Wel, while everyone is ranting at AW I’ll chime in as well. For me there is only one gripe against AW and that is its price! I’m sorry to say this, but I am considering to stop buying it. At 9 euros a month (and rising every other month) it is just not worth it anymore. At current exchange rates I am paying 6,14 pounds! It won’t be long before it is cheaper to fly Ryanair roundtrip to STN and buy my copy there!

They keep calling it a British owned company, but I was fairly sure it was sold several years ago to a German giant like VW or BMW. Was it sold back? The Germans brought the Mini back after the sale. What is going on??

BMW bought MG Rover group in 1994 from British Aerospace and Honda. They paid 800 million pound, taking over 900 million pound debt.

BMW was not having any luck at all with Rover. They sold it to British investment group Phoenix in May 2000. Not the entire lot was sold to them though. Land Rover was sold to Ford (hence the catchline “The best four by four by Ford”). BMW was wise enough to keep the Mini, since it was and still is selling quite nicely.

October 28th 2004 Rover released their financial results for the year 2003. They made a loss of 77 million pounds. After that everything went fast. They started studying a joint venture with SAIC. A car company owned by the Chinese government. Those talks stalled a few days ago. Now Rover had little money left and without the prospect of a shiny ninja on a white horse they had no option but to pull the plug.

Hi all

It is true, G-VFAB is due to emerge on the 15th in a special 21st Birthday colour scheme featuring a giant Varga girl on the rear fuselage.

Cheers
Nick

Have had an email that the plane has left the hangar, but is still at AMS. Since AMS is littered with photogs with airside access it is safe to assume that the first photos will be online soon. Have not seen it myself, weather permitting I’ll visit AMS tomorrow and hopefully catch her.

I like it!

I fully agree with the above mentioned opinions.

Sandy should be back. In fact, I’d go so far as to say he should not have been banned at all. I don’t know what went before this, other then the posts I read here (and I do not pretend to have read them all). I can’t say I have been offended greatly by his posts. Perhaps I just have a thick skin.

Don’t get me wrong. This is not critisism towards the mods. Moderating a forum is hard enough as it is. I can perfectly understand the mods banning someone they regularly get complaints about. It’s just that I am finding it difficult understanding what these complaints where about.

Sandy himself seems to be convinced that someone has been trying to bully him out of the forum from the get go. Maybe he has a point, maybe he is playing the victim I won’t comment on that since I do not know which user(s) made the complaints. Perhaps something for the mods to look into? Sandy did mention one name specifically. I won’t mention it here, but if the mods want to know drop me a line.

Apparently G-VFAB is at AMS receiving the new livery?

Assuming it is indeed at AMS, could you give me a rough ETD? Hopefully saturday late in the morning!

I don’t understand that either. Just a few weeks ago when everything was launched he had his own website which looked quite professional too. Having a Geocities website does, at least, not look professional and might deter customers thinking that Alpha1 is merely a virtual airline.

Hopefully Martin will pull it through.