Saturday, November 21, 2009 PARIS: The first Air France A380 super jumbo reached New York with 380 passengers who had bid a total $450,000 in a charity auction organized by the airline.The airline said in a statement that the money will go to the Air France Foundation, which helps children in difficulty. Nearly 90% of the bidders were French, the airline said.Air France is the first European owner of Airbus's biggest plane, which it will fly with 538 seats and is already flown by Singapore Airlines, Emirates and Australia's Qantas.An A380 costs $327 million at catalog prices, more than four times the cost of a single-aisle A320. Airlines often negotiate substantial discounts to the list price.Air France will start full service with the plane on Nov. 23, with daily flights between Paris and New York, and later to Johannesburg.Airbus has taken 200 orders from 16 customers for the A380, of which it has delivered 20.
BAGHDAD: Nearly 500 U.S. Army combat engineers who specialize in clearing roads of explosives started shifting to southern Afghanistan."We are probably going to be the beginning of the influx you are going to see to Afghanistan," Lt. Col. Kevin Landers, commander of the Fort Carson, Colo.-based 4th Engineer Battalion, said as crews packed crates and cleaned vehicles for the flight to Kandahar.Obama has ordered 17,000 more U.S. soldiers and Marines to Afghanistan to bolster the 38,000 American troops already battling the resurgent Taliban."We are going to take this footprint out of Iraq," said Landers, whose battalion received word of its reassignment last month just after taking command of clearing roads in Baghdad of bombs and debris.
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