Tag Archives: Qantas

Rayman Origins lands in the UK

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Michel Ancel, who has previously designed Rayman and Beyond Good & Evil, has also worked on the creation of Rayman Origins, a game which has just reached the shores of UK

Ubisoft has announced the release of the game, Rayman Origins, in the UK on the Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 and Wii.
Rayman Origins features incredible graphics matching the level of detail and quality of the biggest animated movies, gameplay both accessible and challenging and an original soundtrack.
It’s an interactive game, created by Michel Ancel, with all characters and environments designed by professional artists. The game features a detailed and vibrant universe, six different worlds and more than 60 levels, where each element is meant to feel organic.
The game is a single-player, as well as playable with up to four players, where gamers can play Rayman, Globox or one of two Teensies.
Gamers are also challenged to find all secret areas and access the bonus “Land of the Dead” world.
A free demo of the game is also available for download on the Xbox Live Arcade and the PlayStation Network.
What games have you been playing lately? Let us know via the comments box or through Twitter and Facebook.

Source:http://www.t3.com/news/rayman-origins-lands-in-the-uk

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Quantas flights take off again

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Australian airline Qantas has resumed flights, with the first London departure cleared for take-off from Heathrow.

As many as 2,921 passengers at Heathrow have been affected by the decision of Airbus to ground all its planes on Saturday in an industrial row.

Worldwide, as many as 70,000 passengers have been hit by the company’s decision.

After intervention by the Australian government, Qantas resumed flights on Monday morning, with the first service to operate being a flight from Sydney to Jakarta in Indonesia.

Qantas said all its domestic services were expected to run normally, with international services expected to be back to normal by late on Tuesday.

Qantas said: “Domestic and international services have resumed. We are deeply sorry for the inconvenience and stress our customers have faced over the past days and months. Industrial action is now over, you can again book Qantas flights with confidence.”

The Qantas planes have taken to the skies again after the Australian government ordered an arbitration hearing.

In a victory for the airline, Fair Work Australia issued an emergency ruling, ordering the unions to return to the negotiating table and come to an agreement within 21 days or face binding arbitration.

In the last few weeks, workers have staged strikes and refused overtime work over concerns that some of the airline’s 35,000 jobs would be moved overseas. The strikes have cost the airline 15 million Australian dollars (£10 million) a week.

Source: http://www.google.com/hostednews/ukpress/article/ALeqM5i5GKO3oLChkLUnC7g9OV2KULUkgA?docId=N0363071320035633220A

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Qantas grounds its entire worldwide fleet

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A Qantas 767 passenger jet flies over Sydney Airport
A Qantas 767 passenger jet flies over Sydney Airport. The Australian airline has grounded its entire worldwide fleet, effective immediately. Photograph: Mark Baker/AP

The Australian airline, Qantas, has grounded its entire fleet because of ongoing industrial action.

Domestic and international flights stopped flying as of 5pm Sydney time (7am GMT).

Qantas CEO, Alan Joyce said the union’s demands were unreasonable and he was left with no other option.

“This course of action has been forced on us because of the damage done by three unions,” he said.

“I want to say how sorry I am that this course of action has become necessary.”

Grounding the fleet will cost Qantas $A20m a day.

Qantas has been in dispute with three unions over pay and conditions. The unions, representing engineers, ground, baggage and catering staff and long haul pilots have been holding industrial action, including rolling strikes over the past few weeks.

On Friday 10,000 Qantas customers were affected by the dispute.

It’s costing the airline $A15m a week. Flights on the airline’s most lucrative sector along Australia’s east coast are down 25% on the same time last year.

As of 8pm on Monday night local Sydney time, all the workers covered by the unions involved will be locked out for “as long as it takes” said Joyce.

“They (the unions) will have to decide how badly they want to damage Qantas”, said Joyce.

Flights in the air at the time of the announcement will continue to their destinations but no further flights will take off.

Joyce said Qantas would assist stranded passengers with accommodation and try to get them onto other airlines to finish their journeys.

Tom Ballantyne, chief correspondent at Orient Aviation magazine, said grounding the fleet would have an “incredible economic impact”.

“It’s not just the fact that Qantas has been grounded – this will hit tourism, trade and business,” he said.

“The ramifications are quite incredible and the government can’t stand by and allow this to happen.”

Within an hour of the Qantas CEO’s announcement, the government applied for an emergency meeting at Fair Work Australia to try to resolve the dispute.

Qantas is the world’s second oldest airline and was founded in outback Queensland in 1920. Domestically in Australia it operates around 5,500 flights a week, including its subsidiaries. Internationally Qantas and Jetstar operate around 1000 flights each week.

Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2011/oct/29/qantas-grounds-fleet-industrial-action?newsfeed=true

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