Er.... Yes. Just as much so as Boeing.

> (if you absolutely needed to go somewhere and needed
> to be on time...
> would you chose Airbus?)
>
> exTWAer
>

ARCHIVE PHOTOS added - December 20, 2009

Dipping back into the 90's again. I guess this groups highlight is the Saudi
private 727. Several other interesting items. Only a couple biz jets.

Photos Link:

http://phlairline.com/spotter/122009.html

Cheers,
Paul


[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

JEEZ! I guess the story IS true after all!
See www.financialtimes.com for more.

He's persona non grata in Everett, and
now in Dublin - where next I wonder?
Mullingar? Toulese?

Liam.
YVR.

   ----- Original Message -----
   From: Liam Tully
   To: airline2@yahoogroups.com
   Sent: Sunday, December 20, 2009 2:12 AM
   Subject: [Sky-1] Re: [Airline] Interview with Mr. O'Leary of Ryanair


   Hilarious, if it's true - gotta check out the "FT" story though!

   Liam.
   YVR.


     ----- Original Message -----
     From: James
     To: airline2@yahoogroups.com
     Sent: Sunday, December 20, 2009 1:18 AM
     Subject: [Airline] Interview with Mr. O'Leary of Ryanair



     Lunch with the FT: Michael O'Leary
     By Pilita Clark

     Published: December 18 2009 23:02 | Last updated: December 18 2009 23:02

     "Here," says Michael O'Leary, shoving something the size of a small
grapefruit wrapped in red and white cardboard over the table in his office at
Dublin airport. "Lunch."

     There is an awkward silence.

     You do not expect a banquet from a budget airline boss who has threatened to
make his passengers pay to use the toilet.

     And you do not want to upset a man who calls regulators "rapists", rivals
"arseholes", and advises customers wanting a refund to "f*** off".

     But what exactly has he given me here? Eventually, I make out the words on
the wrapper and blurt: "Oh! A bagel!"

     "It's got pesto," says O'Leary. "It was either that or McDonald's. I figured
you for a bagel girl."

     For himself, he has procured a grim-looking chicken salad, entombed in thick
plastic, also from somewhere in the airport down the road. An aide arrives with
two takeaway coffees. So begins lunch with one of the world's best-known,
least-loved and more improbable airline chief executives.

     EDITOR'S CHOICE
     More from Lunch with the FT - Jun-12I had tried to persuade O'Leary's press
officer that lunch in the office would be dull. Surely there was a restaurant he
liked in Dublin? No. Lunch with the chief executive of Ryanair would be a
Ryanair lunch: at the desk, just your basics, all expenses spared.

     In the world of aviation, Ryanair is a phenomenon, a no-frills behemoth that
has grown from a tiny operation which, in 1985, used to fly 5,000 passengers a
year between Ireland and London in a single plane so small that, according to
the company, its cabin crew had to be no taller than 5ft 2in. Since he took over
in 1994 O'Leary has relentlessly expanded, with 200 aircraft flying more than
60m passengers a year to 150 European destinations, from the Canary Islands to
Constanta in eastern Romania.

     Recession has sent bigger, older airlines around the world hurtling into the
red. Yet Ryanair has fared much better, coupling average fares of just ?32 with
a ruthless drive to cut costs and push up revenues by charging for everything
from checking in online to buying a cup of coffee on board.

     In the middle of this year Ryanair had the highest market value of any
airline in the world, after Singapore Airlines. On the day we meet, it is
getting ready to announce another quarterly profit and expects to make at least
?200m this year.

     None of this is evident from Ryanair's Dublin airport headquarters. Plastic
sacks of wastepaper are piled at the entrance. Boxes are stacked up in corridors
inside. The paintwork is scruffy, the carpet tired.

     The open-plan office feels barely as wide as one of Ryanair's Boeing jets,
and nearly as cramped. There is a single aisle dividing tightly packed teams of
surprisingly young-looking workers into departments such as marketing, sales and
planning.

     It looks less like one of the airline industry's financial success stories
and more like a scene from the television comedy The Office. Except the workers
in The Office have bigger desks. And down at the end, peering out from behind
the glass walls of his own modest office, is O'Leary.

     Wearing jeans, open-necked checked shirt and sneakers, he looks a bit tired
and pale up close. This could be because he and his wife Anita Farrell, a former
banker, have three children under the age of eight. Or because he seems in a
permanent state of exasperation with an endless number of irritants, including
his own staff.

     As I try to prise off the worryingly sturdy wrapper on the bagel, he says
there are two "great things" about lunchtime in an out-of-the-way office like
Ryanair's. "One, there's nowhere to go and eat," and two, the only time staff
are allowed to use the internet for personal reasons is between five past one
and five to two. "So they all tend to stay at their desks at lunch hour!"

     The staff get another pasting as he moves on to talk about management
consultants ("should all be euthanised") and MBAs ("bullshit"). "MBA students
come out with, `The customer's always right,'" he says, adopting a whiny voice.
"Horseshit! The customer's usually wrong! And, `My staff is my most important
asset.' Bullshit! Staff is usually your biggest cost!"

     It is hard to say how serious he is about this. Ryanair did once say it had
issued a memo banning employees from charging their mobile phones at work to
save on electricity bills. But this always sounded like another PR prank by
O'Leary, whose flair for using the media is boundless.

     Airline entrepreneurs have often revealed a talent for doing their own PR.
Richard Branson flew in a hot air balloon for Virgin Atlantic. Stelios
Haji-Ioannou wore orange jumpsuits for EasyJet. But O'Leary takes the practice
to new heights.

     It is not just his willingness to dress up as the Pope to publicise a new
route to Rome. Or his (so far unrealised) threat to charge passengers to use the
lavatory. It is the sheer savagery of his blasts that make him stand out on the
featureless plains of modern corporate life.

     For 20 bracing minutes, he runs through a list of his more egregious
enemies. There are the "cretins" and "twerps" in the Civil Aviation Authority,
the British body that regulates the "bloody evil empire" of BAA, the airport
operator whose London monopoly was recently broken up, after prodding from
O'Leary, who had griped incessantly about its charges.

     There is the "big bloody supertanker" of Boeing, the US aircraft maker that
O'Leary has been badgering for months to sell him 200 new jets at recessionary
prices. And there is, visible right outside his office window, one of his most
hated foes: Aer Lingus, the struggling Irish flag carrier for which O'Leary has
made two thwarted bids in the past three years. "There it is," he hoots, jumping
up out of his chair to point out a large squat building facing away from his
own. "The gulag!"

     He would clearly like to make a third offer for Aer Lingus, but knows this
would mean trouble with its "bunch of bearded, sandal-wearing union bosses", not
to mention Ireland's "utterly useless" politicians.

     And then there is that other source of endless aggravation, Ryanair's
passengers. Especially the ones wrecking his efforts to shave luggage-handling
costs by checking in their cases (for an extra £30) because they are "too
mentally bloody lazy to travel with carry-on bags".

     Surely he doesn't seriously expect anyone to go on a three-week holiday with
just a carry-on?

     "Oh, for God's sake, of course you can for three weeks," he says.

     "I can't."

     "You can."

     "I don't want to."

     He stares at me, then admits his wife feels the same way.

     "My wife goes away on holidays for a couple of weeks, and she wears bikinis
and a few flips-flops, but she needs her 40 pairs of shoes," he says
theatrically. "What do you need 40 pairs of shoes for?"

     So, who exactly is the ideal Ryanair passenger? "Our ideal passenger is
someone with a pulse and a credit card, who will follow the simple instructions
to lower our costs to the maximum."

     By this point, hunger is driving me to make a fresh attempt on the bagel
wrapper. Off it comes, and there sits a sad-looking bagel containing a pile of
pesto, tomato and cucumber. I start picking at it. O'Leary's salad sits
menacingly on his desk, untouched.

     This is a typical lunch for him, he says, when he isn't at the gym.

     What does he like to do in the gym?

     "Look up and down a slim girl's rear," he says. "Sadly there's not that many
of them. They're a bunch of old sweaty farts."

     Though greying a little, O'Leary is, at 48, not that old. Before he became a
loud-mouthed chief executive, he was a tax accountant, before that a
businessman's son, expensively educated at some of Ireland's best schools.
According to one newspaper's estimate he is worth more than £300m, partly thanks
to a 4 per cent stake in Ryanair. But for years now, he has been saying he will
retire "in two or three years". So what is it today?

     "Three years," he says, suddenly trying to look serious. By then it will be
time to "Tesco-ise Ryanair", by which he means time to ditch him for someone
more suitable for a larger, more sedate operation.

     "In certain respects I am our best salesman," he says, explaining the
"pantomime villain character" he plays for the airline is done purely for the
free publicity (the net spend on advertising last year was ?5m, he says, not
much for an airline Ryanair's size). "But I'm also negative in that a lot of my
antics detract from the fact that Ryanair has the youngest fleet of aircraft,
the best punctuality record, delivers a terrific customer service.

     "I think you need me for the rapid growth and for the in-cost reduction
initiatives, but once they're all done you then need to hand over to somebody
who's a bit more respectful of politicians and bureaucrats, talks about caring
about the environment and old people and f***ing jungles and fish in the sea and
all that shite."

     Goodness knows what O'Leary will do if he ever retires. He claims to have no
interest in holidays. "I go to the Algarve with the family for two weeks,
because I have to. And I can build the sandcastles with the children. You know,
the sandcastle's fine for the first five minutes, and after that it's, `Oh
Jesus, will someone come and rescue me!' I'm praying for a crisis."

     What about close friends? "My wife, occasionally. My children on a good
day."

     He hates the theatre. Only sees films when dragged by his wife, "just for
marriage maintenance reasons". His main interests, apart from Ryanair, consist
of farming, football and racehorses, of which he has a few including one called
War of Attrition, which won the Cheltenham Gold Cup in 2006. I had always
assumed this was an O'Leary-esque joke at a rival's expense - Aer Lingus,
perhaps - but he says the animal had the name when he bought it.

     FIVE FURIOUS BOSSES

     `If you want a friend, get a dog'

     Samuel Goldwyn (1879-1974)
     A bullying, vainglorious style, enormous ego and buckets of charm - Goldwyn
had what it took to get films made in Hollywood in its golden age. A Polish
Jewish émigré, he once said, "I don't want to be surrounded by `yes men.' I want
people who'll disagree with me, even if it costs them their jobs".

     Robert Maxwell (1923-1991)
     The Czech-born newspaper proprietor terrified employees and family with his
forceful style. He had courage and nerve but this tipped over, ultimately, into
illegal excess. In a letter to his wife, Maxwell described how during the second
world war he had dealt with a German mayor whom he felt had betrayed him: "As
soon as we marched off a German tank opened fire on us. Luckily, he missed, so I
shot the mayor and withdrew."

     Donald Rumsfeld (born 1932)
     Rumsfeld, US secretary of defence from 2001-2006, was famously decisive. In
the 1990s, while still a corporate executive, he attended a seminar run by James
O'Toole, professor of ethics at the University of Denver. In Transparency
(2008), O'Toole recalls questioning the factual basis of a Rumsfeld assertion.
"He came after me with bone-chilling intensity," he writes, "`No one questions
me! Do you understand that? I am never wrong.'"

     Al Dunlap (born 1937)
     At Scott Paper in the early 1990s Dunlap sacked thousands of people and sold
the business on for a profit. Dubbed "Chainsaw", he relished his ruthless image.
"If you want a friend, get a dog," he once said, adding: "I've got two." He was
fired from the Sunbeam Corporation and later investigated by the Securities and
Exchange Commission and agreed to pay a settlement.

     C Montgomery Burns (born c1909)
     The fiendish boss of the Springfield nuclear power plant in the cult cartoon
series The Simpsons. Burns' philosophy of management is, "I'll keep it short and
sweet. Family, religion, friendship: these are the three demons you must slay if
you wish to succeed in business." According to The Simpsons website, he is "more
misunderstood than evil".

     Stefan Stern is the FT's management columnist
     There is a strange lack of sophistication about O'Leary. His success has
made him one of the industry's most prominent airline chiefs, his name
constantly on the lips of his peers, his business model aped around the world.
Willie Walsh, a fellow Irishman and the chief executive of British Airways, once
told me, only half-joking, that O'Leary's success had even driven other airline
executives to copy his dress sense: "You get these CEOs who, because O'Leary
doesn't wear a tie or a suit, feel that to have any sort of respect, you can't
wear a tie."

     Yet his world view has curious gaps. At one point, I ask him what he thinks
of other well-known figures in his industry. Stelios? "A rich kid who got off
his arse." Richard Branson? "A genius in the way he has made a fortune out of
the Virgin brand, but he doesn't add up to much." But, when asked about Tony
Tyler, chief executive at Cathay Pacific, one of Asia's biggest airlines, he
looks blank. "Never heard of him," he says. "Anyone in the airline industry
outside of Europe, I wouldn't know who the hell they are."

     There is also something rather quaint about him. He doesn't have a
BlackBerry, there is no computer on his desk. He even claims not to have an
e-mail address. "E-mail is rubbish. If there's something important, I'll send a
fax, or we'll speak."

     Each day a team compiles two reports on paper for him, one for sales, one
for punctuality, which give an instant overview of how the business is
performing. He gets up and grabs a sheet showing the day's bookings, the month's
sales, next month's sales, available seats, how it all compares with the same
month last year, and so on. "Business should be simple," he beams.

     Lack of e-mail does not stop him being an enthusiastic correspondent. When
UK advertising standards authorities chided him for claiming Ryanair's flights
were faster than the Eurostar train, he sent them a copy of Everyday Maths for
Dummies. Journalists who write about him sometimes get an unsolicited, though
frequently charming, missive. A colleague on the FT who wrote a column comparing
Ryanair to Aeroflot received a two-page letter along with the latest "Girls of
Ryanair" calendar, featuring bikini-clad photos of Miss Check-In and Miss Fuel
Pump, a regular production that O'Leary insists uses only company cabin crew.

     The admiration is reciprocated, at least in the financial media. On a
cabinet in a corner of his office is a dusty collection of awards sent by the
likes of Barron's, the financial magazine that has named him one of the "world's
most respected CEOs" ever since it started handing out the award in 2005.
"Barf!" says O'Leary, looking embarrassed, when asked about the prizes.

     His constant obsession with cost-cutting, however, not to mention his foul
mouth, has also spawned less adulatory attention, such as the website
www.ihateryanair.co.uk, dedicated to what it calls "the world's most hated
airline".

     Before today, I say, every person I spoke to and said I was having lunch
with Michael O'Leary reacted with horror or pity. Doesn't he find it wearying to
be such a hate figure? "It would be wearying if you weren't growing by 9m
passengers a year," he says. "We know, fundamentally, that we have huge public
support."

     Outside, the light is fading. My flight home is getting near. My bagel is
still there, still half-eaten. O'Leary's salad still sits on his desk.

     A few days later, I get a letter from O'Leary, thanking me for taking the
time to come to Dublin to see him and hoping I enjoyed my "five-star gourmet
lunch". By the way, he adds: "I forgot to charge you for the coffee, so you owe
me one."

     Pilita Clark is the FT's aerospace correspondent






[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

Hilarious, if it's true - gotta check out the "FT" story though!

Liam.
YVR.


   ----- Original Message -----
   From: James
   To: airline2@yahoogroups.com
   Sent: Sunday, December 20, 2009 1:18 AM
   Subject: [Airline] Interview with Mr. O'Leary of Ryanair



   Lunch with the FT: Michael O'Leary
   By Pilita Clark

   Published: December 18 2009 23:02 | Last updated: December 18 2009 23:02

   "Here," says Michael O'Leary, shoving something the size of a small grapefruit
wrapped in red and white cardboard over the table in his office at Dublin
airport. "Lunch."

   There is an awkward silence.

   You do not expect a banquet from a budget airline boss who has threatened to
make his passengers pay to use the toilet.

   And you do not want to upset a man who calls regulators "rapists", rivals
"arseholes", and advises customers wanting a refund to "f*** off".

   But what exactly has he given me here? Eventually, I make out the words on the
wrapper and blurt: "Oh! A bagel!"

   "It's got pesto," says O'Leary. "It was either that or McDonald's. I figured
you for a bagel girl."

   For himself, he has procured a grim-looking chicken salad, entombed in thick
plastic, also from somewhere in the airport down the road. An aide arrives with
two takeaway coffees. So begins lunch with one of the world's best-known,
least-loved and more improbable airline chief executives.

   EDITOR'S CHOICE
   More from Lunch with the FT - Jun-12I had tried to persuade O'Leary's press
officer that lunch in the office would be dull. Surely there was a restaurant he
liked in Dublin? No. Lunch with the chief executive of Ryanair would be a
Ryanair lunch: at the desk, just your basics, all expenses spared.

   In the world of aviation, Ryanair is a phenomenon, a no-frills behemoth that
has grown from a tiny operation which, in 1985, used to fly 5,000 passengers a
year between Ireland and London in a single plane so small that, according to
the company, its cabin crew had to be no taller than 5ft 2in. Since he took over
in 1994 O'Leary has relentlessly expanded, with 200 aircraft flying more than
60m passengers a year to 150 European destinations, from the Canary Islands to
Constanta in eastern Romania.

   Recession has sent bigger, older airlines around the world hurtling into the
red. Yet Ryanair has fared much better, coupling average fares of just ?32 with
a ruthless drive to cut costs and push up revenues by charging for everything
from checking in online to buying a cup of coffee on board.

   In the middle of this year Ryanair had the highest market value of any airline
in the world, after Singapore Airlines. On the day we meet, it is getting ready
to announce another quarterly profit and expects to make at least ?200m this
year.

   None of this is evident from Ryanair's Dublin airport headquarters. Plastic
sacks of wastepaper are piled at the entrance. Boxes are stacked up in corridors
inside. The paintwork is scruffy, the carpet tired.

   The open-plan office feels barely as wide as one of Ryanair's Boeing jets, and
nearly as cramped. There is a single aisle dividing tightly packed teams of
surprisingly young-looking workers into departments such as marketing, sales and
planning.

   It looks less like one of the airline industry's financial success stories and
more like a scene from the television comedy The Office. Except the workers in
The Office have bigger desks. And down at the end, peering out from behind the
glass walls of his own modest office, is O'Leary.

   Wearing jeans, open-necked checked shirt and sneakers, he looks a bit tired
and pale up close. This could be because he and his wife Anita Farrell, a former
banker, have three children under the age of eight. Or because he seems in a
permanent state of exasperation with an endless number of irritants, including
his own staff.

   As I try to prise off the worryingly sturdy wrapper on the bagel, he says
there are two "great things" about lunchtime in an out-of-the-way office like
Ryanair's. "One, there's nowhere to go and eat," and two, the only time staff
are allowed to use the internet for personal reasons is between five past one
and five to two. "So they all tend to stay at their desks at lunch hour!"

   The staff get another pasting as he moves on to talk about management
consultants ("should all be euthanised") and MBAs ("bullshit"). "MBA students
come out with, `The customer's always right,'" he says, adopting a whiny voice.
"Horseshit! The customer's usually wrong! And, `My staff is my most important
asset.' Bullshit! Staff is usually your biggest cost!"

   It is hard to say how serious he is about this. Ryanair did once say it had
issued a memo banning employees from charging their mobile phones at work to
save on electricity bills. But this always sounded like another PR prank by
O'Leary, whose flair for using the media is boundless.

   Airline entrepreneurs have often revealed a talent for doing their own PR.
Richard Branson flew in a hot air balloon for Virgin Atlantic. Stelios
Haji-Ioannou wore orange jumpsuits for EasyJet. But O'Leary takes the practice
to new heights.

   It is not just his willingness to dress up as the Pope to publicise a new
route to Rome. Or his (so far unrealised) threat to charge passengers to use the
lavatory. It is the sheer savagery of his blasts that make him stand out on the
featureless plains of modern corporate life.

   For 20 bracing minutes, he runs through a list of his more egregious enemies.
There are the "cretins" and "twerps" in the Civil Aviation Authority, the
British body that regulates the "bloody evil empire" of BAA, the airport
operator whose London monopoly was recently broken up, after prodding from
O'Leary, who had griped incessantly about its charges.

   There is the "big bloody supertanker" of Boeing, the US aircraft maker that
O'Leary has been badgering for months to sell him 200 new jets at recessionary
prices. And there is, visible right outside his office window, one of his most
hated foes: Aer Lingus, the struggling Irish flag carrier for which O'Leary has
made two thwarted bids in the past three years. "There it is," he hoots, jumping
up out of his chair to point out a large squat building facing away from his
own. "The gulag!"

   He would clearly like to make a third offer for Aer Lingus, but knows this
would mean trouble with its "bunch of bearded, sandal-wearing union bosses", not
to mention Ireland's "utterly useless" politicians.

   And then there is that other source of endless aggravation, Ryanair's
passengers. Especially the ones wrecking his efforts to shave luggage-handling
costs by checking in their cases (for an extra £30) because they are "too
mentally bloody lazy to travel with carry-on bags".

   Surely he doesn't seriously expect anyone to go on a three-week holiday with
just a carry-on?

   "Oh, for God's sake, of course you can for three weeks," he says.

   "I can't."

   "You can."

   "I don't want to."

   He stares at me, then admits his wife feels the same way.

   "My wife goes away on holidays for a couple of weeks, and she wears bikinis
and a few flips-flops, but she needs her 40 pairs of shoes," he says
theatrically. "What do you need 40 pairs of shoes for?"

   So, who exactly is the ideal Ryanair passenger? "Our ideal passenger is
someone with a pulse and a credit card, who will follow the simple instructions
to lower our costs to the maximum."

   By this point, hunger is driving me to make a fresh attempt on the bagel
wrapper. Off it comes, and there sits a sad-looking bagel containing a pile of
pesto, tomato and cucumber. I start picking at it. O'Leary's salad sits
menacingly on his desk, untouched.

   This is a typical lunch for him, he says, when he isn't at the gym.

   What does he like to do in the gym?

   "Look up and down a slim girl's rear," he says. "Sadly there's not that many
of them. They're a bunch of old sweaty farts."

   Though greying a little, O'Leary is, at 48, not that old. Before he became a
loud-mouthed chief executive, he was a tax accountant, before that a
businessman's son, expensively educated at some of Ireland's best schools.
According to one newspaper's estimate he is worth more than £300m, partly thanks
to a 4 per cent stake in Ryanair. But for years now, he has been saying he will
retire "in two or three years". So what is it today?

   "Three years," he says, suddenly trying to look serious. By then it will be
time to "Tesco-ise Ryanair", by which he means time to ditch him for someone
more suitable for a larger, more sedate operation.

   "In certain respects I am our best salesman," he says, explaining the
"pantomime villain character" he plays for the airline is done purely for the
free publicity (the net spend on advertising last year was ?5m, he says, not
much for an airline Ryanair's size). "But I'm also negative in that a lot of my
antics detract from the fact that Ryanair has the youngest fleet of aircraft,
the best punctuality record, delivers a terrific customer service.

   "I think you need me for the rapid growth and for the in-cost reduction
initiatives, but once they're all done you then need to hand over to somebody
who's a bit more respectful of politicians and bureaucrats, talks about caring
about the environment and old people and f***ing jungles and fish in the sea and
all that shite."

   Goodness knows what O'Leary will do if he ever retires. He claims to have no
interest in holidays. "I go to the Algarve with the family for two weeks,
because I have to. And I can build the sandcastles with the children. You know,
the sandcastle's fine for the first five minutes, and after that it's, `Oh
Jesus, will someone come and rescue me!' I'm praying for a crisis."

   What about close friends? "My wife, occasionally. My children on a good day."

   He hates the theatre. Only sees films when dragged by his wife, "just for
marriage maintenance reasons". His main interests, apart from Ryanair, consist
of farming, football and racehorses, of which he has a few including one called
War of Attrition, which won the Cheltenham Gold Cup in 2006. I had always
assumed this was an O'Leary-esque joke at a rival's expense - Aer Lingus,
perhaps - but he says the animal had the name when he bought it.

   FIVE FURIOUS BOSSES

   `If you want a friend, get a dog'

   Samuel Goldwyn (1879-1974)
   A bullying, vainglorious style, enormous ego and buckets of charm - Goldwyn
had what it took to get films made in Hollywood in its golden age. A Polish
Jewish émigré, he once said, "I don't want to be surrounded by `yes men.' I want
people who'll disagree with me, even if it costs them their jobs".

   Robert Maxwell (1923-1991)
   The Czech-born newspaper proprietor terrified employees and family with his
forceful style. He had courage and nerve but this tipped over, ultimately, into
illegal excess. In a letter to his wife, Maxwell described how during the second
world war he had dealt with a German mayor whom he felt had betrayed him: "As
soon as we marched off a German tank opened fire on us. Luckily, he missed, so I
shot the mayor and withdrew."

   Donald Rumsfeld (born 1932)
   Rumsfeld, US secretary of defence from 2001-2006, was famously decisive. In
the 1990s, while still a corporate executive, he attended a seminar run by James
O'Toole, professor of ethics at the University of Denver. In Transparency
(2008), O'Toole recalls questioning the factual basis of a Rumsfeld assertion.
"He came after me with bone-chilling intensity," he writes, "`No one questions
me! Do you understand that? I am never wrong.'"

   Al Dunlap (born 1937)
   At Scott Paper in the early 1990s Dunlap sacked thousands of people and sold
the business on for a profit. Dubbed "Chainsaw", he relished his ruthless image.
"If you want a friend, get a dog," he once said, adding: "I've got two." He was
fired from the Sunbeam Corporation and later investigated by the Securities and
Exchange Commission and agreed to pay a settlement.

   C Montgomery Burns (born c1909)
   The fiendish boss of the Springfield nuclear power plant in the cult cartoon
series The Simpsons. Burns' philosophy of management is, "I'll keep it short and
sweet. Family, religion, friendship: these are the three demons you must slay if
you wish to succeed in business." According to The Simpsons website, he is "more
misunderstood than evil".

   Stefan Stern is the FT's management columnist
   There is a strange lack of sophistication about O'Leary. His success has made
him one of the industry's most prominent airline chiefs, his name constantly on
the lips of his peers, his business model aped around the world. Willie Walsh, a
fellow Irishman and the chief executive of British Airways, once told me, only
half-joking, that O'Leary's success had even driven other airline executives to
copy his dress sense: "You get these CEOs who, because O'Leary doesn't wear a
tie or a suit, feel that to have any sort of respect, you can't wear a tie."

   Yet his world view has curious gaps. At one point, I ask him what he thinks of
other well-known figures in his industry. Stelios? "A rich kid who got off his
arse." Richard Branson? "A genius in the way he has made a fortune out of the
Virgin brand, but he doesn't add up to much." But, when asked about Tony Tyler,
chief executive at Cathay Pacific, one of Asia's biggest airlines, he looks
blank. "Never heard of him," he says. "Anyone in the airline industry outside of
Europe, I wouldn't know who the hell they are."

   There is also something rather quaint about him. He doesn't have a BlackBerry,
there is no computer on his desk. He even claims not to have an e-mail address.
"E-mail is rubbish. If there's something important, I'll send a fax, or we'll
speak."

   Each day a team compiles two reports on paper for him, one for sales, one for
punctuality, which give an instant overview of how the business is performing.
He gets up and grabs a sheet showing the day's bookings, the month's sales, next
month's sales, available seats, how it all compares with the same month last
year, and so on. "Business should be simple," he beams.

   Lack of e-mail does not stop him being an enthusiastic correspondent. When UK
advertising standards authorities chided him for claiming Ryanair's flights were
faster than the Eurostar train, he sent them a copy of Everyday Maths for
Dummies. Journalists who write about him sometimes get an unsolicited, though
frequently charming, missive. A colleague on the FT who wrote a column comparing
Ryanair to Aeroflot received a two-page letter along with the latest "Girls of
Ryanair" calendar, featuring bikini-clad photos of Miss Check-In and Miss Fuel
Pump, a regular production that O'Leary insists uses only company cabin crew.

   The admiration is reciprocated, at least in the financial media. On a cabinet
in a corner of his office is a dusty collection of awards sent by the likes of
Barron's, the financial magazine that has named him one of the "world's most
respected CEOs" ever since it started handing out the award in 2005. "Barf!"
says O'Leary, looking embarrassed, when asked about the prizes.

   His constant obsession with cost-cutting, however, not to mention his foul
mouth, has also spawned less adulatory attention, such as the website
www.ihateryanair.co.uk, dedicated to what it calls "the world's most hated
airline".

   Before today, I say, every person I spoke to and said I was having lunch with
Michael O'Leary reacted with horror or pity. Doesn't he find it wearying to be
such a hate figure? "It would be wearying if you weren't growing by 9m
passengers a year," he says. "We know, fundamentally, that we have huge public
support."

   Outside, the light is fading. My flight home is getting near. My bagel is
still there, still half-eaten. O'Leary's salad still sits on his desk.

   A few days later, I get a letter from O'Leary, thanking me for taking the time
to come to Dublin to see him and hoping I enjoyed my "five-star gourmet lunch".
By the way, he adds: "I forgot to charge you for the coffee, so you owe me one."

   Pilita Clark is the FT's aerospace correspondent





[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

Lunch with the FT: Michael O'Leary
By Pilita Clark

Published: December 18 2009 23:02 | Last updated: December 18 2009 23:02

"Here," says Michael O'Leary, shoving something the size of a small grapefruit
wrapped in red and white cardboard over the table in his office at Dublin
airport. "Lunch."

There is an awkward silence.

You do not expect a banquet from a budget airline boss who has threatened to
make his passengers pay to use the toilet.

And you do not want to upset a man who calls regulators "rapists", rivals
"arseholes", and advises customers wanting a refund to "f*** off".

But what exactly has he given me here? Eventually, I make out the words on the
wrapper and blurt: "Oh! A bagel!"

"It's got pesto," says O'Leary. "It was either that or McDonald's. I figured you
for a bagel girl."

For himself, he has procured a grim-looking chicken salad, entombed in thick
plastic, also from somewhere in the airport down the road. An aide arrives with
two takeaway coffees. So begins lunch with one of the world's best-known,
least-loved and more improbable airline chief executives.

EDITOR'S CHOICE
More from Lunch with the FT - Jun-12I had tried to persuade O'Leary's press
officer that lunch in the office would be dull. Surely there was a restaurant he
liked in Dublin? No. Lunch with the chief executive of Ryanair would be a
Ryanair lunch: at the desk, just your basics, all expenses spared.

In the world of aviation, Ryanair is a phenomenon, a no-frills behemoth that has
grown from a tiny operation which, in 1985, used to fly 5,000 passengers a year
between Ireland and London in a single plane so small that, according to the
company, its cabin crew had to be no taller than 5ft 2in. Since he took over in
1994 O'Leary has relentlessly expanded, with 200 aircraft flying more than 60m
passengers a year to 150 European destinations, from the Canary Islands to
Constanta in eastern Romania.

Recession has sent bigger, older airlines around the world hurtling into the
red. Yet Ryanair has fared much better, coupling average fares of just €32 with
a ruthless drive to cut costs and push up revenues by charging for everything
from checking in online to buying a cup of coffee on board.

In the middle of this year Ryanair had the highest market value of any airline
in the world, after Singapore Airlines. On the day we meet, it is getting ready
to announce another quarterly profit and expects to make at least €200m this
year.

None of this is evident from Ryanair's Dublin airport headquarters. Plastic
sacks of wastepaper are piled at the entrance. Boxes are stacked up in corridors
inside. The paintwork is scruffy, the carpet tired.

The open-plan office feels barely as wide as one of Ryanair's Boeing jets, and
nearly as cramped. There is a single aisle dividing tightly packed teams of
surprisingly young-looking workers into departments such as marketing, sales and
planning.

It looks less like one of the airline industry's financial success stories and
more like a scene from the television comedy The Office. Except the workers in
The Office have bigger desks. And down at the end, peering out from behind the
glass walls of his own modest office, is O'Leary.

Wearing jeans, open-necked checked shirt and sneakers, he looks a bit tired and
pale up close. This could be because he and his wife Anita Farrell, a former
banker, have three children under the age of eight. Or because he seems in a
permanent state of exasperation with an endless number of irritants, including
his own staff.

As I try to prise off the worryingly sturdy wrapper on the bagel, he says there
are two "great things" about lunchtime in an out-of-the-way office like
Ryanair's. "One, there's nowhere to go and eat," and two, the only time staff
are allowed to use the internet for personal reasons is between five past one
and five to two. "So they all tend to stay at their desks at lunch hour!"

The staff get another pasting as he moves on to talk about management
consultants ("should all be euthanised") and MBAs ("bullshit"). "MBA students
come out with, `The customer's always right,'" he says, adopting a whiny voice.
"Horseshit! The customer's usually wrong! And, `My staff is my most important
asset.' Bullshit! Staff is usually your biggest cost!"

It is hard to say how serious he is about this. Ryanair did once say it had
issued a memo banning employees from charging their mobile phones at work to
save on electricity bills. But this always sounded like another PR prank by
O'Leary, whose flair for using the media is boundless.

Airline entrepreneurs have often revealed a talent for doing their own PR.
Richard Branson flew in a hot air balloon for Virgin Atlantic. Stelios
Haji-Ioannou wore orange jumpsuits for EasyJet. But O'Leary takes the practice
to new heights.

It is not just his willingness to dress up as the Pope to publicise a new route
to Rome. Or his (so far unrealised) threat to charge passengers to use the
lavatory. It is the sheer savagery of his blasts that make him stand out on the
featureless plains of modern corporate life.

For 20 bracing minutes, he runs through a list of his more egregious enemies.
There are the "cretins" and "twerps" in the Civil Aviation Authority, the
British body that regulates the "bloody evil empire" of BAA, the airport
operator whose London monopoly was recently broken up, after prodding from
O'Leary, who had griped incessantly about its charges.

There is the "big bloody supertanker" of Boeing, the US aircraft maker that
O'Leary has been badgering for months to sell him 200 new jets at recessionary
prices. And there is, visible right outside his office window, one of his most
hated foes: Aer Lingus, the struggling Irish flag carrier for which O'Leary has
made two thwarted bids in the past three years. "There it is," he hoots, jumping
up out of his chair to point out a large squat building facing away from his
own. "The gulag!"

He would clearly like to make a third offer for Aer Lingus, but knows this would
mean trouble with its "bunch of bearded, sandal-wearing union bosses", not to
mention Ireland's "utterly useless" politicians.

And then there is that other source of endless aggravation, Ryanair's
passengers. Especially the ones wrecking his efforts to shave luggage-handling
costs by checking in their cases (for an extra £30) because they are "too
mentally bloody lazy to travel with carry-on bags".

Surely he doesn't seriously expect anyone to go on a three-week holiday with
just a carry-on?

"Oh, for God's sake, of course you can for three weeks," he says.

"I can't."

"You can."

"I don't want to."

He stares at me, then admits his wife feels the same way.

"My wife goes away on holidays for a couple of weeks, and she wears bikinis and
a few flips-flops, but she needs her 40 pairs of shoes," he says theatrically.
"What do you need 40 pairs of shoes for?"

So, who exactly is the ideal Ryanair passenger? "Our ideal passenger is someone
with a pulse and a credit card, who will follow the simple instructions to lower
our costs to the maximum."

By this point, hunger is driving me to make a fresh attempt on the bagel
wrapper. Off it comes, and there sits a sad-looking bagel containing a pile of
pesto, tomato and cucumber. I start picking at it. O'Leary's salad sits
menacingly on his desk, untouched.

This is a typical lunch for him, he says, when he isn't at the gym.

What does he like to do in the gym?

"Look up and down a slim girl's rear," he says. "Sadly there's not that many of
them. They're a bunch of old sweaty farts."

Though greying a little, O'Leary is, at 48, not that old. Before he became a
loud-mouthed chief executive, he was a tax accountant, before that a
businessman's son, expensively educated at some of Ireland's best schools.
According to one newspaper's estimate he is worth more than £300m, partly thanks
to a 4 per cent stake in Ryanair. But for years now, he has been saying he will
retire "in two or three years". So what is it today?

"Three years," he says, suddenly trying to look serious. By then it will be time
to "Tesco-ise Ryanair", by which he means time to ditch him for someone more
suitable for a larger, more sedate operation.

"In certain respects I am our best salesman," he says, explaining the "pantomime
villain character" he plays for the airline is done purely for the free
publicity (the net spend on advertising last year was €5m, he says, not much for
an airline Ryanair's size). "But I'm also negative in that a lot of my antics
detract from the fact that Ryanair has the youngest fleet of aircraft, the best
punctuality record, delivers a terrific customer service.

"I think you need me for the rapid growth and for the in-cost reduction
initiatives, but once they're all done you then need to hand over to somebody
who's a bit more respectful of politicians and bureaucrats, talks about caring
about the environment and old people and f***ing jungles and fish in the sea and
all that shite."

Goodness knows what O'Leary will do if he ever retires. He claims to have no
interest in holidays. "I go to the Algarve with the family for two weeks,
because I have to. And I can build the sandcastles with the children. You know,
the sandcastle's fine for the first five minutes, and after that it's, `Oh
Jesus, will someone come and rescue me!' I'm praying for a crisis."

What about close friends? "My wife, occasionally. My children on a good day."

He hates the theatre. Only sees films when dragged by his wife, "just for
marriage maintenance reasons". His main interests, apart from Ryanair, consist
of farming, football and racehorses, of which he has a few including one called
War of Attrition, which won the Cheltenham Gold Cup in 2006. I had always
assumed this was an O'Leary-esque joke at a rival's expense – Aer Lingus,
perhaps – but he says the animal had the name when he bought it.

FIVE FURIOUS BOSSES

`If you want a friend, get a dog'

Samuel Goldwyn (1879-1974)
A bullying, vainglorious style, enormous ego and buckets of charm – Goldwyn had
what it took to get films made in Hollywood in its golden age. A Polish Jewish
émigré, he once said, "I don't want to be surrounded by `yes men.' I want people
who'll disagree with me, even if it costs them their jobs".

Robert Maxwell (1923-1991)
The Czech-born newspaper proprietor terrified employees and family with his
forceful style. He had courage and nerve but this tipped over, ultimately, into
illegal excess. In a letter to his wife, Maxwell described how during the second
world war he had dealt with a German mayor whom he felt had betrayed him: "As
soon as we marched off a German tank opened fire on us. Luckily, he missed, so I
shot the mayor and withdrew."

Donald Rumsfeld (born 1932)
Rumsfeld, US secretary of defence from 2001-2006, was famously decisive. In the
1990s, while still a corporate executive, he attended a seminar run by James
O'Toole, professor of ethics at the University of Denver. In Transparency
(2008), O'Toole recalls questioning the factual basis of a Rumsfeld assertion.
"He came after me with bone-chilling intensity," he writes, "`No one questions
me! Do you understand that? I am never wrong.'"

Al Dunlap (born 1937)
At Scott Paper in the early 1990s Dunlap sacked thousands of people and sold the
business on for a profit. Dubbed "Chainsaw", he relished his ruthless image. "If
you want a friend, get a dog," he once said, adding: "I've got two." He was
fired from the Sunbeam Corporation and later investigated by the Securities and
Exchange Commission and agreed to pay a settlement.

C Montgomery Burns (born c1909)
The fiendish boss of the Springfield nuclear power plant in the cult cartoon
series The Simpsons. Burns' philosophy of management is, "I'll keep it short and
sweet. Family, religion, friendship: these are the three demons you must slay if
you wish to succeed in business." According to The Simpsons website, he is "more
misunderstood than evil".

Stefan Stern is the FT's management columnist
There is a strange lack of sophistication about O'Leary. His success has made
him one of the industry's most prominent airline chiefs, his name constantly on
the lips of his peers, his business model aped around the world. Willie Walsh, a
fellow Irishman and the chief executive of British Airways, once told me, only
half-joking, that O'Leary's success had even driven other airline executives to
copy his dress sense: "You get these CEOs who, because O'Leary doesn't wear a
tie or a suit, feel that to have any sort of respect, you can't wear a tie."

Yet his world view has curious gaps. At one point, I ask him what he thinks of
other well-known figures in his industry. Stelios? "A rich kid who got off his
arse." Richard Branson? "A genius in the way he has made a fortune out of the
Virgin brand, but he doesn't add up to much." But, when asked about Tony Tyler,
chief executive at Cathay Pacific, one of Asia's biggest airlines, he looks
blank. "Never heard of him," he says. "Anyone in the airline industry outside of
Europe, I wouldn't know who the hell they are."

There is also something rather quaint about him. He doesn't have a BlackBerry,
there is no computer on his desk. He even claims not to have an e-mail address.
"E-mail is rubbish. If there's something important, I'll send a fax, or we'll
speak."

Each day a team compiles two reports on paper for him, one for sales, one for
punctuality, which give an instant overview of how the business is performing.
He gets up and grabs a sheet showing the day's bookings, the month's sales, next
month's sales, available seats, how it all compares with the same month last
year, and so on. "Business should be simple," he beams.

Lack of e-mail does not stop him being an enthusiastic correspondent. When UK
advertising standards authorities chided him for claiming Ryanair's flights were
faster than the Eurostar train, he sent them a copy of Everyday Maths for
Dummies. Journalists who write about him sometimes get an unsolicited, though
frequently charming, missive. A colleague on the FT who wrote a column comparing
Ryanair to Aeroflot received a two-page letter along with the latest "Girls of
Ryanair" calendar, featuring bikini-clad photos of Miss Check-In and Miss Fuel
Pump, a regular production that O'Leary insists uses only company cabin crew.

The admiration is reciprocated, at least in the financial media. On a cabinet in
a corner of his office is a dusty collection of awards sent by the likes of
Barron's, the financial magazine that has named him one of the "world's most
respected CEOs" ever since it started handing out the award in 2005. "Barf!"
says O'Leary, looking embarrassed, when asked about the prizes.

His constant obsession with cost-cutting, however, not to mention his foul
mouth, has also spawned less adulatory attention, such as the website
www.ihateryanair.co.uk, dedicated to what it calls "the world's most hated
airline".

Before today, I say, every person I spoke to and said I was having lunch with
Michael O'Leary reacted with horror or pity. Doesn't he find it wearying to be
such a hate figure? "It would be wearying if you weren't growing by 9m
passengers a year," he says. "We know, fundamentally, that we have huge public
support."

Outside, the light is fading. My flight home is getting near. My bagel is still
there, still half-eaten. O'Leary's salad still sits on his desk.

A few days later, I get a letter from O'Leary, thanking me for taking the time
to come to Dublin to see him and hoping I enjoyed my "five-star gourmet lunch".
By the way, he adds: "I forgot to charge you for the coffee, so you owe me one."

Pilita Clark is the FT's aerospace correspondent

Latest uploads:

"JFK International Airport"-3/8/70

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jzYluZxnrWw

Swissair DC-8-62 & 55-"Arrival JFK"-3/8/70

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ncmNm-ORQ58

Airline Stewardesses-"Have A Nice Day"-Vol. ll

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wdjDpI0Jik4

BOAC Boeing 707-436-"Arrival Sydney"-6/64

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=29VlzBS25Xg

Air France Boeing 707-328-"Las Vegas"-8/64

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HZvtDB-Ke9I

JAL Douglas DC-8-55-"Arrival Tokyo"-6/29/66

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BpCsMpje1Hw

Aeroflot Tupelov TU-134-"Landing"-1973

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4nhjcqA5kNg

Aeroflot Ilyushin IL-62-"Take-Off Moscow"-1973

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5xtNSOSx3zE

British United VC-10-"Take-Off Nairobi"-1966

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3EyftXMDo9E

"British United Vickers VC-10"-1965

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=epzytGSNyJ8

Lufthansa Stewardess-"Boeing 707 Facts"-1965

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=baVZ2V78ANk

"British United BAC One-Eleven"-1965

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LchdmV6j5sI

Pan Am Boeing 707-321 & 121-"Take-Off"-1963

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w-8p8RfYO2U

JAL DC-8-62-"Water Landing SFO"-11/22/68

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9VnAvH6z3-c

United Boeing 747-122-"Take-Off Honolulu"-1972

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XWIiVZyehT8

United Douglas DC-8-61-"Arrival Honolulu"-1972

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hhgWTK4utik

United Douglas DC-6 & Douglas DC-4-"LAX"-1960

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EIgakzVw5Q8

"Pan Am Lockheed L-049 Constellation"-1947

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1C1DaqG9isk

AA Lockheed Electra-"Arrival Memphis"-8/18/66

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G9IJ3U4qVaY

Bonanza Fairchild F-27-"Salt Lake City"-3/27/68

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=efO14c-shkQ

Ansett Fokker F-27-"Arrival Melbourne"-6/64

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ELIDQVeEmY0

"American Flyers Lockheed L-188 Electra"-9/4/64

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x8o0ZA4494o

Enjoy,

Christian/SEA

thanks for correction and clarification
ahoo SIN showed a pic with clearly a B777

exTWAer




________________________________
From: "Catsn4@..." <Catsn4@...>
To: airline2@yahoogroups.com
Sent: Friday, 18 December 2009 5:02:25
Subject: Re: [Airline] QF 777 retunring to SIN

 

from www.Avherald. com:

http://www.avherald .com/h?article= 4245f1f9& opt=0

it was a QF B744 VH-OJQ

-----Original Message-----
From: UnknownSender@ UnknownDomain
To: airline2@yahoogroup s.com
Sent: Fri, Dec 18, 2009 11:02 am
Subject: [Airline] QF 777 retunring to SIN

possible engine problems

exTWAer

http://m.sg. yahoo.com/ _ylt=AnN8uQuQZp6 U3DxLlU19Ff. CG7J_;_ylu=
X3oDMTNkOGl2dXNt BGEDU0dOZXdzX1Fh bnRhc3R1cm5zYmFj a18yMDA5MTIxOARj
cG9zAzEEZwNpZC00 ODgEaW50bANzZwRw a2d2AzUEcG9zAzIE c2VjA3RkLWZlYXQE
c2xrA3RpdGxlBHNs cG9zA0YEdGVzdAM3 MTI-/SIG= 130kdmlj5/ **http%3A/ /sg.news.
yahoo.com/ cna/20091218/ tap-621-qantas- flight-turns- back-spore- e-231650b.
html

ARCHIVE PHOTOS added  PHL - December 19, 2009

Some different stuff in here, and of course biz jets. These span several years
1997-2002.
The Rich DC-8 was across from the old Strawbridges warehouse and World DC-10 was
at the old overseas terminal. If I knew about going into the long term parking
lot back then, I could have gotten a better  photo.

Photos Link:

http://phlairline.com/spotter/121909.html

Cheers,
Paul


[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

from www.Avherald.com:

http://www.avherald.com/h?article=4245f1f9&opt=0

it was a QF B744 VH-OJQ









-----Original Message-----
From: UnknownSender@UnknownDomain
To: airline2@yahoogroups.com
Sent: Fri, Dec 18, 2009 11:02 am
Subject: [Airline] QF 777 retunring to SIN




possible engine problems

exTWAer

http://m.sg.yahoo.com/_ylt=AnN8uQuQZp6U3DxLlU19Ff.CG7J_;_ylu=X3oDMTNkOGl2dXNtBGE\
DU0dOZXdzX1FhbnRhc3R1cm5zYmFja18yMDA5MTIxOARjcG9zAzEEZwNpZC00ODgEaW50bANzZwRwa2d\
2AzUEcG9zAzIEc2VjA3RkLWZlYXQEc2xrA3RpdGxlBHNscG9zA0YEdGVzdAM3MTI-/SIG=130kdmlj5/\
**http%3A//sg.news.yahoo.com/cna/20091218/tap-621-qantas-flight-turns-back-spore\
-e-231650b.html






[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

PHOTOS:  PHL - December 18, 2009

This has been a totally disgusting Christmas cargo season (so far).  But I did
manage a couple other things today. Seems like The Rollin W. King has been
repainted and has a new font for the Inscription. Also a couple US Army
Blackhawks, a Midwest E170 that was formerly in US colors. Of course a few biz
jets.  RW27R was used for departures for about an hour.
Carolina Panthers US A-319 too, but I didn't post the photo.

Note: theres's a few OT photos at the end of this group. Just ignore them if
they annoy.

Photos Link:

http://phlairline.com/spotter/121809.html

Cheers,
Paul


[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

analysts say still tough solutions to be found.
exTWAer


http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20091217/ts_alt_afp/usaerospacecompanyboeing787_14

possible engine problems

exTWAer


http://m.sg.yahoo.com/_ylt=AnN8uQuQZp6U3DxLlU19Ff.CG7J_;_ylu=X3oDMTNkOGl2dXNtBGE\
DU0dOZXdzX1FhbnRhc3R1cm5zYmFja18yMDA5MTIxOARjcG9zAzEEZwNpZC00ODgEaW50bANzZwRwa2d\
2AzUEcG9zAzIEc2VjA3RkLWZlYXQEc2xrA3RpdGxlBHNscG9zA0YEdGVzdAM3MTI-/SIG=130kdmlj5/\
**http%3A//sg.news.yahoo.com/cna/20091218/tap-621-qantas-flight-turns-back-spore\
-e-231650b.html

software problems for A380

and related delays for A350

The trees at Airbus are not growing to heaven!
(only the arrogance and mouth are)

exTWAer


http://www.focus.de/finanzen/boerse/aktien/luftfahrt/a380-neue-pannen-beim-super\
-airbus_aid_464337.html

PHOTOS:  PHL - December 16, 2009

The height of the Cargo Rush?  A couple UPS 757's, an ATI DC-8 and a Mountain
Air Cargo (drum roll please)
King Air.

Plus a few biz jets.

Photos Link:

http://phlairline.com/spotter/121609.html

Cheers,
Paul


[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

electrical problems and returning to pod.
This time Airbus cannot blame an outsider
it is squarely an Airbus technical

http://www.tagesanzeiger.ch/panorama/vermischtes/Stromausfall-zwang-A380-zur-Umk\
ehr/story/16485602

the 4 A380 operators have sofar over 1500 technical
problems whil operating.

If I had a Lada like this I would say
"unfinished product".....

or maybe Airbus should change the anme altogether
Lada380 (not as bad as TU380 or IL380) does not sound that bad.

exTWAer

Scotland's biggest airline goes bust

The airline, Scotland's biggest, carried more than 1.5m passengers in 2008
Scotland's biggest airline, Edinburgh-based Flyglobespan, has been placed in
administration with all scheduled flights cancelled.

Administrators PricewaterhouseCoopers said Globespan was in contact with about
5,000 passengers booked with or travelling with the airline.

Last year the airline, which employs about 800 staff, carried more than 1.5m
passengers and operated 12,000 flights.

The majority of the company's staff have been made redundant.

The move followed attempts to conclude a financing deal for the airline with
Jersey-based Halcyon Investments which broke down earlier on Wednesday.

In a statement tonight, the administrators said the Civil Aviation Authority
(CAA) would be responsible for the repatriation of about 1,100 people who are on
holidays booked as part of a Globespan package holiday.

However, a further 3,400 people are overseas and are not protected, who booked
directly through flyglobespan.com.

Customers who booked Flyglobespan flights directly via the Flyglobespan website
or the call centre would not be protected.

There are also 27,000 people who have future flights booked through the ATOL
insurance scheme, and around 90,000 people who have forward bookings but have no
ATOL protection.

They may be protected under their own personal travel insurance or through their
credit card transaction.

Bruce Cartwright of PricewaterhouseCoopers said: "Unfortunately I am obliged to
confirm that, the Group will not longer be able to operate flights.

"Our focus right now is on assisting those passengers who need to complete
return journeys and communicating with those who have future reservations.

Operating profit

"We would strongly advise those passengers who had expected to travel tomorrow
to remain at home or make alternative arrangements as there is no prospect of
their planned flight taking place."

On the Flyglobespan website its Christmas and New Year schedule showed flights
to Tenerife and many other winter holiday destinations from Edinburgh, Glasgow
and Aberdeen.

Earlier this year, Flyglobespan announced it had made an operating profit of
£1.2m following a loss of £19m the previous year.

Set up in 2002, the company operates from five UK airports, including Prestwick,
Edinburgh and Aberdeen.

Earlier this year, it pulled its services out of the Durham Tees Valley airport,
blaming the worsening economic climate.

Delta: Case could be made for more airline mergers
By HARRY R. WEBER , 12.15.09, 04:37 PM EST

ATLANTA -- A case could be made for further consolidation in the U.S. airline
industry, but it's unclear whether the Obama administration would allow it, the
CEO of Delta Air Lines Inc. told investors at a conference Tuesday.

CEO Richard Anderson didn't hint whether the world's biggest airline, which
bought Northwest Airlines ( NWA - news - people ) last year, has the appetite
for another acquisition. But he suggested there is room for more mergers in the
industry.

"If a transaction were to occur, economics should prevail," Anderson said. "I
think the case can be made ultimately, but it remains to be seen what this
administration's take will be."

He said the current Democratic administration is more focused on regulatory
issues than the Republican one that preceded it.

Some analysts have speculated in the past that Alaska Air Group Inc. ( ALK -
news - people ) or JetBlue Airways ( JBLU - news - people ) Corp. could be
appealing targets for Delta. There also has been talk in recent years of
possible combinations between Continental Airlines Inc. ( CAL - news - people )
and United Airlines and between American Airlines ( AMR - news - people ) and US
Airways Group Inc. ( LCC - news - people )

Yes it is the spaces have to be removed
----- Original Message -----
From: GOTHIC39@...
To: airline2@yahoogroups.com
Sent: Tuesday, December 15, 2009 4:38:09 PM GMT -05:00 US/Canada Eastern
Subject: Re: [Airline] Plane Spotting on Today on NBC

 




are u sure thes is the right link == Glenn


In a message dated 12/15/2009 8:41:28 A.M. Central Standard Time,
danwiljr@... writes:

http ://today. msnbc . msn .com/

[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]




[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

to airport of departure
now already the 3rd return and related massive delay.
(plus another another one in NOV on the RIOPAR route with a A330.200)
QF hat 19 returns/mishaps
SQ over 20 "incidents"
Emirates 7

the fat Euro Baby is not out of diapers yet....
(if you absolutely needed to go somewhere and needed
to be on time...
would you chose Airbus?)

exTWAer

successful
with picture book landing
now get the other 4 up in the air and start making $$$

exTWAer

are u sure thes is the right link == Glenn


In a message dated 12/15/2009 8:41:28 A.M. Central Standard Time,
danwiljr@... writes:

http  ://today. msnbc . msn .com/




[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

I wonder if they are going to get run off by TSA or the Airport sercurity.  We
all know how itchy those folks can get. I hope it is not going to be an stage
event or whatever just for media purposes. Glenn 




-----Original Message-----
From: danwiljr@...
To: Airline 2 List <airline2@yahoogroups.com>; Washington Baltinmore
<washbaltspotters@yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Tue, Dec 15, 2009 8:39 am
Subject: [Airline] Plane Spotting on Today on NBC

 

Hi all

     The NBC Today Show This weeks is doing a series on odd/ unusual
hobbies and on Thursday Morning Anne Curry and Al Roker go plane spotting at JFK
for more information go to http ://today. msnbc . msn .com/

Happy Holidays

Dan

[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]







[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

Hi all

     The NBC Today Show This weeks is doing a series on odd/ unusual
hobbies and on Thursday Morning Anne Curry and Al Roker go plane spotting at JFK
for more information go to http ://today. msnbc . msn .com/



Happy Holidays



Dan

[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

Canada carrier not miffed by Grenada flight snub
Module body

Sun Dec 13, 7:45 PM

By The Associated Press

ST. GEORGE'S, Grenada - Canadian-based Sunwing Airlines Inc. says it is not
bothered by Grenada's lack of a welcoming ceremony for its inaugural flight to
the southern Caribbean island.

The absence of formal fanfare for the Nov. 23 flight prompted an outcry from the
island's tourism industry and led to the suspension of Grenada's top tourism
official.

But Sunwing vice president Lawrence R. Elliott says in a letter received Sunday
by local reporters that the airline was "not offended by any lack of a formal
greeting for the first flight into Grenada."

Even so, the island will try to make things right with a formal welcoming
ceremony for Sunwing on Monday.

ARCHIVE PHOTOS added - December 13, 2009

Nothing earth shattering. A TWA MD-80 in American colors. Odd story about this.
I was hoping to see it at PHL for awhile, I didn't. I got it at BWI, the next
day at PHL, I got it again.
More biz jets than airliners here.

Photos Link:

http://phlairline.com/spotter/121309.html

Cheers,
Paul


[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

PHOTOS:  PHL - December 12, 2009

Several military aircraft again (a couple improved photos).  I didn't time the
Osprey fly over right. I was planning to go to the parking lot of my employer in
the Navy Yard, but I was just off the Broad St. exit when they flew over and
shot the shots out the window while moving. Next year, I'll give it more time as
it would have been prime photos. Plus the rare daylight Saturday arrival of a
FedEx 727 and UPS A300.


Photos Link:

http://phlairline.com/spotter/121209.html

Cheers,
Paul


[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

Basically if you look at this aircraft -- all it is just an almost copy of
the C-17 Globemaster with turbo props - that is all it is
Glenn

 
 
I know it looked somehow familiar
but you should never say such thing in public, it
could hurt the tender minds of the Europeans who
already had publicly to admit (oh shame, oh shame)
2 weeks ago
"Boeing checked the engines and gave OK to fly"
(btw when was the last time Airbus invented something?
sofar they "misappropriated" most of the design
even the new winglets)
exTWAer

Basically if you look at this aircraft -- all it is just an almost copy of
the C-17 Globemaster with turbo props - that is all it is
Glenn

In a message dated 12/11/2009 3:03:47 P.M. Central Standard Time,
UnknownSender@UnknownDomain writes:




even the King of Spain wanted to see this.
Magnificient, historic,  superb, unique are just a few of the words used
by the Euro Press to  describe this first flight.....

The 6 billion+ Euros cost overrun are  forgotten...

exTWAer

here some really nice pix:

_http://www.tagesanzhttp://wwhttp://www.tagehttp://www.taghttp://wwwhttp://w
whttp://www.http://www.taghttp://w_
(http://www.tagesanzeiger.ch/wissen/technik/A400M-Landung-geglueckt--grosser-App\
laus-in-Sevilla/story/30113246)






[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

PHOTOS:  PHL - December 11, 2009

A few military craft today. Including one I've been chasing that seems I keep
missing. That's 85-1607. I keep getting 85-1608 whenever they are around. Also
AirTran Falcons One makes another appearance. Plus several biz jets and other
stuff. Ignore the few OT photos if they annoy.

Photos Link:

http://phlairline.com/spotter/121109.html

Cheers,
Paul


[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

even the King of Spain wanted to see this.
Magnificient, historic, superb, unique are just a few of the words used
by the Euro Press to describe this first flight.....

The 6 billion+ Euros cost overrun are forgotten...

exTWAer

here some really nice pix:

http://www.tagesanzeiger.ch/wissen/technik/A400M-Landung-geglueckt--grosser-Appl\
aus-in-Sevilla/story/30113246