Phuket Air

[SEAtramp]

Good riddance to it.

[HarryHacker]

Good riddance to it.

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[The_Moog]

The airline is considering legal action against the passengers involved. <BBC>

Drunken mutineers - disgraceful British yobboes.

[ThaiPauly]

My freind who owns a travel agency says he has been offered really cheap flights on P.A. but says he wont accept them as all their planes are as old as the hills and they have the the worst record for delayed flights of all the airlines he uses, flights can be as cheap as 18,000 baht return to London, but a life is worth more than 18,000 baht right?

[Kerryd]

My freind who owns a travel agency says he has been offered really cheap flights on P.A. but says he wont accept them as all their planes are as old as the hills and they have the the worst record for delayed flights of all the airlines he uses, flights can be as cheap as 18,000 baht return to London, but a life is worth more than 18,000 baht right?

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Obviously your friend has never experienced the wonders of travelling (or arranging travel) on Ariana Afghanistan Airlines ! I think their motto is: Sometimes, Somewhere, Some People ?

Their office publishes a schedule on the internet. They send a different schedule to our office, and then their Operations staff has another, completely different schedule !

I've actually spoken to their Lufthansa consultant, and listened to him explain that they were expecting a flight to arrive that day, but he didn't know if they would send it to Delhi, Tehran, Dubai or Jeddah after it refueled ! He said he was down to flipping a coin to make the decision. Meanwhile, I've got 10 people with pre-paid tickets to Dubai, sitting in the back of an armoured vehicle. (They sent the plane to Jeddah to pick up pilgrims from the Haj, and my group ended up going back to the camp).

A few days later, we had 15 people going to Delhi. They were checked in, got on the plane and sat there for an hour. Then they were told to go back into the departure lounge. They took the food off the plane and feed it to the passengers in the "lounge". An hour afte that, they were told to go home and come back the next day. Why ? The cabin crew and pilots never showed up for the flight ! None of them !

I'm still trying to figure out why Thai Air charges 1,600 US for a Dubai-Bangkok return flight, and Emirates charges only 600 US for the same flight ? For an extra 1,000 US, you'd think you would get some "extras" on the flight

[cdnvic]

From BBC:

But Gordon MacFarland, Phuket Air's UK sales and marketing manager, labelled some of the things said by the passengers as "crazy".

He said one passenger jumped up and shouted "fire", causing other passengers to panic.

"Are passengers really qualified to know what's going on? There was no danger to passengers," he said.

Just someone paid to say what he's told. Worries about his own paycheck more than people's lives in my opinion.

cv

[RDN]

From BBC:

But Gordon MacFarland, Phuket Air's UK sales and marketing manager, labelled some of the things said by the passengers as "crazy".

He said one passenger jumped up and shouted "fire", causing other passengers to panic.

"Are passengers really qualified to know what's going on? There was no danger to passengers," he said.

Just someone paid to say what he's told. Worries about his own paycheck more than people's lives in my opinion.

cv

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Agreed - what a prat!

I suppose it's too much to expect that he ever read about the crash on 8th January 1989 when a British Midland Airways 737-400 crashed near East Midlands Airport in England killing 47 passengers.

The captain had shut down the wrong engine after a fire warning in the cockpit. Some of the survivors said that they had questioned the announcement made by the captain when he said there was a problem and which engine he had shut down - the passengers could see which engine was on fire, the captain couldn't.

There was talk afterwards of this event triggering the installation of video cameras on the tail so that the pilots could see the engines - don't know if it ever happened.

[cdnvic]

There was talk afterwards of this event triggering the installation of video cameras on the tail so that the pilots could see the engines - don't know if it ever happened.

The airbus A380 will be the first with it I believe....16 yrs later.

cv

[dr_Pat_Pong]

The airline is considering legal action against the passengers involved. <BBC>

Drunken mutineers - disgraceful British yobboes.

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Drunken airline management sounds more apt.

[Crossy]

There is an extensive thread on this subject on the Professional Pilots RUmour NEtwork:-

http://www.pprune.org/forums/showthread.php?threadid=169642

Some interesting comments from the people who sit at the front:)

[RDN]

Lightning striking twice...

Phuket Air – another flight abandoned

LONDON (Scotsman): An airline which twice grounded a holiday jet bound for Britain with fuel gushing from a wing yesterday abandoned another flight in a safety scare.

Phuket Air was forced to return a Boeing 747 service bound for Bangkok to London Gatwick three hours into a journey yesterday morning.

The company said the aircraft was struck with a hydraulic problem and forced to head back to the capital.

A Phuket Air spokeswoman confirmed the plane was the same which Tuesday night finally brought home a group of Britons left in the United Arab Emirates after two ditched flights on Sunday.

“There were 82 people on yesterday’s flight, which flew into Gatwick from Sharjah Tuesday night and had suffered a hydraulics problem,” she said.

“Though it was thought the fault had been corrected, the plane suffered the same problem again yesterday morning.”

Th e flight took off from Gatwick at 8.30am, landing back at the airport at 11.37am.

A British Airports Authority spokeswoman said 83 passengers were onboard and confirmed they were transferred to London Heathrow to take alternative flights on Qatar Air and THAI Airways.

On Sunday, around 200 Britons were travelling on another Phuket Air service when many saw fuel flooding out of the wing of their aircraft.

Pilots abandoned two take-off attempts as screaming passengers threatened to storm the cockpit.

Several refused to board another of the company’s planes and others were left stranded in the UAE following further problems and delays.

Brought to you by:

The Phuket Gazette

17:59 local time (GMT +7)

7th April 2005

[The_Moog]

Time for an 'Is it safe to fly Poo Air?' Poll

Will they have another problem in the next 300 years?