Sonu Nigam slightly overestimates how great his singing is

Sonu Nigam was on a chartered flight, and encouraged to sing a song or two over the PA system. He obliged.

Trouble is, nowadays if things like that happen, it gets shared on the net, and people hear about it. Including the safety regulators of Indian flights. They're not happy, and have called in the executives from Jet, the airline involved, to ask why a safety tool was being used as an entertainment platform.

Jet, in the face of a potential punishment for letting this happen, have had to take action; and so they've suspended the flight crew involved to try and head that off by looking like they're taking it seriously.

Sonu, though, has decided to wade into the debate, missing the point and the finer detail completely:

In a statement, Nigam Friday said, “I have witnessed an elaborate fashion show in an aircraft. I have heard of small concerts happening in aircraft. I have seen pilots and crew members cracking jokes to loosen up passengers in other countries, which is so cool. To suspend crew members for asking me to sing on the address system, when the seat belt signs were off, and no announcements were to be made, is nothing less than punishing someone for spreading happiness.” “Pity there’s no one to question such harshness except the media perhaps. Indians, need to loosen up. This act of lack of common sense, according to me, is real intolerance,” he added.

It's real intolerance, people. Punishing people for spreading happiness. I mean, under what circumstances might you suddenly need to make a cabin announcement on a plane, right? That hardly ever happens. That people survive to tell you about, anyway.

Bruce Dickinson's air business has wings

Bruce Dickinson out of Iron Maiden continues to prove his credentials as the Freddie Laker of Hard Rock (only successful), as he's expanded to help growth of an African airline:

Now he’s got a new flag carrier role – having signed a memorandum of understanding with Air Djibouti to develop a national airline for the East African nation.

Dickinson signed the deal in his role as founder of Cardiff Aviation, the aircraft repair business he helped set up in 2012. The company is now to manage a European air operator’s certificate for Air Djibouti, find aircraft and provide operational management, and offer maintenance support from its base in South Wales.

This is good news for that nation, good news for Dickinson, and good news for music hall comics:

- I flew in on that new African airline, and I've just been to freshen up
- Air Djibouti?
- No, I just washed my hands and splashed on some cologne

Bono: The emergency exit shouldn't be an exit, and that's an emergency

Even inanimate objects can't stand Bono. As if having a giant mechanical lemon whose doors failed to open when they should wasn't humiliation enough, now his plane doors are opening when they shouldn't:

The rear hatch of the aircraft taking the U2 lead singer from Dublin to Berlin was missing when the aircraft landed at Berlin Schonefeld Airport on Wednesday.

In some places, like the Daily Mail, this is being touted as some sort of near-death scrape for Bono:

Bono cheats death after private jet door falls off: U2 singer 'extremely lucky' after plane's tailgate becomes detached during flight to Berlin with four friends

That sounds scary, although let's not forget that in newspaper terms the Mail Online is less a paper of record, more one of those tablecloths you get at Romano's Macaroni Grill that the waiter writes his name on in crayon.

Because, as CNN reports:

The ground crew discovered that the hatch was missing shortly after the aircraft landed at 12:26 a.m., 11 minutes after it blew off, Freitag said.

So was this a chilling moment when the people on the plane saw their lives flashing before their eyes (Bono's would have been directed by Anton Corbijn, obviously)? Not if nobody noticed until, after the plane had landed, someone turned up to carry the cases off the plane and realised they didn't need to unlock the door.

Still, I'm really pleased that no harm came to Bono. Can you imagine how grim Saturday's Band Aid Rehash session would have been if it took place under the shadow of a Bono who had fallen to earth and simultaneously ascended to heaven? I'm betting that rather than assign it to somebody else, the whole track would have fallen silent for the duration of "tonight, than God, it's them instead of you".

Gordon in the morning: Cole's terror at, er, zero feet

Gordon leads today with a massive splash about Cheryl Cole's flight horror horror shock shock horror:

Cheryl Cole’s storm terror on private jet

The "storm terror"? Er... there was some lightning quite near her plane. Before it took off.

The bad weather was right over the grounded private jet and lightning struck the runway just a few metres from the plane.

Coming tomorrow: Sugababes experience nightmare as captain warns of turbulence and switches the seatbelt sign on.

[Cheryl Cole] said: “We were stuck in the plane and just sitting on the runway and a bright massive flash of light hit outside the aircraft. I said to my friend, ‘That’s lightning’ — then it just didn’t stop.

“I was so scared that I thought, ‘This is it. I’ve got an album to promote and I’ve got so much yet to do!’”

Yes, imagine all the lip-syncing and polite replies to inane questions the world would have missed out on.

Cheryl Cole might have taken comfort in the knowledge that lightning strikes on planes are common, but actual accidents as a result incredibly rare - a commercial plane won't get through a year without being hit by lightning. Instead, she reached deep inside herself:

“But I remembered I’d climbed Kilimanjaro, so took a bit of strength from that.”

Yes. If a lightning strike did manage to knock out the electrical system of my plane, sending it hurtling to the ground, having climbed a mountain is even better than adopting the brace position.

Iron Maiden: Marketing the skies

I know that Bruce Dickinson is a trained pilot, and has flown commercial flights, but does that really make him an obvious choice to be an airline marketing director?

He's been appointed in the role for charter company Astraeus. The Guardian reports how they explain their thinking:

"Bruce is a great communicator," explained Astraeus's chief commercial officer, Shaun Monnery. "[And] he knows the aviation industry inside out."

"In a demanding industry he is a man who can cope with pressure," Monnery said, "whether as a 757 captain or in front of 50,000 Iron Maiden fans, or senior airline and aviation managers."

Perhaps. Or, much more likely, the decision to appoint a heavy metal guy to a marketing job is, in itself, a wonderful act of marketing.

Ken Dodd cleared for take-off

No disrespect to the King of The Diddymen, but I'm not sure I'd feel entirely relaxed if I saw Ken Dodd's face peering out the side of a plane I was clambering aboard.

Twittergem: Solange Knowles

The more @solangeknowles Tweets, the more I find myself warming to her:

Whenever I get handed a plane blanket I have these creepy images of some weird guy jacking off underneath one, or a slobbering old man. Eek.

Travis Barker 'seriously burnt' in fatal plane crash

Travis Barker and his partner in TRVSDJAM, Adam Goldstein, have been seriously injured in a plane crash following a gig in Columbia, South Carolina.

The pair, relatively, were lucky: The other four people on board died in the accident. Their private lear jet overshot a runway on take-off, hitting the airport's communication aerials, before bursting into flames on the neighbouring highway.

CNN firther reports:

Lexington County Coroner Harry O. Harman said all the dead in Friday's crash were Californians.

He identified them as pilot Sarah Lemmon, 31, of Anaheim Hills; co-pilot James Bland, 52, of Carlsbad; Chris Baker, 29, of Studio City; and Charles Still, 25, of Los Angeles

Diddy's plane lies

You'll recall P Diddy's complaints about the high cost of air fuel from last week, of course. The poor thing couldn't afford to fly his private jet, he complained.

Thye Palm Beach Post, though, has been doing some digging and reckons that it's found the cost of aviation fuel shouldn't be a problem for Diddy at all: he doesn't own a jet:

One private aviation source scoffed: “It’s my jet this, my jet that. I have list of every plane with the name of the owner, and he’s not on it.”

Further evidence he was making it up? He hasn't got a clue what planes cost, either:

The private aviation spy said Diddy’s math is off. Flying back and forth to the Left Coast twice would set him back $100,000, even with pricey fuel.

“The truly rich aren’t affected by oil when it comes to private planes,” said the private aviation source in Palm Beach. “Monthly payments on a $20 million-plane and crews are expensive.”

What makes this even more embarrassing for Diddy is that he took MTV off to a hanger to see a jet which he appears to have told them he owned.

His people try and explain how he might have got confused and suddenly started talking about owning a plane when he doesn't:

The hip-hopper’s publicist in New York said Combs, 38, swears Combs is the fractional owner of a NetJets plane.

That company sells flight hours on private jets and calls it “fractional ownership.”

I suppose if you had a timeshare in Spain, you might start to get confused and assume you had some sort of presidential status in Madrid.

Gordon in the morning: How close we came to losing an national icon

Terror At Zero Feet meets Spiceworld: The Movie, as Victoria Beckham's plane sucks a bird into the engines at take-off. It's the sort of light non-story which Gordon actually does quite well:

It was then that the horrifying scale of the disaster really hit home for Victoria — she realised she was wearing standard-issue aircraft pyjamas and no make-up.

Thus, the drama is not about the pilot reacting quickly to a potential threat, but Victoria refusing to get off the plane until she's done her make-up.

Surely, though, it's too late - everyone now knows she gets into the free pjs in first class. And they let this woman judge Project Runway.

Meanwhile, the increasing number of people allegedly slapped by Amy Winehouse means there's every chance that the bloke who claims he was hit by her in a pub may be telling the truth, or perhaps just judged that there's every chance that he'll be believed.

In the interests of balance to the story, Gordon runs an unsourced quote from a pal:

But a pal of Amy’s insisted: "Someone behind her pinched her bottom and she reacted."

And yet there's no name to verify that statement, presumably because it's possible someone is explaining the plausible reason for a reaction that might never have happened.

Elsewhere, Smart runs what he claims are

Abbey & Peter's holiday snaps

Unlike many couples, they seem to have taken their photos from the other side of the beach with a very long lens.

Sting's environmental commitment: He only has a small-ish plane to himself

Of course, it's not that surprising that Sting was spotted flying into Germany on a fourteen seat jet with just him aboard, given that he happily endorsed that Jaguar car as well. And, let's face it, it's not like there's any other way to get from England to Germany by regular plane, is there?

Pete And The Pilots

When we saw the NME headline yelling about Pete and the Pirates "in plane flight drama", we held our breath and clicked through. Were they on that flight where the co-pilot died? Had they found themselves next to Ian Brown in the air, keeping out a nervous eye in case he threatened to cut off flight attendant's hands again?

Erm, no:

The aeroplane the Reading band had been scheduled to fly back to the UK on after a gig in Italy was grounded due to excessive fog, meaning that the band had to hastily alter their schedule.

After some frantic rescheduling the band managed to get on an alternative flight and walked onstage at the Astoria with only five minutes to spare before their slot would have been pulled.

That's not really 'plane flight drama' - 'band have to reschedule air tickets' more like, surely?

The Miley Cyrus terrorist dance

We did wonder when reading the sad story earlier today about the sixteen year old kid who was arrested after supposedly saying he was going to hijack a plane to commit suicide who'd be the first news outlet to try and make something out of the supposed plans to fly the plane into a Hannah Montana gig.

Well done, TMZ, whose team broke off from their current duties of reporting every single rumour surrounding the death of Heath Ledger, and then reporting the denials with a 'fancy anyone even believing that' sneer, to bring the 'news' of how close Miley Cyrus came to grief:

The unnamed 16-year-old had handcuffs, duct tape, rope and other items with him on the flight Tuesday, and though there was no incident on the plane, the FBI says he had a plan to hijack the jet. "He had some general plans where he was going and indicated where he wanted to die."

... and then how close she didn't come to grief:

Even though Nashville media have reported that the plane was going to be directed to Lafayette, La. to interrupt a Miley Cyrus concert, it seems that the concert was scheduled for today, not Tuesday.

... which didn't stop TMZ headlining the report:

Dude Tries to Crash Miley Gig – With Plane?

although, of course, the response to the question is 'no, not really'.

Now, let's assume that there really was a 'plot' - and it wasn't all a damaged kid seeking some attention - let's just look at the facts here: a sixteen year old boy, acting on his own, planning to somehow overpower the entire attendant team (and, presumably, all the passengers) using only some string and sticky-tape. So, how's he actually going to manage that? But even if he did, he'd then have to get into the locked cockpit, and somehow overpower the flight deck team. And then somehow fly the plane to a concert, and dive it into the gig - which isn't that easy, if you're not used to flying this sort of plane. So, really, it was a 'plot' in the way that another 16 year-old boy's 'plot' to move to Hollywood and somehow become Miley Cyrus' boyfriend is a plot.

It's not strictly crossing a picket line if you fly over

John Legend has come up with a plan for pleasing record company bosses and sticking to the letter of the Screenwriter's Guild request: he's going to play his Grammy gig in a plane:

Details are still being worked out, a Grammy spokesperson tells Billboard.biz, but Legend will perform a 30-minute set aboard a Delta Air Lines, Grammy-branded Boeing 757. The flight will leave New York on Feb. 7 en route to Los Angeles.

Not only is Legend managing to say 'screw you' to the Unions, he's also found a way to make his tiresome plugging of an industry back-slapping as environmentally disastrous as you can get without actually burning a whale in a leaky nuclear submarine. Let's hope there's some Greenpeace campaigners entering that sweepstakes...

Winehouse hair storage

From the looks of a video that's currently circulating on the internet, Amy Winehouse uses her beehive like Marge Simpson uses hers. Only while Marge keeps the family's saving money jar in her hair, Amy appears to keep some her Vicks inhaler in there; rummaging about and then snorting to clear her passages. It's horrible being congested, isn't it?

Meanwhile, she's been winning friends by locking herself in the toilets for a crafty fag. Unfortunately, she's been doing it on a plane:

Finally a fed-up female crew member announced on the Tannoy: “Our famous little friend is smoking in the toilet. It’s just that the smoke alarm hasn’t gone off yet.”

A 23-year-old girl passenger said: “It’s one rule for her and another one for us.

“I’d have been arrested if I was caught smoking in the toilet and rightly so.

“Fair enough she’s stressed out but it’s not exactly a long-haul flight.”

British Airways have denied the cabin announcement was made and have promised an "investigation" - it's not clear if they're investigating the announcement or the smoking, or indeed why; but given British Airways ability to cock things up on a grand scale, we don't imagine we'll ever hear of the investigation ever again.

Did Clay run to the FBI because he got shoved?

Somehow, the FBI got themselves involved in a spat between Clay Aiken - that's American for "Gareth Gates" - and a woman during a flight to Oklahoma. It seems Aiken had shoved his feet on a woman's armrest; when she pointed out how boorish that was, a dispute occurred which ended up with Clay getting gently shoved and the FBI called to meet the plane.

It's good to know that the worst security threat you face in American airspace is gameshow losers behaving like they own the joint. This all sounds rather economy class, doesn't it?

Amy in the air

We wouldn't want to be on a plane with Amy Winehouse:

Amy was groping Blake in business class on flight SK0526. Then she climbed up and straddled him.
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A fellow passenger told me: "They were practically having sex. It was cringeworthy."

Unbelievable. Everyone knows if you want to shag on a plane, you have to go first class.

It gets worse:

During the flight, Amy got up and walked back to economy where her band were sitting.

She's travelling in business while the people she relies on get shoved in coach? Charming.

Hot shot boys: Tennant and Lowe cheat death, a bit

As if the story about the flaming meteor shards nearly hitting a plane wasn't enough to spark a whole revival of the Airport movie franchise, the sizzling space rock nearly took out official national pop heroes.

Yes, The Pet Shop Boys were on the plane. How did they cope with such a terrifying ordeal? Neil reveals all:

“We were blissfully unaware of it. We didn’t know anything had happened until the next morning when the waitress at breakfast said, ‘Are you glad to be alive?’

“Then we realised with horror what had happened. Our friends and families started calling us in a panic to find out if we were OK.”

Hats off to the graphics department at the Sun for managing to produce a fairly accurate illustration of the crisis: