Ben Sandilands
Editor of Plane Talking @PlaneTalking
Ben Sandilands has reported and analysed the mechanical mobility of humanity since late 1960 - the end of the age of great scheduled ocean liners and coastal steamers and the start of the jet age. He’s worked in newspapers, radio and TV in a wide range of roles as a journalist at home and abroad for 56 years, the last 18 freelance.
The analysis and commentary that preceded the Japan Airlines bankruptcy filing yesterday was conducted almost entirely in the words and terminology of failed airline business models, writes Ben Sandilands.
Yet another Sydney transport infrastructure project -- $5.3 billion underground CBD Metro -- is about to be snuffed. It seems one of the few growth industries in Sydney is proposing and cancelling public transport projects.
Qantas is engaged in a heated discount fare battle with... itself, with its own low-cost carrier Jetstar undercutting it on Melbourne to Bangkok flights, says Ben Sandilands.
The career-driven, social agenda-driven scaremongering frenzy of the IPCC over global warming is totally unnecessary when glaciers already tell the tale.
Amsterdam’s Schiphol airport has started the soft-sell approach to voluntary body scanners, with a brochure featuring smiling attendants, happy families, and a distinct lack of crowds or tightly packed queues, reports Ben Sandilands.
Qantas is still trying to play the low-key, meek and mild cards in what is turning into a tense battle of wills over the future of its 27% stake in Jetstar Pacific domestic airline in Vietnam.
How much clearer does the message from Hanoi to Qantas need to be? They've told them they can’t be Jetstar Pacific anymore, they are responsible for losing tens of millions of dollars, and they’re unsafe, writes Ben Sandilands.
It is a dismal reflection on the media when an imprecisely defined package of benefits to the fiscal basket case that is Japan Airlines is headlined as a $US 2 billion rescue package with a significant Qantas contribution, writes Ben Sandilands.
An interim report into the escape of six people aboard a flooded Pel-Air jet in the sea off Norfolk Island in November last year hangs air safety regulator CASA out to dry.
Here I am, worried about being scooped by spotters who have apparently sprung a V Australia 777-200LR under assembly in Everett when my email sends me a set of pix under the heading, the true 789, explains Ben Sanilands.
