraq � already have different positions with regard to the post-election turmoil in Iran. People�s opinions are split, with some citizens envying the relatively free campaigning and criticism that was to a large extent tolerated in the Iranian election campaign, while others are horrified by the street violence used against the protesters.

But each Gulf state has a special relationship with Iran. The Sultan of Oman�s scheduled three-day �historic visit� to Tehran today may or may not go ahead because of the security situation. Nevertheless, last year Oman signed a $7 billion contract to develop the Iranian Kish gas field, a deal that may increase in value to $12 billion.

During the first Ahmedinejad administration Bahrain was repeatedly referred to as a province of Iran, and the continuous allegations irked the Bahraini government so much that this year it suspended negotiations with Iran on a natural gas import deal.

Saudi Arabia�s disagreements with Mr Ahmadinejad�s administration are on multiple levels; in January Prince Turki al Faisal, a former director of Saudi intelligence and ambassador to both the UK and the US, referred to Iran as one of his country�s �most ardent foes�.

In Kuwait, meanwhile, the interior minister, Sheikh Jaber Khaled al Sabah, accused Iran last September of �harbouring and bankrolling� terror groups including al Qa�eda, a charge that Iran vehemently denied.

The UAE for its part has the strongest commercial ties with Iran, with mutual trade in excess of $14 billion annually, making the UAE Iran�s largest trading partner.

And finally to Qatar, which has the closest relations with Mr Ahmadinejad, having repeatedly invited him to the Doha Arab and Gulf summits that it has hosted over the past few years � much to the chagrin of some other GCC states, especially Saudi Arabia, whose monarch refrained from attending a recent summit to which Mr Ahmedinejad was invited.

With the exception of Qatar, which has invested so heavily in a personal relationship with Mr Ahmadinejad, I believe that in their hearts no GCC state would have been unduly sorry to see him depart no matter what their official positions were. Similarly, many Iranians would have felt glad to see the end of an administration that has presided over record unemployment and inflation, and one that has witnessed the nadir of relations with much of the developed world.

Today the GCC is looking at an Iranian government that has lost a great deal of credibility, both locally and internationally, and the Gulf states must now figure out how to deal jointly with a country that has yet to figure out how to deal with itself."

Sultan Sooud Al Qassemi is a non-resident fellow at the Dubai School of Government

Dubai's proposed mega property merger

28 June 2009

Two Dubai government-related groups are in advanced talks to merge Emaar Properties, the Middle East�s largest real estate company, with three developers owned by the emirate�s ruler.

The move appears intended to deliver cost savings by merging Emaar, which is building the world�s tallest tower in Dubai, with Dubai Properties, Sama Dubai and Tatweer, the developer behind the Dubailand theme park, which is yet to be built.

The latter three companies are part of Dubai Holding, which is owned by Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid al Maktoum, Dubai�s ruler.

The merger, if completed, is part of the need to consolidate Dubai's sprawling prperty assets as the emirate looks to restructure and get back on its feet after being hit by the global financial crisis.

The property sector, which has accounted for as much as a third of Dubai�s gross domestic product, has been particularly affected, with real estate prices falling between 40 to 50 per cent after a boom.

A statement by the groups said Royal Bank of Scotland and Merrill Lynch were acting as advisers.

�Consolidating these three companies with Emaar is a natural progression in the evolution of the Dubai real estate landscape, providing benefits to all stakeholders,� said Mohammed al Gergawi, chairman of Dubai Holding.

However, the move could trigger concerns among Emaar�s investors.

The company, which is listed on the Dubai Financial Market, has built up cash reserves that are helping it through the downturn.

Some analysts are therefore reluctant to see it merge with Dubai Properties, Sama Dubai and Tatweer.

Emaar and Dubai Holding abandoned a land-for-shares swap in 2007 because the deal upset shareholders.

Many institutional and international investors sold their shares at the time.

The decision to merge the real estate entities signals an apparent willingness for the ruler to break down the business empires of his lieutenants. During the boom years they competed with one another, helping develop the city rapidly but building up the emirate�s $80bn debt.

Officials have been seeking ways to consolidate some of the emirate�s disparate government-related assets, but have complained that personalities have sometimes slowed down the process.

Emaar, in which the government has a 32 per cent stake, is run by its chairman, Mohammed Alabbar, while Dubai Holding is overseen by Mr Gergawi, with day-to-day management of the group undertaken by Ahmad bin Byat, its chief executive.

 

Be aware what you wear in Dubai

28 June 2009

A man has been jailed in Dubai for wearing a cancer awareness Marc Jacobs T-shirt featuring a nearly-nude picture of Victoria Beckham.

Raffi Nernekian, a Lebanese national, was arrested after an argument with a local man about the T-shirt, in which the key parts of Beckham's body are obscured either by her hands or the logo "Protect the skin you're in".

Mr Nernekian was subsequently jailed for offending public decency for a month, a sentence upheld on appeal. He will be deported after serving his sentence, even though he has lived in the city for five years.

The case is the latest example of foreigners falling foul of the strict social codes in force in the United Arab Emirates.

Mr Nernekian's brother said he bought the T-shirt on a visit to New York.

It was one of a series produced by the designer Marc Jacobs, for whose local agents Mr Nernekian worked as a brand manager.

A number of celebrities, including the actress Winona Ryder and the model Naomi Campbell, posed for the T-shirts, which aim to raise money for a skin cancer research project at New York University.

Mr Nernekian was approached in a bakery by a local man who complained about his T-shirt. After an argument, he left to change, but when he returned he found the police waiting for him.

Curiously I suspect that if this was the cover of a magazine it would be distributed in the UAE as is without any black ink required; the parts that need to be covered are. This was a charity campaign; it was shirt designed not to offend but to warn.

Dubai issued an updated version of its code in March, which said that "clothing shall not indecently expose parts of the body, be transparent, or display obscene or offensive pictures and slogans".
 

Jackson's death saves his life

28 June 2009

I am largely unmoved by the death of Michael Jackson and am rather taken aback by the excessive media coverage and near idolisation of an individual who led a distinctly shady and questionable existence.

The 24 hour coverage of his death and his autopsy (now the family want another one - I hope this is not just to keep the story running) has revived interest in him like never before. Was he a monster or a genius or both? As far as most of the media is concerned the memory is of a musical superstar.

In the 1980s we stayed up late to watch the of the glitzy Thriller video. Now the media is transforming Jackson into an immortal.

He is everywhere; tweets, the websites, pundits, acquaintances, impersonators, choreographers, questionable celebrities, fan club members, correspondents, people claiming long friendships; everyone is on TV recalling the Jackson they want us to remember and making sure they get their few minutes associated with fame.

An untimely and dubious drug associated death was always likely; yet it was also the start of the publicity and goodwill that his life could no longer generate. The fifty London concerts that were in rehearsal had always seemed like an event that could never happen as planned by the promoters. They may indeed have damaged rather than enhanced his career and we will never know whether he would have even completed more than a few shows. It would have all been rather grotesque. Voyeurism.

Jackson's life was almost perfectly timed to fit into the new world of 24-hour news channels and a gossip driven entertainment and celebrity industry.  His death sadly was in keeping with his life. Rather tragic, mysterious, lonely and sad.  

Jackson's image and reputation were permanently damaged. Court cases. Out of court settlements. Revelations of a child-like life at Neverland were his recent history. Not his music. 

Jackson's life has gone from irresistible child star to weird, shattered, self-pitying, fallen idol. He now joins those he loved and admired for their life-after-death adventures - Garland, Dean, Monroe, Presley, Lennon, Diana. And his death, however untimely, will now see him remembered alongside these legends.

Now can we get back to some real news.

Iran's vengeful faith

27 June 2009

I am loathe to write about a faith that I know rather little about.

But there is something frightening about a faith with leaders who call for extreme punishment of their own citizens for the crime of peaceful protest.

"Rioters and those who mastermind the unrest must know the Iranian nation will not give in to pressure and accept the nullification of the election results," said Ayatollah Ahmed Khatami during Friday prayers in Tehran, according to Iran's state-run Press TV.

Khatami demanded that leaders of the election protests should be punished harshly, with some "worthy of execution."

With a widespread crackdown on the opposition since the bitterly disputed June 12 presidential election scattered protests have now replaced the initial mass gatherings.

The word Islam means �surrender.� The entire religion is based on surrendering one�s self, speech, action and thoughts to God.

The first verse of every chapter in the holy Muslim book, the Quran, goes like this, �In the name of God, most merciful, most compassionate.� Devout Muslims start many of their activities or speech with these glorious words. But where is the compassion in the Iranian mullah�s speech? Where is the Mercy?

These are Iranians. His own people; they were protesting for an honest vote. Many are students; many are women.

The Iranian regime imposed a crackdown on foreign media which made the story impossible to cover freely. The world ended up with two views of on what�s going on: The government perspective came through the state media, radio, TV, newspapers and websites.

The opposition turned itself into a media outlet where everyone with a cell phone became a correspondent. They uploaded their images to video-sharing websites and interacted with the world through social media. They provided raw, unedited picture to the entire world.

Meanwhile comments from the rest of the Arab world are very muted or non-existent. But for moderate Muslims the rhetoric of the Iranian leadership must be repellant. Why the silence. Because across most of the rest of the Arab world resides a disenfranchised populace. A popular uprising calling for transparent elections is something that much of the Arab world is not ready for. 
 

The Bangkok Post's hypocrisy

24 June 2009

I am not sure that the Bangkok Post even realises the wonderful hypocrisy of its editorial opinion on the Iran elections. The editorial is reprinted below; remember this is the yellow shirt backing newspaper that decries foreign commentary on Thai politics.

Remember that in Thailand a military coup and the judicial system were employed to oust the democratically-elected government and then to ban certain political parties. In Iran, it appears that the popular vote has at a very minimum been misrepresented and violence is now being used to suppress protestors.

In both Thailand and Iran state authorities have been perfectly willing to use violence to disperse pro-democracy protestors. In both countries, real power is wielded by individuals acting largely behind the scenes.

The Bangkok Post blames the Iranian authorities for the events of the last week and calls for foreign election observers to be allowed in and for an end to harassment of foreign journalists. There are no foreign election observers in Thailand and foreign journalists are a threatened breed there at present.

Better still the Post calls on journalist to "ferret out the cheating, fixing and buying of elections." The Post might want to set an example on its own doorstep.

What is so strange is why the Post advocates that Iran should do things that the Post steadfastly denies in Thailand in order that Iran "may yet salvage an honest and credible result from the inadequate polls." Yet the Bangkok Post has supported both the September 2006 coup and the appointment of an unelected Democrat government.

Would the Post ever advocate foreign election observers and journalists checking the next Thai election? Of course not. That's why this editorial is so very entertaining.

"EDITORIAL Outsiders must be let in - 17 June 2009

The presidential election in Iran has gone from undignified farce to international concern in the past week. Riots and large, partisan demonstrations turned deadly on Monday, 72 hours after voters turned out in record numbers at peaceful polling stations. The uncontrolled protests over a supposedly democratic election have caught attention everywhere. But President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Iranian authorities are at least responsible for what is happening, by harassing foreign journalists and barring election observers.

The actions of the incumbent towards those who gather and disseminate information did not directly cause huge protests and violence that has closed down much of Teheran and other parts of the country. Rather, the information vacuum has encouraged rumours and conspiracy theories. Because no independent or objective observers were present in any numbers, the government's claim that Mr Ahmadinejad scored a landslide victory seems no more credible than a similar claim by the opposition candidate, former prime minister Mir Hossein Mousavi.

Journalists, of course, can cause a lot of trouble for a government, and foreign journalists can cause it worldwide. But one basic facet of their work is to ferret out the cheating, fixing and buying of elections. If they find this, it certainly makes an incumbent look bad, and could threaten his or her regime. But if they fail to find this, the election process gains instant acceptance.

Election observers have the same basic chore. There are many such groups around the world who have high standards of objectivity. They have the experience at watching elections to back them up. Iran barred all such groups, whether they were independent or sponsored by groups such as the United Nations.

The harassment of the press has been particularly distasteful. President Ahmadinejad's regime has reportedly blocked foreign websites, including the BBC, and jammed radio broadcasts, including Voice of America. The local bureau of the news channel Al-Arabiya was closed for a week.

If objective journalists or trained observers were present at the election, it would be possible to assess the competing assertions of victory. But now, media rights group Reporters Without Borders has urged all nations to refuse to recognise the results of the election because of the censorship and violence towards news personnel. President Ahmadinejad and Mr Mousavi both claim to have captured well over 60% of the ballots. Obviously one of them is wrong. Neither has the credibility needed to foster public or foreign belief.

Mr Ahmadinejad, however, has tried to dismiss the post-election violence as a football-type demonstration. He called a post-election victory rally, attended by thousands of his supporters. This was equally as disrespectful of the election, as Mr Mousavi's supporters, who also appealed to emotion rather than reason. The president's attempt to whip up post-election support led to violence and murder. Neither he nor his opponent has tried to moderate the violence, including that by police.

Following the allegations of vote-buying and ballot-stuffing, the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, has ordered an investigation of the election. Iranians, like all people, deserve the most honest election possible. To get that, Mr Khamenei should also order that acceptable and experienced international observers help with the investigation, along with foreign journalists to observe and report. That way, Iran may yet salvage an honest and credible result from the inadequate polls."
 

So funny, it hurts

24 June 2009

This story is so funny that it hurts.

Dubai Properties LLC, a subsidiary of Dubai Properties Group, today announced key infrastructure work including sewage, water network, district cooling, and power connectivity is steadily progressing at the AED110 billion Business Bay master development.

Do you really need a press release to announce that something is progressing. Are things that bad that it is necessary to announce that you are doing something!

Further the company announced that it is also gearing up for the forthcoming delivery of the Executive Towers.

What it did not say is that this handover is almost 18 months late; and that purchasers have been either not informed or have been misled about progress on the development.

The press release says that Business Bay is Dubai Properties' 80 million sq. feet master development, located along the extension of the Dubai Creek. A 'city within a city', it is being developed along the lines of Manhattan of New York or the Ginza of Tokyo, (this is funny - it bares no resemblance to either) for providing the best possible commercial environment to world-class companies, investors and businesses.

The press release quotes Mohamed Binbrek, Group CEO of Dubai Properties GroupDubai Properties GroupDubai Properties Group said: "Business Bay is our most acclaimed and ambitious project up to date. The unprecedented logistics and scale of construction that encompasses the development is closely supervised by Dubai Properties and relevant business partners and stakeholders, and we are determined to deliver all foundational function in a timely manner. In line with the progression of key infrastructural networks, Dubai Properties is continuously implementing improvements to the development, ensuring that all areas receive adequate attention and enhancement wherever needed."

"As part of our commitment to shaping quality master developments, Dubai Properties complements the Dubai skyline with the delivery of several major projects. In line with our promise to our stakeholders, our status is backed by projects such as Executive Towers and the Creek extension at Business Bay, amongst other spectacular developments around Dubai. Client needs stand as our topmost priority and we will continue to bring on stream projects that serve as a benchmark for generations to come."

Even better the company says that "in line with the handover of many spectacular towers at the development, a comprehensive road network has been laid out throughout the first and second phase of project to serve the residential and commercial premises. Additionally, two parallel roads that are being constructed to the east and west of the development by the Road and Transport Authority (RTA) are anticipated to further benefit the Business Bay community." After almost three years in Falcon Tower and Millennium Tower, both adjacent to Business Bay; and with access that is mud, stones and potholes, I am far from confident of any decent road access.

Complementing this accessibility, a major portion of a thorough water network has also been completed last year and is scheduled to open soon. In parallel, an internal sewage network at Business Bay has been completed and will soon be connected to the Dubai Municipality sewage network.

Dubai Properties' first project in Business Bay, the AED3 billion Executive Towers, markedly visible from the arterial Sheikh Zayed Road and Al Khail Road, is a vibrant residential and commercial environment. While 10 of the residential buildings at Executive Towers feature studio-to four-bedroom apartments, others include one office tower (with 187 office suites), 60 villas located at the plaza level, eight boutique office villas and a three-level podium that offers parking bays for 4,500 vehicles.

flydubai adds Indian connections

24 June 2009

flydubai, Dubai�s first low cost airline, has announced new flights to India taking the airline's destinations quickly to eight.

flydubai will begin its Indian flights with the north eastern city of Lucknow on July 13. This will be closely followed by Coimbatore in the south of the country on July 14. The trio of destinations will be completed on July 23 when flights to the north western city of Chandigarh begin.

FZ449 will depart Dubai for Lucknow on July 13 and will operate four times per week. Prices will start from Dh425, including all taxes and one piece of hand baggage weighing up to 10kg.

The thrice-weekly Coimbatore service, FZ413, will take off from Dubai on July 14. Prices to Coimbatore also start from Dh425.

flydubai�s third Indian destination, Chandigarh, also known as The Beautiful City, serves as the capital of two states, Punjab and Haryana. With a population of around 1m, Chandigarh is the richest city in India with a per capita income of Rs 110,676 annually. Chandigarh is India�s first planned city and is internationally renowned for its architecture and planning.

FZ431 will become the first international flight to touch down at Chandigarh airport on July 23. Prices to Chandigarh start from Dh350.

Mergers amid the airline gloom

23 June 2009

Amid the financial gloom and overall lack of activity there are a slew of airline mergers quietly taking place that might reshape the industry; some are necessary for survival; some opportunistic and some that suggest that big is going to be far from beautiful.

Whatever the reality the airline industry is in a major shake up and a prolonged recession will only lead to more changes.

How bad are things; Boeing announced just one order at the recently held Paris Air Show - that from MC Aviation Partners for two 737-800s. Meanwhile, Airbus announced firm orders for just 58 aircraft worth almost US$6.4 billion.

It is not just planemakers which are seeing new orders slumping. GE Aviation, a unit of General Electric Co and the world's largest maker of jet engines, expects orders this year to halve as airlines rein in plane buying amid a slump in travel demand.

The global airline industry constantly glides through short booms followed by long busts. After losing some US$42 billion between 2001 and 2006, it turned in a profit of US$12.9 billion in 2007. Then it lost US$10.4 billion last year amid sharp hikes in fuel costs.

Two weeks ago in Kuala Lumpur, the International Air Transport Association (Iata) projected that a 15 per cent fall in revenue would see the industry losing US$9 billion this year amid a collapse in air travel demand.

About 50 airlines have disappeared since the beginning of last year. Another 20 could go down in the next six months.

Although the planemakers are seeing a huge slump in new orders, they are still sitting on a comfortable cushion of order books of about 7,000 planes worth more than US$800 billion. So there is enough work; but can the airlines pay for the planes they have ordered. Already airlines are talking about postponing orders.

The real pain is in the premium cabins where first and business class demand has fallen dramatically. It may be that some of the lost traffic may be gone forever.

Regional business travellers who downgraded to low-yielding coach-class may never come back to the premium cabins, which provide some 40 per cent of the revenue and most of the yield for major carriers. Meanwhile, the extensive use of ever improving communications technology could permanently take away a significant portion of long-haul business travel.

That said there are still plenty of new travelers. In Asia, Air Asia has grown from no where ten years ago to perhaps Asia's most influential airline. The slogan "now everyone can fly" is about a whole new traveler. The growth though is in the emerging economies. Europe and the USA are clearly in for a long term consolidation.

Airlines have cut costs and boosted efficiency. There us little fat to shed to boost the bottom line. In recent weeks, airlines have attacked the final frontier of costs - wages. Many have cut remuneration and forced employees to take no-pay leave. Others, such as British Airways and Air India, have even asked employees to work for free for a while. But these can only be temporary solutions.

If the recession wears the solution will be more consolidation and the elimination of duplicate costs. This has already led Delta ( DAL) buyout Northwest Airlines in the USA. It is forcing a China Eastern and Shanghai Airlines merger; Air India and Indian Airlines to merge; Kingfisher to acquire Deccan and Jet to acquire Air Sahara. it has driven Air France and KLM to merge their operations; Cathay Pacific to acquire Dragonair, the baby that it originally gave birth to; Iberia and British Airways to start talking and Lufthansa to go down a significant European acquisition strategy.

Lufthansa meanwhile is acquiring Austrian Airlines, British Midland and Brussels Airlines (which has a large part of the old Sabena network). Lufthansa has cemented itself as the most active commercial airline buyer in Europe. It has already integrated Swiss International Air Lines into its aviation group. Lufthansa is rumoured to be courting Polish carrier LOT.

It may be that In Europe there may eventually be only three or four airlines. Perhaps only two or three in the USA and in other major markets.

This may not be enough; ultimately, the only long-term solution is industry restructuring.

The airline industry has to be freed from archaic 60-year-old rules which prevent cross-border mergers, consolidations and access to free skies. Every other industry across the globe - including the key resources, technology and automobile sectors - are free to embark on meaningful restructurings.

Governments and regulators should let the industry to do what is necessary for long-term sustainability and growth: merge within and across borders; raise capital globally; scale up; or just close down. The colours on the tail should be a brand, not a national symbol.

Can one airline survive alone or do they need the geographic reach to be able to whether economic storms; to be able to redeploy resources; to be able to source people?

In Asia and the Middle east every country needs a flag and an airline. Ownership rules restrict foreign ownership to limits of up to 49% but not enough to take control. Can smaller countries support multiple carriers. What is the future for Qantas, Air New Zealand, the Japanese carriers; Thai Airways etc. Can they survive on their own. Should they. Does it really matter that the airline is named after the country that it is headquartered in.

What should happen; it may be that local regional mergers do not make sense; they dont extend the airline's reach or market. A Singapore/Cathay merger probably does not make sense. A Cathay and Qantas alliance might work. The Middle East carriers are cash rich. Why shouldn't Emirates be allowed to fly services in the USA to connect  to its international network.

The protectionism of Air Canada and the Canadian government is the sort of short sighted thinking that will kill this industry as it sinks into a thundercloud of debt. Air Canada flies passengers across the channel to feed into the European and Far Eastern network of Lufthansa and its European subsidiaries. As such Air Canada is not operating as Air Canada but a small cog of the much larger Star Alliance. Emirates and other should be allowed to compete.

Afridi and the joy of Twenty/20

22 June 2009 - The Guardian

"St John's Wood was a sea of green and white on Sunday. Outside Lord's, it was hard to move for the crowd. Air horns hooted, cars bedecked with the flag of Pakistan crawled up the Wellington Road and everywhere held aloft were pictures and signs. "Pakistan Zindabad", '"Be Afridi Be Very Afridi". And there, towering above the masses, was a giant poster of the great Pashtun, upright, right arm raised aloft and finger pointing to the sky in celebration as another wicket fell to him.

Of all the magnificent cricketers on display, it is Shahid Afridi, the mavericks' maverick, who has epitomised what this wonderful tournament has been about. Has anyone, in any sport, ever radiated more unalloyed, exuberant joy at success, not just for himself but on behalf of his team-mates and his nation? Afridi is not for the purist but the romantic. He swashes and buckles and the Pakistani people idolise him for it. Once, in a Test match against England in Faisalabad, he belted his way in a flurry of sixes to within eight of a remarkable first-innings century. When next the time came to bat, the ground was packed. In the minutes after Andrew Flintoff removed his off stump first ball, the stadium drained of spectators as if a giant plughole had been unblocked. That is charisma.

Afridi epitomised Pakistan's achievement in raising themselves from a ramshackle start to gather unstoppable momentum so even as fine and versatile a side as Sri Lanka had no answer. They were led excellently by Younus Khan, a man who understands the difference between stick and carrot, cajoling his side away from intensity and towards enjoyment of the moment. Be grateful to be playing, he seemed to say, we are the lucky ones. Let us play for those less fortunate.

The response in Pakistan will be enormous, for the game has deep roots there. Perhaps this win will serve to sustain them, inspire the next generation which is queueing in vast numbers to take part. Geoff Lawson, their former coach, tells of an initiative for under-16s, Hunt for Heroes, run by the former Test player Haroon Rashid and set up in all the big centres such as Karachi, Lahore and Rawalpindi, to find the next generation. For the opening day in Karachi, they anticipated 100 applicants at most: 6,000 turned up and the area around the venue was gridlocked. It was the same countrywide. All they want now is the opportunity. Younus pleads for international tours to Pakistan.

"It is not our fault," he says, and he is right. But he knows, in the light of what happened in Lahore on that March day this year, that it is not feasible in the foreseeable future to resume tours. Now it is the duty of the International Cricket Council and its member countries to ensure the profile of Pakistan cricket is maintained. Specifically, the England and Wales Cricket Board can take the lead by offering fine neutral venues during our summer, not just to the benefit of Pakistan cricket but to that of those Pakistanis who have made their homes here.

If neither the men's nor the women's final produced the spectacle that would have been hoped for, then that is often the way. But the tournament has been a triumph from the opening ceremony with the comedian doing a wonderful impression of an upper-class twit (what do you mean, Duke of Kent?), to the celebrations after the close. Running the men's and women's tournaments in parallel was inspirational and should be repeated at all major ICC events. The whole thing was succinct, beautifully encapsulated in a timescale that has left us wanting more. That, all governing bodies take note, is how it should be. The joys of cricket have been brought to a fresh audience as well as converting many agnostics or sheer atheists to the format.

There have been spectacular matches, none more so than the run chase masterminded on Friday (against Australia) by Claire Taylor and Beth Morgan for England women. But Pakistan's triumph over South Africa was a seminal moment, Sri Lanka's embarrassment of Australia instructive, and West Indies' defeat of India exhilarating. Individually the skills shown render as Neanderthal those of even two years ago.

In a format that was once regarded as a one-sided slugathon, it is the bowlers, hamstrung at every turn by legislation � wides, bouncer and fielding restrictions, susceptible to daft bats and short boundaries, free hits, limited overs, no throwing the ball in on the bounce to scuff it, no waving your arms around to distract the batsman � have still found the wherewithal to fool, bamboozle and generally dominate the game.

Artists such as Ajantha Mendis, Umar Gul and Afridi have set new benchmarks. With the bat Tillakaratne Dilshan was deemed man of the tournament but others left their mark, among them the mighty Chris Gayle, clinical, cerebral Kumar Sangakkara, and Jacques Kallis, whose more prosaic skills served South Africa so well. Then there was the fielding, with catching beyond belief and such athleticism.

If we want one image beyond that of Afridi in his pomp to sustain us until the next tournament (too early actually, in the Caribbean next spring) then it is of Angelo Mathews of Sri Lanka, defying gravity to turn six runs into three."

Airline culture gone wrong

21 June 2009

There is something seriously warped in the management culture at the combined Hong Kong Express/Hong Kong Airways head office.

This is their May email to all staff including pilots and cabin crew. It is very Chinese; like reading from Mao's little red book. But I want crew who have been assessed on the knowledge of safety and emergency procedures not on whether then even know what an apothegm is. What is it anyway?

The saddest part was the threat of punishment if you cannot recite this in a spot check!

"Dear All Colleagues,
Re : Corporate Culture
As the members of Hong Kong Airlines and Hong Kong Express, all staff should familiar with the CORPORATE CULTURE. Staff members are requested to study the following apothegm thoroughly and apply it in daily life.

Harmony is the basis for collective prosperity;
Perseverance is the rule to sturdy progress;
Careful recipe is the best medicine to health;
Forgiveness is most needed in dispute;
Kindliness to youth endows the superior with virtue;
Diligence leads research to accession of knowledge;
Sincerity is the fundamental in daily life;
Modesty is the best policy in human relationship;
Preparation avoids needless drudgery;
Prudence remains essential in conducting business.

According to the company policy, all staff should keep firmly in mind the apothegm. Human Resources Department will follow up with the colleagues regarding on the practice of apothegm after 2-3 weeks and Management will conduct the random spot check after a month. Please be reminded that Department Head should have the responsibility to ensure his/her subordinates to understand the CORPORATE CULTURE. Please note that punishment will be given to those who could not recite the apothegm."

According to the Hong Kong media the instruction, which saw flight attendants swatting up on the creed on their way to work, was described by pilots and flight attendants as insulting and "like being back in primary school."

Airline executives have apparently d been reciting the apothegm to each other at their weekly management meetings.

Very bizarre.

The richest of them all?

21 June 2009

"No. 1 on our list, for the second year in a row, is Thailand�s King Bhumibol Adulyadej. He is worth $30 billion, $5 billion less than last year, as a result of double-digit declines in real estate and stocks owned via the Crown Property Bureau, the state investment vehicle of which he is a trustee. Rising political tensions have also destabilized the country, dampening even the important tourism sector.

We include the assets of Thailand's Crown Property Bureau in King Bhumibol's net worth, as he is a trustee. However, the Thai government disagrees and has publicly stated that the CPB's assets are not part of the king's personal wealth; rather, the CPB owns and manages the assets of the monarchy on behalf of the Thai people."

-Extracted from Tatiana Serafin, �The World�s Richest Royals�, Forbes, 17 June 2009.

As last year the Thai authorities will argue that the CPB and its assets do not belong to the monarchy; that these are assets of the state. Forbes references last year#s objections in its second paragraph above.

But the reality is that no one in Thailand would ever suggest that these assets do not in fact belong to the monarchy.

Decisions on the use of CPB land and money are ultimately up to the Royal Family and their advisors. They are not decisions of the people and their representatives.

Dubai development may be down, but it's not out

21 June 2009

Among all the western doom and glow reporting about Dubai; among all the sex on the beach scandals which should be discouraged anywhere; along comes a report which seems to have a bit more substance and a little more optimism.

Christopher Hawthorne is the architecture critic for the Los Angeles Times, and his essay on Dubai follows. It is a decently balance article but also has a different approach, describing, really for the first time in the western press, how Dubai's urbanisation has developed through what he calls a "new kind of urbanism", where the city is really divided into miniature cities that operate in and of themselves.

"It's as if Dubai's leaders had taken sections from cities around the world that appealed to them, or that they decided would appeal to foreign investors, and imported them wholesale to the shores of the Persian Gulf."

One reason for this is the fact that there are so many "master developments", where a developer controls the fate of a huge piece of land. In most cities, a developer is never dealing with much more than a city block. The essay is interesting for anyone interested in architecture and/or in urban planning.

Perhaps the most important point comes three quarters the way through:

"Dubai's new neighborhoods ... have been colonized by builders simply pushing out into virgin desert -- or, in the case of the emirate's now-iconic island developments, into the gulf. That makes Dubai -- its neighborhoods unburdened by history, its developers unconstrained by zoning codes, preservation battles or community activism -- an unusually pure, unfiltered example of what new cities look like in the age of globalization."

With oil creeping up to US$80 a barrel; a price that is unlikely to see a fall back to $40 levels, just maybe we will be reading "Dubai rebirth" stories.

"Many of the city-state's bigger-than-life projects may be in a holding pattern, but don't look for its mega-growth world influence to be contained any time soon.
By Christopher Hawthorne - Architecture Critic - Los Angeles Times

If a city can be spectacularly quiet, this waterfront city-state has certainly qualified in recent months. Hundreds of abandoned construction cranes languish above Dubai's gated communities and beach-side developments and, most dramatically, up and down Sheikh Zayed Road, its high-rise spine. According to a recent estimate in the Middle East Economic Digest, projects worth a staggering $335 billion in the United Arab Emirates -- of which Dubai, with a population of about 2 million, is the largest member -- are stalled or have been canceled outright.

Dubai's residents, roughly 85% of them expatriates, have been left to wonder if the current crisis is merely a pause, a recessionary lull that will be painful but temporary, or closer to a fundamental reckoning that will entirely reorder the emirate and how it does business. The same question is being asked in cities around the world, of course. But it's a particularly acute, even existential one here, since it goes right to the heart of Dubai's self-image.

During the boom years of the last decade, the emirate -- which has only a tiny fraction of the oil reserves held by the capital of the UAE, Abu Dhabi -- became synonymous with frenzied real estate speculation and headlong growth. It operated as a highly efficient machine for attracting capital from around the globe -- in some cases from investors who, for political reasons, rejected the idea of sending it to the U.S. -- and turning it into real estate. In a fundamental sense, many of Dubai's skyscrapers were conceived and designed primarily as vessels to store excess liquidity. If the endless rows of stalled towers now resemble mere shells, perhaps shells are all they were ever meant to be.

You wouldn't have to be hopelessly cynical to conclude that it was all a kind of Ponzi-scheme urbanism: city planning � la Bernard Madoff. "During the boom," as the Economist put it, "supply seemed to create its own demand."

But charting the economic collapse and its fallout is not the only story worth telling about Dubai as the global downturn grinds on. Scrape away the signs of financial distress, plentiful though they are, and what you find is an experiment in a new kind of urbanism here -- one that has both winning and alarming elements and that is likely, for a range of reasons, to outlast the current crisis.

Like many first-time visitors, I expected to find in Dubai a messy, vital hybrid of architectural and urban strategies, reflecting the city's history as a regional crossroads and trading center. I could hardly have been more wrong. Dubai is not some Middle Eastern Venice, a polyglot city where the combination of construction workers from Pakistan, bankers from London and Hong Kong and tourists from around the world creates a mash-up of contemporary urbanism.

It is, instead, carved into a series of separate, perfectly ordered miniature cities, each performing a remarkably persuasive imitation of the place that inspired it. There is the Manhattan-like Sheikh Zayed corridor, where skyscrapers line up shoulder to shoulder and where, just off the boulevard, work continues on an impossibly lanky beanstalk skyscraper known as the Burj Dubai. Designed by Adrian Smith when the architect was a partner at Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, the tower will officially become the tallest building in the world when it's completed later this year.

Between Sheikh Zayed Road's skyscrapers and the Dubai beachfront, meanwhile, is a series of low-rise gated communities that look just like those in Orange County. Farther inland, the Emirates Golf Club re-creates an artificially green slice of suburban Houston or Phoenix. To the west is a center for high-tech and media companies whose office-park architecture -- mid-rise, mirrored-glass office blocks set into a landscape of rolling grass and ponds -- is an almost perfect replica of Silicon Valley, the Microsoft campus in Redmond, Wash., or new high-tech outposts in China and India. Other Dubai neighborhoods mimic the urbanism of Miami, Cairo and Mumbai.

Overlapping ambitions

George Katodrytis, an architect who teaches at the American University in Sharjah, the emirate just northeast of Dubai, calls the resulting condition "cut and paste" urbanism. It's as if Dubai's leaders had taken sections from cities around the world that appealed to them -- or that they decided would appeal to foreign investors -- and imported them wholesale to the shores of the Persian Gulf.

One major reason that the city has been divided up this way is that the emirate's ruling family, led by Sheik Mohammed bin Rashid al Maktoum, controls all the major real estate companies operating here. In Dubai, the urban planners and the developers are essentially one and the same. Market ambition and civic ambition are similarly intertwined: Sheik Mohammed has often been called Dubai's chief executive. Instead of building a monumental city hall or war memorial, Dubai builds shopping centers and office towers at a monumental scale.

In the heart of most cities, the biggest piece of land that a single developer is typically able to control is one square block. (In a dense, layered city, of course, the average parcel is far smaller.) In Dubai, whole districts of the city, many covering dozens of square blocks and hundreds of acres, have been given over to single developments. Seeing architectural diversity within any project as a threat to the bottom line, their creators usually hire a single firm to design them around a recognizable theme: the golf community, the office park, the vaguely souk-like waterfront combination of retail outlets and condominiums.

The result is a surprising twist on the privatization of cities like Los Angeles, where public space is notoriously scarce. In the privatized city, as the well-known critique goes, people aren't forced to mix with people who are different from themselves. They are hidden from that interaction inside their private cars and gated developments. (Cue the opening music from "Crash.") In Dubai, remarkably enough, the same is true for buildings, which tend to cluster together with other pieces of architecture just like them.

The strategy takes some obvious cues from aggressively themed environments, like the casinos lining the Las Vegas Strip. But in Dubai, the illusion is far more powerful. In Dubai, the themed architecture is not only authentic, or nearly so, but is produced at a far more dramatic level. Along Sheikh Zayed Road, the rows and rows of skyscrapers don't just suggest or symbolize a Manhattan-like scale -- they match that scale tower for tower.

At the Mall of the Emirates, a 4-year-old behemoth designed by the Pasadena-based firm F+A Architects, there is an indoor alpine resort, Ski Dubai, whose signature black-diamond run is a remarkable 1,300 feet long. Seen from the front, the mall resembles a big version of any newish Sun Belt shopping center, all pastel stucco and oversized fashion-label billboards. But if you walk around back you notice that the structure bulges dramatically. That enormous bulge holds the ski slope, which is longer than the U.S. Bank Tower in Los Angeles is tall. The mall's main attraction is not some small-scale, irony-laden re-creation of a ski slope. It is a ski slope.

The over-chilled, hyper-ambitious exoticism of such projects has helped give the UAE the biggest ecological footprint, per capita, of any country in the world. That is not Dubai's only black mark. Its labor record, though recently somewhat improved, has been dismal. The construction workers who have built its new towers often live a version of indentured servitude. The BBC aired a documentary in April exposing wretched conditions in one of the emirate's largest labor camps.

Dubai's brand of city-making hasn't produced much important architecture, at least at the level of individual buildings. Though the emirate has lately enlisted some well-known and innovative architects, most of their projects -- including an opera house by Zaha Hadid -- aren't built and because of the downturn may never be.

If the architecture that has emerged here over the last two decades does cohere around a single, particular style, it is a sort of cruise ship modern. Dubai's malls and hotels are lined with loud carpeting and over-polished marble floors, its skyline draped in the architectural equivalent of gold chains and leisure suits. The most obvious example of the type is the 9-year-old, 1,000-foot-tall Burj al Arab hotel, which is shaped like a billowing sail and sits on its own man-made peninsula. The rooms, which, even in the current downturn, start at $1,000 a night, offer countless amenities and sweeping views of the Persian Gulf. Also, there are mirrors above the beds.

Dubai's architecture will be familiar to anyone who has spent time in a quickly modernizing and growing part of the world lately. Its new towers look a lot like the new towers along Chang'an Avenue in Beijing, for example, or those rising alongside elevated expressways in Shanghai.

In those cities, though, new buildings and neighborhoods are laid over or replace old ones, and the tension between modernization and maintaining some links to an urban and cultural past are palpable everywhere (and in many cases have a sharply political dimension). Dubai's new neighborhoods, by contrast, have been colonized by builders simply pushing out into virgin desert -- or, in the case of the emirate's now-iconic island developments, into the gulf. That makes Dubai -- its neighborhoods unburdened by history, its developers unconstrained by zoning codes, preservation battles or community activism -- an unusually pure, unfiltered example of what new cities look like in the age of globalization.

Global reach

Of course, the very attractiveness of Dubai as a place to invest led directly to the current crisis, creating a dangerously speculative bubble that grew and grew until, last year, it popped. But Dubai's economy is likely to recover, for a number of reasons. Chief among them are Abu Dhabi's interest in keeping its neighbor healthy -- already it has bailed out Dubai to the tune of $10 billion, with more perhaps to come -- and Dubai's ability to manipulate the local financial and real estate markets in ways that U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner can only dream of.

Increasingly, Dubai also is likely to be a force in exporting a certain approach to architecture, urbanism and real estate development to cities around the world, in particular through the investments overseen by its various sovereign wealth funds. Among the best studies to date of gulf urbanism is a dense 2007 book called "Al Manakh," a co-publication of the architectural journals Archis and Volume. A sequel will be released early next year; significantly, its editors say it will focus on how Dubai and other city-states that make up the UAE "are reaching out beyond their borders to export development and urbanization."

Dubai's wealth funds have so far tended to sink their money into projects -- including the $8.6-billion CityCenter development on the Las Vegas Strip, funded in part by an investment group called Dubai World -- that re-create a version of Dubai urbanism in other cities, responding as nimbly to global capital flows as to the streets around them.

Even the now-abandoned plan by Frank Gehry and developer Forest City Ratner for Brooklyn's Atlantic Yards, though it wasn't funded by the UAE, had Dubai written all over it. Designed to cover 22 acres and include 16 towers, all by the same architect, if built it would have been an example of the same themed, city-within-a-city, triple-XL approach that has shaped the emirate. In this case the theme happened to be not golf or financial services but Frank Gehry.

That project was doomed by bitter community opposition -- as well as by market timing that could not have been worse. In the U.S., once the economy revives, similar mega-projects will be attempted again. And in parts of the world where governments, like Dubai's, can approve such developments by fiat, they are likely to be even more popular and their chances of taking root far greater.

In the Western press, reports of Dubai's economic crisis have been marked with more than a bit of hopeful schadenfreude. Since Dubai's rise was in part a result -- and therefore a symbol -- of American decline, U.S. reporters have been quick to play up the emirate's subsequent troubles, sometimes in breathless if largely anecdotal stories about its artificial islands sinking into the gulf or laid-off expats abandoning their cars at the airport, tracing plaintive goodbye messages with their fingers in dust-covered windshields. It's as if Dubai's real estate crash somehow represents a green shoot for the notion of unshakable American wealth and influence.

No such luck. Dubai's strange, singular brand of development may offer a cautionary tale for the age of globalization, and it may have been dealt a serious body blow by the economic crisis. But it's far from dead. And it may be coming soon to a city near you."
 

Man on the moon x12

21 June 2009

We are just one month away from the 40th anniversary of the first lunar landing. Among the TV shows and interviews over the next week there will be plenty of discussion of the 12 men who have walked on the moon:

Neil Armstrong Apollo 11, 1969

Born in 1930, in Wapakoneta, Ohio, Armstrong was a navy pilot during the Korean war before becoming an astronaut. He has since worked both in business and academia. Since 1994 he has refused to give any autographs after discovering that his signature was being sold for thousands of dollars to collectors. In 2005 he also sued his barber for selling his hair to space fans.

Edwin "Buzz" Aldrin Apollo 11

Aldrin also fought in the Korean war as a fighter pilot before becoming an astronaut. After his moon flight, he suffered bouts of severe depression and alcoholism which he chronicled in Return to Earth and in his latest memoir Magnificent Desolation. Aldrin remains an ardent advocate of manned space flight.

Charles "Pete" Conrad Apollo 12, 1969

The third man on the moon, Conrad was a flight instructor for the US navy before becoming an astronaut. He was killed in 1999 after a motorcycle accident in California. He was 69.

Alan Bean Apollo 12

Like Armstrong, Bean claimed Scottish ancestry and even took a piece of the McBean tartan to the moon. Bean quit Nasa to become an artist in Houston. He paints only space scenes.

Alan Shepard Apollo 14, 1971

America's first man in space, in 1961, Shepard made front pages round the world after playing golf on the moon. He was made a rear admiral before retiring, and died in 1998 of leukaemia.

Edgar Mitchell Apollo 14

A former naval pilot, Mitchell conducted private psychic experiments while on the moon and later founded the Institute of Noetic Sciences to conduct experiments into consciousness and other paranormal events.

David Scott Apollo 15, 1971

After his mission, Nasa refused to let Scott fly again after it was discovered he had taken commemorative stamps to the moon which he later sold to dealers. He also made headlines, in 2003, when he became engaged, briefly, to British newsreader Anna Ford.

James Irwin Apollo 15

After his moon flight, Irwin founded the High Flight Foundation, an evangelical organisation in Colorado Springs, and later led expeditions to Turkey's Mount Ararat in search of Noah's ark. He died in 1991, aged 61.

John Young Apollo 16, 1972

Young flew on Gemini, Apollo and space shuttle missions. He was openly critical of Nasa in the wake of the shuttle Challenger disaster but continued to work for the agency. He retired in 2004.

Charles Duke Apollo 16

The youngest of the 12 men who walked on the moon, Duke will be 74 in October. After he returned from his lunar journey, Duke discovered God and became involved in prison ministry.

Harrison "Jack" Schmitt Apollo 17, 1972

The only moonwalker who was never a member of the US armed forces, Schmitt - a geologist - turned to politics after his mission and was elected Republican senator for New Mexico. He was defeated after one term in 1982.

Eugene Cernan Apollo 17

The last man to walk on the moon, Cernan was a naval pilot and then an astronaut, flying on Gemini and Apollo missions. He later started his own consultation company, the Cernan Corporation, and became chairman of Johnson Engineering which handles flight crew systems development for Nasa's Johnson Space Centre.

Regime against change

20 June 2009 Editorial The Guardian

"Once a regime loses the combination of legitimacy, popular support, and ability to maintain order without excessive use of force which all successful states display, it is enormously difficult to regain it. That was the lesson the Shah learned 30 years ago as his power melted away. He tried concessions; he tried explanations; he tried violence, although never in a wholehearted way; he tried sacrificing his aides and his friends. Nothing worked. Soon, he was history, and soon after that he was dead, and it was as if his government had never been.

The crisis of the Islamic Republic of Iran today is not of this order, and yet, if at the end of a longer road than the one which the Shah travelled down so rapidly, the same fate may ultimately beckon for the clerical elite who preside over its affairs. They have always claimed that the political life of Iran was subject to a significant measure of consent, a claim which has not been altogether without foundation. More important, most Iranians have been ready to believe in that claim at least some of the time. Periods of disillusion have been followed by fresh attempts to get the regime to respond to popular demands. If Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the supreme leader, had wished to show that the state could be responsive, he would have avoided the harsh language he used yesterday at the Friday prayer meeting at Tehran university. He would have said, or at least hinted, that the election results could be reconsidered. He would not have threatened demonstrators. He would not have attacked foreign powers. He would, in short, have faced up to the fact that his problem is that huge numbers of Iranians will not accept his mere assertion that the results were genuine. If he ever had that kind of authority, he does not have it now. They deem him to be a liar.

He is not the only member of the regime whose authority is damaged. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad sat in the front row on Friday like a teacher who cannot control his class undergoing the indignity of the headmaster having to emerge from his sanctum to back him up. Whatever else he is, Ahmadinejad is not the president of all Iranians which Khamenei proclaimed him to be last Saturday. He is a compromised and weakened man. But the status of Ahmadinejad and Khamenei in a way matters less than that of Mir Hossein Mousavi. He and his backers now face a test of nerve and purpose. Will they give in to Khamenei's argument that all the presidential contenders are "part of the state," with its implication that they must now retreat from confrontation? Or will Mousavi, in particular, persist in his demand that the election be annulled, refuse to be cowed or co-opted, and refuse to ask his supporters to cease protesting ? No doubt, if he takes the easier course, there would as a reward be some redressing afterwards of the balance between factions inside the regime. But those who voted for Mousavi did not do so to achieve a mere shifting of the furniture of that kind. They wanted deeper changes."

So the curious position is that, if Khamenei persuades Mousavi to submit, the Supreme Leader will have undermined the authority of the regime even more seriously than is already the case. It would then become apparent beyond doubt that the supposedly democratic levers are unconnected to the machinery of power, and that even a man as identified with the Islamic revolution as Mousavi cannot be permitted to function as a popular leader. Once before the regime forced a reformist into retreat, when Mohammad Khatami, who had achieved office but not power, saw his policies in almost every area blocked by entrenched conservative forces. Now it is happening again. Iranians do not want another revolution. They wanted the Islamic republic to respond and evolve. But there is a limit to the number of times you can go to a well which always turns out to be dry.
 

Emirates adding 3rd Sydney flight

20 June 2009

Effective 2nd December 2009 Emirate will be flying a third daily, and a second non stop, flight to Sydney.

EK414/DXB-SYD
Departs: 1:40am
Arrives: 22:35pm

EK415/SYD-DXB
Departs: 6am
Arrives: 1:45pm

Aircraft is A340-500 and services are daily. The repaired 345 from the Melbourne incident/accident will be back in service by then and will presumably be needed for this schedule.

Emirates pilots and the ATSB

20 June 2009 - The Melbourne Herald-Sun

"Emirates pilots have complained to Australia's air safety regulator that airline work practices were to blame for the near disastrous tail-strike incident at Melbourne airport three months ago.

The Middle East airline is accused of unfair rostering, clamping down on subsidised housing allowances and bending the rules on flight hours.

Evidence given to the Australian Transport Safety Bureau suggests that "an incident or accident was predictable" because of a culture within the airline of not admitting mistakes.

The pilots say their actions are aimed at improving flight safety standards for Emirates crews and passengers.

The ATSB has yet to hand down its final report into the tail-strike incident in Melbourne, where an Emirates A340-500 airliner, carrying 245 passengers, 14 crew, and a full load of fuel, struck the runway in a botched takeoff.

A preliminary report found that the flight crew punched wrong load figures into a flight computer, causing the aircraft to move too slowly during takeoff.

After the findings, Emirates management claimed the pilots of the damaged jet, a Dane and a Canadian, had taken rest breaks and were operating within regulated flying hours when they botched the takeoff.

A pilot who has since secretly copied Emirates documents and given them to ATSB investigators, told the Herald Sun in an email, that he is "deeply disappointed" with the way the airline has been run over recent months.

"An incident or accident was predictable," the pilot says. "Our management has still not understood what is going on in the fleets."

The email adds that Middle Eastern culture does not acknowledge mistakes."

Emirates US$70 million repair bill

19 June 2009

Emirates will pay an expected uS$70 million to repair the A340-500 jet that was severely damaged in a near disastrous take-off incident at Melbourne Airport.

A team of French pilots and engineers, which has been working on the jet for the past five weeks, plans to ferry the plane at low altitude to Toulouse next week.

Once there it will undergo one of the biggest aircraft salvage jobs ever undertaken by Airbus.

The entire tail and last two sections of fuselage will be stripped away to allow engineers to replace a fractured bulkhead, a huge salvage task that has never been done before.

Because of the bulkhead fracture, the cockpit and passenger cabin cannot be pressurised, which will force the ferry crew to fly the plane at no higher than 12,000ft.

Senior pilots have said the low-altitude, four-day flight will consume copious quantities of fuel and cause the pilots to put down in Bali, Singapore, Dubai and Cairo before the final leg along the Mediterranean Sea to France.

"For the crew it will be like flying as it was in the 1950s when passenger jets had to make the journey unpressurised from Australia to Europe," long-haul pilot Capt Ian Woods said in an interview with the Melbourne Herald-Sun.

"Because of the low altitude the four engines will simply guzzle fuel, but there are plenty of places along the route that they can put down," said Capt Woods, a veteran long-haul pilot with more than 20,000 hours in his logbook.

Iain Lachlan, Emirates senior vice-president for engineering, told how getting the plane ready to fly after the March 20 incident where the tail struck the tarmac on take-off, had involved replacing several lower skin panels on the fuselage.

A number of structural frames and stringers used to join sections of the airframe had also been replaced, he said in an email.

"The aircraft is currently scheduled to begin commercial operations in late October or early November after undergoing the required safety checks," he said.

flydubai adds Aleppo

19 June 2009

Budget carrier flydubai is continuing its expansion with the launch of flights to Aleppo next month.

Dubai�s low-cost carrier will operate a Boeing 737-800NG to Syria�s second biggest city from July 13, increasing its route network to five destinations.

The daily service will leave Dubai at 8am and arrive in Aleppo at 10.30am. Return journeys are scheduled to depart Syria at 11.15am, touching down in Dubai at 3.35pm.

People power in Iran

17 June 2009

Iran's presidential election was five days ago. Official results gave 63% of the vote to President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and 34% to Mirhossein Mousavi, the strongest opposition candidate, with tiny votes going to the two other contenders.

The Mousavi camp say the true result � allegedly leaked by the interior ministry � had its candidate winning more than 60% of the vote.

The dispute is therefore not over a handful of stuffed ballot boxes or a few contentious provinces, but over more than 10m votes.

And the dispute has led to five days of unrest. The government has responded by intensifying its crackdown on opposition figures with the arrest of dozens of leading critics and issued a further warning against reporting of the protest movement.

It is eerily similar to Beijing twenty years ago. Iran has had five days of gathering protests after the

Robert Fisk, reporting for the Independent and ABC news estimates that Ahmadinejad might have actually won the election but more with more like 52 or 53 per cent of the vote and that Mousavi got closer to 38 per cent.

The trouble is that the ruling regime wanted to humiliate the opponent and so fiddled the figures to give Ahmadinejad an overwhelming and therefore unlikely win. This has backfired and provoked the opposition.

The authorities may indeed even be defending a massive fraud in claiming that Ahmadinejad won 30, 40, 50 per cent more than he should have done.

It is a very personal protest. It is not a protest agaist the Islamic republic or the Islamic revolution. It is specifically targeted at the personality, the manner, the language of Ahmadinejad.

This election and the post-election protests is by far the greatest challenge the Islamic Republic of Iran has faced since its inception in 1979.

Even though the outcome is uncertain, the ongoing protests reflect a remarkable phenomenon: the rise of a new middle class whose demands stand in contrast to the radicalism of the incumbent President Ahmadinejad and the core conservative values of the clerical elite, which no doubt has the backing of a religiously conservative sector of the population.

Nevertheless, this new middle class, a product of the Islamic Revolution that supports Mir Hussein Moussavi and the reformist cleric Mehdi Karroubi, the two moderate opponents of Mr. Ahmadinejad, is a force to be reckoned with. This middle class has a different vision for the Iranian society and state. It is much larger in size and younger in age, politically more engaged and less timid. And rather more outward than inward looking. It is a group that looks to engage, not to intimidate, the world.

All this is playing out just across the Gulf to the North of Dubai. The resolution, when there is one, could have a far reaching effect of this region.

Blue Rodeo to join Canada's walk of fame

17 June 2009

Canada�s Walk of Fame, along with Canwest, announced today the names of its 2009 inductees. The eight recipients will be feted as part of The Canada Honours tribute Saturday, September 12 at Toronto�s Four Seasons Centre for the Performing Arts. The evening�s festivities will be broadcast on Global Television.

Celebrating its 12th anniversary, Canada�s Walk of Fame will expand its list of inductees to 124 with the induction of these Canadian icons:

Blue Rodeo
Raymond Burr
Kim Cattrall
Tom Cochrane
Dsquared2 (Dean & Dan Caten)
Howie Mandel
Robert Munsch
Chantal Petitclerc

�This year�s inductees are a perfect illustration of what The Canada Honours represent,� explained Peter Soumalias, CEO and President of Canada�s Walk of Fame. �Their achievements are truly astounding and continue to resonate throughout the country and around the world.�

The 2009 honourees will join the 116 previous inductees of Canada�s Walk of Fame, which annually chooses to recognize achievements from the fields of music, sport, film and television as well as the literary, visual and performing arts, and science and innovation. The 2009 inductees will be celebrated during Canada�s Walk of Fame broadcast with retrospective videos, celebrity presenters and special performances.

As one of this year�s eight inductees, the late Raymond Burr will be honoured with the Canadian Legends Award sponsored by Cineplex Entertainment and Universal Studios Canada. The Legends Award is given posthumously to Canadian pioneers in film and television, music, sport, arts and innovation. Cineplex Entertainment and Universal Studios Canada are proud to sponsor the Legends Award as well asCanada�s Walk of Fame. This sponsorship is part of Cineplex Entertainment and Universal Studios Canada continuing recognition of Canadian film.

To qualify for induction to Canada�s Walk of Fame, candidates must have been born in Canada or spent their formative or creative years here. They must also have been successful for a minimum of 10 years and have a body of work recognized for its impact on our cultural heritage.

The 2009 Inductees:

Blue Rodeo Hometown: Toronto, Ontario
Since the release of their debut album, Outskirts, in March 1987, Blue Rodeo has established themselves as one of the premiere bands in Canadian music history. Over the course of their stellar career Blue Rodeo has released 11 studio albums, one live album, a Greatest Hits collection and two DVDs, all selling in excess of 4 million copies around the world. Their recent release, Blue Road, won the 2009 Juno for Best DVD and the band is back in the studio recording an album slated for a fall 2009 release.

Raymond Burr Hometown: New Westminister, BC
Born in New Westminister BC, Burr landed his first Broadway role in Crazy with the Heart in 1941 and made his film debut in 1946 in San Quentin. Burr continued to appear in over 90 movies from 1946 to 1957 before landing the role of defense attorney Perry Mason (which originally ran from 1957 to 1966 and reprised in 26 made-for-television Movies from 1984 until his death in 1993). In 1967, another hugely successful acting opportunity arose for Burr with Universal Studios�the title role in the television drama Ironside. Burr was also well known for his philanthropy including USO visits to Korea and Vietnam; 27 foster children and generous donations to several other charitable organizations.

Kim Cattrall Hometown: Little River, BC
Kim Cattrall has had an extensive acting career that spans film, stage and television. Her career highlights include her award-winning role as the infamous Samantha Jones, in HBO�s Sex and the City, for which Cattrall received a Golden Globe, two Screen Actors Guild Awards, four Emmy Award nominations and three Screen Actors Guild nominations. Cattrall has also starred in a host of Hollywood blockbusters, including Porky's, Mannequin, Masquerade, Star Trek 6: The Undiscovered Country, John Carpenter's cult classic Big Trouble in Little China (opposite Kurt Russell), and Brian De Palma's Bonfire of the Vanities with Tom Hanks. Current and upcoming projects are Meet Monica Velour, the animated series, Producing Parker, the political thriller, The Ghost directed by Oscar award-winning filmmaker Roman Polanski and Sex and the City 2 this fall.

Tom Cochrane Hometown: Lynn Lake, Manitoba
Tom Cochrane began as a struggling artist in the coffeehouses in Yorkville. As fate would have it, and a chance meeting, Cochrane would join the group Red Rider. On the tails of two successful albums and a name change for the band, Tom Cochrane and Red Rider went on to solidfy their place in music history. Along with their success came Cochrane's first JUNO Award for Songwriter of the year in 1989�one of many. As members of Red Rider separated to work on solo projects Cochrane was penning his most successful work Mad Mad World, which became one of the biggest-selling Canadian records of all time, achieving diamond status (one million copies) in Canada. Throughout his career, Cochrane has thrown himself into a wide range of worthy causes including World Vision, The Canadian Parkinsons Foundation, Make Poverty History and The World Society for the Protection of Animals.

Dsquared2 (Dean & Dan Caten) Hometown: Toronto, Ontario
Canadian twin brothers from Willowdale Ontario, Dean and Dan Caten have operated in the international fashion business since 1984. They moved to New York City in 1983 to attend the Parson�s School of Design and in 1991 moved to Italy where they had their first men�s collection show in 1994. Since the very beginning Dsquared2 has always attracted a following among international celebrities: Lenny Kravitz, Justin Timberlake, Ricky Martin, Rihanna, Christina Aguilera, Robbie Williams, Madonna and Britney Spears are all devotees of the brand.

Howie Mandel Hometown: Toronto, Ontario
Howie Mandel started his career in 1979 at the legendary Comedy Store on amateur night. Since then, Mandel�s versatile career has encompassed virtually all aspects of the entertainment spectrum, including television, film and stage. From his work on the Emmy-Award winning St. Elsewhere, to the international animated children�s series Bobby�s World, Mandel has become a mainstay of the American comedy scene. Recently he has been thrust back in the spotlight as the host of Deal or No Deal on NBC for which he received an Emmy nomination for �Outstanding Reality/Competition Host.� He also unveiled his new hidden camera show, Howie Do It, on NBC this past January.

Robert Munsch Hometown: Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
From the first time he stood in front of a group of children as a student teacher at a nursery school in 1972, Munsch�s animated presentation grabbed hold of the imaginations of his listeners and he�s been telling stories ever since. Munsch has published more than 50 books, which are sold around the world in 20 different languages, including French and several different First Nations languages. His first efforts, Mud Puddle and The Dark, were published in 1979, and the runaway bestseller Love You Forever was first published in 1986. Munsch has been publishing two books a year with Scholastic Canada since 1997. His most recent book is Down the Drain!, which was published this past spring.

Chantal Petitclerc Hometown: Saint-Marc-des-Carrieres, Quebec
After losing the use of both legs in an accident at the age of 13, Chantal Petitclerc was introduced to the world of sports by her high school gym teacher. That lead Chantal to wheelchair sports at University Laval, a sport she fell in love with instantly. She has been a member of the national Paralympic team since 1988 and first competed in the Paralympic Games in Barcelona (1992). Since then she has become one of the world�s most decorated track athletes with a total of 21 Paralympic medals including 14 gold medals. Plus Chantal was the very first disabled athlete in the history of sports to register a result for her country�s team in a non-disabled competition (2002 Commonwealth Games) in which she won a gold medal.

Established in 1998, Canada�s Walk of Fame aims to educate, inform, and inspire through the permanent celebration of the achievements in Canadian music, sport, film and television as well as the literary, visual and performing arts, and science and innovation. The annual celebration culminates in a televised tribute special that honours Canada�s finest stars from the worlds of arts, entertainment, and sports. Each inductee is immortalized, their names forever cemented into the sidewalks of Toronto�s entertainment district. To date, 116 Canadians have been honoured including Margaret Atwood, Jim Carrey, Steve Nash, Michael J. Fox and Celine Dion. A complete list of inductees along with more information on Canada�s Walk of Fame can be found at www.canadaswalkoffame.com

China's censorship is about control

15 June 2009

This past week, the Chinese government issued a sweeping directive: Beginning July 1 every personal computer sold in the country must include new software that filters pornography and other content from the view of China's 300 million internet users.

This may sound all well and good. But it really is about control of the flow of information from the internet.

The software, called Green Dam/Youth Escort, is designed to keep web surfers from sites the government deems dangerous, adding one more brick to the Great Firewall of China. Green Dam works to identify images, text, and urls visited by net surfers, and if they match blacklisted items, they're blocked.

Beijing already employs 30,000 people to police the web, who try to shape opinion by flooding popular sites with positive comments about the Chinese Communist Party. It also routinely blocks sites that mention the spiritual movement Falun Gong, the 1989 Tiananmen Square crackdown, the Dalai Lama and other sensitive topics. On the 20th anniversary of the Tiananmen protests earlier this month, the government shut down Twitter, Flickr, YouTube and other popular social media sites.

But the coming imposition of Green Dam/Youth Escort has reportedly unnerved personal computer makers operating in China, such as Hewlett-Packard, Dell and Lenovo.

And with good reason. More than 40 million PCs were sold in China last year, and demand is growing despite the global economic crisis. This huge market is irresistable and critically important for any computer maker.

The internet, of course, is also good for the Chinese economy, which has slowed in recent months amid the global economic meltdown. The web makes many business operations more efficient, from tightening supply chains to speeding orders and deliveries to improving communications.

So Beijing is caught between its need to promote economic growth, and its desire to retain political control over 1.6 billion people.

What is Green dam. "It's like downloading spyware onto your computer, but the government is the spy," Charles Mok, chairman of the Hong Kong chapter of the Internet Society told The New York Times.

Worse it is locally developed. Apparently the software does not work very well. Computer experts say Green Dam is susceptible to hacking, crashes easily, runs only on computers that operate Microsoft Windows, and is ineffective when used with a Firefox browser.

And its porn filter is hit or miss at best. To determine whether a photograph is "pornographic," the system reportedly is designed to identify the proportion of skin color. White, pink and fleshy, therefore, is blocked by the software. this is bad news for pictures of farmyard pigs. But is good news for lovers of naked African women?

Of course the Chinese government is likely to hammer out at least some of these problems with Green Dam/Youth Escort. But these initial efforts are in pi terms -- rather ham fisted.

The internet is not going away. Nor, sadly it seems, is Chinese paranoia.

I need to re-read Orwell's 1984.

Here is the University of Michigan's review of the software revealing security vulnerabilities and pirate (no surprise there) code.

50 over cricket will die

15 June 2009

First it was 60 over one day cricket - the old Gillette cup. Then there was 40 over Sunday cricket. Then the 60 over game was reduced to 50 overs.

But here is little worse than a dead 50 over game.

So 20/20 looks like the future; and it fits our limited attention brains !

England all-rounder Kevin Pietersen seems to agree that Twenty20 will be the new form of one-day cricket and the 50-over form is set to be eclipsed in a couple of years. �I don�t think the 50-over game has had its day yet, but in terms of everything going on now with Twenty20 - the financial rewards the players get, the tournaments coming up, the interest created and the audience it grabs - then maybe so in a couple of years,� Pietersen said in a television interview Saturday.

Pietersen said �Test cricket is the best� but predicted that Twenty20 will �speed up all parts of cricket because guys are going out there to entertain, to score a lot quicker.�

�There may be a lot more four-day Test matches and a lot more 400 scores in 50-over games.

And England sent India home last night in the Twenty20 World Cup.  Shame !

Mr T - still in Dubai?

15 June 2009

You've got the wrong man says Thaksin Shinawatra. This article is from today's Arabian Business and was apparently written by the well know Thai fugitive! The Thai authorities keep saying that they do not know where he is. But Arabian Business seems to have no problem keeping in contact with him. I highlighted a couple of great Thaksinisms!

"It�s always amusing to read my name in the newspapers, especially over things I have nothing whatsoever to do with. I am used to it, but it doesn�t get any less frustrating.

And so it is the case once again over the past few days. Depending which papers you read, mostly in the British press, I am now, it would appear, behind the takeover of Portsmouth FC. I am funding the whole deal, it is being claimed, or if not, am somehow involved behind the scenes.

So let me set the record straight for all my friends in the media: I have nothing to do with Portsmouth FC in any shape or form. It isn�t me, it never has been. I hope that this clarifies the position once and for all.

As I am sure you know, I was the previous owner of Manchester City Football Club. It was a club I was very proud to own, and was not keen to sell.

In July last year I was contacted by representatives of the Abu Dhabi United Group, at the time led by Dr Sulaiman Al Fahim. They showed me a very attractive proposal to take over the club, one which would undoubtedly take it to a higher level.

As a result of the sale, I naturally became acquainted with Dr Sulaiman Al Fahim. He is a businessman I greatly admire, and have met and spoken with several times. I consider him a close friend.

Earlier this year he told me he was looking to invest in a Premier League club himself. I gave him some advice and wished him well � that was the end of the conversation.

Myself and Dr Sulaiman have spoken many times since about football, though our discussion has been on whether Diego Maradona is a better footballer than Lionel Messi.

Indeed, a journalist from Arabian Business has even joined us once during these heated debates over dinner. No mention was ever made of Portsmouth, or any other Premier League club.

I first found out about the takeover on May 27, when I read it on the Arabian Business website.

It is correct that some of my associates may have helped with the introductions for Dr Sulaiman. Why not? I know a lot of people in soccer, and was more than happy to pass on any contacts I could. That doesn�t make them investors. Again, I am not involved, nor are my associates.

During the last two years, I have become involved in a number of new fields, particular health and education. I am working on new initiatives that I hope will one day lead to better standards in both this areas across not just the Gulf but the world.

My biggest passion right now is to try and rid the world of poverty, through many detailed initiatives I have been discussing with several governments.

Given his own humanitarian efforts, it is likely that myself and Dr Sulaiman will work together on some of these projects in the future. But football? Me? Again? No, no and no.

I wish Dr Sulaiman the very best of luck with Portsmouth. I think it is a club with great potential, and one that I believe he will do an excellent job of developing. And I will be watching the club�s future every step of the way � from my television screen."

 

From panic to prejudice

14 June 2009

Hong Kong's unelected officialdom can spout some utter nonsense. The latest outburst is simply offensive, prejudiced and downright mean spirited.

According to Gabriel Leung, the city's under-secretary for health, Filipino maids in Hong Kong may be spreading the swine flu virus by gathering together in large numbers on their day off. He added that employers should consider switching their maids' days off to reduce the risk of the H1N1 virus spreading.

Leung's remarks, carried in Hong Kong newspapers Sunday, came after a 28-year-old Filipino maid was admitted to hospital with swine flu and three other cases were detected in people visiting from the Philippines.

Filipino maids traditionally gather by the thousands in public spaces in Hong Kong's Central district on Sundays, their usual day off.

Leung said there might be a community outbreak of swine flu in the Philippines and appealed to Filipino servants to pay extra attention to their personal hygiene.

All primary schools and kindergartens were ordered to close for a fortnight from Friday after the detection of the first non-imported cases of swine flu in Hong Kong. So Hong Kong's maids are already having to provide two weeks of home care to kids who are not at school.

But of course as far as Hong Kong is concerned it is the Filipinos that will spread the flu bug. Not the Hong Kongers who congregate in their offices; not the Kong Kongers who will parade on 1 July 2009 in the annual democracy march; not the Hong Kongers in their hundreds in the malls; not the hundreds in the dim sum halls; not the hundreds still spitting on the streets; not the hundreds queuing up for the next Li family ipo or government land sale!

The fate of Flight 447 is a nightmare for us all
By Paul Hopkins - Belfast Telegraph

14 June 2009

"I am having a bad dream lately and I suspect it�s a bad dream shared by a lot of people who just can�t put out of their minds the pitiful plight of, and cruel fate foisted on, the 228 Air France passengers and crew.

Doomed, in an instant, to a watery grave. It�s that awful instant-ness of it that is hard to comprehend. We are surrounded daily by catastrophes of one sort or other, whether man-inflicted, as with genocide, or the vagaries of nature, as with tsunamis and earthquakes.

So why does a tragedy like Flight 447 strike a much deeper chord within us all?

Well, one can argue that we all, to some degree or other, have a fear of flying. It�s just not natural to be 35,000 feet up in the air in an elongated tube of steel and glass-fibre with 200 relative strangers rushing through God-knows-what at 500 miles an hour.

It�s not natural and we instinctively, intuitively, know it. If man were meant to fly we would have sprouted wings.

But we learn to live with it � because business or pleasure, and the fast pace of those worlds, dictate that we do so.

But if we are honest about it, we are all nervous wrecks before � weeks before � during, and sometimes after, a flight, no matter how routine it might be.

We all worry about turbulence � that spiller of coffee, jostler of luggage, rattler of nerves � though we have been told it�s not, except in the most extenuating circumstances, a crasher of planes. But turbulence is still upsetting for tens of thousands of passengers.

We all ponder which is the safest carrier to fly with. That Air France is among the safest seems now no longer enough to put our minds at ease.

For the safest airline, look to that fine movie Rain Man in which Tom Cruise says to his autistic brother Dustin Hoffman: �All airlines have crashed at one time or another. That doesn�t mean they are not safe.��

�Qantas,�� responds Hoffman. �Qantas never crashed.��

The point, of course, is that it is Cruise�s character, not Hoffman�s, who makes the correct and valuable point. Flying, overwhelmingly statistically, is safer than driving, taking a train or jumping on a bus.

But still there�s that awful thought of What if? And in this post-9/11 world there�s the ever-present terrorist threat, reinforced by news of such a possible link to Flight 447.

And so, we are not convinced and all we white-knucklers have our little ways, our talisman, to deal with fear of flying when there is no other way to get from A to B in generous time.

Me, on short-haul flights I always look for seat 15c � �c� being the aisle and 15 the number of the house I was reared in. On long-haul I opt for in or around 43 � not sure why � and I always pop one of �mother�s little helpers� before boarding.

I�ve flown through an electric storm on an old Viscount, travelled through extreme turbulence from Colombia in South America with Air France on a parallel path to Flight 447 and I�ve even co-piloted a small Cessna into the African bush to get over my morbid fear of small planes which leave nothing between me and my Maker.

In the end, though, like all of us, I am happier on terra firma. Where I feel I have some control, some say in my own fate.

No, it�s not just the fear of flying that has us all having that bad dream about the lost souls of Flight 447 or that we lost three beautiful and promising young Irish women that strikes such a deep chord within us.

It�s this: the going down of the Air France flight out of Rio is an abrupt and stark reminder of how tenuous life is. How in one instant we can be here and in the next � gone, sometimes without trace.

Never having had time to prepare, to tidy up our affairs, to say one last goodbye.

It�s a daunting realisation, grasping our own fallible nature. None of us knows when our time is up. We can take every conceivable precaution, especially when on the ground � 35,000 feet up in the sky it�s a somewhat different matter � but such precautions do not negate the possibility of a sudden death at any moment.

Life is full of wonderful possibilities. Life is unpredictable. Life can ground us but that ground can, literally, disappear from under our feet, in an instant.

Life is tenuous: in the true meaning of the word, we hang like a thread.

Perhaps, then, in the essence of the great religions we should live each day as if it were our last, and abide accordingly.

In the meantime let�s count our blessings and pray for the souls of the dearly departed.

They may well be but one step ahead of us."

An epidemic of anxiety

13 June 2009

We are in a swine flu panic.

SARS, Katrina, and other major events have led to politicians and public officials over reacting, in order to fend of media criticism of under reacting, to any problem that rises to the level of a Media Code Red.

In the next year we will discover whether our handling of the swine-flu threat is relatively rational or confused and destructive.

The WHO has now declared this a "pandemic." It is the wrong word. It creates crisis; panic and a sense of the unknown.

The WHO reports 141 deaths globally from swine flu, with 106 of those (75%) in Mexico and 27 in the U.S.

Yet seasonal influenza kills 35,000 to 50,000 Americans each year. Seasonal flu kills 500,000 people annually world-wide, a staggering death toll that occurs with hardly any of the public losing a moment's sleep over it.

It is now clear that the current strain of the H1N1 swine-flu virus is a "mild" version rather than a pathogenic killer like the 1918 Spanish flu.

Let's be clear; The WHO's classification system designates a virus as a pandemic based on geography, the number of countries in which it has been found, not the fatalities produced. The WHO announcing "pandemic" will be like shouting "fire!" in a crowded theater. "Pandemic!" could be the title of an apocalyptic disaster movie.

With the media now chanting "pandemic" public officials are rushing into school closings, traveler quarantines, nightclub closings and compulsory mask wearing. The potential for needlessly disrupting work and production in an already staggered world economy could become significant. The impact on travel which has taken such a beating already, is likely be be significant.

Add to that the wolf story; over react now what happens when there is a serious viral threat.

Virologists believe the odds are strong that in time some virus is going to be a virulent killer. This "mild" but unstable swine-flu virus could mutate (another charged word) into a mass killer, as happened in 1918.

Really the authorities need to reserve "pandemic" for a danger virus. Find another word for this ; a geodemic.

There is no reason why countries should not  enhance surveillance capabilities. But we are in a global mess if we let everyone with a headache overwhelm a nation's emergency rooms.

The WHO does not help itself; people read and hear what they want to hear. The WHO says this is a mild flu but then says that one in five people worldwide will probably eventually catch the disease.

In Hong Kong health authorities have closed schools for two weeks. So guess what children are now mingling with others in public markets, malls and places such as Disneyland, or at their parents' workplaces. How does that help ?

In Thailand, the Bangkok Metropolitan Administration (BMA) has begun cleaning and fumigating all 435 schools under the agency�s administration in the Thai capital, while entertainment venues in Thailand�s Andaman Sea resort province of Phuket have been asked to close for five days after an employee was found to have contracted the Influenza A(H1N1) virus.

Bangkok Governor Sukhumbhand Paribatra said the two-day school cleaning campaign, ending Sunday, is aimed at preventing the spread of the flu to students under City Hall�s supervision.

Mr. Sukhumbhand said he had invited about 2,000 operators of Bangkok�s Internet cafes, school administrators, and the managers of malls and cinemas for a meeting on Monday. What is he planning next? Closing cafe and cinemas ?

Sneezing in any one of these places is going to be hazardous. Yes the combination of heat, humidity, rain and air conditioning is guaranteed to cause flu like symptoms.

The most irritating is the Hong Kong authority requiring airlines to tell all arriving passengers to practice good hygiene and wash our hands. This from people who invented spitting on the streets and have one of the most polluted, asthma inducing, cities in the world.
 

Far from bottom?

12 June 2009

Another Dubai reality check. This time from the Swiss.Bear in mind that Germans and Swiss have little mortgage exposure. Hence their honesty about the death of Dubai property. Those taking a more positive position such as HSBC need to talk up their bad loans, or face further peril from defaults.

UBS said yesterday that property prices in Dubai will have fallen another 40 percent by the end of 2010 when one in three homes will be vacant. A 33 per cent vacanvy rate is alarming.

�From our vantage point we think we�re still relatively early in the cycle,� analyst Saud Masud told Arabian Business in an interview about recent reports that Dubai real estate prices are showing signs of stabilising. "We believe the fundamentals are weakening as we speak.�

That was most likely due to pent up demand coming into the market and consumer confidence recovering from the initial shock following a steep decline in prices, Masud said.

�This is a very natural reaction. No market drops from peak to trough in a straight line.�

But as a significant amount of new supply looks set to enter the market this year, there are doubts as to where the new demand is going to come from.

�I think what we have to ask ourselves is: what is the fundamental, underlying demand? Is there any net new demand that will stabilise the market?� Masud said.

Analysts currently estimate a vacancy rate in Dubai of 10 to 20 percent.

Adding 30,000 new units to the market by the end of 2010 would translate into another 10 percent of vacancies, Masud said.

Colliers said in April it believes 64,800 new homes will be ready by the end of 2011, down from an earlier estimate of 140,000 units.

�The net impact from population exits I�m putting to around 5 to 10 percent of the total market impact.�

That adds up to around one third of Dubai properties being vacant by the end of next year, he said.

Masud reiterated UBS�s April prediction that Dubai residential property will bottom out at around AED500-800 per square foot, which would be around 40 percent below current levels.

Some people bought at over AED2,000 per square foot in the middle of last year.

UBS said in March that Dubai�s expatriate population will decrease by 8 percent this year and by 2 percent next year.

Deutsche Bank said on Thursday that property prices in the UAE will fall another 15-20 percent before bottoming out at the end of this year.

Not at the bottom yet

11 June 2009

The UAE press has been full of stories trying to talk of a stable economy; that banks are lending again; that prices have started to pick up; that people are not really leaving; that the roads are really busy and its just the roadworks that have been completed!

But the Germans can be relied upon to give a more sombre assessment of the state of the economy.

Deutsche Bank has said that property prices in the UAE will fall another 15-20 percent and won�t bottom out until the end of the year.

�We expect UAE property prices to decline another 15 to 20 percent from current levels and only expect a bottom by year end,� a team of analysts wrote in a research note.

The bank said its forecast was based on an exodus of expatriate workers and the amount of new supply entering the market this year, reported Bloomberg on Thursday.

Deutsche estimates that Dubai prices have lost 50 percent of their value since peaking in August last year, while the Abu Dhabi market has come down 30 percent from previous highs.

HSBC said in May that real estate prices in the country were stabilising after agreed prices in the two largest cities rose 4 percent in April and 5 percent in May from the previous month.

Earlier this week, Standard Chartered said that the market was stabilising after being in �freefall� for several months.

However, Deutsche said it remained cautious despite signs of stabilisation, given the limited number of transactions and a continued decline in rents.
 

No help but at least a reply

11 June 2009

So there was a reply from the Visa section of the British Embassy. It offers no help whatsoever. But at least it was a reply.

Dear Mr Scott

Thank you for your email dated 10 June.

The system has changed since 2007 due to the amount of applications we receive and the ever change circumstance in the need to carry out in-depth security checks including bio metrics.

These checks take up to 24 hours to come back from the UK and in some cases even longer. Until we receive this information an application can not be assessed. No visa is issued from the British Embassy to anyone including members of the ruling family, until we get this information back. This is the process we follow to protect the UK.

All fight crew from all airlines are informed not to submit a passport if they are travelling within the assessment period. We normally take up to 10 working days to assess an application, with airline staff we endeavour to do this over a 3 day period, depending if they have travelled to the UK before and if the bio metrics have been confirmed.

Whilst I do understand this may be frustrating, we have been informed that Emirates crew have been advised by Emirates Airlines to submit their applications allowing 15 days for assessment.

I hope this explains our process in a bit more detail.

Yours truly

Visa Section

And my response:

Dear Sir/Madam,

Thank you for taking the time to reply.

I remain strongly of the view that you need to find a way to support and assist Emirates (and presumably other) airline crew.

Air crew are required to take their passport with them for all flights, both turnaround and layover. There is never going to be a window of more than a few days in any roster month where they are able to stay in Dubai and submit their visa application.

Other UAE applicants are of course far less likely to have the travel/work obligations of airline crew and can plan to leave their passport with you for a significant number of days.

Emirates cabin crew may apply for 30 days leave a year; up to 15 days in each half of the year. But it makes no sense to spend potentially all of that leave period in Dubai waiting for their UK visa application to be processed.

There is one obvious solution still used for instance by the Swiss Consul when processing a Schengen application. A crew member would ideally be able to submit their application with you; submit their biometric data; leave a copy of their passport with you; and then be allowed to leave with their passport. When the necessary assessment has been completed they could return to either VFS Global or to the British Embassy for the necessary visa stamp to be entered into their passport.

This would meet your more extensive assessment process and also ensure that crew are able to fulfil their important employment obligations; including flying 19 flights a day full of passengers travelling to the UK.

The changes to the system simply do not work for this group of people; the new procedures make it almost impossible for crew to have the time to obtain a visa for the UK. In our case the family summer trip to see my mother will now be a visit that I have to make on my own. That saddens me.

Yours faithfully,

Robert Scott

Open letter to the Visa Section of the British Embassy in Dubai

(Honestly - I bet I don't even get a reply)

Entry Clearance Manager
The British Embassy
Dubai

10 June 2009

Dear Sir/Madam,

I am writing to bring your attention to the problems encountered by certain Emirates Airline employees applying for UK visit visas. The process seems to have deteriorated dramatically since the 2007 appointment of VFS Global as the processing company for visa applications. VFS Global is meant to work in partnership with the UK Border Agency at the British Embassies in the United Arab Emirates.

Based on my experience today the agency is simply not working effectively. It is acting as a deterrent to visitors rather than in support of people wishing to go to the UK. In this serious recession this seems a very negative impact of the VFS role.

I will detail today�s experience and my concerns with the process.

My wife is a Thai national; she has been working in Dubai for almost three years as cabin crew with Emirates Airline.

In 2007 she was granted a 2 year multiple entry visa to the UK. This was granted at the British consul in Dubai; the application was submitted in the morning and the passport and visa were returned in the afternoon.

The visa has now expired.

We wish to visit my mother in Devon for a week from 29 June. My mother now lives alone and is unable to travel to visit us in Dubai. My wife needs to apply for a new visa. She was on standby from 1 May until 6 June. This is standard for crew at Emirates. It does mean that due to the unpredictable nature of scheduling for that period it is impossible to make any visa application as your passport is required at all times.

So after returning from a flight this morning (10 June) we went to the VFS Global office to apply for her new visa.

However, it is clear that VFS has no decision making responsibility. They are solely filtering applications for decisions to be made by the UK Border Patrol personnel at the Consul.

We asked upfront whether the visa could be processed in one day and returned tomorrow as my wife is flying (ironically) to London on 12 June and to Birmingham on 15 June.

The staff at VFS Global told us that he simply could not confirm a one day turnaround and that realistically the application would take 3 to 4 days to be processed. Her passport has to be given up for this time. Apparently VFS previously gave Emirates crew their passports back while the application was processed so that they could meet their work obligations. We were told that this is no longer the case.

Given my wife�s flying schedule this month there is no 3 or 4 day period before 29 June where she can give up her passport and wait for the visa to be granted.

Emirates employs some 10,000 cabin crew and over 2,000 pilots. Many of whom will require a visa to visit the UK despite the fact that they can enter the country at anytime when employed as working crew on one of Emirates 19 flights a day to the UK.

So as is stands now my wife will not be able to come with me to the UK, and is unable to spend time with my mother.

Meanwhile in return every time I visit Thailand I am granted 30 days visa on arrival. Does that not seem a little inequitable?

The previous system of applying directly through the Consul worked well. Decisions could be taken. Outsourcing the application review to VFS Global is flawed. No decisions may be made and the staff can offer no support or solution to cases like ours where we cannot give up my wife�s passport.

I know that my wife is not alone among her crew friends in abandoning her plans to visit the UK this year. These should be among the easiest of applications to process. The crew have employment confirmation letters from the airline; they have employment that they respect and enjoy; and they are experienced travellers able to support themselves.

All I can ask is that you review the process by which Emirates crew may apply for a UK visit visa. I will copy this letter to the Personnel department at the airline so that they are aware of the issues raised.

I can only add that I am bitterly disappointed at how hard it is now for my wife to be able to travel with me to the UK and I am disappointed for my family there, of which she is now a welcome member who they look forward to seeing.

Yours faithfully,


Robert A Scott
 

EIU liveability index is good news for Canada

10 June 2009

With a rating of almost 100, Vancouver is the world's most liveable city according to the Economist Intelligence Unit�s latest liveability ranking, published this week.

Vancouver achieves the best possible score for all indicators, with the exception of prevalence of petty crime.

Canadian and Australian cities perform strongly because they benefit from good infrastructure, plenty of recreational activities and relatively low population density. The threat of violence and instability puts half of the ten lowest scores in Africa, and continuing strife in Zimbabwe left Harare in last position.

The Economist Intelligence Unit�s liveability rating quantifies the challenges that might be presented to an individual's lifestyle in 140 cities worldwide. Each city is assigned a score for over 30 qualitative and quantitative factors across five broad categories: stability, health care, culture and environment, education, and infrastructure. The categories are compiled and weighted to provide an overall rating of 1�100, where 1 is considered intolerable and 100 is considered ideal. �

The top ten cities in order were

TOP TEN
Vancouver
Vienna
Melbourne
Toronto
Perth and Calgary (tied)
Helsinki
Geneva and Sydney (tied)
Zurich

The survey has produced a mixed picture of the world's cities. London was ranked in the 10th group, on a par with Dublin and Los Angeles, but one place below Manchester, four behind Berlin, five lower than Tokyo, and six off Helsinki, Frankfurt and Stockholm.

The Bottom 10 cities were:
Tehran
Douala
Harare
Abidjan
Phnom Penh
Lagos
Karachi
Dhaka
Algiers
Port Moresby

In the USA Pittsburg was the best city - ranked 29th.

In Latin America, "no city manages to present ideal living conditions, neither do any fall into the category where extreme difficulties are faced", the EIU said.

Montevideo in Uruguay, Santiago in Chile and Buenos Aires in Argentina offer the region's best conditions. Bogota in Colombia and Caracas in Venezuela score the least favourably.

In Asia, cities in Japan, South Korea, Singapore, China and Taiwan all score well, as do Australia's main hubs. Hong Kong was ranked 39th while Seoul and Singapore tied for 54th place.

Bangkok was in a lowly 100th place.

Africa and the Middle East fare less well, with the EIU citing concerns about terror attacks, and economic and political instability.

Middle East airlines have few friends

10 June 2009

There were feathers flying at the IATA meeting in Kuala Lumpur at the the start of this week as struggling airlines from North America and Asia complained about losing market share to Gulf carriers Monday, amid accusations of predatory pricing and capacity dumping as the industry experiences its worst slump on record.

But the region�s carriers rejected their rivals� complaints saying they were generating new demand by opening up previously untapped markets.

Executives from Air Canada and Air New Zealand attacked the �Big Three� carriers from the Gulf � Emirates Airline, Etihad Airways and Qatar Airways � which have built their airlines on a go-it-alone strategy, rather than joining alliances with established players.

They said Monday that the Gulf airlines served to only redirect traffic at the expense of the airlines based in large consumer markets.

Robert Milton, the chairman of ACE Aviation Holdings, the parent company of Air Canada � which has consistently opposed allowing Emirates Airline to fly daily services into the country � said Gulf carriers were developing themselves into big and powerful airlines.

�They are building fine service airlines and coming into markets at a starting point in terms of a capital base that others would love,� he said at the annual meeting of the International Air Transport Association (IATA).

�My view is, let them fly 100 times a day into Canada if they want, but only flying customers from Canada to Dubai and not connecting to every other market on the planet.�

Emirates has argued that consumers benefit the most when access is free.

Milton's argument is a large dose of nonsense. his airline takes passengers to Star Alliance hubs in for instance London and Frankfurt to be taken onto global destinations.

Rob Fyfe, the chief executive of Air New Zealand, said �predatory pricing� and �capacity dumping� were concerns whenever a large airline entered new markets, arguing that services to the Middle East from New Zealand had �created very little new traffic�. That is also hard to believe.

James Hogan, the chief executive of Etihad, rejected the claims. Etihad�s entry into markets such as Geneva and Dublin showed that it stimulated new traffic, he said.

�We are opening up new markets and the pricing has not been predatory because we are there to make a buck,� Mr Hogan said. �We are the only airline that operates east out of Dublin. At the end of the day, more access for the consumer is better for all of us.�

The concern over the Gulf comes as the region�s airlines remain committed to contracts to acquire billions of dollars worth of new aircraft, even as other carriers seek to survive a severe contraction in air travel demand through delaying and deferring deliveries.

Etihad is also standing firm on 11 aircraft scheduled to arrive this year, and Tim Clark, the president of Emirates, said he has had to fight Airbus against slight modifications in the delivery of Superjumbo Airbus A380s next year. �These airplanes are fully allocated,� he said. �We need them.�

By contrast, Jet Airways of India is cutting capacity by 20 per cent this year and Singapore Airlines said it planned to ground 16 aircraft to better match capacity with demand.

Defending Gulf carriers, Mr Hogan said airlines such as Air Canada catered to the same intercontinental traffic as Gulf carriers through their participation in airline alliances. Air Canada is part of the Star Alliance, and carries traffic to the Indian subcontinent by way of its Star partner, Swiss International.

But Etihad, Emirates and Qatar have opted to build their own operations organically, and they have done so with considerable results, he said.

Emirates is the fourth-largest air operator in terms of capacity or �scheduled passenger kilometres�, and only trails three airline alliances: Star Alliance, Sky Team and One World, representing dozens of carriers, according to the IATA�s latest World Air Transport Statistics report.

Middle East carriers are positioning themselves to boost market share when the economy recovers, said Abdul Wahab Teffaha, the secretary general of the Arab Air Carriers Organisation. �It�s a game of market share for a period of time, until the crisis is over.�

Tube strike hits London

10 June 2009

It is summer; it is hot; there are lots of tourists in London; there is a mega recession; record numbers are unemployed.

What shall we do kids? ask the leaders of London's underground (subway) unions. Lets have a two day strike for better pay and conditions; forget the fact that the subway is already horrendously expensive by international standards and that its users are all taking pay cuts or redundancy.

Idiots!

Here is how things are line by line this morning.

 

 

Inside the world's biggest private jet

10 June 2009

Some of us would happily settle for a second hand Cessna 172.

Others need something bigger! The owner has not been named but is from the Middle East and the work will take another year to complete.

There are four-poster beds, a Turkish bath for four and somewhere to put the Rolls-Royce - not to mention a boardroom with holographic screens and a concert hall.

The owner and his guests will drive to the plane and the car can be parked in the onboard garage.
 
A lift drops to the tarmac and a red carpet unfurls. The lift gives access to the cargo hold of the A380 which has been turned into a relaxation zone, including a Turkish bath lined with marble only two millimetres thick to keep the weight down.

Next door is a wellbeing room, with the floor and walls turned into a giant screen showing the ground down below. Guests can stand on a 'magic carpet' and watch the journey, a scented breeze blowing into the room.

If work really is unavoidable, the boardroom is on hand with iTouch screens and live share prices projected on to the tables. For conference calls, a business partner on the ground can be virtually projected on to the table to 'join' a meeting.

The five suites which form the owner's private quarters have king- size beds, entertainment systems and a prayer room featuring computer generated prayer mats which always face Mecca.

There are around 20 sleeper seats - the equivalent of First Class seats - for extra guests. According to the designers, the style is elegant curves and swirls of Arabic writing.

And here she is in the following graphics:

EK may slow deliveries

9 June 2009

Tim Clark, the President of Dubai-based Emirates Airline may slow down deliveries of its plane orders from next year as a recovery in business travel demand is not in sight.

"We are looking at slowing some - maybe next year and 2011 - but much will depend on what happens in the next few months," Tim Clark said on the sidelines of the International Air Transport Association annual meeting in Kuala Lumpur.

"This is probably the worst economic situation I've experienced in my aviation career," he said. "Every day is a fire-fight."

Gulf-based carriers have been rapidly expanding, but global airlines have been hit by a combination of falling passenger and cargo demand, volatile oil prices, problems in getting financing and recently, worries over the H1N1 swine flu outbreak.

Emirates, which has a $55 billion order book for planes from Boeing and Airbus, expects to receive about 10 planes a year.

Asked if this may be reduced to five next year, Clark said possibly but he did not think the airline would slow orders for more than one year.

Clark said the airline was carrying more passengers than ever before in terms of volume, but they were paying 30 percent less. He saw no signs of a recovery in business travel but was not planning to change more routes after dropping a flight to New York earlier this year.

Clark said the airline had funding in place for 22 planes ordered until mid-2010. He said (as he always does) that Emirates did not expect to receive any government funding.

Dubai house prices 'may never return to 2008 peaks'

9 June 2009

Standard Chartered says Dubai house prices may never return to 2008 peak prices.

In a 2008 survey of the world�s most expensive office markets by CB Richard Ellis, Dubai ranked seventh worldwide, putting it ahead of the City of London, Paris, Singapore, and New York, the bank noted in a report on the GCC economy.

�This does not accurately reflect these cities� comparative advantages, demographic pressures, and physical constraints relative to Dubai�s,� said analyst Philippe Dauba-Pantanacce adding that �Dubai�s real-estate market needed to become better-aligned with its intrinsic value.�

Signs of stabilisation in the emirate�s property market are encouraging but further falls cannot be ruled out and should even be �welcomed�, he continued.

He cautioned that stability is not a given as there are still question marks surrounding population flows in the coming months.

Thai likely to cancel A380?

9 June 2009

Thai Airways International (THAI) seems poised to cancel its order of six A380 superjumbo jets, which it considers not viable for its operations and, at a total cost of about US$1.8 billion, too expensive to fund.

Wallop Bhukkanasut, chairman of THAI's executive board, revealed the national carrier's revised stance on procuring the world's largest civil aircraft, which it agreed to purchase back in 2007.

"It is not economically viable to have and deploy this aircraft in our network," Mr Wallop said while attending the International Air Transport Association (IATA) annual general meeting being held in Kuala Lumpur.

He argued that airlines operating A380s (there are only three - SQ, EK and QF) have found it difficult to achieve the yields they expected due to the global economic crisis, high operating costs and a lack of flexibility in moving the aircraft through airports. I am not sure that he knows much about the operations of any of these carriers and is probably just speculating.

He said that with THAI's planned configuration of the A380, the airline must fill 88.8% of 501 seats just to break even. He could of course change the configuration into a two class 600 plus seat airplane.

He added that the final decision rests with the Thai government and the issue needs to be addressed by the Finance and Transport Ministries. So guess what - while EK argues that it operates independently of the Dubai government, Thai Airways has to refer every decision to the Thai authorities.ace on substituting the double-decker A380 jetliners with other Airbus aircraft.

"There is no contract that can't be broken or re-negotiated," said Mr Wallop, who retired as THAI's executive vice-president for commercial affairs two years ago and recently became chairman of the airline's executive board. But it will cost him in penalties - or he will have to fill the order with other airbus jets.

Mr. Wallop said that THAI may have to extend the service years of its fleet, now averaging 12 years, to 20 years to reduce the expense of procuring new jets. This is ominous; older planes are less fuel efficient, have higher maintenance costs and are less popular with passengers.

The Computer crash

7 June 2009 - The Times

"When things go wrong at high altitude, one of the deadliest challenges for pilots is a phenomenon known as �coffin corner�. This is the point, tens of thousands of feet up, where the margin for error in controlling a sophisticated modern airliner becomes tiny. Investigators are now wondering whether Air France flight 447, which disappeared last week with 228 people on board, may have flown into coffin corner never to escape.

For amid all the speculation and mystery, two events are clear in the worst aviation disaster for half a decade. At 3am BST last Monday morning flight 447, a four-year-old Airbus A330-200, reported that it had encountered �stormy weather with strong turbulence�. Ten minutes later, the plane�s autopilot disengaged, according to its automatic communications and reporting system (Acars).

Somewhere around 35,000ft, with storm winds raging and the plane buffeted on all sides, the crew found themselves trying to fly 230 tons of electronic wizardry by hand. At that altitude, it is far harder than passengers imagine.

Whoever was in the pilot�s seat was looking at two computer screens, a host of other instruments and two rudder pedals � but no traditional hand controls. Instead, an A330 pilot reaches for a small joy-stick to one side. It looks a bit like the control for a games console. Through that �sidestick�, the pilot flies the plane with electronic signals, rather than any mechanical linkages.

Related Links
Bodies found from tragic Air France flight
�It�s tricky. At altitude big planes wallow about,� said Roger Guiver, a former British Airways pilot. �It�s like trying to steer the QE2 with a 2ft rudder.� Jean-Pierre Albran, a former French air force pilot, said: �On a [Boeing] 747, you feel things with your hands. On an Airbus, you�re just looking at screens.�

On a British web forum for pilots, one contributor wrote: �Have any of you hand-flown an Airbus (or other aircraft heavy with fuel) at those flight levels even in smooth air? You are fighting to stay within the flying envelope . . . small margin for error on a good day, let alone a dark and stormy night.

�Take a jet aircraft and put it high, heavy, and run it through rough enough air and the laws of aerodynamics are waiting.�

In those laws, speed is a crucial factor. The thinner the air, the more speed needed for the wings to maintain their lift. Too slow: you stall.

At the same time, the faster the air passes over the wing, the more the centre of lift moves backwards, pushing the nose of the plane down. Too fast: you nosedive.

At high altitude the gap between those two critical speeds gets narrower and narrower. That�s coffin corner - and that was one of the crises facing the crew of AF447 as the plane plunged through the thunderheads in the early hours of last Monday.

It is now clear the crew, as they fought to stay airborne, no longer knew how fast their plane was travelling. According to Airbus and the accident investigators, the pilots� instruments were giving �inconsistent� readings of the plane�s speed.

Did the crew or computer mistakenly think there was a danger of stalling? Did they power up, tipping the plane out of control and tearing it apart in the turbulence? Or did a violent updraft simply drive them too close to coffin corner?

Though no one yet knows for sure what destroyed the plane, investigators are concerned that it was not caused, as first suggested, by a lightning strike or a bomb or a meteorite. Instead they fear it was a fatal collision of high technology and the brute force of nature.

THE passengers who gathered at Rio de Janeiro�s airport last Sunday evening for AF447 spanned more than 30 nationalities, including five Britons. Eithne Walls, a young doctor from Belfast, was heading home from a holiday with two Irish doctors. Alexander Bjoroy, an 11-year-old boarder at Clifton College in Bristol, was returning after spending half term with his family. Two Brazilians, Bianca Machado Cotta, a doctor, and Carlos Eduardo de Melo Macario, a lawyer, had married the day before near Rio; they were off on honeymoon to Paris. Silvio Barbato, conductor of the Rio symphony orchestra, was leaving behind his violinist girlfriend, Antonella Pareschi. Later she said of Barbato: �He always used to tell me, jokingly, that he would not simply die, but disappear.�

If they worried about flying, they didn�t show it. Not so a Swedish family who had a habit of travelling separately in case disaster struck. Christine Schnabl boarded AF447 with her five-year-old son, Philipe; she left her husband to follow a few hours later with their three-year-old daughter on another flight. On such choices lives turn. The route from Rio to Paris passes through an area known as the ITCZ - the intertropical convergence zone - where hot, humid trade winds meet, creating storms with updrafts that can reach 100mph. Weather maps for that night show �numerous cumulonimbus towers rising to at least 51,000ft�, with thunderstorms and severe turbulence. But it was not exceptional.

Several hours after take-off AF447 went out of range of land radar and was heading across the Atlantic into the ITCZ. At night, pilots use onboard radar to spot storms ahead and divert sideways round them because they often rise too high to fly over. Did AF447 fail to spot a storm as it tried to find a way through the bad weather?

�Modern weather radar is very good,� said Guiver. �You get a good return [signal] off water droplets. The strength of return determines the colour you see on your screen: green, amber or red. Red is the core of the storm.�

At high altitude, however, the rain in a storm turns to ice crystals - and radar is much less effective at picking up ice.

Another danger is that, at the top of a storm, strong cross winds can blow turbulence out to one side, down-wind from the main updraft, in a formation known as an anvil.

�You always avoid a storm upwind of the core, or the anvil might catch you out,� said Guiver. If AF447 had accidentally hit an anvil, tossing it beyond its normal flying parameters, it could have made the autopilot disengage.

Crew error cannot be discounted. An internal Air France report, seen last week by The Sunday Times, said �the reliability of these [fly-by-wire] aircraft has the consequence of reducing the pilots� appreciation of risk�. It warned against �complacency� and recommended that training should include more time on flight simulators.

Yet it seems unlikely to have been pilot error alone, especially since planes regularly cross the ITCZ and the crew of AF447 was experienced. At 58, Captain Marc Dubois had 11,000 hours of flying time. So did a malfunction precipitate or contribute to trouble? On the face of it, the A330 had an excellent safety record, with more than 550 planes built and no passenger fatalities since it went into service in 1993. Nevertheless, it has suffered some unnerving incidents.

Last October a Qantas A330 was flying at 37,000ft over Western Australia when it suddenly �pitched nose-down�, in the words of an official report. Henry Bishop, a passenger from Oxford, described the panic: �I feared for my life. It just fell hundreds of feet. It just fell forever and there were people flying everywhere.�

One crew member and 11 passengers were seriously hurt, and more than 100 suffered minor injuries before the pilot recovered control and made an emergency landing. A recent report on the incident found that one of the plane�s computers, known as Adiru (air data inertial reference unit), had �started providing erroneous data�. Back-up systems are in place, but other errors occurred and the �computers subsequently commanded the pitch-down movements�. Computers such as Adiru rely on data from sensors all over the aircraft. One that supplies information on airspeed is the pitot (pronounced �pee-toe�), a probe that measures the pressure of air rushing into it. If it gets blocked, it can start supplying incorrect information to the fly-by-wire system.

In 2001 an air worthiness directive for the A330, issued by the US Federal Aviation Administration, noted: �Unreliable airspeed may be caused by a radome [radar housing] destruction or obstructed pitots.�

The danger was illustrated only weeks later when a different model, an Airbus A319, suddenly found its instruments giving different airspeeds as it flew into Heathrow. At 6,000ft the autopilot disengaged without warning and the captain had to take manual control.

Though suspicions fell on the Adiru, no faults were found. Instead a pitot was discovered to have blockages, causing false speed readings.

There are also problems with the probes icing up in the freezing air at high altitudes, despite a heating system supposed to prevent it. One contributor to a pilot�s web-forum last week alleged: �The A330 is a beautiful aircraft but it has shown, again and again, very susceptible to probes icing.�

Did a pitot ice up and confuse the fly-by-wire system? Did the computers wrongly order more, or less, thrust?

What is clear is that the autopilot of AF447 disengaged and massive system failures rapidly followed. One minute later an Acars message reported �multiple faults regarding Adiru�.

Two minutes later flight control primary computer one failed, then flight control secondary computer one. Both those systems, however, have back-ups. Something far more drastic was also happening and the plane was out of control.

Four minutes after the autopilot disengaged, the cabin suddenly depressurised, perhaps with explosive force.

Although planes are designed to withstand enormous stresses, those caused by turbulence can be huge. That was demonstrated when an Airbus A300 flew into the wake of a Boeing 747 just after take-off from John F Kennedy airport in New York in November 2001. The turbulence - and the Airbus pilot�s attempts to correct for it - sheared off the A300�s rudder and vertical stabiliser. Without them the plane was doomed, and 265 people died.

Had AF447 suffered a structural failure? Did a window break or wing shear off? Whatever it was, the passengers must have been terrified. It was night over the Atlantic, lightning splitting the sky, the aircraft jolting in the turbulence, systems failing. Then massive decompression, cabin air gone and, outside, the temperature -30C or below. Mercifully they may not have suffered long.

As Philippe Juvin, a French doctor, explained: �If depressurisation is extremely brutal, you lose consciousness and a deep coma sets in. It would have been like falling asleep.�

INITIAL reports that wreckage from the plane had been spotted floating over a wide area have proved false, with the material turning out to be detritus from ships. Last night, however, the Brazilian air force reported that it had found two male bodies from AF447.

The search will continue with a French submarine heading for the area. The aircraft�s two �black box� data recorders - one for flight data; the other for cockpit voice recordings - can withstand immersion up to nearly 20,000ft and emit an audio beep for up to a month. But the chances of finding them must be slim in an area where the ocean floor is mountainous and up to 9,000ft deep.

Investigators admit that, without the black boxes, the full causes of the crash may remain elusive. But yesterday Airbus revealed that the Acars messages had pointed to 24 errors in the fly-by-wire system. It said: �There was inconsistency between the different measured airspeeds.� It also emerged that Air France is now replacing pitot tubes on all its medium- and long-haul jets - which it had previously been advised to do but had failed to carry out.

That will come as little comfort to Marie-No�lle Linguet, whose husband Pascal was on AF447. He had just posted a card to his wife. Shortly before he boarded the aircraft, he rang his wife to say he would be home before the card arrived.

When news broke that the plane was missing, Marie-No�lle could barely comprehend it. �I didn�t believe it,� she said. �I keep seeing him on the plane.� He never made it home. All his widow now hopes is that his last words will."

Hong Kong's Tiananmen Beacon

5 June 2009 - John Simpson for the BBC.

Pictures here

BBC Picture

"It was the strongest possible answer by the pro-democracy movement in Hong Kong to the Chinese government's efforts to sweep the memory of the Tiananmen massacre under the carpet.

A huge crowd, which the organisers said numbered 150,000, gathered at Victoria Park in Hong Kong to remember the anniversary of the massacre on 4 June 1989. That would make it the biggest anniversary commemoration of all here.

Among the crowds sitting quietly on the ground, with candles in front of them, were some tourists from mainland China. Some who were from Hong Kong had come here every year since the massacre happened. Quite a few were not even born then.

"I am a politics student," one nineteen-year-old said. "I have to know what happened." An older woman said she was always hoping that the Beijing government would apologise for the massacre.

But at present, far from apologising, it does not even admit that a massacre took place - not, at any rate, in the square itself. But those of us who were there saw with our own eyes that dozens of people were shot down in Changan Avenue, which leads to Tiananmen Square.

Altogether, throughout China, the death toll was probably well over 1,000. But no-one knows because the Chinese authorities have never fully admitted to any of it.

They must have hoped that memories of the demonstration and the killings that ended it would have faded long ago. Similar outrages have faded quickly from the world's mind.

But Tiananmen was different. The students captured the sympathy of people around the world, though in China itself many felt that their protest endangered the very definite gains that had already been made. Others saw it as a sign of dangerous chaos.

In China itself, it has not been forgotten, even though it is never referred to in public. The whole episode showed the Communist Party at its weakest.

Things have changed extraordinarily in China over the past 20 years. The economic reforms that have been introduced have gone far beyond anything most of the students hoped for in 1989.

But the Communist Party has never quite dared to make the political changes they wanted. It remains deeply worried about any organised opposition. And it can be brutally heavy-handed when it feels threatened.

By banning any kind of commemoration of the Tiananmen massacre in mainland China, the authorities may have hoped they had dealt with it: not elegantly, perhaps, but effectively. If so, they forgot about Hong Kong.

Here, people have remembered it more intensely than ever. And in Victoria Park they have rekindled the memories of others, all round the world."

Being honest about the past

4 June 2009

There were 150,000 people gathered in Hong Kong today to commemorate the deaths twenty years ago in Tiananmen Square. 

Perhaps the message for the Chinese leadership is that their country is a very different, much wealthier and more stable society now than it was 20 years ago.

It is embarrassing to hear intelligent, highly educated officials, including many in Hong Kong, who would have sympathised with the students in 1989, now calling the massacre "the incident", or even pretending it did not happen.

After all this time, being open and honest about what happened that night in Chang'an Avenue and Tiananmen Square will not put Chinese society in danger. 

On the contrary, it would help China develop into a country which is at ease with itself and its past.

Instead the Chinese authorities shut down Tiananmen Square and have an army of plain clothes police (east to tell from their earpieces) carrying umbrellas that they put up in front of every TV camera that points at the square. Sorry guys, it just looks foolish and petty. And whoever thought of that bright idea has given the foreign media some of the funniest video in a long time.

Predictably China angrily rejected calls for a review of the 1989 crackdown in which hundreds, possibly thousands, of people were killed.

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton urged Beijing to examine the "darker events of its past".

But Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Qin Gang said Mrs Clinton had made "groundless accusations".

In a statement released on Wednesday, Mrs Clinton said Beijing needed to "provide a public accounting of those killed, detained or missing, both to learn and to heal".

China expressed its "strong dissatisfaction" with her comments.

"The US remarks are groundless accusations against the Chinese government and in contravention of the fundamental norms governing international relations, as well as a gross interference in China's internal affairs," said foreign ministry spokesman Qin Gang.

"We urge the US to put aside its political prejudices and correct its mistakes so as to refrain from undermining bilateral relations.

"On the political incident that took place in the 1980s, the party and the government have already reached a conclusion," he said.

At some stage being honest about history means being honest to your people and marks your nation as a nation that is secure enough about the present to be open about the past.

Clear skies for economic growth

4 June 2009 - The National Post, Canada

By Tim Clark,  President of Emirates Airline. These comments are excerpted from a speech yesterday at the Ottawa Economic Club.

Protectionism of the worst type is being applied to aspects of Canada�s transport policies.

Despite increased demand, growing links between Canada and the United Arab Emirates and our desire to fly more often to Canada, some elements of Ottawa continue to insist that Emirates be limited to flying just three times a week to all of Canada.

Despite the fact that we are ready, willing and able to invest significantly in Canada � and create new jobs and economic opportunities in the midst of an economic downturn � the answer to our request for access is a rather long-standing and firm �no.�

To ensure there is no room for confusion, the official language in formal correspondence is that additional Emirates services would �divert revenues from Canadian air carriers and bilateral partner airlines operating to Canada.�

Of similar disappointment is the confirmation that lobbyists for the Air Canada pilots� union are on the lobbying register confirming one of their priorities is the matter of Emirates� air access.

Does such a skilled, mobile and professional group as the pilot community really believe the answer lies in more government protection? And if you think about it, the notion that a few extra flights a week, to a destination that the national carrier doesn�t even choose to serve, will have any type of impact on their bottom line is clearly ludicrous.

Let me put this in perspective: Emiratis are the highest yielding tourists in the world, spending on average $10,000 per person, per week when they travel. But sadly, for anyone wanting to holiday here from across our route network, their options are just three flights a week to all of Canada, and all go to Toronto.

Compare that to 98 Emirates flights per week to five cities in the United Kingdom; 63 flights a week to four cities in Australia; 49 flights a week to four cities in Germany; 28 a week to two, soon to be three cities in South Africa; 28 a week to two cities in New Zealand and 19 per week to two cities in France.

In the United States � a market we are starting to progressively build since we launched services five years ago � we already have 35 weekly flights to four cities and more will be announced in the next year.

We have no government imposed flight restrictions to the United States, or the U.K. or New Zealand. Australia, having started from a stance of protectionism a decade ago, now allows us to fly 84 times a week should we wish and on an unlimited basis to their smaller capitals and secondary cities.

And yet we are restricted to three flights a week across greater Canada.

So if you are an Emirati tourist, or a businessman or traveller from elsewhere in the Middle East, Africa or the South Asian sub-continent � none of which are served by Canadian carriers � how do you physically get here?

You don�t automatically choose a country that makes it as difficult as possible to reach.

For over a decade we have tried in earnest to convince them otherwise and allow a daily service to Toronto and also be allowed to offer flights from Dubai to Calgary and to Vancouver. The answer sadly remains no.

However, the refusal to allow more direct flights from Dubai to Canada is not about denying Emirates. It is about denying opportunity to the hundreds of Canadian businesses eager to increase their footprint in Dubai and the Middle East. That would be your architects, high-technology companies, professional service firms, lawyers, accountants and new media companies. That includes exporters like the Nova Scotia lobster fishermen, Western agricultural producers, engineers and Canada�s oil and gas sector.

Opportunities are being missed simply because the transport options are not there. And the fallout from these policies is not confined to Canadian companies seeking to do business in Dubai. It extends to those seeking inbound investment from the UAE and, as I already mentioned, to the Canadian tourism industry, which appears very keen to open new markets.

It is why many more in addition to my company are calling on Ottawa to throw away protectionism.

Emirates and Air Canada battle over access

3 June 2009

Emirates wants extended flying rights to Canada.

Air Canada wants Emirates kept out of the Canadian market.

Who is right?

I have had to think long and hard about this one; I have a foot in both camps as a Canadian living in Dubai and married to am Emirates flight attendant.

The president of the Air Canada Pilot's Association, Captain Andy Wilson (who happens to work for Air Canada) warns that Air Canada could be pushed into bankruptcy protection if Emirates succeeds in persuading Ottawa to grant daily Toronto-Dubai flights and allows new service to Calgary and Vancouver. 

Captain Andy Wilson said Canada's largest carrier is in a precarious financial position and can't afford to lose lucrative traffic to Emirates, which offers connecting flights from its Dubai hub to Asia, for instance. Air Canada already provides Toronto-Beijing service, as well as Vancouver-Tokyo, to name just two routes.

Problem here - Emirates does not even fly to Tokyo! And Toronto to Beijing through Dubai is almost 22 hours flying plus transit time. At the right fare a Toronto passenger would always go westbound not east.

Joseph Galimberti, Air Canada's director of government relations, has been lobbying the federal government to be wary of the impact of Emirates' expansion plans on the Montreal-based carrier.

Captain Wilson said Air Canada wants to keep a lid on Emirates' Toronto-Dubai A380 service at three times a week. Air Canada also opposes the foreign airline's growth strategy into Western Canada, perhaps three or four departures a week from Calgary and Vancouver. Longer term, Emirates envisages two daily departures from Toronto.

Captain Wilson said that "this is not a good time to be adding this kind of pressure on Air Canada right now. It's a very bad time. We all know that Air Canada is having financial difficulties."

This is a weak argument. The airline is in financial difficulties so must be propped up? This is not helped by Air Canada's $2.9-billion pension solvency shortfall.

There are people defending Air Canada by arguing that Emirates is UAE government owned, that it gets cheap oil and subsidies; that it has led to the collapse of other airlines.

Again the arguments are weak. Emirates derives many passengers from India; yet Jet Airways and Kingfisher have both flourished on international routes. Emirates will also argue that it has had no subsidy since its now repaid start up money. Yes it has some lower operating costs but that is about efficiency and the fact that it has no domestic market to worry about.

In fact there is no direct competitive overlap between Emirates and Air Canada in the Middle East, Africa or the South Asian subcontinent.

Air Canada is more concerned about feeding traffic into the Star Alliance network. How that benefits Canada is unclear. Air Canada will fly transatlantic and then feed passengers onto Lufthansa flights to South Asia, South East Asia and Africa.

Meanwhile British Airways, Air France, SwissAir and Lufthansa all operate out of Toronto and connect through their hubs to destinations in South East Asia and elsewhere. That is the market that Emirates is competing with - not Air Canada.

Meanwhile Singapore Airlines has pulled out of Vancouver. Oasis failed in trying to break into the HKG to Vancouver market.

I suspect that what Emirates does is create new demand and allow more people to fly rather than taking traffic from other carriers.

Emirates president Tim Clark spoke in Ottawa to the Economic Club of Canada, pressing his company's view that it's being artificially restricted from expanding. Clark told the Economic Club of Canada that boosting Emirates flights would increase tourism and trade at a time of economic crisis.

"Opportunities are being missed simply because the transport options are not there," said Clark, saying load factors on the three flights were around 95 percent.

He said the airline would also like to fly to Calgary and Vancouver.

He also argued that Dubai isn't merely a hopping-off point, but that there are strong links between Canada and the United Arab Emirates, with more than 200 Canadian firms operating in Dubai alone.

Mr. Clark also met yesterday with federal Transport Minister John Baird. Transport Canada says that if the airline were allowed any more flights, it would hurt national carrier Air Canada and its international partners. Quite why the Canadian Transport Ministry cares about Air Canada's international partners is a mystery.

"The notion that a few extra flights a week to a destination that the national carrier doesn't even choose to serve will have any type of impact on their bottom line is clearly ludicrous," said Emirates President Tim Clark, calling the limits "protectionism of the worst kind".

For traveling Canadians greater access for Emirates can only be good news. Air Canada has forced most competition out of business over the last decade - Wardair, Canadian, Canada 3000 and others have all disappeared. Westjet is the only domestic competitor of note.

Why should Canadians not allow Emirates if it brings in more competition and lower prices. Why should Canadians have to prop up a private company like Air Canada. Add to that the jobs that are created at airports that Emirates flies into. More flights; more jobs; from agents to baggage handling; to mechanics to taxi drivers. Add the money that is then spent in the Canadian economy.

Emirates operates 98 non-stop flights per week from the UK to Dubai � in addition to its daily service to Newcastle, the airline operates five services a day to Heathrow, three daily to Gatwick, two per day to Manchester and Birmingham, and a daily service to Glasgow. The British government and airline unions are not protesting Emirates access to the UK; they are not seeking to protect British Airways and Virgin Atlantic.

The USA wants more flights from Dubai; there is no suggestion of their protecting the legacy US carriers.

As long as Emirates commits to creating jobs in Canada and being fair with competition they should be allowed to operate. I think that is the fairest conclusion.

Air Canada - A Canadian perspective

From a writer on the National Post's website

"Air Canada is the logical result of a legacy government monopoly coddled for years and then spun off into the real world.

None of its habits are right. Its managers are dedicated to warfare with its employees. The employees take it out on the passengers.

Since it has already had the bankruptcy reorganization cure tried, and is now in remission, the only solution is straight bankruptcy.

Take it apart, sell all the pieces, and let those employees who still are interested work for a living at a real airline. Also, claw back  anything paid to management in the last decade other than straight salary.

Air Canada's Toronto-centric business model makes sense only to its executives.  Its North American 'partners' are dredged from the stratum of customer service immediately below its own -- I expect to find pay toilets on my next flight with them.  Their baggage regulations are clearly a means to augment misleadingly advertised fares by entrapment of the unwary.

Air Canada's fare structure makes sense to no one and changes so often, and in such byzantine fashion, that it can't be kept up with.  It is no wonder that customers believe that the business plan is that of the railroads in their 19th century heyday: 'All the traffic will bear.'

As a frequent traveller by rail and bus in the East, I can assure you that either offers a standard of service far superior to Air Canada.

Air Canada tourist class has not quite reached the comfort level of the cargo deck of a C-130, where I have also flown; but they are working on it, and I have faith they will make it during my lifetime.  The military allowed you to stretch out on a pile of tarpaulins, or a canvas jump seat with space for your knees.  Air Canada folds you into a space two inches too small in all directions, and gets nasty if you move around during flight.

Air Canada's passenger service attitude is worse than military flight crew, and that by a long, long way.  When you treat paying customers worse than people who have no choice about being there, your business is terminal.

BKK rail link delayed

3 June 2009

The first trial run of the new airport rail link has been postponed another three-and-a-half months, transport deputy permanent secretary Thawalrat Ornsira told the Thai cabinet today.

The trial was scheduled for Aug 12, which is Mother's Day.

However, the contractors had advised they would not be able to complete the work by that date. So the first run had been rescheduled for Dec 5, or Father's Day, His Majesty the King's birthday.

Under the contractual agreement, building of the 28km route from downtown Bangkok to Suvarnabhumi must be completed by November.

It was now expected that the Airport link, which connects Phaya Thai and Makkasan areas to the international airport, would enter service in March next year, Mr Thawalrat said.

The State Railway of Thailand has said the fare will be 150 baht for passengers taking non-stop trains, and between 15 and 45 baht for trains that stop at every station.
 

Marital vengeance in Dubai

2 June 2009

It is sad to see families breaking up; especially when the break up is in public and vengeful.

Today Sally Antia, a 44 year old British woman was jailed for two months on Tuesday along with her boyfriend, Mark Hawkins, who was visiting from Liverpool.

The couple were arrested coming out of the 5-star Radisson Creek Hotel in Dubai on May 2, after police were tipped off by her husband, Vincent Antia, a British pilot at Emirates airline.

Mrs Antia and her husband are reported to have been estranged for some time and were seeking a divorce. But her husband still made the complaint to police in the emirate, where adultery is a crime.

Mrs Antia and Mr Hawkins appeared before judges at a brief hearing yesterday and both admitted meeting up in the hotel.

The case was adjourned but later in the morning sentence was passed down in their absence by the judge. Both were ordered to be deported immediately after being freed.

Mrs Antia was not represented by a lawyer and did not comment as handcuffs were placed on her wrist outside the hearing.

The sentence was backdated to their 2 May arrest. Mrs Antia and Mr Hawkins have been held in police cells since their arrest, though they will now be transferred to the central jail where conditions are better.

Mrs Antia was held in an underground, windowless cell holding up to 100 people at one stage, and said her food was riddled with maggots.

The Antia's have two young daughters in Dubai. The family has been resident here for over ten years.

Custody of the daughters could be granted to Mr Antia if he chooses to pursue a custody hearing locally.

Of course there is a need to accept the law of our host country; and you fall foul of them at your peril. But Dubai has largely turned a blind eye to the marital status of foreign visitors and residents. In this case Mr. Antic took a decision to involve the police; and after 12 years living in Dubai he must have known the consequences of his actions. Subjecting your wife and the mother of your children to a Dubai court and jail is vengeful.

Rather miserable judgment from all concerned and who loses the most; the kids.

Where is Mr. T?

2 June 2009

A senior Dubai police official has insisted that fugitive former prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra is not in the United Arab Emirates.

"The former prime minister of Thailand, Thaksin Shinawatra, is not in Dubai and no one with this name is here," Dubai deputy police commander Khamis Mattar Al Mazeina told Gulf News.

 Thai police have asked for Interpol's assistance to locate the outlawed politician, who is now said to be carrying up to six passports from different countries, none of them Thai.

The Supreme Court last year found him guilty of abuse of auithority in the Ratchadapisek land deal case.

Opposition Puea Thai party MP Chalerm Yubamrung said last week he had travelled to Dubai for a three-day meeting with Thaksin.
 

Dirty buses

2 June 2009 (updated 3 June)

In Thailand the Transport Ministry has traditionally been lucrative for the incumbents.

Now a battle over buses is bringing Transport Minister Sohpon Zarum of the Bhumjaithai Party into conflict with the Prime Minister and the Democrats.

Mr Sohpon said yesterday that the ministry will pursue its Baht 67billion plan to rent 4,000 Chinese built air-conditioned buses powered by natural gas for the Bangkok Mass Transit Authority when the cabinet meets tomorrow. Mr Sohpon is a member of the faction controlled by banned politician Newin Chidchob. 

The ministry's plan to rent the 4,000 buses has been on and off at cabinet meetings due to the high price tag, particularly the high maintenance costs of 2,250 baht a bus a day.

The ambitious project was initiated by the Friends of Newin faction in the government led by the now-dissolved People Power Party. But it was stalled after facing public criticism about alleged corruption.

Bangkok Mass Transit Authority chairman Piyaphan Champasut has defended the project, saying it was a crucial part of the debt-ridden agency's financial restructuring. The BMTA, which has accumulated debts of 60 billion baht, posted a loss of 6.2 billion at the end of last year.

Meanwhile the Rak Muang Thai group, a new political think tank led by MR Pridiyathorn Devakula, is demanding Mr Abhisit scrap the scheme. He said his group believed certain politicians involved in the project would reap huge benefits from it. Surprise, surprise!

MR Pridiyathorn Devakula is a former Bank of Thailand governor.

Interior Minister and Bhum Jai Thai Party leader Chaovarat Charnweerakul brushed aside allegations the project would benefit certain individuals.

Politically, the row over the scheme could widen the rift between Bhum Jai Thai and the Democrats. Do not be surprised to see the Democrats give way again in order to keep their alliance intact.

Some maths:

4,000 buses for Baht 69billion is Baht 17.25m (approx US$522,500) per bus. A new bus would cost approx US$80,000 to US$100,000

The money is in the maintenance fee - Baht 2,250 per bus per day - Baht 821,250 a year per bus - or 8,212,500 (250,000) for ten years. Almost half the value of the contract is the maintenance fee.

No wonder this "deal" smells bad.

The sadness of AF 447

1 June 2009

A very sad start to the month with the loss of Air France 447 from Rio to Paris this morning.

There is no chance of survivors at this stage. And since the plane went down in the middle of the South Atlantic there are clearly doubts as to the whether the black box and other flight data can be recovered.

There are some basic diagnostics that are constantly transmitted by modern Airbus planes and this may give some indication of the problems encountered by the flight. It will take some time for AF and Airbus technicians to understand the messages.

Clearly it was catastrophic. There appears to have been no opportunity to issue any sort of mayday message.

What is troubling is that you have a first class airline with a strong safety record flying a near new modern airliner, yet there is no clue as to the precise location of the accident or of what actually happened.

Speculation surrounds the weather; lightening is not as issue at 35,000 feet. Turbulence; that rarely brings down an airliner. There is something else. Something major.

For the families who have no idea what happened, or why, this can only be the most awfully painful of times.

What is telling is that an airline accident is still an anomaly. They happen but are incredibly rare. When they do we are shocked. And when they do it is likely that there is a large loss of life.

The investigators' ability to pursue such accidents and get to the facts is remarkable. We will find out what happened to AF 447.

Phuket crash report released

1 June 2009 (updated 2 June)

Phuketwan.com is reporting that the results of the investigation into the One-Two-Go crash of Flight OG269 at Phuket Airport in 2007 were released today. The report identifies six causes for the tragedy.

The report is apparently a preliminary report. In Australia a preliminary report takes 30 days; in Thailand it has taken two years. It really is an offence to the families of the dead and survivors of the accident.

The report also made three sets of recommendations, one for the airline, one for Airports of Thailand, and one for the Department of Transport.

The One-Two-Go MD 82 aircraft on a scheduled flight from Bangkok crashed on landing on Phuket early on the evening of September 16, 2007, with the deaths of 90 passengers and crew.

Another 40 survived, many with severe injuries or burns.

The results of the investigation appear to confirm that the pilot froze at the controls at a time when he needed to react to bad weather conditions. The pilot did not following standard operation procedure for going around; he failed to hit the go-around button; he failed to respond to control alerts; co-ordination between the pilot and the co-pilot broke down; both pilots failed to react to the emergency.

The summary of the results also make the point that the pilots were suffering from an accumulation of stress and fatigue.

The airline, One-Two-Go, was advised to more closely review training procedures (cockpit resource management) and flight operations.

Limitations should be placed on the flight hours of the pilots and the aircraft; a safety management system (SMS) needs to be created.

Executives at all levels needed to set values in a corporate culture for following rules and regulations and report unusual developments.

The Airports of Thailand was advised to provide a safety management system; Runways needed to be wider and safer; specific recommendations were made to improve the ability of rescue vehicles to move around Phuket International Airport.

The Department of Transportation was advised to make more thorough checks on One-Two-Go and its parent Orient Thai Airlines.

Coordination with the Bureau of Meteorology needed to be improved.

The release of the report came online at www.aviation.go.th with the Thai version released first. An English version is expected to be released shortly.

1 มิถุนายน 2552 -  ผลการสอบสวนอุบัติเหตุเบื้องต้น กรณีเครื่องบินของบริษัท วัน ทู โก แอร์ไลน์ จำกัด แบบ DC-9-82 (MD-82) เครื่องหมายสัญชาติและทะเบียน HS-OMG ประสบอุบัติเหตุ

I hope this is just a summary of the report; otherwise it took two years to produce a 6 page report without any pictures, diagrams, statistical data.

AVHerald is now reporting that :

Thailand's CAA have released a very brief preliminary report in Thai stating, that according to the opinion of the accident investigation commission the probable causes of the crash were:

- the crew did not follow standard operating procedures to stabilise the airplane during approach and did not follow standard operating procedures (call outs) to change phase of flight (go-around).
- the TO/GA (takeoff/go-around thrust) button was not pressed, so that the engines did not accelerate and the airplane could not climb/accelerate. Engines acceleration and airplane speeds were not monitored by the crew.
- Crew resource management and crew cooperation was ineffective increasing workload of the pilot flying
- weather changed rapidly
- pilots have accumulated stress and fatigue due to insufficient rest.

InvestigateUdom - This campaign brought to you in memory of the passengers of Flight OG 269.