Deadly turbulence

Two passengers were killed and 70 were injured of varying severity, including hospitalization, on a Singapore Airlines flight from London to Singapore.

An emergency occurred when a Boeing 777-300ER with 211 passengers and 18 crew members on board flew over the Irrawaddy district in Myanmar at an altitude of 11 thousand meters. The plane got into “sudden extreme turbulence” – that’s how the incident was explained by the airline. According to passengers, the board was first thrown up, then began to shake violently, and then a very sharp decline began. As a result, all passengers who were not wearing seat belts hit their heads on the ceiling and luggage racks.

The airliner was forced to make an emergency landing at Suvarnabhumi Airport in Bangkok. A Bangkok airport spokesman confirmed that medical teams had been put on standby to assist the injured. One passenger died when the plane hit a turbulence zone, according to preliminary data, he had a heart attack. A little later, already in a Thai clinic, another victim died.

In Russia, a court in the Altai Territory sentenced an aviadeboshir to 2, 5 years in a penal colony. The incident itself happened in February 2023 aboard Pobeda Airlines, flying from Moscow to Barnaul. The bully drank a lot and slept through the whole flight. But when the plane began to descend, the man woke up and rushed to the front of the cabin shouting “on fire!” and demanded to open the door to get out. The flight attendants blocked the exit, then the passenger began knocking on the cockpit door. The stewardess, who tried to stop him, was punched in the face by the intruder. The crew and passengers restrained the bully and handed him over to police officers after landing in Barnaul. At the trial, he claimed that he did not remember anything.

In the Sverdlovsk region, they again remembered the sensational story about the cancellation of cheap Aeroflot airline tickets to Phuket, which happened in October 2023. Recall that last fall, the national carrier, due to a technical error, put on sale tickets from Yekaterinburg to Phuket at bargain prices. After seeing the error, Aeroflot cancelled the bookings. Not all passengers liked this behavior of the airline, and they went to the courts. We have already reported on two successful cases for passengers, and now the third one has arrived.

Ekaterina and Alexander filed a lawsuit with the Leninsky District Court of Yekaterinburg, asking the company to recover the difference between cancelled and reissued tickets. It turned out to be almost 120 thousand rubles. The district court denied the claim, but the Sverdlovsk Regional Court sided with the passengers. However, the regional court is not the last instance. It is still unknown whether Aeroflot will continue to sue.

Moscow is getting prettier

In the first quarter of this year, over 6 million tourists visited the capital, this figure is 20% higher than the pre-pandemic period. During the May holidays alone, 2.2 million people visited Moscow. About 90% of the tourists came from the regions of Russia. Basically, the capital was chosen for family holidays.

On June 1, the festival “Summer in Moscow. Everyone outside!” It will last 100 days and will become the longest-running urban festival in the world. Festival venues will be located all over the city – in total, more than 40 types of events are planned for all ages and interests. The summer season started in city parks on May 1. On the website of the Summer in the Park project, you can choose a convenient park and see what activities there are. In addition, a landscape design festival has been taking place in Moscow since May 1. More than 700 decorated locations and objects will gradually appear in the city.

A virtual version of the Troika card and instant payment for trips immediately after remote replenishment of the card became available to passengers of Moscow transport. A virtual “Troika” is when you can pass through all types of transport without a card, by phone. And biometrics can be used not only in the subway, but also on the MDC. After the remote replenishment of the Troika card, previously it was necessary to perform manipulations with the yellow information terminal to activate the balance. Now the card can be used immediately after the remote replenishment.

Visa News

The Schengen visa will rise in price by 12% from June 11.

The cost of registration will be 90 euros for an adult and 45 euros for a child (a child in the EU is from 6 to 12 years old, there is no visa fee for applicants under 6 years old, from 12 years old – an adult). It is assumed that along with the visa fee, the fees of visa centers will inevitably increase, because the VC is allowed to charge applicants up to 50% of the fee, which means that the tariffs of the VC will increase from 40 to 45 euros.

Norway will ban the entry of Russians for tourist purposes from May 29.

The entry ban applies to travelers with tourist Schengen visas from any EU country. The Murmansk – Kirkenes route was the last opportunity to enter the EU through the border with the countries of the Schengen area. Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova promised that “Moscow will give an answer.”

The Israeli Interior Ministry has updated the launch dates of the Electronic Travel Authorization (ETA) pilot program for tourists from visa-free countries. For Russians, the pilot program will begin on July 1, 2024, and pay a fee of 25 shekels (about 600 rubles). Not yet. “The purpose of submitting the request is to make sure that there are no obstacles to boarding passengers on a flight to Israel,” the country’s foreign ministry explained and once again stressed that ETA is not a visa, the visa–free regime agreement between Israel and Russia continues to operate.

The European Commission has published data on the issuance of Schengen visas for 2023. It follows from them that France remains the No. 1 country in terms of the number of applications (2.6 million) for a Schengen visa for the second year in a row. In Russia, 520 thousand applications for Schengen were submitted, for comparison: in 2014, 5.7 million applications were submitted. The largest number of Schengen visas issued to Russians – over 60% – falls on three countries: Italy, Spain and France. At the same time, it is noted that in 2023 Italy has displaced Spain from the first place in terms of the number of applications received and approved. Estonia and Austria had the least number of approved applications last year.

A trip to space

SpaceX has opened a booking for tourist flights into space – a function has appeared on the official website of the company with which you can sign up for a mission. Four directions have been announced: to Earth orbit, an excursion to the ISS, flights to Mars and the Moon. At the end of 2024, you can go on a trip along the first route, starting next year you can visit the astronauts. They promise to tell you about the launch dates of flights to the Earth’s satellite and the Red Planet later.

The Chinese are also going to send tourists into space. The first suborbital flight of CAS Space is scheduled for 2028. Novice astronauts will fly comfortably – seven seats and four panoramic windows will be installed on the ship for them. Flights are going to be sent every 100 hours from a special space park. The ticket costs about 3 million yuan (37 million rubles).

And Blue Origin has resumed flights of its New Shepard rocket with space tourists (although all flight participants are referred to as crew members) on board after a two-year hiatus. Two years ago, during an unmanned launch, part of the ship was destroyed, but the capsule successfully landed. Now six crew members have risen 105 km above the Earth’s surface and found themselves in suborbital space for a couple of minutes. The capsule then landed near the launch site in Texas. The cost of the trip to orbit has not been disclosed.

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Источник: argumenti.ru