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Check this out guys, I chanced upon this while reading an Australian newspaper today.. www.smh.com.au.
First the F1, now this.
Passengers stranded by A380 glitch
Scott Rochfort
- February 19, 2008 - 2:52PM
Singapore Airlines has encountered its first major technical glitch with its four-month-old A380 super jumbo, which forced it to cancel a flight from Singapore to Sydney last night leaving 70 passengers stranded without a hotel room.
The airline has confirmed it was forced to ground the Airbus jet overnight due to a problem with a fuel pump.
"It was a difficult delay. A problem presented with a fuel pump, and this is the sort of problem that doesn't show till engine start-up,'' said the airline's head of corporate affairs Stephen Forshaw.But Mr Forshaw said the problem which does "occur from time to time with aircraft generally'' was exacerbated when a replacement pump did not solve the glitch.
Given the Singapore Air's second A380 was undergoing maintenance, Mr Forshaw said the flight had to be replaced with a Boeing 747-400.
"Obviously, a 747-400 can't carry as many passengers as an A380, so we've had to transfer around 70 passengers to alternative flights today,'' he confirmed via an email.
According to Changi Airport's web site the 747 replacement flight left nine hours late.
"We're very sorry for the inconvenience caused to customers by the long delay, and especially the nature of it, with a lack of certain departure time,'' said Mr Forshaw.
"Given the time of night, we explored transferring all customers to hotels till the defect was repaired, to allow them to get some rest.
"Unfortunately, with the Singapore Airshow on this week, there were not sufficient hotel rooms to be able to accommodate those affected,'' he said.
Mr Forshaw was the delay was ``most unfortunate'' given the high reliability of the world's largest passenger jet since its entry into service last October.
Last month, Airbus boasted the A380 delivered to Singapore Air last October had been operating between Sydney and Singapore ``around 15 hours per day with a 100 per cent technical reliability''.
Singapore Air introduced its second A380 on the route in mid-January. Singapore Air's morning departure from Sydney left only 20 minutes late this morning, given the replacement 747 had enough seats to carry the ``booked load''.
The jet encountered its first mishap last month when it rolled off the tarmac onto a grass verge at Singapore's Changi Airport after coming loose from a tow truck.
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http://www.asiaone.com/Motoring/News/Story/A1Story20080214-49683.html
F1 fans fume over ticketing system foul-up <!-- TITLE : end-->
<!-- Story With Image End --> <!-- CONTENT : start
-->WHEN tickets for the world's inaugural Formula One night race went on sale on Thursday morning, fans were expecting a well-oiled ticketing machinery at work.
Instead, what happened when the starting flag came down was complete chaos.
A server error caused the entire ticketing system to foul up. Fans tried for hours to get through the ticketing website and failed.
Even as late as 5pm, fans called up The Straits Times to say they were having problems getting into the F1 website to buy tickets.
Those who tried calling also could not get through.
Some who tried both and failed rushed down in the hope they would have better luck buying over the counter. They were wrong.
Tickets sales on the ground too had run into problems. At the one of SingPost ticket stations, the system was so slow that only three fans were able to purchase tickets in the three hours from opening.
Mark Benterman was whooping with joy when he finally got into the Singapore GP website after one and a half hours of trying.
The British Airways pilot, who lives in Singapore, reserved two Pit Grandstand tickets, each costing $1,388, but his session was timed-out as he was filling in his particulars on the online form.
When Benterman managed to log on to the website again an hour later, he realised, to his horror, that he had lost his seats. After four hours of trying, he gave up trying to buy the tickets online.
'It was absolutely frustrating and a disgrace,' he slammed.
'I like Singapore for its efficiency but this incident is unacceptable. I am trying to spend money but I can't, due to a computer problem. If Singapore GP cannot sell it online, then they shouldn't have offered the tickets on the Internet.'
Similarly, Mr Lim Yong Soon had unsuccessfully tried to get the tickets online.
The businessman also tried buying them at the SingPost outlet at Bukit Timah but was told that the website had crashed. After five hours of trying, Lim gave up.
He said: 'It's very frustrating to keep trying for hours without results.'
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Has anyone tried buying tickets to the F1 today? It appears that the people responsible for the site have not taken into the account the expected load of people wanting to buy tickets online.. what a joke.. no wonder people end up resorting to the good old fashioned queue.. I find it a total disgrace; imagine you're a tourist trying to buy the tickets online and you spend most of your time just trying to access a webpage.. what type of picture is this painting of Singapore?
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