Oman gearing up for a Census, Oman Air on growth and some H1N1 vaccines.

Oman's gearing up for a census in 2010. Apparently some people will have test questions being asked in the next few days.

MUSCAT -- Field works for the 2010 Census of Population, Residences and Establishments are under way. The week-long stage, which conclude on September 10, is significant for the census and it aims at crafting a comprehensive list of all residential and other buildings and to locate them precisely on a comprehensive map, besides enumerating the families that live in the residences.

The Census Administration at the Ministry of National Economy hereby requests all Omani and expatriate families to co-operate with the enumerators who will visit the families in their residences. The families are required to give accurate data in reply to questions to be asked by the enumerators, who will take only a few minutes to note down the data.

Oman Air, who have been enjoying some pretty significant expansion lately, have been busy again in the last few weeks.

First up, Oman Air have signed on SITA to create and manage their voice and data networks between their offices world wide. This will help streamline things at the airline behind closed doors, for us customers, it shouldn't really make much of a difference, but its a sound business move. Oman Air then cleverly decided to target the German market by hiring a German PR firm, C.O.M.B.O. Starting in this month, 4 flights a week will run between Frankfurt and Muscat, then in October, 3 flights a week will run between Munich and Muscat. Ze Germanz do love to come to Oman, its a wonder direct flights were never done before. Or do Lufthansa fly direct? I know they fly cargo planes direct from Frankfurt to here, but not sure on passenger flights. Additionally in October, Oman Air will be operating 4 flights a week between Paris (CDG) and Musat, and also 4 times a week between Muscat and the Maldives. And if thats not enough new destinations for 2 months, they will also be launching a daily service to Colombo. I predict a long weekend in Colombo looking at elephants and stuff in the near future...

Oman Air's fleet should be 7 A330s and 15 737s over the next 15 months. Thats a lot of wonga to be spending on planes, good job they're starting to actually fly to places I want to go to! Can we have a direct service to Hong Kong? Cape Town? LA? Cork? Ibiza? Athens? Manilla?

The best bit about Oman Air to blog about today is this: they announced that in July 2009, fourteen young Omani Pilot Trainees successfully completed the 15 month comprehensive and intensive Pilot Training Program with RMIT (Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology, Melbourne, Australia). These Omani Trainees now possess an approved Commercial Pilot License - Multi Engine and Instrument Rating category as their initial qualification.
Thats pretty good going, obviously the Jet Driver is doing his job well :)

And finally, H1N1.

Novartis have pledged 100,000 doses of its H1N1 vaccine, and GSK have pledged 20,000 doses of it's equivalent vaccine. Which I guess is a pretty good start. There are still rumours of distortion of actual fatality figures and published figures, but in the general scheme of things, it's pretty low. I'm sure more people die every day from IDS (thats Idiot Driver Syndrome) here in Oman.