KLM pilot misses new Hyderabad airport

One would thing that all that state of the art equipment on board of airplanes should make it impossible for pilot to miss the arrival port, but then one would be mistaken.

In a slip-up barely hours after the Shamshabad airport opened for business, a KLM flight from Amsterdam, which was supposed to land at Hyderabad, skipped the airport and flew across the country — first to Delhi, and then to Mumbai.

Apparently, the pilot knew nothing about the new airport and was flying towards Begumpet only to be told that the facility had been shut. He was directed to Shamshabad, to which the pilot asked the air traffic control: "Shamshabad? What’s that?" The pilot then flew to Delhi, from where, after being refused permission to land, he took the plane to Mumbai.

Next time, give a guy GPS system, I heard TomTom is good.

Public holidays cut back in Indonesia

Last Tuesday, the Indonesian government cut down the number of public holidays by three days, bringing it to total of 20 days. According to the decree issued by the ministers for religious affairs, manpower and transmigration the cut back is caused by fear of a global economy slowdown.

The cut three holidays were among so called “sandwich holidays” - days sandwiched between public holidays and weekends, introduced in 2002 to encourage domestic tourism.
Private sector businesses can decide whether or not to offer the holidays to their employees.

I am trying really, really hard to feel sorry for Indonesians. However, with our mere eight days of public holidays, just somehow I am more envious than sympathising.