(Thanks, Chris!)

Various responses between commercial air crews around the world and their respective controllers:

Pilot: “Albuquerque Center, this is United 372. I have an engine that just went out and I need to land. No panic, but I need a runway that’s close to my present location.”
Tower: “United 372, this is Albuquerque Center. You are cleared to land at [Name of town I have never heard of] Airport immediately.”
Pilot: (Who had obviously never heard of town either) “Hey, I’m not talking some crop duster airport here, Albuquerque Center.”
Tower: “United 372, that runway is 6,700 feet long. Is THAT going to be enough for you, or do you want me to send someone up to help you land?=========================================

Tower: “Delta 351, you have traffic at 10 o’clock, 6 miles!”
Delta 351: “Give us another hint! We have digital watches!”
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“TWA 2341, for noise abatement turn right 45 Degrees.”
“Centre, we are at 35,000 feet. How much noise can we make up here?”
“Sir, have you ever heard the noise a 747 makes when it hits a 727?”
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From an unknown aircraft waiting in a very long take off queue: “I’m f…ing bored!”
Ground Traffic Control: “Last aircraft transmitting, identify yourself immediately!”
Unknown aircraft: “I said I was f…ing bored, not f…ing stupid!”
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O’Hare Approach Control to a 747: “United 329 heavy, your traffic is a Fokker, one o’clock, three miles, Eastbound.”
United 239: “Approach, I’ve always wanted to say this — I’ve got the little Fokker in sight.”
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A student became lost during a solo cross-country flight. While attempting to locate the aircraft on radar, ATC asked” “What is your last known position?”
Student: “When I was number one for takeoff.”
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A DC-10 had come in a little hot and thus had an exceedingly long rollout after touching down.
San Jose Tower noted: “American 751, make a hard right turn at the end of the runway, if you are able. If you are not able, take the Guadalupe exit off Highway 101, make a right at the lights and return to the airport.”
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There’s the story about a military pilot calling for a priority landing because his single-engine jet fighter was running “a bit peaked.”
Air Traffic Control told the fighter jock that he was number two, behind a B-52 that had one engine shut down.
“Ah,” the fighter pilot remarked, “The dreaded seven-engine approach.”
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Taxiing down the tarmac, a DC-10 abruptly stopped, turned around and returned to the gate. After an hour-long wait, it finally took off. A concerned passenger asked the flight attendant, “What, exactly, was the problem?”
“The pilot was bothered by a noise he heard in the engine,” explained the flight attendant. “It took us a while to find a new pilot.” (Huh — musta been Southwest. — BZ)
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A Pan Am 727 flight waiting for start clearance in Munich overheard the following: Lufthansa (in German): “Ground, what is our start clearance time?”
Ground (in English): “If you want an answer you must speak in English.”
Lufthansa (in English): “I am a German, flying a German airplane, in Germany. Why must I speak English?”
Unknown voice from another plane (in a beautiful British accent): “Because you lost the bloody war.”
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Tower: “Eastern 702, cleared for takeoff, contact Departure on frequency124.7”
Eastern 702: “Tower, Eastern 702 switching to Departure. By the way, after we lifted off we saw some kind of dead animal on the far end of the runway.”
Tower: “Continental 635, cleared for takeoff behind Eastern 702, contact Departure on frequency 124.7. Did you copy that report from Eastern 702?”
Continental 635: “Continental 635, cleared for takeoff, roger; and yes,we copied Eastern — we’ve already notified our caterers.”
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One day the pilot of a Cherokee 180 was told by the tower to hold short of the active runway while a DC-8 landed. The DC-8 landed, rolled out, turned around, and taxied back past the Cherokee. Some quick-witted comedian in the DC-8 crew got on the radio and said, “What a cute little plane. Did you make it all by yourself?”
The Cherokee pilot, not about to let the insult go by, came back with a real zinger: “I made it out of DC-8 parts. Another landing like yours and I’ll have enough parts for another one.”
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The German air controllers at Frankfurt Airport are renowned as a short-tempered lot. They not only expect one to know one’s gate parking location, but how to get there without any assistance from them. So it was with some amusement that we (a Pan Am 747) listened to the following exchange between Frankfurt ground control and a British Airways 747, call sign Speedbird 206.
Speedbird 206: “Frankfurt, Speedbird 206 clear of active runway.”
Ground: “Speedbird 206. Taxi to gate Alpha One-Seven.”
The BA 747 pulled onto the main taxiway and slowed to a stop.
Ground: “Speedbird, do you not know where you are going?”
Speedbird 206: “Stand by, Ground, I’m looking up our gate location now.”
Ground (with quite arrogant impatience): “Speedbird 206, have you not been to Frankfurt before?”
Speedbird 206 (coolly): “Yes, twice in 1944, but it was dark, — and I didn’t land.”
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While taxiing at London’s Gatwick Airport, the crew of a US Air flight departing for Ft. Lauderdale made a wrong turn and came nose to nose with a United 727. An irate female ground controller lashed out at the US Aircrew, screaming: “US Air 2771, where the hell are you going? I told you to turn right onto Charlie taxiway! You turned right on Delta! Stop right there. I know it’s difficult for you to tell the difference between C and D, but get it right!”
Continuing her rage to the embarrassed crew, she was now shouting hysterically: “God! Now you’ve screwed everything up! It’ll take forever to sort this out! You stay right there and don’t move till I tell you to! You can expect progressive taxi instructions in about half an hour and I want you to go exactly where I tell you, when I tell you, and how I tell you! You got that, US Air 2771?”
“Yes, ma’am,” the humbled crew responded.
Naturally, the ground control communications frequency fell terribly silent after the verbal bashing of US Air 2771. Nobody wanted to chance engaging the irate ground controller in her current state of mind. Tension in every cockpit around Gatwick was definitely running high. Just then an unknown pilot broke the silence and keyed his microphone, asking: “Wasn’t I married to you once?”

BZ

This will be a short, simple post, one that I have borrowed from AB Freedom’s blog because I found his post and the accompanying video so shocking.

Watch this video about America’s schools, by John Stossel of 20/20.

This is so embarrassing, so, so shameful.

BZ

Hezbollah has clearly come out and said what it means — what it has meant all along and what every other organization aligned with Islam has said and, more importantly, means:

Islamists and Militant Islam, i.e., most all of Islam, will not stop at crushing and totally eliminating the Jews of the world; they will not stop until they have eliminated the Western world and, moreover, eliminated anything not aligned with Islam.

Unlike the United States and certainly most of Europe, we should take Hezbollah at its word: it means what it says. Translated for us: we should, as a country, take each and every threat as Truth and place it squarely in the Credible category.

Even back in 2004, articles ran in the Daily Oakland Press indicating Hezbollah, led by Sheik Hassan Nasrallah (see left), was “a key sponsor of Palestinian violence, funding suicide bombings that have killed dozens of Israelis in recent months, Israeli intelligence sources, Palestinian Authority officials and militants have told The Associated Press.”

Iran’s Hizbollah, which claims links to the Lebanese group of the same name, said on Tuesday it stood ready to attack Israeli and U.S. interests worldwide.

“We have 2,000 volunteers who have registered since last year,” said Iranian Hizbollah’s spokesman Mojtaba Bigdeli, speaking by telephone from the central seminary city of Qom.

“They have been trained and they can become fully armed. We are ready to dispatch them to every corner of the world to jeopardise Israel and America’s interests. We are only waiting for the Supreme Leader’s green light to take action. If America wants to ignite World War Three — we welcome it,” he said.

It is interesting to note that already Hezbollah appears to be quantifying the issue as another World War III — in the fashion that former Republican Speaker Newt Gingrich similarly quantified the issue this past weekend on Meet The Press and on the Michael Medved show on Tuesday.

GINGRICH: We’re in the early stages of what I would describe as the third World War and, frankly, our bureaucracy’s not responding fast enough and we don’t have the right attitude. And this is the 58th year of the war to destroy Israel and, frankly, the Israelis have every right to insist that every single missile leave south Lebanon, and the United States ought to be helping the Lebanese government have the strength to eliminate Hezbollah as a military force — not as a political force in the parliament — but as a military force in south Lebanon.

RUSSERT: This is World War III?

GINGRICH: I believe if you take all the countries I just listed that you’ve been covering, put them on a map, look at all the different connectivity, you have to say to yourself: this is, in fact, World War III.

Newt Gingrich has it right and, in my estimation, he has connected ALL the dots.

BUT WAIT, THERE’S MORE:

Though some sites have written that “The Arab League Condemns Hezbollah,” that is not true. Go here. In truth, Egypt, Jordan and Saudi Arabia have “all tempered condemnation of the scale of the Israeli reprisals with criticism of the ‘adventurism’ of the Syrian- and Iranian-backed Hezbollah in seizing two Israeli soldiers last Wednesday.”

First, that’s incorrect; three Israeli soldiers were seized. Already I doubt the Arab League’s ability to “get it right.” Or perhaps I should blame Yahoo. That doesn’t sound like outright condemnation to me.

“We must take swift steps with sincere intentions to solve the Arab-Arab differences which create an obstacle to reaching a unified Arab position,” Foreign Minister Abu Bakr al-Kurbi said, calling on all Arab states to “end any cooperation with Israel.”

Ending cooperation? — that doesn’t sound like condemnation to me either.

“Arabs are still talking about peace initiatives, about land for peace,” Masr told state television. “But we are not getting land and we are not getting peace.”

That isn’t condemnation and that isn’t correct. Arabs are not “still talking about peace initiatives. They are instead lobbing missiles at Israel. Doesn’t read or sound like courting peace to me.

And land for peace?

How incredibly stupid do you have to be, World? Israel gave up land already — land that fellow Arabs refused to provide their brothers and sisters. It’s called Gaza.

And it is from Gaza that a good bulk of the missiles striking sovereign Israeli soil are issuing.

Israel gave up land. There is no peace. Palestinians are throwing missiles from Gaza.

I think even Downs Syndrome children could figure this one out.

BZ