16 April, 2014

The Hunt For MH370 Goes On

The underwater probe being used to look for missing Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 was back in the water after its first attempt ended prematurely, said the company that owns the vehicle, Phoenix International. The Bluefin-21 autonomous underwater vehicle was about four hours into its second dive mission at 2 p.m. ET on Tuesday (2 a.m. Wednesday in Perth, Australia), a source close to the operation told CNN's Brian Todd. On Monday, crews sent the probe toward the ocean floor on what was expected to be a 20-hour deployment, only to have it return in less than eight hours after encountering waters beyond its 4,500-meter (14,764-foot) maximum depth. 

The probe found no debris during its shortened scanning session. The second mission is expected to end Wednesday around 10 a.m. ET (10 p.m. in Perth), the source said. The vehicle was deployed in nearly the same area and is operating at about the same depth as the earlier mission, the source said. The earlier aborted mission doesn't mean anything is wrong with the probe, which is designed to swim about 30 meters (100 feet) above the ocean floor and use sound waves to draw a three-dimensional map of what lies below.


Spirit Tops Most Complaint - Again

A low-cost carrier has been named and shamed as the most hated airline in the US.
Spirit Airlines has received more complaints than any other domestic carrier for five years in a row, according to a study.
Every year from 2009-2013, passengers were three times as likely to have an issue with Spirit than they were the second-place airline.
High complaints: Spirit topped the chart for grievances over the past five years
High complaints: Spirit topped the chart for grievances over the past five years
The figures were calculated based on complaints - from flights and fares, to baggage and refunds – per 100,000 passengers.
‘As the airline has grown in the past several years, complaints against the airline have skyrocketed,’ according to the U.S. Public Interest Research Group Education Fund report. 
 


    In fact, Spirit received so many complaints, it had to be excluded from deeper analysis of on-time performance, baggage mishandling, and other issues.
    Chart-topper: More complaints have been made about Spirit Airlines than any other carrier in the US
    Chart-topper: More complaints have been made about Spirit Airlines than any other carrier in the US
    The airline also has its own ‘boycott Spirit’ Facebook page, and a Twitter handle called @hatespiritair.
    Southwest Airlines generated the lowest number of grievances, the research found.
    The findings added: ‘As the airline has grown in the past several years, complaints against the airline have skyrocketed.’
    The report, which analysed consumer complaints filed with the Department of Transportation, said of Spirit: 'Two checked bags, basic meals and snacks, carry-ons, and, often, in-flight entertainment were formerly included in the price of your ticket, but now add-on fees for each of these newly a la carte items can easily add $100 or more to the cost of a one-way ticket.’

    US Airway's Porno Tweet

    US Airways has offered an explanation and another apology after a pornographic image was shared from the airline's official Twitter account.
    The carrier said the photo was sent accidentally to one of its customers who launched a series of complaints against the airline on Monday. The image featured a womanposing with a toy plane inserted in her vagina.
    "We apologize for the inappropriate image we recently shared in a Twitter response," Davien Anderson, a spokesperson for the airline, said in an statement emailed to Reuters. "We deeply regret the mistake and we are currently reviewing our processes to prevent such errors in the future."
    Airline representatives said the image, which originated from a German amateur porn site, was sent to the airline's Twitter account by another user. Employees in charge of the airline's Twitter account meant to flag the image as inappropriate but mistakenly included it as part of a reply, USA Today reports.

    Bomb Tweets To American Continue.

    A passenger walks through an American Airlines baggage claim area at O'Hare International Airport in Chicago. (Nam Y. Huh/ AP)
    A passenger walks through an American Airlines baggage claim area at O’Hare International Airport in Chicago. (Nam Y. Huh/ AP)
    In the wake of a 14-year-old Dutch girl’s arrest for tweeting a threat to American Airlines, dozens of copycats took to Twitter to make bomb “jokes” of their own. Eighteen hours after the event, those quote marks remain 100 percent necessary. The tweets still aren’t funny, still not provocative, and still not “political satire” or “protest against the surveillance state,” as many of those commenting on the story have insisted.
    Don’t get me wrong: We need both political satire and protests, and there is something self-evidently ridiculous about a teenager getting interrogated for an idiotic tweet. But this isn’t satire, by satire’s very definition. Here’s the Columbia Encyclopedia on the subject:
    From ancient times satirists have shared a common aim: to expose foolishness in all its guises — vanity, hypocrisy, pedantry, idolatry, bigotry, sentimentality — and to effect reform through such exposure.
    But the “foolishness” these would-be satirists are protesting isn’t foolishness at all. An airline, which had planes hijacked on 9/11, received what appeared to be a terrorist threat. The airline reported that threat in accordance with the Homeland Security Department’s much-publicized guidelines, which urge even private citizens to report suspicious activity as apparently innocuous as “an unattended backpack.” The threatener, knowing the game was up, later turned herself in.
    The medium doesn’t matter, nor the fact that the sender was actually 14. At the time of the initial threat, whatever beleaguered social media manager who saw it knew only that he or she had gotten a threat and a response was warranted. That isn’t foolishness — it’s common sense.
    That becomes even clearer in contrast to, say, the “Colbert Report” satire recently in the news: A Twitter post reference to a “Ching-Chong Ding-Dong Foundation for Sensitivity to Orientals or Whatever” may have sparked controversy, but it did expose a specific hypocrisy that deserved ridicule.
    Maybe the protest is bigger than that, some have said. Maybe this satire is aimed at the surveillance state, in its overarching, knee-jerky ubiquity. Maybe it’s aimed less at the actual actions of American Airlines and more at the cultural and political climate that made those actions necessary. They’re protesting, in other words, the idea that all threats need to be taken seriously. They’re protesting fear.

    More at http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/style-blog/wp/2014/04/15/if-you-think-the-american-airline-bomb-tweets-are-satire-you-dont-understand-what-satire-is/

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