European Airliners Association Ranking

This is just another topic that in the end covers another downside of the Portuguese society.

A few days ago I was reading a newspaper on the internet when one of the news captured my eye. The title was: “TAP is the European airliner that gets more often delayed and that looses more luggages” (literal translation from Portuguese). Was that fact supposed to surprise me!? (I’m being ironic of course). All the flights that I did with TAP none have left at the right time, though sometimes they did arrive almost on time. How is that possible?! They fly at a higher speed, but at the expenses of a lower efficiency of fuel. So, in the end the company is losing something with that.

Then I continue reading the article and it says that the Association of European Airliners made a study to analyze some aspects of the European Airliners (the study includes 26 airliners). The conclusions of that study consist of tables that show the percentage of flights that depart on time and flights that arrive on time. TAP is on the end of those tables with 59,5% of arrivals on time and 62,5% departures on time. Hmmm… this fact kind of contradicts what I’ve said before because it states that the number of flights on time on arrivals is lower than on departures… but maybe not because the universe (number of flights) that I know is very small compared with the total amount of flights of TAP. Perhaps the captains of the flights that I did preferred to arrive on time and spend more fuel. Who knows?

On this study the Luxembourgish “Luxair” is the top company with less delays followed by KLM (the company in which I flew last time). I think that I should try to choose that company more often because not only I liked a lot the trip like also the studies confirm that the company is really good. Then I think… Portugal is integrating many European directives, laws and rules and when people in Portugal complain about something wrong in Portugal there is always someone pointing to the examples in Europe and that we should do the same. Well, this could be a matter where TAP could look to their competitors on Europe in order to improve its services, don’t you think?...

Well, the study also refers another point, the percentage of loss luggage. Also in this field TAP is in the last place of the table with almost 28 luggages lost per 1000 passengers. What else can I say? It’s a shame, is what it is. Unfortunately here the examples come from countries outside the Schengen space, with “Air Malta” and “Turkish Airlines” on the top. This makes sense since they need to have tighter security measures resulting from having “closed” borders.

This is a topic in my field, that’s why I decided to bring it up. Nevertheless, it illustrates how the Portuguese society is. See you…

Emergency services in Portugal

Today (Monday), I'm going to write this post during my flight from Lisbon to Amsterdam like I did to my blog on MSN. The idea is, like I wrote on the other blog, to give better use to time when I'm travelling. Let's see if I also get inspiration for writing this time. Before, I just want to add that I'm flying again with KLM on a Boeing 737-800 and the flight has been pretty similar to the last one a couple of days ago: comfortable, with “xpto” food, a nice crew and quick boarding time (no use of bus to get from the terminal to the aircraft).

So today’s' subject, like the title suggests, is about the way emergency services are working in Portugal nowadays. A week ago, on the news of every television and newspaper's website of the country there was shown a recording first between the family and the emergency services and afterwards only between emergency services (112 operator, doctor and firefighters). Here it is a copy of the recording on "Sapo Videos"...

Unfortunately the movie is in Portuguese, but I'll explain what it shows and why I'm writing about it. I have to start saying that this movie could have been taken from a comedy show, but the sad part is that the movie is very real. The first part shows the content of the call to the 112. It's stupid the amount of questions the operator asks to the victim's family and moreover the number of times the operator ask the same questions (on different times of the call) and the time spent just to do a simple call to 112. But this is not the worst...

The second part, the first time I saw it I started laughing, but then I realized that I was listening to a actual conversation and then I was amazed... I know that Portugal has several serious problems, but such incompetency, plus the fact of human lives being at stake, was too unbelievable for me. Why!? The 112 called to a fire department and there was only a firefighter on duty that was also using is cell phone while receiving the emergency call so that you can clearly see that he's not paying attention to the call. Moreover, he asks what he has to do. Come on, didn't he received training for doing his work on an emergency situation!? Oh, and when the operator is giving him the number of the emergency registration, he answers that he doesn't have anything to write. How can just a jackass like that be working as a firefighter?

After a certain point, the operator decides to call another fire department to quickly try dispatching an ambulance. The fire department, she called was on the next town, but again it had only a firefighter as well. With such incompetency shown so far, more one stopped surprising me.

At some point they found a way to solve the situation by making the second firefighter call others to enter on duty and head with the ambulance to the place where the emergency call was made.

Some days after this news, the firefighters' services were changed so that they would be able to give assistance on new similar situations. But that doesn't change the fact that there are serious problems with the emergency services in country such as Portugal, a country in Europe and member of the EU. Part of me still can´t believe that the video is real.

This is just something that I wanted to share with you that I think is cause of concern, specially for the people living in Portugal away from cities, because the call is made for fire departments of small villages or at least, really small towns (you can see where the place is at http://www.castedo.eu/googlemaps.htm ). Bye...

Portugal - Serbia…

This week I will write about only one event that although being a couple of weeks old I think it is still of interest.
The subject is about the incidents after the soccer game of Portugal against Serbia, in which the Portuguese coach Scolari tried to punch a Serbian player. Right after the match, the reaction of the Portuguese coach was very disappointing because he claimed that he didn’t tried to attack the player and that he was just trying to push away the Serbian player because he tried to attack a Portuguese player. Well, the images show what really happened and it’s sad that he did that.
Afterwards, according to what I heard in the news, I found out that what he did was a reaction after the Serbian player insulted him and tried to hit him. As a penalty, the FIFA decided to suspend Scolari for four matches and the Serbian player for two.
My comments to this event are simple: Scolari shouldn’t have done what he did in any case whatever were the circumstances. And I do agree with the punishment of FIFA. He is a public figure and therefore he has special duties to accomplish. One of them is serving as an example to other people and to show what kind of people we (Portuguese) are. I felt ashamed with what he did even taking into account the fact that he later on did apologize for his action and attitude. He has to show more maturity and more cold blood in this kind of situations and for that reason he has no excuses.
The aspect I don’t agree in all of this is that the Serbian player got a less punishment. He did wrong and his actions were similar to the Portuguese coach, since even the referee told that the Serbian player did insult and tried to attack Scolari. I don’t understand why this happened, but the Serbian player should have equal penalty as Scolari.

Some secondary concerns about Abortion

First of all, I want to be completely clear about my stand about this subject: I am in favor that abortion shouldn’t be considered a crime.
After this statement, let me talk about the abortion contextualized with the Portuguese reality. Last February there was a referendum to find out what was the Portuguese people’s opinion about the Portuguese law about abortion. The result was that the majority of the people who went voting wanted to end with the criminalization of the abortion.
What I do not agree is that the Portuguese government legislated on the subject. It was only a matter of taking out the law that makes abortion be considered a crime. Instead, the government legislated and gave priority to the abortion. This means, for example, that in a hospital where there is a free room and it is scheduled an abortion, if appears for the same time a pregnant women giving to birth, the pregnant women can’t go to that room. Or the hospital has other available rooms, or the pregnant women will give birth probably in the ambulance because the ambulance won’t reach on time other hospital. I consider the idea wrong. I also disagree that abortion is completely free, when a pregnant women has to pay her stay in the hospital for and after the birth. To be fair or it is free for everyone or everyone pays.
One last point is that since the Portuguese people is getting aged and the number of births is decreasing over the years, why not investing on supporting the women who do not desire the child to carry to the end the pregnancy and then the child would be given to adoption. Also the adoption process had to be quicker and bureaucracy decreased. That way we would invest in increasing births while fighting unwanted pregnancies.
Can I hear other opinions please :P