Landed in Lebanon and the weather was a cool 28 Degrees, I could hear people complain that its a little warm. If only they knew how hot 47 degrees felt they wouldn’t be complaling about how wonderful 29 Degrees feels. I had the car windows down as we drove to the hotel. Its right after elections, the plane had about 15 people in it with 3 people in first class, the roads were desolate, I have never seen Lebanon like this, there wasn’t traffic so we got the hotel in 20 minutes with very few stops. Got to the hotel, checked in, washed up and headed to the first meeting, I was done a few hours later and met up with a few friends. I wanted to eat at Al Farooq Shawarma but turns out they pretty much sold out of all the meat they had which was ridiculous. So we went else where for dinner and I was pretty much on the verge of passing out from hunger and a long day. As soon as I was back in the hotel I passed out and woke up at 6 am to a kings breakfast. Meeting at 9 am and was done late the afternoon, had to go back to the hotel and check out and take off to the airport so I wouldn’t be late. I was hungry as hell and all I could think off is food, luckily I managed to eat on the flight.
For a short 26 horus I didn’t have a chance to do all that I wanted. I wanted to go check out a few places and I had my camera with me, I wanted to walk around and snap pictures but I didn’t have a chance yet to do that but I hope to soon. Beirut is such a picturesque city with lots of places to snap pictures, even the pictures that I was snapping people didn’t seem to bother about where I was pointing the camera, so I snapped away.
Flew to the airport, made a late check out form the hotel on Tuesday due to a meeting running a little over. Packed my bags, there wasn’t too much, I just had to make sure I got my magazines, and some other stuff all packed up and ready to go. The streets were still relatively empty, they even told me that the hotel had very low occupancy and the summer crowd would be coming right around the 15th of June. The weather was just perfect a breezy 29 degrees with clear skies, and a little humidity.
I got my bags on a trolley and headed straight to the check-in counter right after security, then passed immigrations and went to the virgin stand to check it out. Virgin just isn’t what it used to be, waited at the gate to board. This time around I was the only person up front with about 15 – 20 people in economy. The place was empty, so I asked the staff that I wanted the food right away since I didn’t have a chance to eat due to the long meeting. After a good meal I switched on my laptop watched about 20 minutes of anime and passed out for 2 hours, woke up to us landing and dusty view outside.
It looks like Kuwait isn’t the only country that got a bunch of these Dodge Chargers as police vehicles. From what I heard the Ministry of Interior recieved these vehicles as a gift from the US Government, including some Humvee and some Armaments for the Lebanese Army. These Dodge Chargers look pretty good as police cars, I prefer the Kuwait color scheme to these black ones. But these guys seem to be seated more comfortable as there are no cages in the back to stop them from sitting comfortably. I wonder if they are modified in any way other then looks, maybe some engine modifications.
Recently I have been traveling on and off to different parts of the GCC/Arab Countries. Every time I have a flight come up I always check Wataniya for their available flights to see if I could fly out of Sheikh Sa’ad airport instead of the regular airport. I do wish they start their frequent flyer program already, I would have some air miles racked up. What I found out is that unlike before their schedules have changed for some of the destinations and some work out to my benefit, they used to fly only to four destioinations a couple of months ago but now 6 destinations daily and 2 more on set schedule with only a few days difference. I hope they continue their growth into different areas, and I heard they will be landing in London soon but when exactly I’m not sure. For now I put an extensive list of all their flight times for all their destinations, click the “more” to see the whole long list.
- Amman
- Bahrain
- Dubai
- Beirut
- Cairo
- Bahrain
- Damascus (Except Tuesday & Friday)
- Sharm El Sheikh (Only Tuesday & Friday)
Kuwait/Dubai (Daily)
1st Flight – Departure 0900 Arrival 1140
2nd Flight – Departure 2040 Arrival 2320
Dubai/Kuwait (Daily)
1st Flight – Departure 0005 Arrival 0055
2nd Flight – Departure 1225 Arrival 1315
Work has been piling up and I have been delaying a meeting in Lebanon for a few weeks but now I have to go to finsih one long meeting. I was supposed to go last week but due to unforseen circumstances I wasn’t able to. I’m going today on the Wataniya flight, which luckily for me they changed the schedule and now they have two flights a day to and from Lebanon. If I could I would go in early morning and come back at night, I have this tendency with business trips to try to keep them as short as humanely possible. A lot of people have been telling me to postpone the meeting to a later date because of the elections but I have few in the systems that nothing drastic as the airport being shutdown will happen, well at least I’m crossing my fingers, I have too much damn work to be stuck in one location. One thing is that I’m going to do is eat from Al Farouq for their amazing shawarama, I just love good shawarmas and theirs is damn good.
228 people from Brazil to France on an Air France flight has vanished over the Atlantic after flying into turbulence. I haven’t seen a tragedy such as this in a long time, a flight of this type crashing in the middle of the Atlantic. Brazil sent out their Air Force to search the ocean, while France sent out rescue planes on their route as well as requesting help from US to use their Satellites to pinpoint the probable location of the crash. My prayers goes out to the family of the passengers and crew.
Link: BBC
I don’t think I would have visited Jordan if it wasn’t for work and its one very interesting country. The airport is very small and is in need of major renovation, but they have state of the art security, I noticed all the cameras were new and the systems were relatively new. The people at the airport were nice, and I waited a little while for my luggage to come out of the belt.
The airport is about a 25 to 30 minute ride from the city, all the areas are just empty plot of lands and its a two to three lane highway to the city. As soon as you go in, its hilly just like Lebanon but a little different. I stayed at the Sheraton hotel which is decent, not the best but it did the job and they had a decent internet connection. Went to a few meetings over two days, the weather was amazing and I had my camera with me but for the first time when I’m about to snap some pictures some police men and soldiers asked me what I was doing. Basically I’m not supposed to take pictures of anything that has any security related to it.
Went to a few nice places around Amman, mostly Arab restaurants with good food. The service is decent but not the same as Lebanon sometimes you feel like the waiter doesn’t feel like working today or you caught him on a bad day. I also had dinner at a colleagues place and I have to say that people are very hospitable. Its seems that the people from the Gulf seem to have a bad reputation in Jordan, I got that feeling and when I asked they mentioned what happens in some places in Amman. Abdoon is one of the nicer areas in Amman, and there are a lot of round abouts which people just drive right through. I passed by this area which looked like a fortress and turned out to be the American Embassy, its practically huge, I didn’t think it would be that big, there must be at least 10 buildings in that compound and thats all I can see from one side.
Third morning was my flight back to Kuwait on Royal Jordanian, easy check and the staff is friendly. I have to say I was impressed by their lounge. It was very spacious and comfortable with food availabe, lots of comfortable seating, also movie chairs for people to watch what they want. It was an interesting trip, next time around I want to go to Aqabah and plan for it, its about four hours away by car so I didn’t have a chance to go this time around.
Going to Emirates Terminal 3 I thought I was used to it but I was completely wrong its a lot bigger then I knew. I have been just taking flights close to the center of the terminal turns out there is another part which is a 20 minute walk away, a couple of kilos at least, terminal 3 is seriously huge. I didn’t think about it much, since I could see the ending of the section only to discover a set of stair going down to an even longer walkway of gates. Turns out that if your gate is in the 100 range that you have a very long walk ahead of you, I knew it was a big terminal but not that big. Luckily I found an Emirates lounge right next to my gate but it was one hell of a walk, luckily for me I took one of those carts to to my bag in it and push it all the way, that helped relief the pain on my shoulder and made it for an easy walk. I was hungry and tired, got a bite to eat and I wanted to get on the plane to catch up on some sleep and get some work done.
A quick business trip came up which will have me bouncing around for the next couple of days. Took off to Dubai on sunday on Wataniya Airlines, got in around 9 pm went straight to the hotel then to the movies to go watch Angels and Demons. Meeting next day in the morning at 8am, done around 11 am went back to the hotel and packed my things. Went to the airport to catch the Emirates flight to Amman, and coming back on Wednesday to Kuwait on the Royal Jordanian. I’m taking three different airlines for the sake of the timing and I have to say that bouncing around like this isn’t that comfortable and I might to go to a fourth stop but I’m not sure about that yet.
The brand spanking new Airbus 340-600, the largest passenger airplane ever built, sat in its hangar in Toulouse, France, without a single hour of airtime. Enter an Arab flight crew of Abu Dhabi Aircraft Technologies (ADAT) to conduct pre-delivery tests on the ground, such as engine run-ups, prior to delivery to Etihad Airways in Abu Dhabi. The ADAT crew taxied the A340-600 to the run-up area. Theyn then took all four engines to takeoff power with a virtually empty aircraft. Not having read the run-up manuals, they had no clue just how light an empty A340-600 is.
The takeoff warning horn was blaring away in the cockpit because they had all 4 engines at full power. The aircraft computers thought they were trying to take off, but the aircraft had not been configured properly (flaps/slats, etc.) Then one of the ADAT crew decided to pull the circuit breaker on the Ground Proximity Sensor to silence the alarm. This fooled the aircraft into thinking it was in the air.
The computers automatically released all the brakes and set the aircraft rocketing forward. The ADAT crew had no idea that this is a safety feature so that pilots can’t land with the brakes on. Not one member of the seven-man Arab crew was quick enough to throttle back the engines from their max power setting, so the $200 million brand-new aircraft crashed into a blast barrier, totaling the airplane.The extent of injuries to the crew is unknown for there has been a news blackout in the major media in France and elsewhere.
Coverage of the story was deemed insulting to Muslim Arabs. Finally, the photos are starting to leak out.
Pictures speak louder then words, but this is pretty shocking, the pilots from Abu Dhabi managed to crash a brand new airplane because they didn’t bother reading the manual. Details aren’t out regarding this crash, and I got the pictures by email. Based on the pictures I wonder how they survived the crash.
Update: Turns out this is a two year old crash, check comments for details
