News in The Air
Created | Updated Sep 7, 2006
Passengers Sue Ryanair
In an unprecedented move, passengers of Ryanair have announced that they are suing the company's management because of new measures the company has taken to cut costs.
Ryanair have recently implemented a charging scheme for any items put into the baggage hold. David Gaynor, a passenger on the Birmingham-Malaga flight, was told he had to bring his pet elephant onboard or else pay 600 quid.
'It's ok though', said David - 'she did a bit of hoovering during the flight - so it gave the flight crew a bit of a break'.
In another announcement, the airline is planning to remove seats on all its planes.
'Standing room only from now on - that way we can pack 400 people onto each flight.' Metal poles will be used for passengers to grip on to during take-off and landing.
'While the plane is at rest we hope to further increase revenues by using them for lapdancing shows', a spokesman indicated. Members of the flight crew have already been asked to purchase sexy underwear just in case.
Also, Ryanair has recently announced a plan 'to fly anywhere we goddamn like' without giving passengers any indication of the destination in advance. A recent test in Northern Ireland, where the plane landed in a different airport, was very successful in this regard, inside sources claim.
A spokesman for the passenger group SMOLU (Shut Michael O'Leary Up) called the situation a 'shambles', and said;
'If we allow these restrictions to stay in place, then we will have handed the extremist airlines an enormous PR victory.'
The CEO of Ryanair, Michael O'Leary, in a carefully worded statement, had this to say on the situation;
'You can all freak off and die'.
NOT-2-SMART-1 Due To Make Crash Landing
Astronomers around the world are expecting the imminent demise of the British built space probe NOT-2-SMART-1 in the next few days. NOT-2-SMART-1 was launched in a blaze of publicity in 1997, having succeeded from the troubled MAJOR-1 mission (itself a less zealous offshoot of the 1980's IRON-LADY project).
'It's amazing how long its lasted', says John Beggs, Astronomer with the Royal Observatory. 'It's was originally specified to last just 4 years before being replaced by a far cheaper device' he says, referring to the CHANCELLOR-G11 mission, which is still in mothballs. The project has not been without its difficulties.
'In recent years, pieces have continued to drop off it', says Beggs. In 2003, the Cooke Spectrometer and the Short Activator stopped
working when the probe began its foray into the notorious Iraqi asteroid field, followed a few months later by an overload of the Campbell-A high-gain transmitter. In 2005 the Mandelson and Blunkett control systems were declared defunct and, earlier this year, the Clarke heat-shield failed after a particularly heavy particle barrage. The Prescott backup-device has behaved very erratically in the past few years, but it continues to hang on.
In recent years, the probe was part of a 'puppydogging' initiative with an American space-module, the YEE-HAW-1. This entailed synchronising completely with the US device on a master-slave basis.
'Every signal sent to the American probe were replicated exactly by the British one, no matter how distorted', says Beggs. 'It was a great success for the Americans, but the British probe is showing increasing signs of premature aging.'
Some experts believe that the space-probe has started to spiral out of control in the past year.
'The whole system has been drifting from crisis to crisis in the last few months', says Greg Davies of the British Astronomy Guild. 'Very little really useful work has actually been done.' A conference of astronomers later this month could seal the probe's fate. 'We might even consider dropping it completely from the list of official probes!' says Davies.
