SPAIN: Ryanair Passengers Bag Robbed Of Item By Baggage Handler

At an airport in Ibiza a baggage handler was nabbed on camera by a Ryanair passenger ploughing through bags after they had boarded, and stealing an item from a suitcase.

The Ryanair passenger was travelling from Ibiza to Madrid when he spotted the incident.

Footage captured the man opening a case on the luggage trolley that was waiting to be put on the flight.

He was then spotted taking a red speaker out and putting it in his pocket.

The person filming alerted a member of the cabin crew who contacted the police.

The baggage handler was then ordered to return the item to the rightful owner.

He is currently being investigated, having only worked for the airport for three days.

He was not a Ryanair employee.

It is thought that he is no longer working for the airport.

The luggage that was opened was thought to have belonged to a young boy who was travelling on the flight after visiting his brother who lives in Ibiza.

His mother said afer the return of the item: I was very grateful because I had bought it for my son’s birthday and it cost about 140 euros.

The flight then left two and a half hours later following the delay.

It isn’t the first time baggage handlers have been caught on camera treating luggage in a less than careful manner.

A passenger captured one worker at Manchester Airport throwing bags onto the baggage carousel carelessly.

A similar incident caught a woman working at Honolulu Airport in Hawaii hurling bags from the plane to a chute without much care.

Many were spotted bouncing off the chute and almost falling to the ground.

Both incidents were investigated at the time, according to the airports.

In Japan, however, baggage handlers have been spotted treating bags very differently at the airport.

A Japanese baggage handler was filmed carefully organising and cleaning suitcases as they were moved on a conveyor belt.

The young woman wearing gloves and wielding a cloth even polished some of them as they left the plane dirty.

Another man was caught on camera carefully placing suitcases on a truck when removing them from a plane.


Tourism Observer

USA: Delta Air Lines Domestic Planes Stop Due To A Systems Outage

Delta Air Lines domestic planes were taking to the skies again early Monday but a nationwide ground stop due to a systems outage caused departure delays and at least 150 cancellations overnight, the airline said.

Delta's website and mobile app as well as airport information screens and computers at the airline's reservation desks were still down as of midnight ET, barring travelers from obtaining information about their flight statuses.

Delta's website was down early Monday after a systems outage forced the airline to ground its domestic fleet, causing delays and at least 150 flight cancellations.

"I want to apologize to all of our customers who have been impacted by this frustrating situation," Delta CEO Ed Bastian said in a statement. "This type of disruption is not acceptable to the Delta family who prides itself on reliability and customer service.

"I also want to thank our employees who are working tirelessly to accommodate our customers," he added.

More cancellations were expected because of the outage, the airline said in a statement, especially at Delta hub airports like Atlanta, Memphis and Minneapolis-St. Paul.

Delta said in the statement that it would not fly unaccompanied minors through noon ET on Monday.

International flights and flights in the air Sunday night were not affected by the stoppage, the airline said in a statement at 8 p.m. ET.

Jeremy Webb said his flight from Los Angeles International Airport to Maui, Hawaii, was held on the tarmac for an hour and a half.

Hyatt launches new brand-The Unbound Collection by Hyatt

Hyatt Hotels Corporation announced the launch of The Unbound Collection by Hyatt, a global collection of unique and independent stay experiences. The Unbound Collection by Hyatt will include a portfolio of new and existing upper-upscale and luxury properties that will maintain a distinct character while providing guests and owners Hyatt’s award-winning customer loyalty program, robust operational and marketing resources and trusted, quality brand.

The properties within The Unbound Collection by Hyatt – which will include historic urban gems, contemporary trend-setters, boutique hotels, resorts, and more – will have their own individual brand identities, free from constraint or convention. At the same time, the brand will provide guests the freedom from worry by giving them the high-quality that comes with the Hyatt brand.

“The Unbound Collection by Hyatt provides us with a myriad of opportunities to grow, not only in new markets, but also in places we know our guests want to go. The collection of properties will allow us to reach the modern traveler who seeks one-of-a-kind experiences, but also wants the reassurance and loyalty program that comes with our brand,” said Mark Hoplamazian, President and CEO of Hyatt Hotels Corporation. “What really excites us about The Unbound Collection by Hyatt is that this portfolio provides rich social currency through story-worthy, shareable experiences that guests will take with them long after their stay.”

The Unbound Collection by Hyatt launches with properties around the world, including The Driskill Hotel in Austin, Texas; the Hôtel du Louvre in Paris, France; the Carmelo Resort & Spa in Carmelo, Uruguay; and the Coco Palms Resort in Kauai, Hawaii, which is expected to undergo a revitalisation and re-open in spring 2018. Future hotels in The Unbound Collection by Hyatt will be equally story-worthy, whether it be through a fascinating past, an exclusive location, famous architecture and design, or an award-winning dining experience.

Star-gazing Tourists Flock To Africa's Darkest Place

NOT many tourist spots boast of being dark and difficult to get to, but the Namib desert is one of a number of remote "Dark Sky Reserves" drawing in stargazers for a celestial safari.

In the cool night air, an urbane Austrian tourist climbs rocky steps behind a chic hotel lodge and peers into a matt-black metal cylinder containing a spine of mirrors and lenses that reveal the universe.

"My mum wanted to set him on fire yesterday when he said, 'We are looking ten million years in the past!'" he joked, pointing at the resident astronomer.

Not everyone is ready to face the enormity of the universe laid out so starkly by powerful magnification and the crisp desert sky.

But across the starkly beautiful Namib, hotels and lodges are betting that the stars will lead to more business rather than a spike in Galileo-esque witch hunts.

Many lodges have bought research-grade or "prosumer" telescopes and hired live-in astronomers as they try to lure tourists who want to gaze deeper into space and time.

According to consultancy Euromonitor, astro-tourism holidays are growing in line with increased urbanisation, with Africa in particular "taking off".

"Most people come here for the other activities, visiting the dunes or the nature reserve where you see all the wildlife. This is kind of a bonus," said Misha Vickas, formerly a guide at a public observatory in Sydney, but now resident at the AndBeyond Sossusvlei Desert Lodge.

"Most people have never looked through a telescope and a lot of them have just never looked up."

Vickas operates a "go-to" telescope, a device which, once calibrated, pivots on demand to any star or planet with little more than a mechanical hum and whir.

Not that a telescope is really needed in the Namib.

Across as much as 50% of the Earth the starry firmament is obscured by an orange glow of man-made light pollution.

During the day, the Namib's sea of copper red and ecru yellow dunes and mountains glow blindingly, befitting the world's oldest desert.

But in the inky night sky, the Milky Way seems much closer than Windhoek, a half day's drive away across dirt track and sun-rippled single-lane carriageway.

Mars's red glow, Magellanic clouds -- dwarf galaxies outside our own -- and assorted gaseous nebulae are all visible with the naked eye.

"The sky is particularly good to look at here, because the Milky Way, which is the main part of our galaxy, is usually very high overhead," meaning light refraction is at a minimum, Vickas said.

"There is a lot to look at."


Darkest places on earth

In 2012, a sliver of the central Namib the size of Mauritius -- the NamibRand -- was named Africa's first "Dark Sky Reserve," in recognition of the sky's special allure here.

A handful of similar sites exist across the world, including Aoraki Mackenzie on New Zealand's South Island and the Iveragh Peninsula on Ireland's southwest coast.

Hawaii and Chile have also become renowned as astro-tourism hot spots.

"The darkest places are almost inevitably distant from populated places," said John Barentine of the Arizona-based International Dark-Sky Association, which awards the designation.

"The glow of cities can often be seen several hundred kilometres away under good conditions."

To rank sky quality, scientists use measurements like the Bortle scale.

An inner city is level nine, meaning you can see very little. Bright constellations like Orion may be faint or even invisible.

At the other end of the scale, in a first-class sky like the Namib, Venus and Jupiter shine bright, a white swathe of zodiacal light smears the sky.

Like parts of Chile, the Namib's good weather and ultra-dry atmosphere make for clear nights and particularly transparent air all the way to the horizon.

"A visitor to NamibRand has a statistically high probability of experiencing that exceptionally dark sky on any given night," Barentine said.

Namibia has just over two million people spread over an area roughly the size of Pakistan or Nigeria, making it one of the most sparsely populated countries in the world.

"NamibRand is located in one of the darkest accessible places that remain on Earth," said Barentine.

"It is as close as you get to the way the world was long ago, before the invention and proliferation of artificial lights."

That may be the only thing this remote region is close to -- thankfully for stargazing tourists.

USA: American Airlines Says It Flew Wrong Plane To Hawaii

Federal safety officials are looking into a flight that American Airlines operated to Hawaii using a plane that lacked all the emergency equipment required for long over-water trips.

Federal Aviation Administration rules require such planes to carry extra oxygen for medical emergencies and an extra canister of fire extinguisher. That's because the planes fly far from airports where they could make an emergency landing. An American Airlines flight from Los Angeles was on its way to Honolulu on Aug. 31 when an employee on the ground realized that the airline had sent the wrong plane, spokesman Casey Norton said Monday.

He said the airline completed the flight but canceled the return trip, which would have used the same jet, and flew the plane flew back to Los Angeles without passengers. Norton said American notified the FAA of the mistake and changed its software to make it easier for workers to match the correct plane with the route.

An FAA spokesman said the agency was investigating. The mistake occurred about two weeks after American switched from Boeing 757s to Airbus A321s on the Hawaii route. Some of its A321s are certified for over-ocean flights but some are not. Norton said both types of A321 have the same engines and the same number of life rafts and flotation devices.

PHILIPPINES: Turbulence On Hawaii-Philippines Flight

Philippine Airlines says 15 passengers sustained minor injuries during turbulence on a flight from Hawaii to Manila. Medical and airline personnel helped them after the plane landed safely at Manila's airport.

The airline said in a statement that Flight PR101 carrying 132 passengers left Honolulu at 12:06 p.m. Friday and the Airbus 340 experienced clear air turbulence en route. Such turbulence is not associated with clouds and cannot be detected visually or by conventional weather radar.

A DZBB radio reporter tweeted pictures of passengers in wheelchairs. One of them, identified as Abuena Castillo, held an ice pack on her head. She was quoted as saying that the plane suddenly fell and rose, throwing her off her seat.