* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * 2008 Toronto International Goan Convention Theme: Goan Identity And Networking Today. http://2008goanconvention.com/index.php
Mario Miranda Festival, July 24-26, 2008 Old GMC Building http://lists.goanet.org/pipermail/goanet-goanet.org/2008-July/077732.html * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * Asian carriers' wings clipped July 26, 2008 Budget airlines are taking off across Asia, but their future is under a cloud from soaring crude prices. http://business.smh.com.au/business/asian-carriers-wings-clipped-20080725-3l 0y.html?page=fullpage#contentSwap3 <The most successful of these, Malaysia's Air Asia, is as faithful a facsimile of Richard Branson's Virgin as are the bodgy Rolexes and DVDs of Asia's lawless bazaars. Indeed, Air Asia's youthful Eurasian chief executive, Tony Fernandes, seems to have closely followed Branson, right down to his airline's fire-engine red livery and uniforms, funky PR "attitude" and even a monolithic flag-carrying state carrier as primary competitor. Fernandes was even a record industry executive in a former life at - you guessed it - Virgin. Also a self-promoter like Branson, Fernandes launched Air Asia just two months after the attacks of September 11, 2001, when few wanted to fly. Seven years and myriad 1 ringgit (32c) fare offers later, it's grown to be about three-quarters the size of state-owned Malaysia Airlines System and is much more fun to fly. Air Asia is expected to best Kuala Lumpur's lumbering MAS by 2010 in every industry measure; destinations served, profit and size of fleet. The best thing going for Air Asia is what it is not, a tool of government. Malaysian leaders liked to carry MAS in their diplomatic goodie bag, handing out routes willy-nilly for the photo opportunity when visiting fellow potentates in, say, Tunisia. MAS bosses were left with profitless schedules while Fernandes's fleet scoots off to places Malaysians actually want to visit. But in no country in Asia has the low-cost carrier expansion boomed louder than in India, which, with miserable infrastructure, was about the worse place it could have happened. As India deregulated its "licence raj" corporate sector, about a dozen new airlines have launched there in recent years. That's been great for Indians, who once regarded air travel as a maharajah's pleasure. But it has woefully overburdened airports that were already bedlam even when there were just three: the state-owned domestic carrier Indian Airlines, now merged with its big international sister, Air India; the first of the upstarts, Jet Airways; and bizarrely, the carrier that actually sprung from aviation roots, Air Deccan, which was regarded by Indians as the worst of the lot - maybe one reason why it was cheapest. Thankfully, Deccan was recently put out of its misery by India's United Breweries, better known to curry lovers as the brewer of Kingfisher beer.....India's crowded skies aren't helped by a paranoid military. It insists planes must not fly over "strategic sites" - which it deems to be just about everywhere Pakistan might be peeking, which is just about everywhere. So Indian carriers fly very narrow air corridors, where they occasionally go close to bumping into each other. I desperately hope it does not happen, but **Indian aviation might be an accident poised to happen**> Here in Goa we (should) know about Tony Fernandes -- and the military. But for some reason there is a mental block about aviation, low cost or otherwise! --------------------------------------------------------------------------- **** http://www.GOANET.org **** --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Tri Continental Film Festival 2008 July 25 - 30, 2008 Goa, India http://www.moviesgoa.org/page/tri_continental/ http://www.moviesgoa.org/tricon/schedule_2008.pdf ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
