Got one from work, Europa Worldwide Logistics.

!!! NO I DID NOT NICK IT !!!

I must admit I judged A.net harshly. 😮

They must have lowered standards (a lot) since they accepted some of my pics! 😮

What I find even more surprising is the speed it took them. Uploaded yesterday (after Kenneth adviced to do so) and they are already uploaded! Last time they refused something it took about 2 weeks, and the last thing they accepted took even longer! 😮

They have? Well, I’ll give it another try then. You’ll here 3 weeks from now if I have been succesful! Or have they improved on the queue as well? Last time I tried uploading something (+/- 2 months ago) it took 4 weeks for them to refuse the pic. I appealed and am still waiting for an reaction! I given up hope for that pic… :rolleyes:

I believe that Boeing owned De Havilland for a brief period. At the time it was Hawker-DeHavilland, and Hawker had some nice military contracts.

Boeing being very interested in the military side of HDH they bought the company. They were less interested in the commercial side (For christ sake, it had props! That can’t be good :D) so they sold that part.

Bombardier describes it on their website as follows:
“In March 1992, acquisition of the assets and operations of Ontario-based de Havilland, manufacturer of the Dash 8* turboprop regional aircraft. Acquisition made through a new company, de Havilland Inc., whose equity is shared by Bombardier (51%) and the Province of Ontario (49%). In January 1997, Bombardier completed the purchase of the 49% interest in de Havilland, owned by the Province of Ontario.”

I think that Boeing kind a regrets having sold De Havilland. Their main product at the time may have had props, but the CRJ turned out to be quite a succes!

I’ll try to debunk these claims. The bottom two or three paragraphs summarize it.

First, an unadmitted contempt for democracy.

If it were only people from the Middle East, Africa and Asia “hating” the US I’d agree. Problem is that a lot of Europeans are also perceived as hating the US. Since Europe has an equally comprehensive democracy as the US, this statement can only be false.
What you are writing about France is just plain wrong. In France the emphasis may be more on wise men and less on public opinion. That does not mean the public has no say! Both systems have their advantages and disadvantages. Sometimes the public can not make a good decission. The public does not always have all information on hand. If the public had decided what to do right after September 11, (part of) the Middle East would have been nuked. Now that would not have been a wise thing to do! Hitler became dictator by popular vote.
The wise men are suppposed to have more information on which to base their decissions.

The truth is, on the European Continent there is little experience of working democracy

WTF, have you recently been to Europe? If you are going to include Albania, Bulgaria and Yoegoslavia I’ll believe it. If you are talking about the EU then you’ll find that the democracy works quite nicely, thank you.

An astonishingly high proportion of European elites know very little about U.S. history or

Now there’s the pot calling the kettle black.

After all, the U.S. Constitution (suitably amended) has lasted for more than 200 years.

And a lot of the local European versions have lasted a lot longer then the US constitution. Having a constitution is not something that only the US has. Most countries in Europe have the same, albeit with another name.

because competition is something Continental Europeans like to keep to a minimum and under careful control

That’s not completely true. Europeans indeed try to control more. Generally speaking basic means for living (water, (public) transportation, electricity, medicines, schools etc) are protected more then you will find in the US. This does not mean that they are completely controled, nor that other companies are regulated any stronger then in the US.

Anti-Americanism is factually absurd, contradictory, racist, crude, childish, self-defeating and, at bottom, nonsensical.

To be honest, that was one of the few sentences I could fully agree with! Discrimination of any form is just plain stupid.

May I explain some things?

We Europeans do not hate Americans. In fact I think I can safely say that no country in the world hates Americans. Some individual nutters like Al-Quaida may hate them, but you will find those everywhere. I think that if you look long enough you will also find people that hate Holland, Belgium or the republic of Kyrgystan or any other country.

What we Europeans do dislike and sometimes even hate is the way that CERTAIN Americans can come over as being very arrogant (whether they are arrogant or not). Unfortunaly president Bush strikes us Europeans as being a VERY arrogant person, and as such is not quite liked around here.

Some examples of this arrogancy include the almost constant bragging by SOME American. Unfortunately the LOUD minority. “The US is the best at…. and the best at… and even better at…”. When someone then says that the US is not the best, and brings up an example they are suddenly called “US-bashers”, “Saddam lovers”, “Terrorist supporters” and more of that ilk. I think I do not have to explain why that can be quite frustrating.

Another thing we kind a dislike is that whenever a conversation goes the wrong way we constantly get stuff like “you’re just jealous you did not get your green card” or “If it weren’t for us you’d be German/Russian/Korean etc”. You do not hear the French and Dutch constantly saying that if it weren’t for us you’d be English. Neither do you here the English, French, Dutch, Germans etc saying that if it weren’t for them you’d be living either in Europe or as a native American.

We do not dislike the US at all. Just some people that tend to be the loud persons. At the moment this includes your president, therefore I can understand it seems like you are getting a lot of flak.

Sorry this thread went on quite long.

whats the latest on Rekkof?

Well, their website is still active. Updated as recently as May 6th 2003, so they seem to be still going strong. Last I heard is that they only want to do the F70 production, with the F100 sometime in the far future. Kind a obvious considering the massive demand for the F70 (still the only plane in its class, until the ERJ-170 enters) and the oversupply for F100.

Top quote from Rekkof’s website:
“Rekkof will start production of Fokker 70 JetLiner as soon as the first 80 Fokker 70 JetLiners have been ordered. After this launch criterium Rekkof will be ready for producing Fokker 100’s as well.”

Just how many airframes have been sold is not mentioned anywhere. Pity…

http://www.rekkof.nl/

This is a subject I have no knowledge of. Will there still be a UK operation or will the UK employees be laid off?

Well, nothing really changes here. All that happens is that the whole fleet gets PH- registration and “Cityhopper” titles rather than “UK” titles.

The main reason KLM merged ‘Cityhopper and ‘UK is that it gives flexibilty. The F70 and F100 are now more easily interchangable. Hence the appearance of more F70s in the UK.

For the employee’s not much will change. After all, the pilots and cabin crew that are qualified on the F100 are also qualified for the F70! I do not believe they have to be retrained. If it is required it will be a short retraining, like when a A320 pilot goes for a A319 license.

Actually, office personel may be affected since the ‘Cityhopper offices will effectively take over the ‘UK offices. Not sure though. I am (WAS) only a student who has to much time on hand reading online message boards, so I can not know everything! 😀

OH OOH

Roger S summed it up quite comprehensibly, if you still require the full version, here goes! Please note that certain parts repeat eachother.

———————————————————————————————————-
SN Brussels Airlines (SNBA), the succesor of SABENA, is said to have made a loss of almost 30 million Euro over the first three months of the year. This can be read in the report that the airline made following the capital-increase of March this year. Geert Sciot, spokesman of SNBA, says this number is merely a guess and that the actual loss is lower.

SARS, the Gulf war and the general economic downturn also affected SNBA. Added to that is that the first three months of the year are traditionally a weak period in the aviation industry. “The number of passengers on the European lines and the yield on the African network is lower than predicted.” The result is a accumultad loss of 30 million Euro for the first three months of the year. These are preliminary numbers, the document mentions.

Sciot denies “crystalclear” that the loss is 30 million Euro. “It is lower”, according to the spokes person. Sciot does not want to reveal how much lower the loss is. “We aren’t a listed company, and are therefore not required to reveal quarterly results”.

Profit
In June leakes already revealed that SNBA wants to redure 20 million Euro to meet its aobjectives. The airlines aims to obtain a net profit of 5 million Euro. That remains our goal”, says Sciot.

The losses are mentioned in the report that SNBA had to made following its increase of capital by 80 million Euro in March of this year. Because of the loss of 36,8 million Euro in 2002the money on hand of the airline had decreased to 13,2 million Euro, less than halve the public capital. The law makes it mandatory for stock-holders to declare activities may continue, which is what happened.

It wasn’t exaclty “fresh” (as in new) money that flowed to the airline. SN Air Holding, the company that overshadows the private stockholders, converted an 80 million loan into shares. The cash-position presents no problem for the airline. At the end of 2002 SNBA had 110 million Euro in cash and at the moment there is still more than 100 million Euro, Scoit told.

Source, De Standaard (Belgian newspaper).