A KLM flight headed for Hyderabad in India's south skipped its destination and flew across India because the pilot was unaware the city had a brand-new airport, a report said yesterday.
The confusion occurred barely hours after the Rajiv Gandhi International Airport in the Hyderabad suburb of Shamshabad became operational after midnight on Saturday, the Times of India said.
`WHAT'S THAT?'
The pilot of the KLM flight, which had taken off from Amsterdam, at first headed toward Hyderabad's old airport and was informed by air traffic control the facility had been shut, the report said.
When directed to fly to the new airport, the unnamed pilot replied: "What's that?"
The pilot flew instead to New Delhi first and then directed the plane to Mumbai after being declined permission to land, the report said.
DELAYS
The plane had 230 economy and 13 business-class passengers on board when it approached Hyderabad at 1:45am on Sunday.
It had been due to fly out of Hyderabad to return to Amsterdam at 3:35am with more than 230 passengers.
The Times of India cited an anonymous source as saying that the Dutch airline's pilot had been reluctant to land in Shamshabad because its headquarters in the Netherlands had not received a notice about the closure of the old and the opening of the new facility.
The new airport, built at a cost of more than US$600 million, opened for flights after a week's delay prompted by airline requests for more time to switch to the new facility and operational reasons such as shifting of equipment.
In the sweltering streets of Jakarta, buskers carry towering, hollow puppets and pass around a bucket for donations. Now, they fear becoming outlaws. City authorities said they would crack down on use of the sacred ondel-ondel puppets, which can stand as tall as a truck, and they are drafting legislation to remove what they view as a street nuisance. Performances featuring the puppets — originally used by Jakarta’s Betawi people to ward off evil spirits — would be allowed only at set events. The ban could leave many ondel-ondel buskers in Jakarta jobless. “I am confused and anxious. I fear getting raided or even
POLITICAL PATRIARCHS: Recent clashes between Thailand and Cambodia are driven by an escalating feud between rival political families, analysts say The dispute over Thailand and Cambodia’s contested border, which dates back more than a century to disagreements over colonial-era maps, has broken into conflict before. However, the most recent clashes, which erupted on Thursday, have been fueled by another factor: a bitter feud between two powerful political patriarchs. Cambodian Senate President and former prime minister Hun Sen, 72, and former Thai prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra, 76, were once such close friends that they reportedly called one another brothers. Hun Sen has, over the years, supported Thaksin’s family during their long-running power struggle with Thailand’s military. Thaksin and his sister Yingluck stayed
Kemal Ozdemir looked up at the bare peaks of Mount Cilo in Turkey’s Kurdish majority southeast. “There were glaciers 10 years ago,” he recalled under a cloudless sky. A mountain guide for 15 years, Ozdemir then turned toward the torrent carrying dozens of blocks of ice below a slope covered with grass and rocks — a sign of glacier loss being exacerbated by global warming. “You can see that there are quite a few pieces of glacier in the water right now ... the reason why the waterfalls flow lushly actually shows us how fast the ice is melting,” he said.
RESTRUCTURE: Myanmar’s military has ended emergency rule and announced plans for elections in December, but critics said the move aims to entrench junta control Myanmar’s military government announced on Thursday that it was ending the state of emergency declared after it seized power in 2021 and would restructure administrative bodies to prepare for the new election at the end of the year. However, the polls planned for an unspecified date in December face serious obstacles, including a civil war raging over most of the country and pledges by opponents of the military rule to derail the election because they believe it can be neither free nor fair. Under the restructuring, Myanmar’s junta chief Min Aung Hlaing is giving up two posts, but would stay at the
RSS