logo

Accusations of favouritism for the home team are commonly made by pilots

Posted by admin   ·     ·   Jump to comments

Accusations of favouritism for the "home team" are commonly made by pilots.Controllers in France, Greece, Portugal and Italy, meanwhile, maintain that their only concern is safety. They say this is why they are striking today, in protest against plans for a "single European sky" rather than the present piecemeal arrangement – which they say is safer.For pilots wilfully to disobey instructions is almost unthinkable, but some passengers would be happier if flight crews never argued the toss with the referees of the sky.Controllers do not need the added stress of arguing with pilots over every decision, and many in aviation are privately glad that the issue has been so publicly aired.The airlines are still well short of being shown a yellow card. I would happily fly anywhere on any low-cost carrier this morning, but instead I am planning to do something far more dangerous: to cycle across London.Flying, thank goodness, is amazingly safe. As Duane Redmond, the Southwest flight attendant, says at the start of his safety briefing: "We never anticipate a sudden change in air pressure; if we did, I'd get another job." And so would I. Budget airlines: a booming businessRyanairRyanair is based in Dublin with its main British centre at Stansted It started operations in 1985 and operates 76 routes. Last year, it carried 12 million passengers and has ambitious plans for expansion It is currently Europe's seventh biggest airline.

Earlier this month it announced a 44 per cent increase in after-tax profits for the year to nearly £100m.EasyJetEasyJet is based at London Luton. It started operations in October 1995 and operates 45 routes In the past 12 months it carried 8.3 million passengers. While not the biggest operator, it has the biggest profile thanks in part to its ebullient outgoing chairman Stelios Haji-Ioannou who started the airline in 1995. By the time it floated in November 2000, it was worth £770m.GoGo, being taken over by easyJet, is based at London Stansted. A late entrant to the market, it was set up by BA in 1998, to counter the rise of the no-frills airlines but was sold last year to a management buyout for £100m It operates 38 routes. Last year, it carried 4.3 million passengers.BmibabyBmibaby is part of the British Midland group and is based at East Midlands Airport. It is the newest of the budget airlines,launched in March this year.

It operates nine routes and after 11 weeks, it had sold more than 200,000 seats.Buzz Buzz is a wholly-owned subsidiary of KLM and is based at London Stansted. It was launched in January 2000 and operates 21 routes from Stansted and four domestic services in France. Last year it carried 1.4 million passengers but is unprofitable.. A striking Gothic mansion, almost unchanged since the days of Queen Victoria, has been bought for the nation by the National Trust. In its first purchase of a country house for more than a decade, the trust is said to have paid at least £20m for Tyntesfield, its original contents and furnishings and estate seven miles from Bristol. The spectacular mansion with 43 bedrooms went on sale last summer after the death of its owner, Lord Wraxall, a reclusive bachelor, because the 19 beneficiaries of his will could not afford to keep it in the family.

A fund-raising campaign was launched by heritage bodies anxious to preserve the house and estate.The historian David Starkey said: "Tyntesfield is not just a Victorian Gothic country house, but an estate with a story that includes gardens, furniture, books and a multitude of bits and pieces. It is a time capsule on an extraordinary scale."Tyntesfield was created on the site of a more modest house in the 1870s by William Gibbs, a strongly religious industrialist who made a fortune importing guano and nitrate from South America for use as an agricultural fertiliser. He and his wife, Mathilda Blanche Gibbs, proved discerning collectors.A team of nearly 50 staff from the auctioneer Christie's has spent more than three months this year assessing the house's collection of 6,000 objects, including Old Master paintings and furniture by the best craftsmen of the period. The library contains 15,000 volumes and the house, with original wallpaper and stencils, has a chapel as large as many village churches.

readers comments

Comments are closed.

NBA

NBA

MLB

MLB

NFL

NFL

NHL

NHL

WWE

WWE

Your sideblock text goes here