It’s very rare that a company fulfill its customer’s wish. And that too at about 35,000 feet in the air.
But Alaska Airlines has done that by changing its flight path on Tuesday, so that passengers could enjoy the view of solar eclipse.
IMAGE: Treat your eyes with this breathtaking view. Solar eclipse from Alaska Airlines flight. Photograph: Alaska Airlines/Twitter
The airliner made this plan a year ago when one of the passengers, Joseph Rao, who is the associate astronomer at the American Museum of Natural History’s Hayden Planetarium, informed it that Alaska Airlines flight 870 from Anchorage to Honolulu would intersect the eclipse’s path.
But there was a catch. The flight’s scheduled departure time was 25 minutes too early to see the eclipse.
After several deliberations the airline decided to adjust the timing to give passengers a chance to witness the grand spectacle.
Emirates cannot hold claim to the world’s longest route – a service from their hub in Dubai to Auckland, New Zealand – for much longer. Fellow Gulf carrier, Qatar Airways have announced their service from Doha to Auckland to begin in December.
The world’s longest commercial flight, Emirates’ non-stop service from Dubai to Auckland, may have only begun on 1 March, but it will not be the world’s longest by the end of the year. Qatar Airways has announced their first route to New Zealand, serving Doha to Auckland, to begin service on 3 December.
Qatar will use the Boeing 777 aircraft to serve the route, which was announced by His Excellency Mr. Akbar Al Baker on the opening day of the world’s largest international travel fair, ITB Berlin. In January, Mr. Al Baker had announced the carrier was looking closely at introducing a non-stop service to Auckland as part of extension plans at Bahrain International Airshow.
The service will cover a distance of 14,539 kilometres which will beat out Emirates’ route to Auckland by 339 km. The flight time is believed to be around 18 hours 34 minutes, whereas from Dubai the flight time averages at 17 hours 15 minutes. Emirates was due to add a non-stop service between Dubai and Panama City in February, which was postponed until 31 March 2016. This service would have been the world’s longest in terms of flight time – around 17 hours 35 minutes – but shorter by distance. The route now will not launch until late 2016 or 2017.
The Gulf carrier had intended on launching the Doha-Auckland direct service in June, but held off until the end of the year. His Excellency, Mr. Al Baker said: “We are not going to chicken out, we will definitely fly to Auckland but as a respect to Emirates as they have already launched a direct flight we will wait until the end of the year before we will operate.”
These new services highlight the growing demand of Auckland Airport, and Auckland as a destination. For January 2016, when the airport celebrated 50 years since their official opening, 893,314 international passengers were welcomed. This is the highest number of international passengers ever for a single month, with 43,000 more passengers than December 2015, the previous month with the highest number of international passengers. Compared to January 2015, numbers increased by 9.3 percent.
Auckland Airport were the overall winners of the Routes Asia edition of the Routes 2016 Marketing Awards, which was announced at the event in Manila, Philippines. It is the first time the airport has received the highly regarded accolade, who was also named the winner of the 4-20 million passengers category. The respected panel of judges who chose Auckland Airport was made up of senior members of the airline network planning community.
As overall winners, Auckland Airport are automatically shortlisted for their category at World Routes Awards in Chengdu, China on September 26, 2016.
After receiving the award, Peppy Adi-Purnomo, South East Asia and India Development Manager, Auckland Airport said: “All the work we do is about ‘win win’ and developing a scenario that the business case to airlines work to deliver sustainable air services. We are not interested about short-term success but always look at the long-term and developing a relationship that is right for the airline and also for us at the airport.”
Source….Laura Hamill
Content Executive, Routesonline in www. routesonline.com
March 9, 2016. Yuri Alekseyevitch Gagarin (1934 – 1968) would have been 82 today. He became the first human ever to travel into space on April 12, 1961, flying into orbit around Earth for 89.1 minutes in Russia’s Vostok 1 spacecraft. He circled the Earth once and flew as high as 200 miles (327 km). The entire mission, from launching to landing lasted 108 minutes.
Yuri was born on a small farm west of Moscow. His father was a bricklayer, a carpenter, and a farmer. His mother was a milkmaid. He was the third in a family of four children.
During the Second World War, the Gagarin family was broken apart as two of Yuri’s older sisters were taken into labor camps by the Nazis. The Gagarins were forced out of their house, and dug a hideout in the ground, where they stayed until the end of the war. After the war, the family moved to Gziatsk.
Gagarin was inspired to become a pilot while still a teenager. When a Russian Yak fighter plane was forced to land in a field near his home, the praise those pilots received left a mark on the young Gagarin. He wanted to be like them.
He studied to become a foundryman (a foundry is a factory that melts metals in special furnaces and pours the molten metal into molds for making products). He was singled out for his skillfulness to further his studies in the Saratov Technical School.
There, his dream to become a pilot took root, as during his 4th and last year at Saratov, he had the chance to join a local flying club. He learned to operate a plane, and flew by himself for the first time in 1955.
That same year, he also graduated from school, and was recruited by the Soviet Army.
At the advice of his flying mentor, he joined the Soviet Air Force, and went on studying at the Orenburg School of Aviation. There, he was taught to fly MIGs.
During his studies at Orenburg, he also met his future wife, Valentina Ivanova Goryacheva, who was a nursing student at the time.
In November, 1957, when Gagarin was 23, he graduated from Orenburg with honors and married Valentina. Later, the couple had two girls, Yelena, and Galina.
In 1959, after the Russians succeeded at photographing the far side of the moon for the first time with Luna 3, many – including Yuri – felt it was about time for the first man to be sent to space. He and a few other men were accepted for cosmonaut training in 1960 after a lot of selection.
The selected candidates underwent not only physical training, but also mental and psychological training.
Gagarin was known for his good humour, perseverance, and calm.
On April 12, 1961, the Russians amazed the world by launching Vostok 3KA-3 (Vostok 1) from the Baikonur Cosmodrome with Yuri Gagarin aboard. Vostok means East in Russian.
East for sunrise, and for the rise of the Space Age.
After coming back from space, Gagarin became an international celebrity. Khrushchev awarded him with the title of Hero of the Soviet Union.
His dream had come true.
Gagarin and his wife began touring the world, where Yuri was decorated for his legendary accomplishment. It’s rumored that Gagarin didn’t handle his fame very well, however.
In 1962, he was appointed as a deputy of the Soviet Union, and he was elected to the Central Committee of the Young Communist League. But Gagarin was not entirely happy. He felt he didn’t train to fly only once. He wanted to fly more, but – according to the stories about him – those around him tried to stop him for fear of losing the great Soviet hero.
In 1963, Gagarin later became deputy training director of the Cosmonaut Training Center outside Moscow. Later, the training center was named for him.
The following year he started extensive training to become a fighter pilot. He died on March 27, 1968, at the age of 34 due to the crash of a MiG – 15UTI that he and colleague Vladimir Seryogin were flying from the Chkalovski Air Base.
Their bodies were collected near the small town of Khirzach, and were cremated. Their ashes are a part of the Kremlin Building in the Red Square, in Moscow.
Bottom line: Born on March 9, 1934, Yuri Alekseyevitch Gagarin (1934 – 1968) was the first human being ever to travel into space. His historic flight took place on on April 12, 1961, when he orbited Earth for 89.1 minutes in Russia’s Vostok 1 spacecraft.
The Soyuz TMA-18M spacecraft is seen as it lands with Expedition 46 Commander Scott Kelly of NASA and Russian cosmonauts Mikhail Kornienko and Sergey Volkov of Roscosmos near the town of Zhezkazgan, Kazakhstan on Wednesday, March 2, 2016 (Kazakh time). Kelly and Kornienko completed an International Space Station record year-long mission to collect valuable data on the effect of long duration weightlessness on the human body that will be used to formulate a human mission to Mars. Volkov returned after spending six months on the station.
Musician Nayan Pancholi recounts how he lost his eye but survived the Pan Am flight hijack in 1986.
It was September 5, 1986. Our tickets got confirmed at the last moment on Pan-Am Flight-73, which was headed from Mumbai to New York, via Karachi and Frankfurt. We were a group of singers and music composers from Ahmedabad, who were going to perform in different cities of USA. At that time, I was just 21 years old. Our flight took off from Mumbai and landed in Karachi around 4.30 a.m. There were some passengers who got off at Karachi. Cleaners entered the aircraft and were just about the leave. This is when four armed men in airport security clothes entered the aircraft from the business class side. We were seated in economy class at the rear of the plane.
Suddenly, there were screams and three or four shots were fired in the air. One terrorist had a machine gun in his hand, another had grenades and a belt full of bullets, while the other two had many guns and grenades with them.
Everyone was told to have their hands locked above their heads. I just can’t forget that sight. Two terrorists were standing in the front and the other two were standing near the rear. In no time, Neerja Bhanot, the senior flight purser, informed the captain and the other crew members in the cockpit to flee the aircraft.
The captain, the co-pilot, and the cockpit crew had left the aircraft. Except Neerja, all other flight attendants were tied up with ropes. The terrorists used Neerja to communicate with the airline.
There were more than 350 passengers in the plane. To scare us, they even killed a person named Rakesh Kumar and threw him out of the plane.
Then, they started collecting our passports. Somehow, Neerja hid some passports of American citizens under the seats. They kept on shouting and screaming at us in Arabic and continued firing shots in the air. After some time, in the afternoon, they offered us sandwiches. But who on earth can eat food in such a difficult situation?
In the evening, they allowed everyone to go to the toilet, one after the other, by crawling on the floor with our hands locked over our heads.
I still remember, exactly after 17 hours of them hijacking the flight, the fuel ran out. Due to this, the generator of the plane went off, leading to darkness. After the lights went off, the terrorists panicked and started firing aggressively at us. They also started throwing grenades.
I saw many people die in front of my eyes.
Nayan Pancholi was just 21 years old when the Pan Am flight was hijacked in Karachi.
My own group director and another girl from the group were shot dead.
I was seated near the emergency exit. I tried to open the emergency exit door, but couldn’t do it. After giving it a second try, it opened, but at the same time a grenade hit me in the left eye. And in a moment, I was down on the ground.
After that, I was taken to the terminal by the army and was later shifted to the hospital. I was given treatment at a hospital in Karachi. After 48 hours, the Indian Airlines flight took all the Indians back home. I was then taken to Jaslok Hospital in Mumbai. But, my eye couldn’t be treated there. So, I was taken to Chicago in the US for treatment, but the doctors there too couldn’t save my left eye.
This incident has had a deep impact on me. It was a very bad day for humanity. That day, nobody saw religion, caste, or creed in each other. That day we saw each other as humans and wanted to help and save each other. It’s as simple as that in end.
This article has been shared via Humans of Amdavad.
About the author: Nayan Pancholi is a singer and composer based in Ahmedabad. He is one of the survivors of the Pan Am plane hijack in 1986.
On February 20, 1962, John Glenn became the first American to orbit the Earth. He made three turns around the planet before returning safely.
February 20, 1962. John Glenn became the first American to orbit the Earth on this date. He made three turns around the planet before returning safely in his space capsule, which was called Friendship 7. He followed two Russian cosmonauts in making this early orbit of our planet: Yuri Gagarin ( April 1961) and Gherman Titov (August 1961).
While Glenn was in orbit, NASA controllers received an indication that the heat shield on his craft had come loose. They instructed Glenn not to jettison the rockets underneath the heat shield during re-entry, because the rockets might be able to hold the shield in place. Fortunately, the indication turned out to be a false alarm.
Glenn returned to space at age 77 aboard the space shuttle Discovery in 1995, making him the oldest person to fly in space. His mission’s primary scientific aim at that time was to study the effects of spaceflight on seniors.
John Glenn climbs into the Friendship 7 spacecraft just before making his first trip into space on February 20, 1962. Photo via NASA
John Glenn and Friendship 7
Here’s what John Glenn saw on February 20, 1962. Just 5 minutes and 44 seconds after launch, Glenn offered his first words about the view from his porthole: “This is Friendship 7. Can see clear back; a big cloud pattern way back across towards the Cape. Beautiful sight.” Three hours later, at the beginning of his third orbit, Glenn photographed this panoramic view of Florida from the Georgia border (right, under clouds) to just north of Cape Canaveral. His American homeland was 162 miles (260 kilometers) below. “I have the Cape in sight down there,” he noted to mission controllers. “It looks real fine from up here. I can see the whole state of Florida just laid out like on a map. Beautiful.” Image via NASA
Bottom line: John Glenn became the first American to orbit Earth on February 20, 1962. His space capsule was called Friendship 7.
Image copyrightAnushree Fadnavis/Indus ImagesUma Tembulkar began performing in ad films at the age of 70
In the youthful world of Indian advertising, Uma Tembulkar, 78, is an unlikely celebrity model.
Ms Tembulkar is the lead in the advertisement, British Airways: Fuelled by Love, that has gone viral on YouTube and has Twitter tearing up over her.
The six-minute film, uploaded a week ago on YouTube, has had more than one million visitors and made Ms Tembulkar a welcoming face that’s beaming from a billboard at the Mumbai airport.
“Ms Tembulkar brings on a heavy dose of emotion to the ad; meaningful not melodramatic,” says advertising expert Vidhya Sankarnarayan.
“It resonates with Indians like the granny who feels dislocated on flights and connects at a human level,” she says.
An emotional flight
Ms Tembulkar said the British Airways ad was easy to enact because it had “two strangers who show kindness and compassion to each other, breaking cultural and generational barriers”.
A look at the ad would explain why she’s spot on.
The film shows a septuagenarian returning home from visiting her son in London.
She struggles while fastening the seat belt and bending over her arthritic knees to pull on her socks. A young stewardess, Helena Flynn, on her maiden flight to India, comes to her help.
The lady wells up, missing her son. The stewardess comforts her and is invited home by the elder woman.
A visit to the south Indian home is full of effusive Indian hospitality, good food and a slice of culture and a high dose of warmth.
Image copyrightAnushree Fadnavis/Indus Images….Uma Tembulkar lives with husband Mahesh Tembulkar in Mumbai
Image copyrightAnushree Fadnavis/Indus ImagesImage captionUma Tembulkar lives with husband Mahesh Tembulkar in Mumbai
“I wanted the ad to debunk the stereotype of the uptight British person and rude Indian traveller and Ms Tembulkar touched the right chords,” says director Neeraj Ghaywan, feted recently at the Cannes film festival.
This was the indie filmmaker’s first venture into ad filmmaking and he found Ms Tembulkar “just the perfect face of dignity and affection”.
And the social media response has been effusive praise for the ad.
Today, Ms Tembulkar gets grabbed for selfies on her morning market run to buy vegetables and milk.
Global granny
“It was an honour to act in the British Airways ad and I thoroughly enjoyed travelling to London,” she says.
Ms Tembulkar has been married for 60 years and led life as a homemaker with an enduring passion in Indian classical music that helped her “overcome fear of performing before an audience or the camera”.
She now watches over a brood of grandchildren, who are students in Harvard and Carnegie Mellon, travelling frequently to holiday with her scattered family across the globe. “My passport is the fattest,” she chuckles with quiet pride.
“My life as a model began at 70,” she speaks carefully in English, though she is also fluent in her native tongue Marathi, and Hindi, Bengali and a smattering of Gujarati too.
The actress in her was discovered by young friends at a family gathering and in the last eight years, she has acted in more than 60 advertisements for products as varied as insurance companies, furniture, cooking oils, biscuits and more.
“Look at her: she’s the quintessential Indian granny and her predicament while travelling alone is real. That has made the ad work,” says Mr Ghaywan.
He praises her as a “super granny” who travels alone frequently to visit her children and grandchildren, and understands the “emotional palette with her restrained, yet powerful performance”.
Image copyrightAnushree Fadnavis/Indus ….Ms Tembulkar is the archetypical Indian granny who lives in a busy suburb in Mumbai
Ageism
Experts say ageism has never been a problem in India and has always helped in selling products.
“Like the grandpas from India and Pakistan for the Google ad, age never goes out of style in Indian advertisements,” says Ms Sankarnarayan.
Unlike an earlier generation, the granny in the British Airways ad travels business class in comfort, though not schooled in global travel; she represents the old setting off alone to connect with scattered families across the world and makes a human connection that makes the ad tick.
Many say the ad helps to debunk the stereotype of the rude Indian in-flight traveller.
“Ms Tembulkar does a fantastic job of giving the contemporary Indian traveller a face,” explains Ms Sankarnarayan.
Given the soaring success of the advertisement, the sky is the limit for this granny.
In this September 27, 2013 photo, Sri Srinivasan takes oath as a judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.
U.S. Deputy Solicitor General Sri Srinivasan is pictured in this undated file photo courtesy of the United States Department of Justice. Srinivasan is among President Barack Obama’s likely options as he looks for a nominee to the U.S. Supreme Court to replace Justice Antonin Scalia, who died on Saturday.
He was Mr. Obama’s principal deputy solicitor general, most notably working on the successful fight against the Defence of Marriage Act.
Death of a serving judge of the U.S. Supreme Court has set off acrimonious exchanges between the Democrats and the Republicans on whether President Barack Obama should nominate a new judge in the last year of his presidency. Mr Obama has declared that he would nominate a replacement for Antonin Scalia who died on Saturday at 79, ending a controversial tenure through which he steered the court towards right with a series of pronouncements.
India-born Srikanth Srinivasan whose family came to the U.S from a village in Tirunelveli in Tamil Nadu figures as the most probable choice to succeed Scalia, according to media reports. Forty-nine year old Srinivasan is currently U.S. Circuit Judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, which served as a stepping-stone for at least three judges of the SC. Scalia too was in the Court of Appeals for DC before President Ronald Reagan nominated him to the Supreme Court.
Judge Srinivasan’s appointment was confirmed by the Senate unanimously in 2013, a rare event given the Republican majority in the chamber. His bipartisan acceptability is among the reasons cited by a lot of U.S. commentators who believe President Obama could pick him for the post. Judge Srinivasan graduated from Stanford University in 1989 and Stanford Law School and Stanford Graduate School of Business in 1995. From 2011 to until his judicial appointment, Judge Srinivasan served as the Principal Deputy Solicitor General of the United States. He has also taught at Harvard Law School.
U.S. Supreme Court has eight judges other than the chief justice and on several sensitive issues the judges have split 5-4, with conservative views maintaining a lead of one vote. For instance, the Supreme Court, through a 5-4 vote settled in 2010 a judgment that allowed unlimited spending by corporations in election campaigns. Campaign financing is a hot topic of debate in the current election season. With the passing of Scalia, the U.S. Supreme Court is evenly split and the stakes are high for both the conservative and progressive camps, in selecting the next judge. Judges of the Supreme Court are appointed for their lifetime. The President nominates the judges and the Senate must confirm them.
Two of the remaining eight judges are in their late seventies and one is 82. The fact that the next President may likely nominate several Supreme Court judges has been a recurring talking point on both sides of the American political divide. The sudden death of Scalia allows Mr. Obama the opportunity to nominate one more before his term ends. He has nominated two already.
“I plan to fulfill my Constitutional responsibilities to nominate a successor (to Scalia) in due time….There will be plenty of time for me to do so and for the Senate to fulfill its responsibility to give that person a fair hearing and a timely vote,” Mr. Obama said.
But the Republican presidential candidates and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell declared that they would not cooperate with the President. “The American people should have a voice in the selection of their next Supreme Court Justice. Therefore, this vacancy should not be filled until we have a new President,” Mr. McConnell said. Senator Ted Cruz said during the Republican presidential debate on Saturday that the President should not be allowed to nominate a liberal to the Supreme Court. “The Senate should not abdicate its constitutional responsibilities for partisan political reasons,” said Democratic presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton.
Pointing out that the Supreme Court has before it cases affecting women’s health, immigration, workers’ rights, and other important issues, Neera Tanden, president of the Centre for American Progress, said the President and the Senate must move forward without delay, “to ensure a full court makes these critical decisions.” “Seventeen Supreme Court justices have been confirmed during presidential election years,” she said.
A Government order in November 2015 has made it mandatory for all road developers in the country to use waste plastic, along with bituminous mixes, for road construction. This is to help overcome the growing problem of plastic waste disposal in India. The technology for this was developed by the ‘Plastic Man’ of India, Prof Rajagopalan Vasudevan, Professor of Chemistry at Thiagarajar College of Engineering, Madurai.
Plastic has slowly became an integral part of all human requirements. Plastic carry bags, packaging material, bottles, cups, and various other items have slowly replaced everything made of other material due to the advantages of plastic. Plastic is durable, easy to produce, lightweight, unbreakable, odourless, and chemical resistant.
But plastic does not decompose. This is its biggest drawback.
Plastic garbage is commonly seen around the country and has started causing several problems. Plastic waste clogs drains, causing floods. It chokes animals who eat plastic bags, etc. Plastics found in fields blocks germination and prevent rainwater absorption.
Recycling plastic can be done only 3-4 times and melting the plastic for recycling releases highly toxic fumes.
By the turn of the century, a lot of noise was being made to reduce the use of plastic and control the waste it was generating. It was during this time when, one evening, Prof. Vasudevan saw a doctor on a TV program saying that plastic ‘dissolved’ in water bodies caused pollution.
“This set me thinking. Since plastic is a product of petroleum this theory of the doctor had to be false. There was a lot of serious talk about banning plastics all over the country and finding solutions to the waste plastic strewn all over. I decided to take up the challenge to experiment with waste plastics and see if I could find a solution,” he says.
Laboratory results of mixing waste plastic with heated bitumen and coating the mixture over stone proved positive. He implemented the use of plastic waste on a road constructed inside the premises of his college in 2002.
“To date, this stretch of road is still going strong,” he says.
In 2006, the Thiagarajar College of Engineering received the patent for this technology.
The plastic waste items that can be used for road construction are various items like plastic carrybags, plastic cups, plastic packaging for potato chips, biscuits, chocolates, etc.
Photo source: Thiagarajar College of Engineering
The entire process is very simple. The plastic waste material is first shredded to a particular size using a shredding machine. The aggregate mix is heated at 165°c and transferred to the mixing chamber, and the bitumen is heated to 160°c to result in good binding. It is important to monitor the temperature during heating.
The shredded plastic waste is then added to the aggregate. It gets coated uniformly over the aggregate within 30 to 60 seconds, giving an oily look. The plastic waste coated aggregate is mixed with hot bitumen and the resulting mix is used for road construction. The road laying temperature is between 110°c to 120°c. The roller used has a capacity of 8 tons.
“The advantages of using waste plastics for road construction are many. The process is easy and does not need any new machinery. For every kilo of stone, 50 gms of bitumen is used and 1/10th of this is plastic waste; this reduces the amount of bitumen being used. Plastic increases the aggregate impact value and improves the quality of flexible pavements. Wear and tear of the roads has decreased to a large extent,” explains the proud Plastic Man of India.
This road construction process is extremely eco-friendly, with no toxic gases being released.
This process has generated an additional job for rag pickers.
Plastic waste helps increase the strength of the road, reducing road fatigue. These roads have better resistance towards rain water and cold weather. Since a large amount of plastic waste is required for a small stretch of road, the amount of waste plastic strewn around will definitely reduce.
Prof R Vasudevan’s inclination to keep experimenting led to another innovation. He decided to try creating a stone block with plastic coating and, in 2012, ‘plastone’ took birth. A plastone block is made from a mixture of waste plastic and stone. It has been found to withstand more pressure and it resists water percolation. In the professor’s department of chemistry they have made plastone blocks using granite and ceramic waste, along with plastic waste.
Each plastone block consumes 300 plastic carry bags and around six PET bottles.
“It is an easier way of disposing off plastic bottles which are found scattered all over,” points out Dr. Vasudevan.
Almost 10% of solid waste consists of used materials that can be broken into pieces and used in the making of plastone. Industrial slug can also be used in the process. One of the foremost advantages of plastone is its non-porous nature and the ability to prevent water penetration.
Plastone can be used for flooring, especially outdoors. It can be a cheap and strong substitute for cement blocks, which have a tendency to wither away in constant rain. It can be an effective liner for water bodies, especially canals, preventing water seepage. It can also be used to raise compound walls. A coat of emulsion can be provided to make it colourful and attractive.
The college, and the professor in particular, have been receiving many queries from various countries in Europe and the Americas for this technology.
“Swacch Bharat is our first priority,” says the professor. “We will first help India dispose of its waste material by spreading the message about the use of plastic waste in road construction and usage of plastone. Once we have made headway in almost every part of our country, we will share this technology with other countries.”
About the author: Aparna Menon is a freelance writer, writing for various newspapers for the past 10 years. Her main fields of interest are wildlife, heritage and history. A keen traveler, she loves to read and write and does a lot of art work too.
Source……..Aparna Menon in www. the betterindia.com
Take off with Natarajan 