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Air India flight returns to Mumbai after presumed rat spotting!

December 31, 2015 By bernard.montrel@gmail.com

A London-bound Air India flight returned to Mumbai this week after human passengers spotted a stowaway rodent on board and alerted staff.
The rat was never found, but the plane was fumigated and checked.
Delayed passengers were later flown to London on another aircraft.
The incident may have played out somewhat differently if agent Neville Flynn, aka Samuel L. Jackson of cult blockbuster Snakes on a Plane, had been on board.

via GIPHY

It’s been an eventful week for Air India following two other incidents with their fleet.
A pilot aborted takeoff from Amritsar airport in northern India after hitting a stray dog on the runway, while a plane from Mumbai was struck by a catering van at Newark airport in the US state of New Jersey.
Air India is known to travelers for its rat issues. Vermin were spotted last year on a plane flying from New Delhi to Calcutta, an incident that sparked a YouTube song.
Earlier this year, an Air India flight from New Dehli to Milan was also forced to turn back due to a rat sighting.
RT News

Filed Under: News Tagged With: Air India, England, India, London, Mumbai, Rat, United-Kingdom

Kuwait Airways drops 5th freedom rights on LHR-JFK

December 16, 2015 By bernard.montrel@gmail.com

Kuwait Airways is no longer selling tickets for flights between New York’s John F. Kennedy airport and London’s Heathrow, after the Transportation Department threatened legal action for its refusal to sell tickets to Israelis.
“Today, Kuwait Airways informed the U.S. DOT that they will be eliminating service between JFK and London Heathrow,” Namrata Kolachalam, a department spokeswoman, said Tuesday.
The airline didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
“Sorry, we were unable to process your request due to either no operating flight or no seats available,” the airline’s web site replied Tuesday, when asked for flights from JFK to Heathrow. But other flights directly to Kuwait City or to other destinations connecting through Kuwait are available.
The end of the route came after the Transportation Department investigated the airline’s refusal to sell Eldad Gatt, an Israeli citizen, a ticket from JFK to Heathrow in 2013.
“It is unfortunate that Kuwait Airways has decided to suspend its service, instead of accepting Israeli citizens as passengers,” said Jeffrey Lovitky, a Washington lawyer representing Eldad Gatt, who was refused a ticket because of the policy. “This demonstrates Kuwait’s stubborn refusal to give up its boycott of Israeli citizens.”
Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx announced Sept. 30 that the airline broke the law because it refuses to sell tickets to Israelis.
On Oct. 29, department ordered the airline to “cease and desist from refusing to transport Israeli citizens between the U.S. and any third country where they are allowed to disembark,” according to a letter from Blane Workie, the department’s assistant general counsel for enforcement.
But Kuwait Airways has said it declined to sell Gatt a ticket to avoid running afoul of Kuwaiti law, which prohibits its citizens from entering “into an agreement, personally or indirectly, with entities or persons residing in Israel, or with Israeli citizenship.”
The airline filed a petition Nov. 24 asking the Federal Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia to review the dispute. The airline contends that it isn’t discriminatory because it will sell tickets to passengers regardless of race, national origin or religion – so long as they hold a passport valid in Kuwait.
Because of that Kuwait law, the U.S. dispute boiled down to flights that didn’t land in Kuwait, such as the airline’s leg between New York and London. The threat was that the Transportation Department could block flights to the U.S. unless the airline changed its policy.
Kuwait Airways hasn’t withdrawn its lawsuit against the department, so it could potentially resume flights if it wins in court. Gatt will do everything in his power to ensure that the airline doesn’t resume flights between New York and London until it accepts Israeli citizens as passengers, Lovitky said.
USA Today

Filed Under: News Tagged With: England, Kuwait Airways, London, New York, New-York City, United-Kingdom, US

UK and Irish Governments grounds ALL flights to/from Sharm el-Sheikh

November 4, 2015 By bernard.montrel@gmail.com

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The UK says it has concluded that the Russian A321 jet that crashed over Egypt’s Sinai on Saturday was likely brought down by an “explosive device.” The British government decided at a crisis meeting to ground all UK passenger flights to and from Sharm el-Sheikh.
“We have concluded that there is a significant possibility that the crash was caused by an explosive device on board the aircraft… We are now advising against all but essential travel by air through Sharm el-Sheikh airport. That means that there will be no UK passenger flights out to Sharm el-Sheikh from now,” Philip Hammond, the UK Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, told reporters after a meeting of a crisis response committee chaired by Prime Minister David Cameron.
An updated statement from Cameron’s office said that all flights to and from Sharm el-Sheikh have been suspended “with immediate effect.”
“We have consular staff at the airport who are working with the operators to ensure that all those passengers who were due to leave this evening are being looked after and taken to hotels,” the statement assured. It added that the government will “work urgently with the airlines and the Egyptian authorities with the aim of getting some flights up and running as soon as possible so that we can get people already in Sharm el-Sheikh… back safely to the UK as soon as possible.”
There will be no flights returning from Sharm el-Sheikh tomorrow, as the measures will “take time,” it warned.
Earlier, all flights from Egypt’s Sharm el-Sheikh resort to the UK had been delayed as a “precautionary measure,” the joint statement from the Prime Minister’s Office, the Department for Transport and Foreign & Commonwealth Office said.
A team of UK aviation experts was ordered to assess the security situation in the resort from where the Russian-operated Airbus 321 departed Saturday.
The Irish Aviation Authority has directed the country’s airlines to suspend operations to and from Sharm el-Sheikh Airport as well. The world’s largest charter airline, Thomson Airways, which flies from the UK and Ireland, has also temporarily suspended its flights to and from the Egyptian resort destination with immediate effect.
“While the investigation is still ongoing we cannot say categorically why the Russian jet crashed. But as more information has come to light we have become concerned that the plane may well have been brought down by an explosive device,” the UK statement read.
The security assessment is expected to be completed by Wednesday night.
Extra consular staff will be deployed to the Egyptian resort, UK officials said, adding that they will be “on hand at the airport, working with the airlines, to assist British holidaymakers there.”
Since the Airbus A321 belonging to the Russian Metrojet air carrier crashed in Egypt, British officials “have been following the investigation closely… to ensure the safety of British citizens on flights from Sharm,” the joint statement said.
Earlier on Wednesday, Downing Street announced that British PM David Cameron and Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi had discussed the Russian plane crash in Sinai in a phone conversation. The two officials “agreed it was important not to prejudge the investigation,” but with the cause of the crash still uncertain, they decided “it would be prudent to ensure the tightest possible security arrangements at Sharm el-Sheikh airport.”
US intelligence has suggested a bomb planted on the Russian passenger plane by Islamic State or an affiliate group is “most likely” behind the Metrojet flight crash, CNN reported on Wednesday, citing a US official familiar with the matter. The US intelligence community has not reached a formal conclusion, the source added, but said “there is a definite feeling it was an explosive device planted in luggage or somewhere on the plane.”
The Egyptian leader had said earlier that speculation that Islamic State might be behind the Russian plane crash was “false propaganda” aimed at damaging Egypt’s image.
A source close to the Egyptian investigation decoding the black boxes said that an explosion could possibly have caused the crash, Reuters reported, adding that it was unclear whether such a blast would have been the result of a bomb or fuel explosion.
Citing sources in Egypt’s investigative committee, Egypt’s Al-Masry Al-Youm newspaper reported on Wednesday that the decoded black boxes showed that an engine blast had caused the plane to crash, killing all 224 people on board.
With no distress signal sent from the plane to the flight’s control center, the anonymous source told the media that the explosion had been huge and could have affected all the engines at once. “The investigation did not point yet to have any links to terrorists,” Al-Masry Al-Youm cited its source as saying, adding that samples from the wreckage and the bodies had been taken to determine whether any explosive materials were present on the plane, or if the blast was the result of a mechanical failure.
Security has been beefed up at Sharm el-Sheikh airport, the Telegraph reported, adding that policemen with bulletproof vests were checking cars entering from outside the hub on Wednesday.
On the day of the crash, the Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS/ISIL) terrorist group claimed responsibility for bringing down the plane. Another Islamic State video released on Tuesday showed a Slavic-looking and Russian-speaking jihadist praising his “Sinai brothers” in Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula for “taking down” the Russian jet and threatening more attacks in retaliation for Russia’s air campaign against IS in Syria.
The terrorists’ claims have been dubbed by Moscow and Cairo as “unlikely,” with officials saying the terrorist group does not possess the means to shoot down a plane at the altitude at which the Airbus was flying.
Although there has been no official announcement on the results of forensic medical examinations of the crash victims so far, there have been conflicting anonymous reports on the condition of the bodies. Russian tabloid LifeNews claimed to have obtained the results of a forensic medical examination that allegedly stated that the passengers “in the tail section of the liner died because of so-called blast injuries.” Burns covered over 90 percent of the victims’ bodies, which were pierced by particles of metal and aircraft covering, according to the report cited by the broadcaster.
On Tuesday, an Egyptian doctor who had examined the victims’ bodies suggested that “a powerful explosion took place aboard the plane before it hit the ground.” The nature of the injuries led him to make such a claim, the doctor told Sputnik news agency.
However, TASS news agency cited Russian and Egyptian experts as saying that they had failed to find any blast-related trauma during their preliminary examination of the victims’ bodies.
“There were no signs of an explosion impact found during the preliminary examination,” a Russian source said, with another Egyptian expert adding that “there were no signs of external impact” found on the bodies.
Some major international air carriers have avoided flying over the Sinai Peninsula area since Saturday’s crash. The biggest airline in the region, Emirates, as well as European Lufthansa and Air France-KLM have rerouted their flights until all the risks, including a possible terrorist act, have been ruled out by investigators.
RT News

Filed Under: News Tagged With: Egypt, Ireland, Metrojet, United-Kingdom

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