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THE PARENT COMPANY of American Airlines, the fourth largest airline in the world, is filing for bankruptcy.
The airline lost $868 million (€650 million) during the first nine months of this year – and was reportedly the only major US airline to lose money last year.
The parent company is seeking Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection as it seeks to unload massive debt built up by years of increasing prices of jet fuel and a number of industrial action disputes. The CEO of the company will also step down.
The airline was the last major US airline which hadn’t filed for bankruptcy protection.
AMR, the airline’s parent company, said in a statement that it sought protection to reduce its costs and debt to remain competitive.
The airline will honour all tickets and reservations and continue normal flight operations during the bankruptcy filling.
Analysts had speculated about a bankruptcy filling as shares in the company sank and it struggled to make money while its rivals reported profits. Most recently, the company’s inability to reach a contract with its pilots fueled talk about a possible filing.
- Additional reporting by Associated Press
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all kids should be taught a second language from primary school. we should all be fluent in different languages, Irish should also be taught the same way foreign languages are taught in order people can speak it.
An utterly pointless language for Irish people to learn. If we lived in Japan, or Korea where the potential for migrating to China for employment was a little more likely – then I’d consider it. But to just throw it out in an arbitrary manner as a language we should learn is stupid.
We live in Europe – So a European language is far more useful like French, German, Spanish – or even one of the Nordic languages. The Irish language is far more useful to me than Chinese ever will be. I use it daily – and have yet found a scenario or visualise a scenario where I’ll ever be required to utter one word of Chinese.
It’s actually strange that Spanish is not as prevalent in Irish schools as French or German. It’s a much more global language than either of the two.
Delusional. We should be learning some languages that enable us to deal with our main trading partners and we haven’t even managed that.
But more importantly, we should be teaching kids to write computer code from the age of 12. It would give us a much faster route to sustainable wealth than trading property in China.
We’ll be speaking German soon enough :P
Remember the 1980s when it was Japan that was going to take over the world?
I remember it well Tom!
Perhaps our students and Ireland would be better served learning what China did to change from a famine ravaged nation to the fastest growing economy. Then seeing what principles can be applied here.
http://www.thefreemanonline.org/columns/china-s-free-enterprise-experiment/
Very true Tom. I remember being in with IDA during that period and it was wall to wall waffle about Japanese this that and the other. If you didn’t own a futon at the time, sufficient for overnight guests naturally, you were really backward. Pathetic.
I have a few stories of my own on that subject but then I remember what a small country this is.
Good idea, people will be able to realize that Chinese are right up there with the Americans when it comes to being arrogant.
And this is because the eminent developer Treasury Holdings says we should do it? Worked out well the last time they said we should do something didn’t it?! Let’s reflect for a moment on Battersea Power station as an example of something we now all own due to Treasury’s ‘great advice’. Johnny Ronan my arse.
When you consider the Chinese use of intonation to differentiate meaning of words (completely alien for any native European language speaker), and the inaccesible script(doubles the difficulty), you’d learn at least 2 European languages fairly fluently by the time you’d get a handle on basic,error-strewn Chinese. Avoid it unless you plan to live there!
Chinese should definitely be an option on curriculum for students. I imagine we will be looking to supply many services to the Chinese over the next few decades
As mentioned above, first step is to get people learning European languages at primary level. It’s well established that knowing more languages makes each extra language easier. If we equip people with European languages first then they’ll be more capable at picking up Chinese.
I’d also highlight that the Chinese are putting huge emphasis on learning English. Maybe we’ll just let them do the talking instead :D
Enda is right when he says how long it takes to learn Chinese. We can’t even get people fluent in Irish at second level. They should at least set a Leaving Cert paper in Chinese and then let people who want to take it up learn it. It’s not something that needs to be pushed into schools.
You already can do a Leaving Cert paper in Chinese, as well as Spanish, French, German, Russian, Japanese, Arabic, Hebrew, Latin, Greek….
Brian, you say you can do a Leaving Cert paper in Chinese? Tell me more…
Maybe the reason we can’t get people fluent in Irish at second level is because people don’t really want to do it – how many doors does it open? We are told to learn it but don’t hear it spoken in Ireland – at least learning french or german opens up possibilities and thoughts of a wider world, all this focus on Irish is insular.
It would certainly help if you want to order a take away.
Chinese? Why not? After all, it’s ideal for business for our future kids…….
Why not learn the language of the world’s largest tyranny? Makes perfect sense in a world increasingly viewing ordinary people as slaves of government and global corporations. Maybe throw in whatever North Korea has to offer as well. Have proponents any idea of just how many people in China do not have a vote? Seeing as most of the Irish haven’t even mastered the ‘first national language’, learning Mandarin, or even Cantonese if you like Hong Kong, should be a doddle. The fact that such proposals can emerge from the global Irish blatherfest unchallenged shows just how tenuous a grasp the Irish have of democracy.
Ah, I wish had a cent for every time someone used the term ‘democracy’ for a self righteous and badly laid out argument….
We already know the language of the worlds largest tyranny .. The USA
i thought latin was the language of the catholic church
In the UK they are going to introduce a foreign language at five years of age – imagine the advantage we would all have now if we had all been so lucky.
Quite a lot of Chinese factories are using robots( pick and place robots) like the ones used in intel. One factory has 110,000 robots for electronics (iPhone and HP laptops) as they consider labour cost too high for production line staff. Average wage now in china for industrial worker 60Euro per week, and they consider this too much – so whoever thinks that there will be jobs in china think again. They prefer robots rather than people as robots are much more efficient. Souls we learn Chinese – it’s better than Irish. Any other European language would be better than Irish and if possible 2 European languages would be great.
"It’s terrible about the poor people in china?"
"What poor people? Martin."
"The Chinese."
English is a dialect of German Dermot.
When you speak English you speak German.
I thought it was French ??? Maybe I’m wrong
To Pete Gibson: though English has its origins from Germanic and Latin roots it’s totally incorrect to say it’s a ‘dialect’ of German.
Ah the Chinese,a great bunch of lads
Let’s recall Micheal Martin’s ‘strategic’ analysis of China’s importance.
http://youtu.be/6x5Rcc17eb8
As part of the Irish Diaspora (sorry, I love that word) I have a long association with China and I spend a significant part of each year there. At 57, I have been learning and enjoying learning Mandarin for 10 years. Admittedly, my son, who has been learning Mandarin for just 4 years, is far more fluent than me, which just goes to prove that maybe Enda and I are a little old : ) Mandarin, I believe, is an essential language of the future and not as complex or as useless as Eurocentrics imagine. In my opinion, clever countries that embrace this amazing language will have a huge economic edge. I thought that Ireland’s ‘Global Economic Forum’ was all about getting Ireland out of an economic rut? How does burying your head in the cultural sand help? Please don’t let ignorance, prejudice and fear get in the way of enjoying one of the oldest and most exciting languages in the world. For those of you worried about the writing system of China, Pinyin is their romanised version which is very useful for learners. Introduce Mandarin in Primary schools in Ireland and Ireland’s future will be impressive. Already China has a tremendous love of all things Irish – let’s build on that.
Ài’ěrlán shì yīgè wěidà de guójiā/爱尔兰是一个伟大的国家/Ireland is a great country
- let’s keep it that way by keeping ahead of the game!
Glad I will be dead before they dominate beside numbers of people I can’t think what these people have to offer.
‘these people’? Jobs, investment, possibly a sense of pride in their country not based on boozed up romantic notions of grandeur, and victimhood?
well said Donncha
the fact that so many people think there is a language called "chinese" shows how eurocentric our education system is.
It is good to learn Mandarin, because China has now the second biggest economy in the world today . However children should be learning Latin and Ancient Greek too. The Greeks and the Romans made Europe. Thee-quarters of English is made up of Greek and Latin, over half from Latin alone. All the scientific words are either Greek or Latin. Latin gave us Portuguese, Spanish, Romanch (4th official language of Switzerland), French, Italian and Romanian, not to mention all the minority language like Catalan and Provencal. Through a business network I met an American man who is teaching Latin to Chinese young men and women in Beijing between the ages of 15-35. They are learning Latin because they feel it gives them gravitas when dealing with Europeans as they know that European culture originated from the Greeks and Romans
I have a relative working in China. He doesn’t use Mandarin. The business language of China is English. That is what he uses.
If the premise is that we want lots of money, and that there can never be enough of it; and if we believe it is in our interests as a nation to become more and more beholden to a country with an appaling human rights record then I say why not? In for a penny in for a yuan.
Keep it simple. Let the Chinese learn English so they can trade with us!
Should teach economics as no economist saw the financial crash coming or when banks were audited they saw nothing wrong.?
What a ridiculous suggestion. The argument behind it, that China is becoming the driving force of the global economy, is extremely shaky. There are strong indications that the Chinese economy is in the same kind of unsustainable bubble as the USA was prior to the crash.
Secondly, even if their bubble does not burst and they do become the world’s largest consumer economy, it is still unlikely that Ireland will be doing a significant amount of trading with them rather than our European neighbours, whose languages we already struggle to master.
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