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Big Chinese tour agents
visit Eastern Seaboard
Some of the visitors gather for a photo op
inside the big flower heart.
Patcharapol Panrak
Director of Tourism Authority of Thailand (TAT) Beijing Office,
Amnuay Teamkeerakul, brought 100 Chinese media and big tour
representatives to the Eastern Seaboard on their tour of Thailand.
The Chinese visitors came from seven northern provinces and Beijing.
Ten media representatives and 80 giant tour agency representatives were
taken to Nong Nooch Tropical Gardens on February 10 to see the elephant
shows, national art protection, environmental protection and the
campaign of planting trees to fight global warming.
Amnuay said that the visitors were seeing for themselves that Thailand
has returned to normal and is safe once again for tourists.
He said TAT had been working hard to restore our tourism industry and to
rebuild visitors’ confidence in traveling to the country.
It is expected that during March, April, and May 2009, these tour agents
will bring tens of thousands of Chinese tourists in to Thailand, he
said.
The Nong Nooch Tropical Gardens welcomed the delegation with flowers
arranged in a huge heart shape as befitting Valentine’s Day and laid on
wonderful accommodation and service.
No doubt the Chinese visitors will spread positive recommendations when
they return home.
Big cinemas open
at Central Pattaya Beach
Saksiri Uraiworn
SF Cinema City has invested 330 million baht for 10 new SFX
cinema halls at Central Pattaya Beach to raise Pattaya theatres to world
class standards.
Opening also was SF Strike Bowl with 16 bowling lanes.
 Pongsak
Tongrom (left) and Supat Ngarmwongpaiboon (right) demonstrate the
elegance of the first class theatre, the only one available in the
region.
On February 6 at the new Central Pattaya Beach mall, Supat
Ngarmwongpaiboon, marketing director of SF Cinema City Company and
Pongsak Tongrom, vice president of the company, presided over the
opening ceremony.
Supat said that the best theatre technology of Digital B-Chain was used
to create the best audio and visual presentation.
The first class theatre has comfortable electric couches, blankets and a
private lounge with its own service of food and drinks.
He said that the cinemas occupy 11,000 square meters on the 6th floor of
Central Festival Pattaya Beach.
There are 10 theatres with 2,270 seats. One theatre has been dedicated
to first class with only 70 seats. Another eight deluxe theaters have
2200 seats.
This is to meet the needs of all moviegoers and to create an incredible
movie watching experience, he promised.
Flight 3407 crash leaves a
community searching for answers
Buffalo, N.Y. - The crew of doomed Continental Flight 3407 reported
“significant ice build-up” on the aircraft’s windshield and leading edges of the
wings in the moments before it suddenly plunged into a Clarence Center house
Thursday night, killing all 49 aboard and one man on the ground in a hellish
fireball, according to the National Transportation Safety Board.
The flight data and in-flight voice recorders, salvaged late last Friday morning
from the tail of the nearly obliterated plane, were rushed to Washington, D.C.,
for analysis.
By 5 p.m., NTSB member Steven Chealander announced that the “black boxes”
already were yielding potentially important clues as to what brought down the
commuter plane.
Chealander and other aviation experts cautioned against jumping to conclusions
and that the investigation was just beginning into the nation’s deadliest
airplane crash since November 2001.
But the new details about ice and the steep descent of Flight 3407, coupled with
information about Thursday night’s weather conditions, seemed to suggest ice may
be to blame.
‘’Significant ice buildup is an aerodynamic impediment,” Chealander explained.
“Airplanes are built with wings that are shaped a certain way, and ice can
change the shape.”
The NTSB also reported that the black boxes indicated that the Bombardier
Dash-8’s anti-icing system had been activated. The ice clearing system employs
“pneumatic boots,” which expand outward to push ice off the wing edges. But
there was no indication yet as to whether the system was functioning properly on
the plane.
Flight 3407, operated by Colgan Air, a feeder company to Continental, took off
at 9:20 p. m. Thursday from Newark Liberty Airport headed for Buffalo Niagara
International Airport. It was about two hours behind schedule.
High winds, with gusts as high as 60 mph, had prevented many aircraft from
taking off from the New Jersey airport Thursday evening, according to Steve
Coleman, a spokesman for the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which
operates the airport.
‘’We had some significant number of delays because of the winds,” he said. “Some
were delayed up to five hours.”
The plane was heading north and west toward Buffalo where a wild winter storm
with slushy snow and heavy winds had struck, plummeting the abnormally warm
temperatures that had enveloped the area Wednesday down to the freezing level by
Thursday night.
Icing is an especially dangerous condition that pilots face — especially in the
winter, according to Bob Miller, who operates Bob Miller Flight Training Inc. at
Buffalo-Lancaster airport.
Miller emphasized that there’s no way to know for certain whether icing caused
the crash yet.
Miller said whatever happened, it must have happened extremely quickly. “There
was no distress call. That is what is so extremely baffling.”
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