A Vietnam Airlines flight bound for Hanoi was delayed for four hours at Danang Airport after several scorpions were found on the plane, an official said today.
The A321 aircraft, with 165 passengers on board, was about to taxi onto the runway Tuesday evening when a crew member spotted two scorpions near a passenger’s seat.
source: The Age
Delays in the nation’s aviation system intensified in October, causing the airline industry’s on-time arrival record to fall from September’s level, while still remaining ahead of last year.
Figures Monday from the U.S. Bureau of Transportation Statistics show 78.2 percent of domestic flights operated by the nation’s biggest carriers arrived on time, down from 81.7 percent in September but stronger than October 2006, when 72.9 percent of flights landed on schedule.
source: Salt Lake Tribune
A Ryanair flight from Rome to Milan was delayed because a metre-long plush crocodile was blocking an emergency exit, and the passenger to which it belonged refused to relocate it.
After an exchange of words between the passenger and the cabin crew, the passenger and her crocodile were removed from the flight.
source: ShortNews.com
Low visibility Tuesday has led to flight delays and cancellations at both Midway and O’Hare airports, according to the City Department of Aviation.
More than 30 flights at O’Hare International Airport had been canceled as of about 8:30 p.m., according to Aviation. Delays are averaging 90 minutes for flights in and out of O’Hare.
At Midway, delays ranged from 15 minutes to an hour, according to Aviation. “No major cancellations have been reported,” according to the city. Earlier in the day, a few flights to and from the East Coast had been delayed more than two hours.
source: Sun Times
Air Canada was struggling to contend with a computer problem Friday that caused flight delays at Toronto’s Pearson International Airport.
It was unclear whether the computer glitch, which apparently affected passenger check-in services, was localized at Pearson or had affected the airline’s operations nationwide, said Angela Mah, a spokeswoman for the airline.
“‘We are currently working on isolating the issue and resolving the issue as soon as possible,'” Mah told The Canadian Press in a telephone interview.
An advisory on the Air Canada website said the airline is experiencing technical difficulties with a computer system which will likely result in some flight delays. The advisory said the airline expects the issue to be fixed shortly.
source: Canadian Press
British Airways’ final flight from Harare landed at Heathrow last night, closing a chapter in links between Britain and Zimbabwe.
British Airways suspends fligthts to Zimbabwe BA also suspended its flights in 1965
BA152 was the final service of a route the airline said it was abandoning because it had become uneconomic.
Zimbabwe’s economy is in freefall and tourism to the country has collapsed. But in Zimbabwe the decision is being seen as part of London’s efforts to isolate Robert Mugabe’s regime, even though BA is a commercial company.
source: Telegraph.co.uk
TAP Air Portugal said a series of pilots’ strikes beginning Tuesday would likely cause the cancellation of many flights and advised passengers to change their travel plans if possible.
Services “‘will be severely disrupted,'” company spokesman Antonio Monteiro said Monday. He could not predict how many of the flag carrier’s about 150 daily flights would operate during the three days of stoppages this week.
The airline’s approximately 500 pilots announced they would strike Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday. They also plan to strike Nov. 5, 7 and 9.
source: IHT
Airline SAS said on Monday it was cancelling at least 228 flights through to Wednesday this week because of the grounding of all its Dash 8-400 aircraft following two crash-landings last week.
In separate statements, SAS Sweden and SAS Denmark said they would cancel 48 flights and 180 flights, respectively.
Two SAS planes crash-landed within days, one in Denmark on Sept. 9 and another in Lithuania on Sept. 12, due to problems with landing gear. No one was seriously hurt in either incident.
source: Reuters
A U.S. Customs computer outage that stranded more than 17,000 passengers at LAX was blamed Sunday on faulty hardware and an insufficient backup system that left frustrated travelers sitting on planes or standing in long lines.
Saturday night’s delays in screening people arriving on international flights were unprecedented, said Kevin Weeks, director of Los Angeles field operations for the U.S. Customs and Border Protection agency.
The computer malfunction, which began at 2 p.m. Saturday and lasted about 10 hours, came on a peak summer travel day, when nearly 25,000 international passengers arrived at the airport.
source: LA Times
An engine failure has forced a brand new Airbus A330-200 carrying more than 300 Jetstar passengers to Melbourne from Bangkok to divert for an emergency landing at Bali’s Denpasar Airport.
The captain of the Jetstar flight headed for Bali after the aircraft’s computer system detected the fault and shut one engine down.
Flying for almost an hour on one engine, the jet landed at Denpasar about 6.45am (AEST), stranding its 302 passengers and 12 crew for an unwanted 17-hour stopover.
source: theage.com.au
