Model Airplanes

In June 2013, Myanma Airways Flight 309 veered off a runway in Kawthaung, Myanmar, with 60 passengers aboard and hit a wall. Myanmar’s investigation concluded the brakes and steering failed after a hydraulic-pressure drop.

Myanmar that year banned the plane, a Chinese-made Modern Ark 60 turboprop, from its airspace. Flight 309’s hulk still sits by the runway.

The day of that incident, another MA60 crash-landed in Kupang,…

Article source: http://www.wsj.com/articles/a-tarnished-turboprop-clouds-chinas-aviation-dream-1458506181

PepsiCo Inc. awarded Chief Executive Officer Indra Nooyi a $26.4 million pay package for 2015, an 18 percent increase, after she helped offset the effect of a stronger dollar by cutting more than $1 billion in costs.

Nooyi’s received $13.9 million in cash bonuses and a stock award valued at $6.25 million that will vest depending on how PepsiCo’s stock performs relative to its peers over the next three years, according to a proxy statement filed Friday. The pay also included $1.64 million in salary and a $4.26 million adjustment to the value of her pension and deferred pay.

Nooyi coped with slowing growth at PepsiCo last year by trimming expenses, raising prices and rolling out new products. North American demand helped fuel growth at its Frito-Lay snack division as the stronger U.S. dollar eroded sales overseas. The Purchase, New York-based company’s shares gained 5.7 percent last year, outpacing rival Coca-Cola Co. and the Standard Poor’s 500 Index.

Chief Financial Officer Hugh Johnston received the second-biggest pay package last year, valued at $8.56 million. About half of that came from cash bonuses.

Article source: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-03-18/pepsico-ceo-nooyi-s-pay-package-increases-18-to-26-4-million

The European Union and Turkey set aside growing tensions by reaching an agreement to control the flow of refugees through the Aegean Sea, in a large-scale people-moving operation that was immediately denounced as impractical and legally suspect.

Syrian refugees who make it to Greece will be sent back to Turkey and others will be shipped from Turkish camps to Europe under a deal that risks being overwhelmed by the sheer volume of humanity on the run.

Greece’s struggle to process asylum applications and the threat that human traffickers will find other weak points in Europe’s porous borders also loomed as major obstacles to making the deal work. Failure to contain the flow will test the sustainability of the EU’s passport-free travel area and will put further pressure on member states already being assailed by a wave of populist sentiment stoked by anti-immigration political parties.

“I have no illusions that further setbacks will still go with what we’ve decided today,” German Chancellor Angela Merkel told reporters Friday after the EU-Turkey summit in Brussels. “There are enormous logistical challenges that we have to tackle. But I believe that we’ve come to an accord that entails an element of irreversibility.”

The EU said it would roll out the welcome mat for an initial 72,000 Syrians, a quota that at the current pace would be exhausted by late May. Both sides set Sunday as the

Article source: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-03-18/eu-strikes-refugee-control-accord-with-turkey-as-arrivals-soar

Countries should step up border checks following the capture in Belgium of suspected Paris attacker Salah Abdeslam, Interpol said Saturday.

The arrest “may encourage any accomplices to attempt to flee Europe, or elsewhere,” the Lyon, France-based world police organization said in a statement. It urged member countries to cross-check the documents of people crossing borders against a database of those that have been lost and stolen.

Interpol said the database has details of about 250,000 stolen and lost Syrian and Iraqi passports, most of which were blank when they were reported missing. Among these was a Syrian passport found at the scene of one of the assaults in Paris on Nov. 13.

“Anyone linked to Abdeslam will be concerned that their location could be revealed and attempt to run to try and avoid detection,” Interpol Secretary General Jürgen Stock said in the statement.

Abdeslam, 26, and an accomplice were detained during a police raid in the Molenbeek district of Brussels Friday, the scene of earlier police raids in the aftermath of the November assaults in the French capital that left 130 dead.

Article source: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-03-19/interpol-advises-more-border-vigilance-after-abdeslam-arrest

Last month, the United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit upheld the Bankruptcy Court and United States District Court for the Middle District of Florida determination that the authorized swapping of parts among aircraft to maximize efficiency “did not and could not commingle the participants’ ownership interests.” In re Avantair Inc., No. 15-10303, slip op. (Eleventh Circuit, February 3, 2016). The ruling helps to clarify uncertainties regarding the legal status of fractional ownership arrangements.

Brief Overview

Avantair, Inc. ran a fractional-owner aircraft operation of approximately 40 Piaggio twin engine turboprop airplanes under Part 91 of the Federal Aviation Regulations, 14 C.F.R. §§ 91.1001 – 91.1443 (FAA fractional ownership regulations). Avantair was one of many operators of aircraft in the United States using a fractional-owner business model.

To participate in Avantair’s program, fractional-share participants purchased shares of at least one sixteenth multiples in specific aircraft via an aircraft interest purchase agreement (AIPA). Then, through a management and dry lease agreement (MDLA), each of the fractional-share participants leased their fractional ownership interests in the aircraft to Avantair. In return, Avantair was responsible for scheduling flights at the owners’ request and maintaining the planes in airworthy condition. Pursuant to FAA fractional ownership regulations, the rights of the fractional share participants in aircraft are expressly limited.

Subsequently, Avantair began experiencing financial troubles. To keep as many aircraft as possible in operation, Avantair cannibalized certain planes in the fleet by removing parts from those aircraft to keep other aircraft operating without repairing or replacing the removed parts.

Article source: https://www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=fa8f4501-d611-438b-82d9-88a09a6e6ba0

A rising tide of right-wing nationalist governments, from Russia to Istanbul, has moved to quiet, or silence, opposing voices. 

Growing anger at the political establishment, fueled by fears of Muslim immigrants and wild conspiracy theories bring a nationalist to power. That scenario may sound like the game plan for Donald Trump’s presidential campaign, but it also describes the political landscape in parts of Europe, where Trump-style rhetoric, once taboo, has become increasingly common and views once consigned to the political fringe are suddenly mainstream.

Germany, France, Netherlands, Denmark and the U.K. have all seen the rise of anti-establishment right-wingers. But it’s in Eastern Europe that this new nationalist populism has been most successful. More than a quarter of a century after the fall of the Iron Curtain, a series of ultra-conservative regimes from Russia to Poland and Hungary to Turkey, have begun to put put their policies into action, resulting in what observers fear is a crackdown on media freedoms.

In Russia and Turkey, where conservative, nationalist leaders Vladimir Putin and Recep Tayyip Erdogan have been in power for more than a decade, the crackdown is taking on increasingly dramatic forms. On March 4, Turkish police firing tear gas, water cannons and rubber bullets, stormed the headquarters of Zaman, one of Turkey’s leading opposition newspapers, turning the paper’s operation over to a panel of court-appointed trustees.

It was only the latest in a series of court-backed attacks on journalists and

Article source: http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/eastern-europe-turkey-media-crackdown-876105