Video of Lufthansa Plane Narrowly Avoids Disaster

Kudos to the cockpit crew for working against strong head winds, and landing everyone safely.Video is of an Airbus-320 trying to land in Hamburg Germany last Saturday. The actual touchdown shows one of the winds nearly making contact with the runway.

Vegas casino burns, but not part of a show

A large fire broke out yesterday at the top of the Monte Carlo Resort & Casino on the Las Vegas Strip. Flames and thick black smoke were rising from the roof of the 3,000-room hotel, according to television newscasts. The hotel was evacuated and no injuries had been reported in the three-alarm blaze, which broke out shortly before 11 a.m. Television pictures showed firefighters on the roof of the 32-story hotel and casino shooting streams of water into the building as the flames spread across two wings.

Meanwhile, Anton Nikodemus (Pres and COO of Monte Carlo) stated on the casino website, “Starting today, Monte Carlo employees will receive pay, health and welfare benefits and toke and tip replacement for the lesser of 30 days or the re-opening of Monte Carlo. These payments will be offset if during that 30-day period a Monte Carlo employee accepts another position at another MGM MIRAGE property or company or accepts employment outside MGM MIRAGE. Also, if a Monte Carlo employee accepts a position with a non-MGM MIRAGE company and is subjected to a waiting period before receiving health benefits, then MGM MIRAGE will continue to provide the employee’s health benefits for the lesser of 30 days or the re-opening of Monte Carlo.”

When it was built, the massive Monte Carlo was the world’s seventh-largest hotel. It’s now considerably overshadowed by its high-profile, more theme-intensive brethren. The property recently received AAA’s Four Diamond rating and had nearly 3,000 employees.

United plane backs into another @ SFO, no injuries

From SFGate: A United Airlines Boeing 757 jet that was backing out of a gate at San Francisco International Airport crashed into a SkyWest plane carrying 60 passengers and crew Sunday night in what airport officials called a serious accident. Read More

NASA: ‘You don’t want to know what we know about flying safely’

Anxious to avoid upsetting air travelers, NASA is withholding results from an unprecedented national survey of pilots that found safety problems like near collisions and runway interference occur far more frequently than the government previously recognized.

A senior NASA official, associate administrator Thomas S. Luedtke, said revealing the findings could damage the public’s confidence in airlines and affect airline profits.

Among other results, the pilots reported at least twice as many bird strikes, near mid-air collisions and runway incursions as other government monitoring systems show, according to a person familiar with the results who was not authorized to discuss them publicly. CBS NEWS

China Airlines plane bursts into flames, 2 injured

A possible leaky fuel line is the blame for a China Airlines flight which burst into a wall of flames shortly after landing in Okinawa airport Sunday. Amazingly all 165 passengers and flight crew escaped before the plane was engulfed in fire. Details from USA Today.

Here is a Video of firefighters working to extinguish the inferno.