Odds and Ends: RR vs Air France; Kingfisher Airlines; Phuket

RR vs Air France: We’ve written about this before–Air France wants to maintain the Rolls-Royce Trent XWB engines on the Airbus A350s it wants to buy, but RR wants to maintain the engines. The dispute has been holding up confirming the order for a year. The Wall Street Journal has this update.

Kingfisher Airlines: The carrier continues its long spiral down. Lessors want airplanes back. The government is holding onto the airplanes in lieu of the airlines’ airport payments which are in default. ATR long ago canceled the orders it had with Kingfisher. Airbus is the other big loser.

Phuket: Emirates Airlines adds Phuket, Thailand, to its route network. We’ve always loved this name. But we’ve always wondered: is it pronounced with a soft U or a hard U? Fokker is a close runner-up.

Update, 1:30 PM PDT: One of the first images from Mars, courtesy of Mr. Sulu (George Takei on Facebook):