Indonesia Grounds Adam Air

Indonesian authorities have withdrawn the Operation Specification Adam Air Sky Connection (Adam Air). The carrier is grounded as of March 19 and has three months to make safety improvements or it will have its AOC (Air Operator’s Certificate) revoked.

Shortcomings noted by the Ministry of Transport include that the airline carried out operations not in accordance with their AOM (Aircraft Operations Maintenance). Also, personnel training was not carried out in accordance with the company’s training program. And maintenance was carried out, not in accordance with the Maintenance Manual.

Adam Air was founded in 2002 by two persons, a well-known Indonesian businessman called Agung Laksono and a lady called Sandra Ang. It was named after Sandra Ang’s son. The airline started operations on 19 December 2003 with 2 Boeing 737s. There were discussions about selling 20% of the stakes – even Qantas was among the expected investors -, but after the crash of flight 574 on 11 February 2006 international investors backed down, although there were no fatalities or injuries in that accident.

Since the crash there have been continuous talks about the safety records and management style of Adam Air. According to talks they bribed their pilots to fly unsafe planes. Today’s decision of the Indonesian ministry was a logical effect of serious reports from the pilots of the airline about safety issues and corruption.

You can read more about Adam Air here.

By Szafi

Ryanair Angels With Bigger Breasts

Remember those “find seven little differences between the two pictures” type of riddles? I played that last time when I was waiting at the Dublin airport for my Ryanair flight to depart.

The riddle was about finding the differences between the old and new style paints of Ryanair’s Boeing 737-800 aircrafts. There are a few small differences like:

• the letters in Ryanair on the side of the plane are bigger
• the harp-angel logo in front of the word Ryanair has a different color
• the engine is painted in a different way
• in the old paint there is a narrow black stripe between the yellow stripe and the background white color
• in the new paint the yellow stripe runs up to the tail of the plan

The funniest difference however is something Mr O’Leary wanted. So if you think this is a mistake or it was made by a different artist or there is any other reason, forget about it. This was a well planned step from the most conscious, most agressive and the most genius CEO of the airline industry.

What is it? Well, it’s a male world – nobody knows it better than us, women – so the solution is simple. The angel that is the silouette of the harp in the logo of Ryanair has bigger breasts. Does it really work in such a simple way with men? Well, it is your choice to judge it, but if anybody on this planet watches the logo just a second longer or notices the logo at all, it was worth it. Well done!

Is it just me to see the jaw of a shark in that logo watching from a different angle? 🙂

By Szafi