Singapore Airlines A380 jumbo jet
Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) - The huge and nearly quiet A380 Airbus jumbojet made what is likely to be a rare appearance in Geneva Thursday morning 21 January. It flew in from Zurich in order to be sure there are no problems landing the plane, in order for the airport to be certified to welcome it.
Singapore Airlines flew the plane in and out of Zurich Wednesday, in order for Kloten airport to be certified for it. Singapore will begin scheduled flights there in the summer of 2010. Geneva is a back-up emergency landing airport for the plane, and thus also needs to be certified. The A380’s other European airports are London Heathrow and Paris Charles de Gaulle.
Links to other sites: TDG (Fre), 20 Minutes with video (Fre) and TSR television (Fre)
US and EU, warming up to aircraft negotiations
US Trade Representative Ron Kirk with EC Trade Commissioner Catherine Ashton, March 2009, at their first meeting
Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – A confidential interim WTO (World Trade Organization) report on European assistance to the aircraft industry, notably Airbus, was issued Friday, reports Frances Williams in the Financial Times, and a similar report on US assistance to Boeing is expected in the next few months.
French authorities in their official report one month after the crash of AF447, the Air France flight that went down over the Atlantic 1 June, say they are far from knowing the cause of the crash, but that examination of debris shows that the plane “fell like a stone”, almost vertically from the sky, and landed flat. Le Monde, Fre and CNN
Update 07:53 Rescuers searching among the debris of the doomed Yemenia Airbus pulled a 14-year-old girl from the sea alive 30 June. Her father, in Paris, has spoken to her on the phone, reports AP (Fre) and says she felt nothing, but was ejected and found herself in the water next to the plane. She spent 12 hours in the water and is being treated for hypothermia. Her father describes her as extremely shy, fragile, and says she barely knows how to swim.
Brussels, Belgium (GenevaLunch) – The European Union’s transport commissioner, Antonio Tajani, called for a worldwide blacklist of unsafe airlines, at a press conference in Brussels Tuesday morning 30 June, following the crash of a Yemeni airlines Airbus near the Comoros Islands.
