Qatar Airways' rapid growth plan

Qatar Airways is investing heavily on new aircraft's and expanding its destination rapidly.The airline has already doubled its fleet in the last five years. In 2010 skytrax world awards the Doha based airliner baged the world's best business class award and also moved up one spot to number 3 among 200 international airlines.
The Airlines has placed orders for more than 200 brand new aircraft's worth $40 billion. It currently operates a very modern and sophisticated fleet of 82 aircrafts and it is expected to have 120 aircrafts in its fleet by 2013 and remaining aircrafts will be delivered in years to follow. Adding to this Doha is gearing up for a brand new International airport to accommodate all these new generation aircrafts and to handle increasing passenger traffic. With this rapid expansion plans upfront, Qatar may be looking for qualified pilots to operate their modern fleet in huge numbers.

spicejet to be rebranded

One of India's low cost airlines is all set to be re branded. It will no more be called spicejet, it will be called as Sun Airlines. This is after the media Barron of south India and the owner of sun network Mr Kalanidhi Maran had acquired almost 40% of the airlines stake to become the single large stake owner of the airlines. Thus propelling a change in name. Chairman and owner of Kingfisher Airlines Dr Vijay Malya has expressed his wishes and has given Mr Maran a welcome to airline industry in one of his twitter messages.

Airbus bags another order from Emirates

Airbus has now bagged a fresh order from Emirates for 32 more A380 super jumbo jets. Emirates had its first A380 in 2008 and since then has taken deliveries of 9 more super jumbos, which takes the tally to 10 A380's with Emirates. It has further 58 deliveries of the super jumbo pending. Now Emirates has placed a fresh order of another 32 more of the super jumbos. All these aircrafts including the previous 58 are expected to be delivered within 2017. The list price of the 32 aircrafts is estimated to be around $11 billion.

Brazil's TAM orders 25 new aircrafts

Looks like TAM, Brazil's largest air carrier has placed order for 25 brand new Airbus aircraft's at the European air show. The orders include 20 A320 single aisle aircrafts and 5 A350 wide body aircrafts, this news is yet to be officially confirmed by the TAM officials and the Airbus officials denied to comment on this issue. If Airbus bags this order then the list price of these 25 aircrafts is almost $3 billion.Sources confirmed that Airbus has bagged an $11 billion deal from Emirates for A380 super jumbo jets.

Kingfisher on board oneworld

India's only five star Airliner Kingfisher is now officially a part of oneworld alliance. After been invited by the one world group and also asked to take the clearance from the Director General of Civil Aviation in India, the airliner has managed to join hands with oneworld. The DGCA has given the airliner a go ahead with this process. The chairman of Kingfisher airlines Mr. Vijay Mallya had expressed that he was very happy to be invited to join hands with oneworld and to be apart of this means a lot to kingfisher fliers, now the airliner will have 800 new destination across 150 countries.
With the new international terminal to be inaugurated in a short span of time from now at New Delhi, the one world group operating to the Indian capital can now share the Kingfisher's premium lounge to their premier flier's as well. The code sharing between the member airlines of oneworld is also under way.

ICAO member states

The updated list of ICAO member states can be found in the following link

List of ICAO member state

Pilots - Licensed to kill

A good old instructor of mine used to say "Got your Commercial? here you go you are now licensed to kill" with some laughter. Bumped into a couple of youngsters last week, more than a year since they had their Com, still job hunting. Learn't that these guys where due for a renewal and preparing to do it. As i got involved in a conversation with the two guys the first topic of conversation started revolving around the job hunt and stuff which is quite understandable, as seconds passed by i started observing how ignorant or should i say illiterate where the two guys. The way they spoke, trying to give me an impression that they where the Gods of aviation and there was nothing they did not know. They never gave it a thought i believe before they spoke about anything. But what ever they spoke regarding aviation was utter rubbish. I believe these guys listen to people talking about something and grasp the wrong meaning of it or read something and interpret it wrong, if am not wrong then i suspect these guys are potential killers of their passengers regardless of what they fly. 
This was the best which i can quote here, the conversation some how tilted towards the FAA and their way of flying in the USA. One of the dude said that the reason for that was USA is not a member of ICAO. Initially i was surprised and had to check it on the internet that the dude was wrong. Then had to check in the internet and understood that the guys where just showing off.

Did they do this intentionally to get the upper hand on the conversation or were they so ignorant?

Emirates to hire

Dubai based Emirates Airlines is all set to hire at least 700 pilots in the next 18 months. Thats suppose to be a very good news for all pilots across the globe who are job hunting. Emirates hopes that the increasing demand for air travel post recession has encouraged them to launch few more new destination's across the world. Emirates is all set to add 6 more new aircraft's to its existing fleet of 147 this year and more in the following years. After taking delivery of its 10th A380 its president said that Emirates has rapid expansion plans and the airline industry is scaling back to the heights in which it was 3 years ago. The rapid expansion plan of Emirates mean more to its right seat pilots where they can jump on to the left quickly.

Transcripts from the Polish plane crash that killed the Polish President

Partial transcripts of the CVR, the communications between the pilots and ATC was released on Tuesday.

10:11:01 SECOND PILOT: No, one can see the ground...Something is visible...Maybe there’ll be no tragedy.
10:17:40: PILOT: It’s not good, the fog has descended. One doesn’t know if we will land there.
FLIGHT ATTENDANT: Really?
UNIDENTIFIED: And if we don’t, then what?
PILOT: We will re-ascend.
10:23:59 AIR CONTROL: What other airport options do you have?
PILOT: Vitebsk, Minsk (in Belarus)
10:25:01 PILOT: Thank you, if it’s fine, we will try landing, but if weather conditions are bad we will re-ascend to make a second circle.
10:25:12 AIR CONTROL: If you try to land, will you have enough fuel to (get to) the backup (airport)?
PILOT: We will have enough.
10:26:05 SECOND PILOT: Well, they (*) succeeded. They also say there is fog...
PILOT: Director (**), there is fog... Right now, in these (weather) conditions, we will not be able to land. We will try to land, will make one attempt, but probably nothing will come out of it. If it occurs (unintelligible) what do we do? We don’t have enough fuel to... (unintelligible).
KAZANA: Well then we have a problem.
PILOT: We can stay up for 30 minutes and then go to the backup (airport).
10:29:40 1st POLISH PLANE: The Il (***) was trying to land twice and I think they flew somewhere else.
SECOND PILOT: Ok, I get it, thanks. Did you hear?
PILOT: Nice.
10:30:32 MARIUSZ KAZANA: So far there is no decision from the president on what to do next.
10:32:55 PILOT: We are attempting to land. If we fail to land, we are re-ascending on autopilot.
10:35:22 AIR CONTROL: From 100 metres be ready to re-ascend for a second loop.
PILOT: Roger.
10:38:00 UNIDENTIFIED: (S)he will be annoyed if... (Unintelligible)
10:40:06 WARNING SYSTEM: TERRAIN AHEAD, TERRAIN AHEAD
10:40:32 WARNING SYSTEM: TERRAIN AHEAD, TERRAIN AHEAD
10:40:39 WARNING SYSTEM: TERRAIN AHEAD, TERRAIN AHEAD (100 metres)
10:40:42 WARNING SYSTEM: PULL UP, PULL UP

10:40:44 WARNING SYSTEM: PULL UP, PULL UP
10:40:46 WARNING SYSTEM: TERRAIN AHEAD, TERRAIN AHEAD (100 metres)
10:40:49 SECOND PILOT: As normal (90 metres)
WARNING SYSTEM: PULL UP, PULL UP (80 metres)
10:40:50 SECOND PILOT: We are re-ascending
10:41:51 WARNING SYSTEM: PULL UP, PULL UP
(60 metres)
(50 metres)
10:40:52 (air control urges pilots to halt descent)
(40 metres)
10:40:53 WARNING SYSTEM: PULL UP, PULL UP
(30 metres)
10:40:54 (air control urges pilots to halt descent)
(20 metres)
10:40:56 WARNING SYSTEM: PULL UP, PULL UP
10:40:58 WARNING SYSTEM: PULL UP, PULL UP
10:40:59 (sound of hitting a tree)
10:41:00 SECOND PILOT: Fuck!
WARNING SYSTEM: PULL UP, PULL UP
10:41:02 AIR CONTROL: Re-ascend for second circle
UNIDENTIFIED: (shout) Fuuuuuuck.
10:41:05 (transcript ends)
NOTES:
* Refers to a plane carrying Polish journalists which had landed safely in Smolensk earlier that morning ahead of Kaczynski’s plane.
** Refers to Mariusz Kazana, head of Poland’s diplomatic protocol.
*** Refers to a Russian plane which tried to land in Smolensk after the first Polish plane but failed due to thick fog. It flew to a different airport.

Source : The Montreal Gazette