A week before they learned to fly the three young storks were testing their wings from their nest near the Swiss-German border
LAUSANNE, SWITZERLAND – Max, the world’s longest banded stork, has sent another batch of babies out into the world, with all three of the babies learning to fly by Sunday 26 June.
The three were born in early May, bring to 26 the number of offspring Max has had in nine years.
The family retreated to the nest together Sunday night, according to the Museum of Natural History in Fribourg, which tracks Max.
US officials are expanding a tarmac-delay rule to prohibit airlines from holding passengers on stranded international flights for longer than four hours, to refund bag fees if they lose customers’ luggage, to include fees and taxes in advertised prices, and to pay passengers more if they get bumped from oversold flights.
The changes stem from December 2010 when several planes were stranded at New York airports with no chance for passengers to get off the aircrafts for up to ten hours.
Airlines that break the rule can be fined up to $27,500 per passenger; they are also required to provide food, water, working toilets and medical care after two hours to passengers.
Full details: Associated Press
Loading Easyjet bags at Geneva's Cointrin Airport
Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) -Geneva’s Cointrin International Airport posted a record number of passengers in 2010 despite discouraging factors such as economic gloom, skies gray with ash, runways thick with snow, strikes in neighbouring countries and even overweight planes. Some 11.9 million passengers used the airport, a 4.9 percent increase, and cargo traffic rose by nearly 33 percent to some 560 million tons.
The increases are surprising given both the many constraints and the small increase in the number of flights, up 2.74 percent, from 172,671 flights in 2009 to 177,400 in 2010.
Easyjet easily largest Geneva airline
Easyjet was the heavyweight at the airport in 2010, with 36 percent of the traffic, while Swiss was number two with 15 percent. Easyjet’s passenger traffic grew by 8.38 percent while Swiss traffic rose by 21.98 percent, reflecting the company’s commitment to build better routes for Geneva passengers.
Easyjet has been in the news for the past three days as the story has made media rounds about a December flight from Birmingham to Geneva, delayed while the staff worked to convince the 30-plus last passengers to board that they had to leave the plane because it was too heavy to take off. Some media have reported that they were threatened with arrest if they refused to leave the plane.
How airplanes are weighed
A golden rule of flying is that you cannot take a commercial plane into the air if it is overweight, but Easyjet says it is investigating how or why the 11 ton over-fueling occurred. Airliners are too big to simply roll onto scales as they head out of their berths, but their weight is routinely calculated. Eurocontrol, a European air safety organization, told GenevaLunch that the maximum takeoff weight (MTOW) can vary per aircraft but also per flight. Takeoff weight is a calculation of dry operating weight + payload + fuel on board – taxi fuel.
“Commonly in aviation when talking about MTOW we mean the structural takeoff weight,” says a spokesperson. “This MTOW will be found in the aircraft manuals and official papers. It can sometimes be lowered due to several parameters such as lengths of the runway or atmospheric pressure or altitude.”
New Geneva connections, more seats in the works for 2011
Several new connections have been announced recently for Geneva: Easyjet is adding Mykonos in Greece, Lot is adding three morning flights for Warsaw, Poland and Emirates is adding daily Dubai flights. Lufthansa is moving to “thinner seats” to add more seats.
Flying back from warm climates, other time zones to Geneva: keep up your guard at the airport
Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – Passengers at Geneva’s Cointrin airport are more than normally the target of thieves and purse snatchers during the holidays, and airport security services are cautioning people to be extra-vigilant over the holiday season. A well-known graphic designer was robbed of his bag containing ID, credit cards and money as he was loading his things into a car after a trip, reports 2o Minutes 22 December.
The first holiday weekend, 19-20 December, saw 100,000 people pass through the airport, nearly double the usual number. Signs at the airport remind passengers to be wary: thieves find that tired and disoriented arriving passengers and stressed departing ones are easy prey.
