Yes you heard right, its finally been confirmed, Jet airways will commence daily direct flights between Mumbai and Johannesburg from mid April 2010. Flight 9W 242 which is the incoming flight will depart from Mumbai @ 2.05am and will arrive in Johannesburg at 7:35am, the return leg will depart Johannesburg at 11am and arrive in Mumbai at 11:30pm.
Jet airways currently flies to numerous destinations in the Arabian Gulf as well as New York, Toronto, Brussels, London, Singapore, Hong Kong, Bangkok and Kuala Lampur (naturally flights originate in India, most from Mumbai).
Airbus have now delivered a total of 26 A380s to Singapore Airlines (10), Emirates (8), Qantas (6) and Air France (2).
Air France is the first European carrier to take delivery of the A380. The first aircraft was drafted into its Paris - New York route, and the second will serve the Paris - Johannesburg route! Air France have been operating Boeing 777s on this route 10 times a week but have decided to add a couple of the Airbus A380s and reduce the number of flights to 7 a week come the end of March (made possible because of the increased capacity of the A380). The first Air France A380 flight to Johannesburg landed today morning!
So if you're planning to fly between France and South Africa you know which flight to look out for. A clip of the Air France A380 interior is included, keep in mind that you'll only be able to experience the luxurious amenities if you fly First class :)
As a matter of fact, they're already in the air undergoing a barrage of tests. Which models I hear you ask, well one which you may have guessed is the much publicised (probably more because of its delays than any other single factor) is the so called Dreamliner, the new Boeing 787. The mid-sized aircraft initially famed for racking up orders faster than any previous wide body airliner, a figure which is currently over 850, became a victim of its own ambition. At a time when the super jumbo from Airbus was encountering heavy delays that resulted in lose of face and shriveling up of fresh orders, Boeing confidently stated there were no such hiccups with their Boeing 787 progress only to concede later, more than once, that they too weren't as infallible as they led themselves to believe. The resultant delays meant that the aircraft's maiden flight took place more than 2 years later than originally intended!
In fact that maiden flight happened quite recently, it was 15 December 2009 when the first of the 787s eventually took to the air. Any number of expectant airliner personnel would have breathed a sigh of relief to see it in the air, and thats discounting the hoards of Boeing staff who came out to witness the big moment. But the wait is not over, with the first delivery only expected at the end of 2010 following the testing phase.
So what's so great about the 787, well it is built from lighter composite materials which should improve fuel consumption figures. Why is this is a big deal one might ask, the answer is because over the past decade the average percentage of the total running costs reported by airlines indicate that the cost of fuel which used to be around 10 - 15% has escalated to about 30% of the total operational cost! Alright good for them, but set aside the profit margins, what do we as passengers have to look forward to? Will it have a lie flat configuration in economy, unfortunately the seats appear to be pretty much the same as what we're used to (yup, knee breaking, spine crushing... its all the same). There will however be a feature which will allow you to dim the windows (referred to as electro-chromic) with the touch of a button, thereby eliminating the need for a window blind. Its cool but not exactly mind blowing, the clip below shows a demo.
While all the hype has been over the 787 the 'new' 747-8 took flight on 9 February 2010. It looks pretty much the same as the 747 which has been around for four decades but now it features redesigned wings and new engines as its major modifications in an effort to drive down the fuel consumption. You might also notice from the picture the lack of windows along the side of the aircraft, there are only three, that's because this is a freighter aircraft. The passenger variant of the 747-8 to be christened 'Intercontinental' will follow later in the year. Boeing will indeed be able to carve out a market share for the latest 747 as there hasn't been any alternative for large cargo aircraft since the old 747. The A380 freighter variant is suspended for the moment while they try to get production figures of the passenger edition up to the desired figures. So it appears the cargo carriers are queuing up in anticipation to rid their old jumbo fleets in favour of the more economical 747-8.
One thing's for sure, Boeing and Airbus are going to be really busy for the next couple of years churning out aircraft to meet the backlog, lets hope they don't incur any further mishaps.
The fourth ticket sales phases kicks off on 9 February 2010 at 1:00pm South African time (GMT +2). In this phase tickets will be allocated on a 'first come, first served, subject to availability' basis so don't delay your application! 400 000 seats will be on sale in this phase, though not all the matches will be available in this phase, those listed below are excluded, possibly due to high demand in previous phases:
Match 5 - England vs USA Match 11 - Italy vs Paraguay Match 37 - England vs Slovenia Match 45 - Brazil vs Portugal Match 54 - 1G vs 2H - Round of 16 fixture (likely Brazil vs Chile) Match 56 - 1H vs 2G - Round of 16 fixture (likely Spain vs Portugal/Ivory Coast) Match 59 - Quarter-final fixture (possibly Argentina vs Germany) Match 60 - Quarter-final fixture (possibly Italy vs Spain) Match 61 - Semi-final fixture (possibly England vs Brazil) Match 62 - Semi-final fixture (possibly Germany vs Spain) Match 64 - Final
Thus far apparently about 2 million of the 3 million odd tickets have already been sold. Aside from the host nation the most ticket applications have been received from the following countries:
1 - USA 2 - UK 3 - Australia 4 - Mexico 5 - Germany 6 - Brazil
This showed up on Lance's twitter feed yesterday, "Hey South Africa! Excited to come down in March. Bringing your man Daryl Impey with me. And yes, we're racing The Argus.... "
Daryl Impey is a 25-year old South African cyclist who has signed for Armstrong's Radioshack team.
For those of you who don't know the Cape Argus Pick 'n Pay Cycle Tour is an annual 109 km cycle race hosted in Cape Town, South Africa. This year the main race will be held on Sunday, 14 March and entries are still open of international riders. With approximately 40,000 cyclists taking part, it is the world's largest individually timed cycle race, and is the first event outside Europe to be included in the International Cycling Union's Golden Bike Series.
Seating in Economy class on airplanes haven't changed for decades. Over time many airlines have introduced much improved solutions on First and Business class, Singapore airlines offers private suites with a bed on First class on their latest Airbus A380 fleet and Emirates offers showers(!) to First class passengers on their A380s (though limited to about 2 minutes). Now I've flown on an Emirates A380 (in Economy class, naturally) and let me tell you, as far as the seating goes it was just as cramped as any 30 year old airplane configuration.
So I was pleasantly surprised to read an article which stated that Air New Zealand plans to launch 'couples beds' in economy class. About time an innovation or two filtered down to Economy class, and hats off to Air New Zealand for initiating it. See for yourself in the clip below, the economy seating is towards the end. It'll be awesome for off peak flights, a bed for the price of a basic Economy seat.
May it be said that the Pakistani cricketing officials missed the original deadline to issue their players with clearance documentation for the IPL and only managed to provide this after special measures were taken afterwards.
This naturally would not instill confidence into the various IPL teams who are naturally looking to obtain players with the ability to strengthen their squads and crucially players who will be available for participation as many matches of the tournament as possible.
It doesn't take a rocket scientist/stock broker to realise that there are risks with availability of Pakistani players which are outside the players' and teams control. Indeed last year the PCB/Pakistani government decided to prevent their players from partaking in the IPL due to 'security concerns' (note it wasn't terrorists from India who had attacked Pakistan, so this was rather ridiculous!) and so the IPL franchises had to suffer due to unavailability.
In my opinion this was most evident with the Kolkota Knight Riders (who finished bottom in season 2 of the IPL) whose owner Sharukh Khan, was initially very keen on the Pakistani players and had the most number in his squad of any of the IPL teams. Do you blame him for not bidding for any of them this time round!!!
And the other complaint from the Pakistan corner is that they find it hard to fathom how the IPL franchises could decide that not one of the Pakistanis were good enough to partake in the IPL. This is also ludicrous as once again it can be shown that player availability in the tournament where the number of international players in a squad is capped is key. KKR bought out (effectively released) Ricky Ponting so as to be able to obtain another player (they ended up getting Shane Bond), was it because Ponting is not good enough, or could it have due to his unavailability for the majority of the past two seasons? You decide.
I agree it is a pity about Pakistan who have a strong cricketing heritage, however, one must note that the IPL was not the cause of their troubles. The damn terrorist plot to assassinate the Sri Lankan cricketers was the cause! If only the politicians and PCB would realise that stop complaining about India and resolve their domestic security issues which would allow international cricket tours to go ahead in Pakistan.
As far as the IPL goes, it may not occur to the Pakistani authorities but the IPL had to be moved out of India last year due to security concerns (admittedly the concurrent national elections impacted as sufficient security personnel were not available to safely manage both events), but the whole reason of insecurity was sparked because of, yup you guessed it, terrorist attacks emanating from Pakistan.
Why then is there such disbelief to find out that, all things considered, the IPL and/or IPL franchises are not keen to have Pakistani players partaking just yet?
The graphic says it all... These are the groups of the 2010 Fifa World Cup.
Phase 3 of ticket sales goes on sale today. The match schedule (downloadable pdf) is available here (all information in this post has been obtained from the official FIFA website).
Its been decided, the playoffs are over! All 32 nations which will compete in the FIFA 2010 World Cup have been determined. In just over 200 days the teams listed below will converge in South Africa for the much anticipated contest. (Click on image to enlarge).
There were a few upsets in the playoffs. Pity Gus Hiddink could not manage to get the very talented Russian side through the play-offs, Slovenia qualified at their expense. The other major upset (this one I was happy about) was that the Algerians beat the much fancied Egyptian side (while Egypt is a good side they've always been a bunch of faking divers and I hate them for that). The Greeks (in my opinion the dullest side in world football) managed to get past Ukraine by a single goal, sigh. But undoubtedly the Republic of Ireland with the unluckiest team (the irony) when it came to the failing to make it right at the very end. The saddest thing was that they were leading the much fancied French side in Paris until Thierry Henry blatantly handled the ball in the penalty area (twice!) to keep it in play and then crossed it in to what resulted in the goal which France drew level and enabled them to go through on aggregate.
The above information and world cup logo were obtained from the Official FIFA website.
With only 6 more spots to be filled the following from the following playoffs the team lineup is looking concrete. Thankfully the major African teams have qualified this time round, its hard to determine the African qualifiers due to a high level of inconsistency (at the 2006 World Cup in Germany the African qualifiers were drastically different to the 2002 World Cup in Korea & Japan). The following teams still have a chance of making it:
Africa Egypt / Algeria
South/Central America Uruguay / Costa Rica
Europe Ireland / France + Portugal / Bosnia-Herzegovina + Greece / Ukraine + Russia / Slovenia
The above information and world cup logo were obtained from the Official FIFA website.
