Malaysian budget carrier AirAsia has delayed the scheduled delivery of ten of its aircraft by three years to 2015, in a bid to switch its order to more fuel-efficient planes, the company said.
AirAsia agreed to order 175 Airbus A320 aircraft in 2005, with a delivery schedule running from December 2005 to October 2014, but earlier deliveries have been put back several times due to its overcrowded budget terminal.
"A key commercial reason for the (present) deferral... is to afford the company some flexibility to switch from its current order of the classic A320 to a new generation A320 aircraft which is more fuel efficient when such aircraft come into production in the near future," it said in a filing with the local bourse Friday.
"Despite the deferral, AirAsia will nevertheless be taking delivery of 14 aircraft in 2012," it added.
"This will enable the company to support the growth of its joint ventures in the Philippines as well as Vietnam while continuing to support existing affiliate airlines."
The company also said that the number of planes delivered in 2015 would accordingly increase from 9 to 19 aircraft, with no penalties payable for revising its delivery schedule.
In August the budget airline deferred delivery of seven aircraft by four years to 2015 due to space constraints at its Kuala Lumpur terminal.
In 2009, the Malaysian government vetoed AirAsia's ambitious plan to build its own 460-million-dollar airport far from the Kuala Lumpur International Airport (KLIA) in a bid to improve standards and lower operational costs.
However, it is now relying on Malaysia Airports Holdings, which runs KLIA, to build a new budget terminal that is scheduled for completion by March 2012.
AirAsia, which was launched in 2001 with just two planes, is now the region's fourth-biggest carrier with 25 million passengers a year.
Thursday, February 17, 2011
Tuesday, January 18, 2011
Female pilot plays piano, drums, saxophone and flute.
PETALING JAYA: When AirAsia’s first female captain is not flying, she spends her time making music.
Norashikin Onn, 43, who has a degree in music, is a trained pianist and plays the drums, saxophone and flute as well.
High achiever: Multi-talented Capt Norashikin wearing her pilot uniform. She got her flying licence while completing her music degree.
She said her childhood ambition was to be an astronaut.
“I was fascinated by the uniform,” she said, adding that although she never made it to the moon, her job still required her to be thousands of feet high up in the air.
The only woman among the 699 captains in AirAsia, Norashikin got her flying licence at the age of 22, while completing her music degree in Boston in the US.
She co-founded the 4B Youth Flying Club before taking up an offer in 1996 to fly with Pelangi Airways.
She became the first female captain of AirAsia in 2009 after joining the airline in 2007.
She had this to say about her famous employer: “Tony (Fernandes) is a great person to work with.
“He takes the trouble to remember everyone’s name and does all he can to make it a wonderful working environment for the staff,” she said.
She has an impressive resume.
She was listed as one of the 10 most respected women in Malaysia by Her World magazine in 1998
She was a finalist in the “Great Women of our Time Awards” in 2007 by Malaysia Women’s Weekly magazine as well.
She was also the first woman in the country to obtain the Airline Transport Pilot Licence.
Norashikin is happily married and says she is blessed to have someone who truly understands and supports her career.
“He is very understanding and hardly complains even though my job requires me to travel frequently,” she said.
Norashikin is a role model for many Malaysian women, but the captain says her role model is American aviation pioneer Amelia Earhart.
When asked if there had been any negative feedback on her success, she said a male passenger once remarked: “a woman shouldn’t be flying”.
But Norashikin said the reaction had been more positive than negative with many people adding her on Facebook to say they were proud of her.
Despite her hectic schedule, Norashikin is currently pursuing a PhD in management.
On her retirement plans she said: “After I am done with flying, I want to sail around the world.”
-Extracted from The Star-
Norashikin Onn, 43, who has a degree in music, is a trained pianist and plays the drums, saxophone and flute as well.
High achiever: Multi-talented Capt Norashikin wearing her pilot uniform. She got her flying licence while completing her music degree.
She said her childhood ambition was to be an astronaut.
“I was fascinated by the uniform,” she said, adding that although she never made it to the moon, her job still required her to be thousands of feet high up in the air.
The only woman among the 699 captains in AirAsia, Norashikin got her flying licence at the age of 22, while completing her music degree in Boston in the US.
She co-founded the 4B Youth Flying Club before taking up an offer in 1996 to fly with Pelangi Airways.
She became the first female captain of AirAsia in 2009 after joining the airline in 2007.
She had this to say about her famous employer: “Tony (Fernandes) is a great person to work with.
“He takes the trouble to remember everyone’s name and does all he can to make it a wonderful working environment for the staff,” she said.
She has an impressive resume.
She was listed as one of the 10 most respected women in Malaysia by Her World magazine in 1998
She was a finalist in the “Great Women of our Time Awards” in 2007 by Malaysia Women’s Weekly magazine as well.
She was also the first woman in the country to obtain the Airline Transport Pilot Licence.
Norashikin is happily married and says she is blessed to have someone who truly understands and supports her career.
“He is very understanding and hardly complains even though my job requires me to travel frequently,” she said.
Norashikin is a role model for many Malaysian women, but the captain says her role model is American aviation pioneer Amelia Earhart.
When asked if there had been any negative feedback on her success, she said a male passenger once remarked: “a woman shouldn’t be flying”.
But Norashikin said the reaction had been more positive than negative with many people adding her on Facebook to say they were proud of her.
Despite her hectic schedule, Norashikin is currently pursuing a PhD in management.
On her retirement plans she said: “After I am done with flying, I want to sail around the world.”
-Extracted from The Star-
Monday, November 29, 2010
History & Airplanes
The dream of flight goes back to the days of pre-history. Many stories from antiquity involve flight, such as the Greek legend of Icarus and Daedalus, and the Vimana in ancient Indian epics. Around 400 BC, Archytas, the Ancient Greek philosopher, mathematician, astronomer, statesman, and strategist, was reputed to have designed and built the first artificial, self-propelled flying device, a bird-shaped model propelled by a jet of what was probably steam, said to have actually flown some 200 m. This machine, which its inventor called The Pigeon (Greek: η Περιστέρα "hè Peristera"), may have been suspended on a wire or pivot for its flight. One of the first recorded – still dilettante – attempts with gliders were those by the 11th century monk Eilmer of Malmesbury (recorded in the 12th century) and the 9th century poet Abbas Ibn Firnas (recorded in the 17th century); both experiments ended with lasting injuries to their pilots. Leonardo da Vinci researched the wing design of birds and designed a man-powered aircraft in his Codex on the Flight of Birds (1502). In the 18th century, Francois Pilatre de Rozier and François Laurent d'Arlandes flew in an aircraft lighter than air, a balloon. The biggest challenge became to create other craft, capable of controlled flight.
Sir George Cayley, the founder of the science of aerodynamics, credited as the first person to separate the forces of lift and drag which are in effect on any flight vehicle, in 1799 he set forth the concept of the modern aeroplane as a fixed-wing flying machine with separate systems for lift, propulsion, and control. Cayley was building and flying models of fixed-wing aircraft as early as 1803, and he built a successful passenger-carrying glider in 1853. In 1856, Frenchman Jean-Marie Le Bris made the first powered flight, by having his glider "L'Albatros artificiel" pulled by a horse on a beach. On 28 August 1883, the American John J. Montgomery made a controlled flight in a glider. Other aviators who made similar flights at that time were Otto Lilienthal, Percy Pilcher and Octave Chanute.
The first self-powered fixed-wing aircraft was created by Englishman John Stringfellow, whose unmanned model made its first successful flight in 1848. Alberto Santos-Dumont, a Brazilian living in France, built the first practical dirigible balloons at the end of the nineteenth century.[citation needed] In the 1890s, Australian inventor and aviator Lawrence Hargrave conducted research on wing structures and developed a box kite that lifted the weight of a man. His box kite designs were widely adopted and became the prevalent type of aircraft until 1909.[verification needed] Although he also developed a type of rotary aircraft engine, he did not create and fly a powered fixed-wing aircraft.
On 14 August 1901, in Fairfield, Connecticut, Gustave Whitehead reportedly flew his engine-powered Number 21 aeroplane for half a mile at 15 m height, according to an article in the Bridgeport Sunday Herald. No photographs were taken, but a sketch of the plane in the air was published with the article.
The Wright brothers made their first successful test flights on 17 December 1903. Their flights are recognised by the Fédération Aéronautique Internationale (FAI), the standard setting and record-keeping body for aeronautics and astronautics, as "the first sustained and controlled heavier-than-air powered flight". By 1905, the Wright Flyer III was capable of fully controllable, stable flight for substantial periods.
On 12 November 1906, Santos-Dumont made what Brazilians say was the first airplane flight unassisted by catapult and set the first world record recognised by the Aéro-Club de France by flying 220 metres (720 ft) in less than 22 seconds. This flight was also certified by the Fédération Aéronautique Internationale (FAI).
World War I served as a testbed for the use of the aircraft as a weapon. Initially seen by the generals as a "toy", aircraft demonstrated their potential as mobile observation platforms, then proved themselves to be machines of war capable of causing casualties to the enemy. The earliest known aerial victory with a synchronised machine gun-armed fighter aircraft occurred on July 1, 1915, by German Luftstreitkräfte Leutnant Kurt Wintgens. "Fighter aces" appeared, described as "knights of the air"; the greatest (by number of air victories) was the German Manfred von Richthofen, the Red Baron. On the side of the allies, the ace with the highest number of downed aircraft was René Fonck, of France. All-metal-structure aircraft took their first steps into reality during the World War I era, through the work of Hugo Junkers in the creation of the Junkers J 1 in 1915.
Following the war, aircraft technology continued to develop. Alcock and Brown crossed the Atlantic non-stop for the first time in 1919, a feat first performed solo by Charles Lindbergh in 1927. The first commercial flights took place between the United States and Canada in 1919. The turbine or the jet engine was in development in the 1930s; military jet aircraft began operating in the 1940s.
Aircraft played a primary role in the Second World War, having a presence in all the major battles of the war: Pearl Harbor, the battles of the Pacific, the Battle of Britain. They were an essential component of the military strategies of the period, such as the German Blitzkrieg or the American and Japanese aircraft carrier campaigns of the Pacific.
In October 1947, Chuck Yeager was the first person to exceed the speed of sound, flying the Bell X-1.
Aircraft in a civil military role continued to feed and supply Berlin in 1948, when access to rail roads and roads to the city, completely surrounded by Eastern Germany, were blocked, by order of the Soviet Union.
The Cold War played a large role in the production of new aircraft, such as the B-52
The first commercial jet, the de Havilland Comet, was introduced in 1952. The Boeing 707, the first widely successful commercial jet, was in commercial service for more than 50 years, from October 26, 1958 to June 22, 2010. The Boeing 727 was another widely used passenger aircraft, and the Boeing 747 was the world's biggest commercial aircraft between 1970 and 2005, when it was surpassed by the Airbus A380.
Here are some pictures of airplanes:
#1 Le Bris and his glider, Albatros II, photographed by Nadar, 1868.
#2 A Tupolev Tu-160 of the Russian Air Force at MAKS in 2007.
#3 A F16C
#4 The Wright Brothers Glider after being improvised in 1902.
And ofcourse,
Our very own
And...
Along with heart-warming stewardess,
So, Malaysia Boleh? :P
Sir George Cayley, the founder of the science of aerodynamics, credited as the first person to separate the forces of lift and drag which are in effect on any flight vehicle, in 1799 he set forth the concept of the modern aeroplane as a fixed-wing flying machine with separate systems for lift, propulsion, and control. Cayley was building and flying models of fixed-wing aircraft as early as 1803, and he built a successful passenger-carrying glider in 1853. In 1856, Frenchman Jean-Marie Le Bris made the first powered flight, by having his glider "L'Albatros artificiel" pulled by a horse on a beach. On 28 August 1883, the American John J. Montgomery made a controlled flight in a glider. Other aviators who made similar flights at that time were Otto Lilienthal, Percy Pilcher and Octave Chanute.
The first self-powered fixed-wing aircraft was created by Englishman John Stringfellow, whose unmanned model made its first successful flight in 1848. Alberto Santos-Dumont, a Brazilian living in France, built the first practical dirigible balloons at the end of the nineteenth century.[citation needed] In the 1890s, Australian inventor and aviator Lawrence Hargrave conducted research on wing structures and developed a box kite that lifted the weight of a man. His box kite designs were widely adopted and became the prevalent type of aircraft until 1909.[verification needed] Although he also developed a type of rotary aircraft engine, he did not create and fly a powered fixed-wing aircraft.
On 14 August 1901, in Fairfield, Connecticut, Gustave Whitehead reportedly flew his engine-powered Number 21 aeroplane for half a mile at 15 m height, according to an article in the Bridgeport Sunday Herald. No photographs were taken, but a sketch of the plane in the air was published with the article.
The Wright brothers made their first successful test flights on 17 December 1903. Their flights are recognised by the Fédération Aéronautique Internationale (FAI), the standard setting and record-keeping body for aeronautics and astronautics, as "the first sustained and controlled heavier-than-air powered flight". By 1905, the Wright Flyer III was capable of fully controllable, stable flight for substantial periods.
On 12 November 1906, Santos-Dumont made what Brazilians say was the first airplane flight unassisted by catapult and set the first world record recognised by the Aéro-Club de France by flying 220 metres (720 ft) in less than 22 seconds. This flight was also certified by the Fédération Aéronautique Internationale (FAI).
World War I served as a testbed for the use of the aircraft as a weapon. Initially seen by the generals as a "toy", aircraft demonstrated their potential as mobile observation platforms, then proved themselves to be machines of war capable of causing casualties to the enemy. The earliest known aerial victory with a synchronised machine gun-armed fighter aircraft occurred on July 1, 1915, by German Luftstreitkräfte Leutnant Kurt Wintgens. "Fighter aces" appeared, described as "knights of the air"; the greatest (by number of air victories) was the German Manfred von Richthofen, the Red Baron. On the side of the allies, the ace with the highest number of downed aircraft was René Fonck, of France. All-metal-structure aircraft took their first steps into reality during the World War I era, through the work of Hugo Junkers in the creation of the Junkers J 1 in 1915.
Following the war, aircraft technology continued to develop. Alcock and Brown crossed the Atlantic non-stop for the first time in 1919, a feat first performed solo by Charles Lindbergh in 1927. The first commercial flights took place between the United States and Canada in 1919. The turbine or the jet engine was in development in the 1930s; military jet aircraft began operating in the 1940s.
Aircraft played a primary role in the Second World War, having a presence in all the major battles of the war: Pearl Harbor, the battles of the Pacific, the Battle of Britain. They were an essential component of the military strategies of the period, such as the German Blitzkrieg or the American and Japanese aircraft carrier campaigns of the Pacific.
In October 1947, Chuck Yeager was the first person to exceed the speed of sound, flying the Bell X-1.
Aircraft in a civil military role continued to feed and supply Berlin in 1948, when access to rail roads and roads to the city, completely surrounded by Eastern Germany, were blocked, by order of the Soviet Union.
The Cold War played a large role in the production of new aircraft, such as the B-52
The first commercial jet, the de Havilland Comet, was introduced in 1952. The Boeing 707, the first widely successful commercial jet, was in commercial service for more than 50 years, from October 26, 1958 to June 22, 2010. The Boeing 727 was another widely used passenger aircraft, and the Boeing 747 was the world's biggest commercial aircraft between 1970 and 2005, when it was surpassed by the Airbus A380.
Here are some pictures of airplanes:
#1 Le Bris and his glider, Albatros II, photographed by Nadar, 1868.
#2 A Tupolev Tu-160 of the Russian Air Force at MAKS in 2007.
#3 A F16C
#4 The Wright Brothers Glider after being improvised in 1902.
And ofcourse,
Our very own
And...
Along with heart-warming stewardess,
So, Malaysia Boleh? :P
Thursday, November 18, 2010
Welcome Abroad!
First and foremost, thank you for visiting my blog and I appreciate it.
Why blog?
-Of course for the 5% of my PLNG002's 5% out of 50% the coursework mark. Somehow, it will also be an alternative for me to express my thoughts and hopefully to share it with my dear followers.
What does this blog about?
-As I was told by my english teacher, Ms.Pamela to choose a topic to write about, I knew blogging about something which relates to my ambition would be interesting. Without hesitation, my blog will be focusing mainly about my dream to be a flight captain, Pilot & stuff which relates to aircrafts and aviation.
"People always ask me why I want to be a pilot. I'll tell you why. To me, flying is something you have to have a passion for. Not anyone can say they can't wait for that moment when the wheels leave the ground and you are doing something that man has always dreamed of doing. How many people can say that they wake up somewhere over the Atlantic ocean to the first faint light of dawn to greet them? You have not lived until you have soared off into sunsets you can't even begin to image. Or the feeling of looking out over the world at night from 35,000 feet and seeing the lights of New York, Philadelphia, and Boston all at once. But perhaps the greatest feeling of being a pilot is the absolute freedom you feel. You are on top of YOUR world. The sky is the limit. And coming in on finals in the last waining moments of the day and knowing that in the morning you get to get up and do it all over again, I can't think of a better job in the world..." said a penpal from the States.
Totally the same thinking. Dreaming about it ever since I was 10, I'm trying my best to look for a sponsorship by any airline who is willing to recruit cadet pilots. From Air Asia to Malaysia Airlines and from Singapore Airlines to Cathay Pacific, and currently I'm studying accounting as my second alternative besides piloting which I neither expect it nor liking it... Sad isn't it? Well, nothing stops me from making a dream come true. I'm all-in!
A picture tells a thousand words.
Aerial view of clouds and sunset from the plane.
Beautiful, isn't it?
Why blog?
-Of course for the 5% of my PLNG002's 5% out of 50% the coursework mark. Somehow, it will also be an alternative for me to express my thoughts and hopefully to share it with my dear followers.
What does this blog about?
-As I was told by my english teacher, Ms.Pamela to choose a topic to write about, I knew blogging about something which relates to my ambition would be interesting. Without hesitation, my blog will be focusing mainly about my dream to be a flight captain, Pilot & stuff which relates to aircrafts and aviation.
"People always ask me why I want to be a pilot. I'll tell you why. To me, flying is something you have to have a passion for. Not anyone can say they can't wait for that moment when the wheels leave the ground and you are doing something that man has always dreamed of doing. How many people can say that they wake up somewhere over the Atlantic ocean to the first faint light of dawn to greet them? You have not lived until you have soared off into sunsets you can't even begin to image. Or the feeling of looking out over the world at night from 35,000 feet and seeing the lights of New York, Philadelphia, and Boston all at once. But perhaps the greatest feeling of being a pilot is the absolute freedom you feel. You are on top of YOUR world. The sky is the limit. And coming in on finals in the last waining moments of the day and knowing that in the morning you get to get up and do it all over again, I can't think of a better job in the world..." said a penpal from the States.
Totally the same thinking. Dreaming about it ever since I was 10, I'm trying my best to look for a sponsorship by any airline who is willing to recruit cadet pilots. From Air Asia to Malaysia Airlines and from Singapore Airlines to Cathay Pacific, and currently I'm studying accounting as my second alternative besides piloting which I neither expect it nor liking it... Sad isn't it? Well, nothing stops me from making a dream come true. I'm all-in!
A picture tells a thousand words.
Aerial view of clouds and sunset from the plane.
Beautiful, isn't it?
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