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October 7, 2013 5:49 AM
Bill Whitaker reports on how a 9-year-old child outsmarted airport security and slipped aboard a Delta Airlines flight, flying from Minneapolis to Las Vegas.
MEMPHIS, Tenn. (AP) — Delta Airlines says a flight was diverted to Memphis International Airport because of a crack in a window.
In a statement, Delta says flight 557 was going from Detroit to Mexico City on Wednesday when crew members reported a small crack in one of the aircraft’s cockpit windows.
The Airbus A319 carrying 104 passengers and six crew members landed safely. No injuries were reported.
Delta says passengers were being placed on another flight.
©2013 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Business News of Monday, 7 October 2013
Source: graphic.com.gh
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Delta Airlines has agreed to operate a direct flight from Accra to Atlanta in the United States of America next year, following a request made by President John Mahama.
The company is also introducing one of its new airplanes on the Accra route, with effect from October 26.
The 210-seater ‘Business Class C’ airliner is equipped with facilities that will make travelling more convenient and entertaining for both business and economy class passengers on the route.
At a meeting with the top management of Delta Airlines Incorporated at the company’s headquarters in Atlanta, USA last Thursday, President Mahama indicated that passenger numbers in Ghana were growing. In that vein, he said Delta’s decision to operate direct flights came as good news to travellers, as currently, passengers travelling to Atlanta had to transit in New York or other longer routes before reaching their destination.
“We intend making Ghana the aviation hub in the West African sub-region, therefore, working together with you, we can achieve that dream,” President Mahama told the airline’s executives.
New airport
President Mahama stated that the government was conducting feasibility studies into the building of a new international airport about 30 kilometres out of the national capital, Accra, to ease pressure at the Kotoka International Airport (KIA).
“Government has secured the land already and we are looking for expression of interest,” he stated, adding that “We are looking for partnership on a win-win situation.”
KIA refurbishment
In the meantime, he said the KIA was undergoing refurbishment including the introduction of air bridges and improving baggage and general services on the ground.
President Mahama informed the Delta officials that aviation fuel was becoming more competitive, stressing that extra facilities had been provided at the airport to avoid past glitches such as aviation fuel shortages.
He expressed appreciation to the senior officials of the airline for linking USA and Africa, stressing the need for Delta to reconsider more than one route to America, to enhance travelling convenience.
Delta MD
Responding, Mr Steve Long, a Managing Director of the company, said, “Ghana is a logical place to look at, considering the stable atmosphere for business.”
He stated that it would be helpful if aviation officials from the Ghana Civil Aviation Authority under-studied the operations of Delta in Atlanta, to tap their rich experience and expertise.
Mr Long also said the new Delta Airplane that would be operating in Ghana later this month was one of its newly refurbished airlines, saying that all the seats would have video strings at the back.
He expressed appreciation to the GCAA for working closely with the airline over the years, adding that the GCAA had ensured that it maintained standards in instances where there had been shortfalls and gave an assurance that Delta would further improve on its services.
President Mahama later toured the offices of the company, where he and his entourage received in-depth briefings on the airline’s operations.
He was accompanied by Mr Daniel Ohene-Agyekum, Ghana’s envoy to America; Kwame Tenkorang, Director of State Protocol; Mahama Ayariga, Minister of Information and Media Relations, and Mr Samuel Sarpong, Central Regional Minister.
Travel Blog • Eva Holland • 05.07.13 | 8:00 AM ET
In the wake of last week’s sequester-driven air travel delays, Jalopnik looks back at a short-lived 1981 strike by the Professional Air Traffic Controllers Organization, better known as PATCO. It’s a fascinating case study. Here’s writer Michael Ballaban:
As soon as the strike began, airlines reported losing $30 million a day. PATCO predicted insanity, with planes crashing into each other, hundreds, perhaps thousands (millions? billions?) of flights cancelled, and women and children crying and men gnashing their teeth.
The FAA began immediately to implement its contingency plan, which included asking airlines to voluntarily delay or cancel some flights, asking pilots to be a bit more vigilant, and calling in perhaps the best air traffic controllers in the world, the United States Air Force.
And after all that… nothing. Planes kept flying. Nobody crashed. Nobody died. Everybody still got to where they needed to go.
It spelled the end for PATCO.
Travel Blog • Eva Holland • 04.25.13 | 8:58 AM ET
In the latest AFAR, longtime World Hum contributor David Farley goes to the world’s caffeine heartland: Ethiopia. Here’s Farley:
Coffee is to Ethiopia what hops are to Bohemia or grapes to Bordeaux. That is, coffee is almost everything, from the cornerstone of the community’s economic fortunes to the lifeblood of its social relations. Java drinking is so deeply rooted here that Azeb was dumbstruck that I could have lived 40 years on the planet never having seen what coffee looks like before it’s plucked, peeled, dried, roasted, and ground.
Which is exactly why I was in Ethiopia. I wanted to travel around this East African country’s primary coffee-growing regions and immerse myself in its coffee culture. I can sit around at coffeehouses in New York and San Francisco drinking all the Ethiopian coffee my brain can take before spinning out of control. But I was curious about the time and toil it takes to produce these beans, everything that goes into slaking the States’ obsessive thirst for small-batch artisan roasts.
Headed to Coffeeland yourself? Check out our primer on how to take part in an Ethiopian coffee ceremony.
Travel Blog • Eva Holland • 04.24.13 | 6:23 AM ET
In the Washington Post, veteran travel writer Tom Haines ponders the rise of the free hotel breakfast—specifically, the dominance of the DIY waffle maker—and what it means for travelers. “This is comfort without community,” he writes, “as the mood in these hotel breakfast rooms feels neither home nor away. There’s an isolation-among-the-crowd sense in the breakfast area that resembles that of an airline terminal: Everyone alone together while waiting to move on.” He goes on:
It is worth considering the costs of this world of waffles all cooked from the same mold. If the lure is to sleep, eat and move on, we Americans taste less and less of the diverse character of the country we call home. And as individuals, we miss the discovery that can come with the unexpected.
(Via @myessis)
Travel Blog • Eva Holland • 05.28.13 | 7:48 AM ET
To celebrate Bob Dylan’s 72nd birthday, Slate has mapped every place the man ever mentioned in his music. Why, you ask?
Once the amateur Dylanologist tries to think of some, they flood the brain. “I’ll look for you in old Honolulu/ San Francisco, Ashtabula.” “Born in Red Hook, Brooklyn/ In the year of who knows when.” “Oxford town, Oxford town/ Everybody’s got their head bowed down.” From the personal—“that little Minnesota town”—to the political—“Ever since the British burned the White House down/ There’s a bleeding wound in the heart of town”—Dylan uses place-names to maintain rhythm or rhyme, to reference other works of art, or to evoke certain thoughts and emotions. (We never do learn what it’s like “to be stuck inside of Mobile with the Memphis blues again,” though we feel like we do.) It’s only natural, after all, that a man who left tiny Hibbing, Minn. for New York City at age 19, quickly became world-famous, and has spent the last 25 years on a “never-ending” worldwide tour, might have a curious perspective on the concept of place.
Enjoy.
Travel Blog • Eva Holland • 05.09.13 | 7:09 AM ET
This past March, Grantland sent writer Brian Phillips to follow the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race, Alaska’s famous 1000-mile feat of endurance, by bush plane. The resulting story, Out in the Great Alone, comes with all sorts of online design bells and whistles—embedded audio and video, and a map that updates itself as you scroll through the narrative. But what I liked best about it was its emphasis on place, not so much on the ins and outs of the race itself but on the landscapes and communities it passes through. Here’s Phillips:
I took a walk through the village. Couple of roads twisting down a couple of hills, some pretty rough-looking houses. Moose antlers over the doorways. Things happen to the color blue during an Alaska twilight that I’ve never seen anywhere else. Imagine that the regular, daytime blue sky spends all its time floating on the night sky, the way you’d float on the surface of a pool. Now it’s submerging itself. You could see it vanishing upward. The cars looked derelict, half-buried in snow. Snowdrifts rammed up doorknob-high against the houses. Every now and again a snow machine would go screaming by; the drivers always waved. Snow 3 and 4 feet high on the roofs.
But it was such a warm place. I mean, fine, we’re all cynics here, go ahead and click over to your next open tab or whatever, but you could feel it: this fragile human warmth surrounded by almost unmanageable sadness. Outside the checkpoint building the Takotnans had set up a row of burled tree stumps beside the flagpoles, and now two guys with chain saws were carving long crosscuts in the stumps. Each night during the Iditarod they’d pour diesel into one stump’s cuts and then light it, making a torch as wide as two people embracing that’d burn for hours and hours. Mushers coming down the river toward the checkpoint would see the torches from—I don’t know about miles, but a long way away. Eight or nine villagers, along with a few volunteers, gathered around the fire. Jay was there, talking about airplanes with Bernard—you could tell from the way he’d sort of bank his hand at the wrist and slide it through the air. Christophe went around taking pictures. A little gang of kids played king of the hill on a snowdrift. The night just dwarfed all this.
It’s a long one, but worth your time. The New Yorker also sent a writer to follow the Iditarod this year; subscribers can read Ben McGrath’s story here.
Travel Blog • Eva Holland • 05.08.13 | 8:30 AM ET
Veteran travel writer Matt Gross has just released his first book: The Turk Who Loved Apples, a collection of never-before-published stories about his life as a traveler. Gross is a former Frugal Traveler columnist for the New York Times—he’s also an occasional contributor to World Hum. The Portland Book Review calls his book “part memoir, part travel odyssey and part growing-up story,” and National Geographic’s Intelligent Travel blog has named it one of the best travel books to land in stores this spring.
You can read an excerpt over at the New York Times.
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