The Qantas A380 is configured with 450 seats in four cabins – 14 in First Class, 72 in Business Blass, 32 in the Premium Economy cabin and 332 in Economy Class.

Features include:
- 14 single private suites in First Class featuring a 17 inch LCD wide screen video monitor, a unique touch screen control unit, and a seat (manufactured by B/E Aerospaces’s VIP jet group) that swivels into a comfortable armchair and a fully flat, extra long and wide bed;

- the next generation of Qantas’ award-winning sleeper seat Skybed in Business Class, which now offers an extra long and fully flat bed with ergonomically enhanced cushioning, a larger in-arm entertainment screen, additional storage options and more privacy;

- a private lounge area in the upper deck Business Class cabin featuring leather sofas, a self-service bar, large video monitor with laptop connectivity and a feature display cabinet;

- Premium Economy seats by Recaro, with fully adjustable, in-arm, digital wide screen television monitors, and a self service bar dedicated to the upper deck Premium Economy cabin;

- Recaro seats in Economy Class featuring a sliding base that moves with the seat back to create a more comfortable, ergonomically tested position to aid sleep and eliminate pressure points and a foot net to stop sliding during sleep;

- four self-service bars in Economy Class;

- state-of-the-art Panasonic inflight entertainment system with more than 100 on demand movies, 350 television selections, 500 audio CDs, 30 PC style games, and a selection of audio books, language tutorials, destination information, business education and radio channels; and

- in-seat laptop power and connectivity in every class allowing passengers to send and receive emails directly from their personal webmail and hotmail accounts via laptop or seat monitor.

The first Qantas A380, named after Australian pioneer aviatrix Nancy-Bird Walton, aged 92, departed Toulouse at 23:55 and operate via Singapore to touched down in Sydney at 09:00 on Sunday, 21st September.

Were it is flying?
The Qantas A380 will undergo a series of pre-entry into service, training and promotional activities ahead of its first commercial passenger service, operating from Melbourne to Los Angeles on 20 October 2008. The first service from Sydney – also to Los Angeles – will operate on 24 October.

Qantas A380 services between Sydney and London via Singapore will commence in January 2009.

Qantas will take delivery of three A380s by the end of 2008, with eight by the end of 2009 and all 20 by the end of 2013.

Source: Qantas PR Department

LOT Polish Airlines announced an agreement for up to 14 Boeing 787 Dreamliners, making LOT the first global network carrier in Europe to operate the world’s newest and most technologically advanced commercial jetliner.

Also, a new LOT advertising campaign was launched on August 1st, 2005 under the motto “You’re under our wing.” The campaign aims at remodelling the brand image and implementing the communications strategy “We follow requirements of our passenger.”

Netzoom.ro is full transformed in boardingmedia.net. For the moment the content is the same but I’ll work at this too.

One of my main goals in this moment is to transform this blog in a more-specialized blog in commercial aviation – airliners and aircrafts. And of course there should be very useful information: like strikes, cancellations, news about airlines, etc. And of course BM (boardingmedia) should become a web identity, right?

Now I am happy that I was able to move the full content of the blog in a new data base. it went without problems. I want now to thank you to my hosting guy (www.claus.ro) for all its support during the moving/changing operations.

The Boeing 737 left Murtala Muhammed airport at 7 p.m. (2 p.m. ET) Saturday and was en route to Nigeria’s capital, Abuja — a trip that should have taken about 50 minutes.

The pilot of Flight 210 issued a distress call just before the control tower lost sight of the plane about three minutes after takeoff, officials said.

Airport officials, speaking on condition of anonymity because they are not authorized to speak to the media, said they believed the plane had crashed on Saturday evening, although there was no confirmation yet.

Associated Press –
Frantic relatives of the passengers and crew gathered at the Lagos airport, seeking news.

“Right now I’m in a state of suspended animation,” said the 22-year old student. “I’m just waiting for concrete information to know what to think.”

For the moment Nigerian authorities are trying to see if the plane landed in one of they neighboring countries.

Rome – I arrived in Rome’s Fiumiciono – Leonardo da Vinci airport, today around 12. One hour and something I have been waiting to see what desk will be the check-in for my flight. Seeing that there is just one more hour till the departure and I was still with my luggage in my hands I went to the information office. A girl told me that it’s at desk 316. I went at 316. Here they were checking-in people for Alitalia flights for Tunis, Catania and Amman. Yes! Exactly three destinations at one desk … Or I am a bit wrong here … for the same destinations were working the girl from 317. I ask if they are making check-in for Alitalia flight to Warsaw. The answer is “yes”. I stayed in the queue but because my flight was leaving first … I had sort of priority. My luggage was almost 24 kg … and they asked me for no money, thing that made me happy. Then, on my way to the gate C2 (that was near the check-in zone) I found 5 euro. J Good now.
I am sitting waiting for the boarding at Gate C2. Unfortunately they don’t have the plane anymore. They sent it to London with a bunch of very angry British people … Angry because they British Airways flight left with 30 minutes before the normal time. So here I am without a plane … and they also moved us at Gate C20. This was not near and I had to take a kind of train, SkyBridge, to that gate. In the end I left in time from Gate C22.

Warsaw – First of all, nobody picked me with “Taxi?”. In Bucharest you will never see this thing happening. Or at least to me it happened most of the time. I went outside of the airport and I took a cab of Radio Taxi (kind of Fly Taxi in Bucharest; but here they are using Mercedes cars). My trip was almost 15 euro. The taxi had even an EPOS … in case you want to pay by credit card.

From the taxi I could saw a small part of the city. Clean, with lots of parks and some skyscraper. We don’t have something similar in Romania and for sure what I saw here is bigger than in Naples. And the thing is that the architecture of these skyscrapers is wonderful. But please, don’t imagine here is New York.

I am living in a ground room from the university where I’ll be studying. The building is nice …. But there is a strange smell around. It is a complex with buildings here. I am not far away from the tram station and also there is a Carrefour and a quite big commercial center at one tram station from here.

At half of hour after my arrival here I decided that I want to go around, and maybe I will find a place where I can buy a Polish number. I get out from the building, I am leaving the walls of the school and I am going directly to a tram station. I was thinking to go in the center and all I knew was that I should take the tram 35. In witch way? Hmmm… I saw a young girl and I am asking her. She is going in the same direction and she offered to me to go together by walking because trams are not working well today. I said ok. She was speaking very good English, she was 25 and she is working in the Ministry of Infrastructure. She was kind of shocked that I choused to come to study and live here, giving that for here Poland is not really over Romania. Yes people! She heard about this country and she knows that the capital is Bucharest and no Budapest. Kidding … even the taxi driver knew this. So the people from small countries know more about countries like theirs.
In the end she saw a tram passing and we went back to the tram station and we took the next one.

Carrefour, Warsaw – I bought one from Orange. They do not have some rows in English about tariffs and so on. They don’t have more tariff plans and they don’t use here euro (like in Italy) or dollars (like in Romania). They used prices in their own currency and this is odd to me. This is another thing that I will have to get used with.

So. The city I think Warsaw is nice and I think I’ll have a bohemian life around here. Still, Naples, with all its noise and madness is my favorite city. It’s a city always alive and I like it, even Zack has another opinion about this thing.
Apart from the thing I would like to have over the street some friends there nothing else I do not like in Warsaw.

In the next two days I will start to discover some small parts of the city and I will let you know about them.

Here they are … Blue Air, the first Romanian low-cost company, its getting the third airplane for its fleet. The plane is a Boeing 737-500 with a 123 passengers capacity. Also the plane was “decorated” in a new way, a way that will become the Blue Air style for all its aircrafts.

Also starting with October 11, Blue air will fly to Paris. Prices starts at 38 Euro for a round trip + taxes around 40-45 Euro. For the moment the tickets are not on line and also I can’t say what airport will be operated by Blue Air. Keep reading this blog.

Investigation started and till now all the facts show that there was just the technical problems. And not only of the crashed aircraft, but on other aircrafts too. There are many complains about the fly safety and other issues, complains comming from passengers that used WCA services. A CNN report said that the crashed aircraft was involved in two other incidents this year but was not checked more than few hours.

You can read a full coverage reports on this theme on news.yahoo.com

McDonnell Douglas MD-82 – WCA

The MD-82 is part of the MD-80 line of planes, which has been in commercial service since October 1980. MD-80s were produced in Long Beach, California, until 1999. The MD stands for McDonnell Douglas, the company that produced the planes before it merged with Boeing in 1997.

Passenger capacity: 152 to 172
Maximum range: 2,052 nautical miles (3,798 kilometers)
Maximum takeoff weight: 149,500 pounds (67,812 kilograms)

Length: 147 feet, 8 inches (32.8 meters)
Wingspan: 107 feet, 8 inches (45.1 meters)
Tail height: 29 feet, 6 inches (9.05 meters)

Source: Boeing

I don’t praise my self too much. I know that not all my articles were good. I know that I had mistakes in the way of writing or in the way of gathering my information. There were times when I was out of the country and remembering that I forgot to write the weekly material I was creating it in the train. I am not proud of this … because I know those stories were not my best material ever. Sometimes I think I have to do like George and make the Saturday the special day of the week for writing articles, replying to the readers and up dating the site. But who knows when I’ll be able to define this kind of day. In the last two years I chose to be always in the move … And maybe this I’ll be doing for some more years now on. So, my readers will still have to enjoy my bad-writing-on-the-plane-or-on-the-train-or-from-the-middle-of-nowhere.

Trying to add all the things that happened, of course, things related to the weekly column I can say the next few things:
- I have made a 65 year-old reader to create and e-mail account on Yahoo!;
- I made some people in their 50’s to convince their children living in other countries to use on line messengers for keeping in touch;
- I’ve learned new things my self;
- I’ve build three versions for the web site where I am uploading also the articles from “Timpul Liber”. Now I am finishing the fourth – hopefully I’ll be a very busy person in the next year so probably no time for new versions.
- I bought most of the Thursday the newspaper because I wanted to have the supplement for my collection. I always was too late in the office to catch one of the free exemplary of the supplement.

Things that I haven’t accomplished yet:
- improving my writing and became a very good and famous IT advisor (like people from The Observer);
- never asked for a chaging the title from “Dictionar de adrese pe Internet” in whatever else sounds better ;
- Forgot to send a letter to one of my readers that asked me via traditional letter some advices and also he told me he likes Naples; I’ve put in an envelope some postcards, together with my answer at his questions, but I never went at a post office. And when I remembered was too late because I didn’t find the letter anymore;
- Never brought flowers to all my females-colleagues;
- Never took out for a beer the one that inspired me … and that put me the Netscape Composer into my hands (God, I hate that program!).

Never is too late???