All passengers safe as Lion Air plane overshoots runway in Bali

April 13, 2013

Bali, Apr 13: A passenger jet operated by budget airline Lion Air — which recently sealed blockbuster orders for new planes — missed the runway at Bali airport Saturday and landed in the sea but everybody on board survived.

The Boeing jet carrying more than 100 passengers missed the runway as it came in to land in good weather conditions at Denpasar airport on the Indonesian resort island, transport ministry official Herry Bhakti said.

bali

Bhakti initially said the plane overshot the runway, but later clarified his comments to say that it landed straight in the water.

Images of the incident site showed the plane partially submerged in the water with inflatable slides deployed from the front exits and a large crack in the fuselage towards the rear of the aircraft. Passengers in life jackets could be seen in the water.

“The plane was about to land when suddenly it fell into the sea. People on board panicked and began screaming,” a passenger named Dewi, who like many Indonesians goes by one name, told AFP, her voice still shaking.

She received light head injuries and was taken to Denpasar hospital where an AFP correspondent saw another nine people receiving treatment.

A Lion Air spokesman said the 737-800 was carrying 101 passengers and seven crew members. The passengers included 95 adults, five children, and one baby. Bhakti initially said it had been carrying more than 130 passengers.

He said the aircraft started operating in 2012 and was new.

The national transportation safety committee “will investigate the cause of the incident”, he said.

It was not immediately clear how many people were injured in the incident or what the nationalities of the passengers were.

Lion Air, a little-known carrier launched 13 years ago with just one plane, has in recent times struck two of the world's largest aircraft orders in a staggering $46 billion bet on Indonesia's air transport boom.

France announced last month that Indonesia's fastest-growing airline had agreed to buy 234 medium-haul A320 jets worth $23.8 billion (18.4 billion euros) from European aerospace giant Airbus.

It came after Lion Air astounded the industry with a $22.4 billion deal for 230 Boeing 737 airliners, inked in 2011 as a visiting US President Barack Obama looked on.

Bali is a hugely popular holiday destination, welcoming millions of foreign tourists from around the world every year.

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News Network
May 6,2020

May 6: In a first, a Pakistani Hindu youth has become the first person from the minority community to join the Pakistan Air Force.

Rahul Dev has been recruited as a General Duty Pilot Officer, the Pakistan Air Force (PAF) said in a tweet.

Dev hails from Tharparkar district of Sindh province.

Sharing the picture of the young man, the PAF recently tweeted, "Good news during #COVID19 tense situation. Thar rocked again...Congratulations #RahulDev who hails from very remote village of Tharparkar has been selected as GD Pilot in #PAF."

Though Dev's exact age is not known, those inducted in PAF at his level are often around 20.

The official Radio Pakistan on Wednesday said it is "for the first time in Pakistan's history" that a Hindu youth has been recruited as a general duty pilot officer in PAF.

The Express Tribune in a report published on Wednesday said the induction showed that the PAF was breaking barriers.

Last year, Kainat Junaid became the first woman from Khyber-Pakthunkhwa province to have been selected for fighter pilot training.

Junaid not only secured the top position in PAF's test for General Duty Pilot, but also became Pakistan’s first female fighter pilot to serve the country alongside her father.

Her father Ahmed Junaid is a Squadron Leader in the PAF.

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News Network
February 12,2020

Feb 12: China on Wednesday reported another drop in the number of new cases of a viral infection and 97 more deaths, pushing the total dead past 1,100 as postal services worldwide said delivery was being affected by the cancellation of many flights to China.

The National Health Commission said 2,015 new cases had been reported over the last 24 hours, declining for a second day. The total number of cases in mainland China reached 44,653, although many experts say a large number of others infected have gone uncounted.

The additional deaths raised the mainland toll to 1,113. Two people have died elsewhere, one in Hong Kong and one in the Philippines.

In the port city of Tianjin, just southeast of Beijing, a cluster of cases has been traced to a department store in Baodi district. One-third of Tianjin’s 104 confirmed cases are in Baodi, the Xinhua state news agency reported.

A salesperson working in the store’s small home appliance section became the first individual in the cluster to be diagnosed on Jan. 31, Xinhua said. The store was already closed at that point, then disinfected on Feb. 1. Nevertheless, several more diagnoses soon followed.

The next to have their infections confirmed were also salespeople at the store. They had not visited Wuhan recently and, with the exception of one married couple, the patients worked in different sections of the store and did not know one another, according to Xinhua.

Japan’s Health Ministry said that 39 new cases have been confirmed on a cruise ship quarantined at Yokohama, bringing the total to 174 on the Diamond Princess.

The U.S. Postal Service said that it was “experiencing significant difficulties” in dispatching letters, parcels and express mail to China, including Hong Kong and Macau.

Both the U.S. and Singapore Post said in notes to their global counterparts that they are no longer accepting items destined for China, “until sufficient transport capacity becomes available.”

The Chinese mail service, China Post, said it was disinfecting postal offices, processing centers and vehicles to ensure the virus doesn’t spread via the mail and to protect staff.

It said the crisis is also impacting mail that transits China to other destinations including North Korea, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Mongolia, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan and Vietnam.

The World Health Organization has named the disease caused by the virus as COVID-19, avoiding any animal or geographic designation to avoid stigmatization and to show the illness comes from a new coronavirus discovered in 2019.

The illness was first reported in December and connected to a food market in the central Chinese city of Wuhan, where the outbreak has largely been concentrated.

Zhong Nanshan, a leading Chinese epidemiologist, said that while the virus outbreak in China may peak this month, the situation at the center of the crisis remains more challenging.

“We still need more time of hard working in Wuhan,” he said, describing the isolation of infected patients there a priority.

“We have to stop more people from being infected,” he said. “The problem of human-to-human transmission has not yet been resolved.”

Without enough facilities to handle the number of cases, Wuhan has been building prefabricated hospitals and converting a gym and other large spaces to house patients and try to isolate them from others.

China’s official media reported Tuesday that the top health officials in Hubei province, of which Wuhan is the capital, have been relieved of their duties. No reasons were given, although the province’s initial response was deemed slow and ineffective. Speculation that higher-level officials could be sacked has simmered, but doing so could spark political infighting and be a tacit admission of responsibility.

The virus outbreak has become the latest political challenge for the party and its leader, Xi Jinping, who despite accruing more political power than any Chinese leader since Mao Zedong, has struggled to handle crises on multiple fronts. These include a sharply slowing domestic economy, the trade war with the U.S. and pushback on China’s increasingly aggressive foreign policies.

China is struggling to restart its economy after the annual Lunar New Year holiday was extended to try to curb the spread of the virus. About 60 million people are under virtual quarantine and many others are still working at home.

In Hong Kong, the diagnosis of four people living in an apartment building prompted worried comparisons with the deadly SARS pandemic of 17 years ago.

More than 100 people were evacuated from the building after a 62-year-old woman diagnosed with the virus was found living 10 floors directly below a man who was earlier confirmed with the virus.

Health officials called it a precautionary measure and sought to assuage fears of an epidemic, dismissing similarities to the SARS community outbreak at the Amoy Gardens housing estate in 2003.

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News Network
June 25,2020

Jun 25: Tencent Holdings Ltd.'s $40 billion surge this week and the recent ascent of Pinduoduo Inc. have reshuffled the ranking of China's richest people.

The country's largest game developer has surpassed Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. as Asia's most-valuable company, with its shares rising above HK$500 in intraday trading Wednesday for the first time. Pinduoduo, a Groupon-like shopping app also known as PDD, has more than doubled this year.

The rallies have propelled the wealth of their founders, with an added twist: Tencent's Pony Ma, worth $50 billion, has surpassed Jack Ma's $48 billion fortune, becoming China's richest person. And Colin Huang of PDD, whose net worth stands at $43 billion, has squeezed real estate mogul Hui Ka Yan of China Evergrande Group out of the top three earlier this year, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.

The coronavirus pandemic has accelerated the digitization of the workplace and changed consumers' habits, boosting shares of many internet companies. Now tech tycoons are dominating the ranks of China's richest people. They occupy four of the top five spots: Ding Lei of Tencent peer NetEase Inc. follows China Evergrande's Hui.

‘Perform Strongly'

Tencent has come a long way since hitting a low in 2018, when China froze the approval process for new games. Since then, the stock has almost doubled, and last month the tech giant reported a 26 per cent jump in first-quarter revenue.

“Tencent's online games segment will probably perform strongly through the Covid-19 pandemic, and most of its other businesses are relatively unscathed,” said Vey-Sern Ling, a Bloomberg Intelligence analyst.

That has been a boon for Pony Ma, 48, who owns a 7 per cent stake in the company and pocketed about $757 million from selling some 14.6 million of his Tencent shares this year, data complied by Bloomberg show.

The native of China's southern Guangdong province studied computer science at Shenzhen University and was a software developer at a supplier of telecom services and products before co-founding Tencent with four others in the late 1990s. At the time, the company focused on instant-messaging services.

It has been a long comeback for Pony Ma. He overtook real estate tycoon Wang Jianlin as China's second-richest person in 2013 and topped Baidu Inc.'s Robin Li as the wealthiest in early 2014. Later that year, Alibaba went public in the U.S., catapulting Jack Ma's fortune.

Bloomberg Intelligence's Ling notes, however, that Tencent's jump this year has lagged behind some internet peers, especially those in e-commerce, games and online entertainment. Just consider: Tencent shares have climbed 31 per cent in 2020, while PDD's American depositary receipts have more than doubled. Alibaba, meanwhile, has advanced just 6.9 per cent.

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