Australasian airspace totally pwned by Qantas

Good to see that despite their recent Whoops There Goes the Oxygen Tank Emergency Landing into Manila Thriller that the latest Skytrax survey still ranks Qantas as the world’s third best airline.

The good news doesn’t stop there. Qantas was also bestowed with the Best Australasian Airline award which speaks volumes to all those naysayers who claim Qantas is putting profit and executive salaries above all else.

This really is no mean feat. The Pacific islands are universally well known for the size and world class-ness of their airlines. Let’s have a look at some of the illustrious competitors they had to beat to win Best Australasian Airline:

Solomon Airlines
After civil war broke out in 1999, UN imposed sanctions severely damaged Solomon Airlines’ international routes, and at one point, the airline was allowed to operate only one interantional route, from Honiara to Brisbane, once a week.

Polynesian Airlines
From its base in Samoa, Polynesian Airlines previously serviced an extensive network including Auckland, Wellington, Brisbane, Melbourne, Sydney, Rarotonga, Papeete, Honolulu and Los Angeles. It ambitiously replaced its 737 aircraft with much larger, leased 767s – a move which bankrupted the airline.

Royal Tongan Airlines
Royal Tongan closed after the carrier ran out of cash for repairs. This followed a mechanical failure which grounded the last remaining aircraft in May 2004. It had been facing an uncertain future since April, when its only aircraft serving international routes was repossessed.

Air Nauru
In December 2005 the High Court of Australia upheld an earlier decision to allow the bank to seize VH-RON, Air Nauru’s only aircraft, leaving Nauru and the island nation Kiribati without air services. The airline was rebranded as Our Airline and relaunched on 14 October 2006. Its services are kept on a very loose schedule. Their logo has possibly had the least amount of effort put into it than any airline in aviation history:

Rebranding Sydney

Morris Iemma has apparently decided to give up on actually making Sydney a liveable city, and decided to concentrate his efforts on simply rebranding the collection of multi-lane traffic jams and poor planning decisions currently passing for a global city.

Iemma: “The Sydney brand will deliver a consistent message to international audiences that will define Sydney as a leader in business, culture,tourism, events and education.”

A Brand Sydney Project, to be chaired by the head of Events NSW, John O’Neill, will produce a new logo for the city, which is expected to be launched in the middle of next year.

I, for one, am very excited about this, and would like to offer the following brands for the Project’s contemplation:

• “Communism” (it’s working very well for Beijing at the moment)
• “Singapore Airlines”
• “Pringles”
• “Catholic Paradise”; alternatively combine with Star City Casino for “Catholic Pair-o-dise”
• “You’ll Love Coles”

ABBA Revival Revival

Hot on the heels of the celluloid abortion that was the recent Mamma Mia film comes the delightful news that Kylie and Dannii Minogue are teaming up to duet on a cover of ABBA’s “The Winner Takes It All”. Extra points for picking the ABBA song that most sums up their collective careers. Frankly they should retitle the song “The Winner Takes It All… and Dannii gets a TV show”.

Perhaps all the stress of having their fingers firmly on the pulse of five minutes ago as always is getting to them, because they really need to stop whatever sibling rivalry-based botox-off they’ve got going. I mean, honestly:

Kylie’s looking more and more like an overstuffed sausage that’s been scotchguarded from head to toe, and Dannii’s face now has such a high plastic content that that silver halterneck makes her look like a screw top bottle.

Perhaps a more appropriate song choice might have been “SOS”.