London – Bangkok 9R 617 Sun, Thu, Sat Dep 14:00 Arr 07:55 747-200
Bangkok – London 9R 618 Sun, Thu, Sat Dep 01:00 Arr 09:00 747-200

Nice to see AZ back at MAN after so long

Yes Steve, it was India : 12 November 1996; Saudia 747-100; near New Delhi, India: The departing 747 had a midair collision with an inbound Kazakhstan Air Lines Ilyushin 76 cargo jet about seven minutes after the 747 had departed New Delhi. The collision occurred near Charkhi Dadri, about 60 miles (96 km) west of New Delhi. All 23 crew members and 289 passengers on the 747 were killed. The 10 crew members and 27 passengers on the Ilyushin were also killed.

None.

I think expansion at LHR (terminal capacity and one new runway), STN (new runways and terminal capacity) and LGW (terminal capacity and one new runway if planning permission is obtained) would be the best solution. Possibly expansion at Luton may also be on the cards. Building new airports is expensive and doesn’t necessarily solve the problems at the existing ones. Lydd and Manston are over 75 miles from London (in comparison BHX is only about 110 miles away!!) so the likelihood of attracting passengers given the poor transport infrastructure to both airports is questionable. Airlines have been reluctant to move away from LHR, LGW, STN and LTN so I doubt the construction of new airports (e.g. Cliffe) would have a substantial impact. That said, Doncaster/Sheffield Robin Hood Int’l has managed to attract Thomsonfly.com and the airport isn’t even operational yet.

I agree with keeping the original spelling of place names such as Köln, München etc, but it’s not just the english language that is guilty of it, In Dutch, London becomes Londen and Paris becomes Parijs, in Spanish and French, London becomes Londres and Edinburgh becomes Edimburgo in Spanish – where did that ‘m’ come from!!??

It comes from Edimbourg – trust the French :rolleyes: Bit like Hamburgo, Viena, Estocolmo, Varsovia, Moscu…

Even more bizzarely, Birmingham frequently becomes Birminghan in Spanish and New York is Nueva York (not as bad as Nova Iorque in Portuguese though)

And what of Λονδίνο or Μάντσεστερ? – it’s all Greek to me 😀