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(Courtesy of The Canadian Press) OT: How about also raising the spending limit for shopping in the US. Would be nice if we could come back after a a day with $500 CDN (goods) and week with $2000 CDN (goods)

before you all get excited, Swiss is going to put the 777 on YUL next summer for pilot training reasons only! With 62 business class seats, this airplane is not meant for Montreal for our market. Effective Aug 30 2016, it will return to normal year-round A330-300 operations. http://airlineroute.net/2015/07/09/lx-77w-s16update1/

La compagnie aérienne a fait l'achat de Servair Private Charter SA et servira de plate-forme d'exploitation pour le parc aérien de Lufthansa Private Jet. Pour en lire plus...

(Courtesy of Luxist)

(Courtes of Financial Times Limited)

How Switzerland camouflaged its ready-to-explode architecture during the Cold War I finally had a chance to read John McPhee's book La Place de la Concorde Suisse, his somewhat off-puttingly titled 1984 look at the Swiss military and its elaborately engineered landscape defenses. To make a long story short, McPhee describes two things: how Switzerland requires military service from every able-bodied male Swiss citizen — a model later emulated and expanded by Israel — and how the Swiss military has, in effect, wired the entire country to blow in the event of foreign invasion. To keep enemy armies out, bridges will be dynamited and, whenever possible, deliberately collapsed onto other roads and bridges below; hills have been weaponized to be activated as valley-sweeping artificial landslides; mountain tunnels will be sealed from within to act as nuclear-proof air raid shelters; and much more. First, a quick look at the system of self-demolition that is literally built into the Swiss national infrastructure: To interrupt the utility of bridges, tunnels, highways, railroads, Switzerland has established three thousand points of demolition. That is the number officially printed. It has been suggested to me that to approximate a true figure a reader ought to multiply by two. Where a highway bridge crosses a railroad, a segment of the bridge is programmed to drop on the railroad. Primacord fuses are built into the bridge. Hidden artillery is in place on either side, set to prevent the enemy from clearing or repairing the damage. Further: Near the German border of Switzerland, every railroad and highway tunnel has been prepared to pinch shut explosively. Nearby mountains have been made so porous that whole divisions can fit inside them. There are weapons and soldiers under barns. There are cannons inside pretty houses. Where Swiss highways happen to run on narrow ground between the edges of lakes and to the bottoms of cliffs, man-made rockslides are ready to slide. The impending self-demolition of the country is "routinely practiced," McPhee writes. "Often, in such assignments, the civilian engineer who created the bridge will, in his capacity as a military officer, be given the task of planning its destruction." But this is where a weirdly fascinating, George Dante-esque artifice begins. After all, McPhee writes, why would Switzerland want anyone to know where the dynamite is wired, where the cannons are hidden, which bridges will blow, or where to find the Army's top secret mountain hideaways and resupply shelters? But if you look closely, you start to see things. Through locked gates you see corridors in the sides of mountains-going on and on into the rock, with alight in the ceiling every five meters and far too many to count... Riding around Switzerland with these matters in mind-seeing little driveways that blank out in mountain walls, cavern entrances like dark spots under mountainside railroads and winding corniches, portals in various forms of lithic disguise-you can find it difficult not to imagine that almost anything is a military deception, masking a hidden installation. Full size Indeed, at one point McPhee jokes that his local guide in Switzerland "tends to treat the army itself as if it were a military secret." McPhee points to small moments of "fake stonework, concealing the artillery behind it," that dot Switzerland's Alpine geology, little doors that will pop open to reveal internal cannons and blast the country's roads to smithereens. Later, passing under a mountain bridge, McPhee notices "small steel doors in one pier" hinting that the bridge "was ready to blow. It had been superceded, however, by an even higher bridge, which leaped through the sky above-a part of the new road to Simplon. In an extreme emergency, the midspan of the new bridge would no doubt drop on the old one." It's a strange kind of national infrastructure, one that is at its most rigorously functional — one that truly fulfills its promises-when in a state of cascading self-imposed collapse. I could easily over-quote my way to the end of my internet service here, but it's a story worth reading. There are, for instance, hidden bomb shelters everywhere in an extraordinary application of dual-use construction. "All over Switzerland," according to McPhee, "in relatively spacious and quiet towns, are sophisticated underground parking garages with automatic machines that offer tickets like tongues and imply a level of commerce that is somewhere else. In a nuclear emergency, huge doors would slide closed with the town's population inside." Full size Describing titanic underground fortresses — "networks of tunnels, caverns, bunkers, and surface installations, each spread through many tens of square miles" — McPhee briefly relates the story of a military reconnaissance mission on which he was able to tag along, involving a hydroelectric power station built inside a mountain, accessible by ladders and stairs; the battalion tasked with climbing down into it thus learns "that if a company of soldiers had to do it they could climb the mountain on the inside." In any case, the book's vision of the Alps as a massively constructed — or, at least, geotechnically augmented and militarily amplified — terrain is quite heady, including the very idea that, in seeking to protect itself from outside invaders, Switzerland is prepared to dynamite, shell, bulldoze, and seal itself into a kind of self-protective oblivion, hiding out in artificially expanded rocky passes and concrete super-basements as all roads and bridges into and out of the country are instantly transformed into landslides and dust. http://gizmodo.com/5919581/how-switzerland-camouflaged-its-ready+to+explode-architecture-during-the-cold-war?tag=design

For the all the grief posters here have given this company and even myself, here are some quick facts; In 1996 there were 2 daily international Air Canada operated flights from Mirabel: AC865/866 YOW-YMX-LHR B767-300 AC870/871 YMX-CDG A340-300 In 2016, as of now there will be 10 daily to Europe + 4 daily joint-venture services: 5 weekly Montreal-Lyon A330 (added in 2016) Daily Montreal-Geneva A330 (added in 2009) Daily Montreal-Rome Rouge B763 (added in 2009) Daily Montreal-Brussels A330 (added in 2010) Double daily Montreal-Paris Daily Montreal-London B777 Daily Montreal-Frankfurt A330 Daily Montreal-Frankfurt A340 Lufthansa Daily Montreal-Zurich A330 Swiss Daily Montreal-Munich A330 Lufthansa 3 weekly Air China Montreal-Beijing B777 4 weekly Montreal-Athens Rouge B763 (added in 2010) 3 weekly Montreal-Barcelona Rouge 763 (added in 2010) 3 weekly Montreal-Nice Rouge 763 (added in 2014) 2 weekly Montreal-Venice Rouge 763 (added in 2015) Amazing progress!

Montréal fait rêver les passagers de Swiss Caroline Rodgers, collaboration spéciale La Presse C'est en regardant des photos du Stade olympique, du Marché Bonsecours et du Palais des congrès que les passagers de Swiss pourront rêver pendant leur prochain vol. Le Swiss Magazine, distribué à bord des avions de la compagnie aérienne, met Montréal en vedette au mois d'octobre. Vingt pages, dont 13 consacrées à de magnifiques photos, tracent un portrait flatteur de la métropole. Le chef Martin Picard, la foule des Piknic Electronik et les smoked-meat de Schwartz's sont au nombre des stars choisies du photographe. Et en page couverture, les vitraux multicolores du Palais des congrès. Dans les éditions précédentes, des villes comme Sofia, Shanghai, Florence et Londres étaient mises en lumière. Au tour de Montréal de se faire complimenter... et de jouir d'une grande visibilité auprès de milliers de visiteurs potentiels! Montréal est décrite comme une ville unique, mélange de simplicité nord-américaine et de distinction à l'européenne, avec une touche festive et artistique. En cette semaine douloureuse pour le Grand Prix, on ne peut toutefois s'empêcher de remarquer l'ironie involontaire d'un certain passage: «De festivals de films en événements sportifs comme la Formule 1, il se passe toujours quelque chose à Montréal», peut-on lire. Et à la classique question «pourquoi Montréal?», la designer de mode Mariouche Gagné répond: créativité, mélange culturel, paradis culinaire et sécurité. Un carnet d'adresses bien garni présente enfin les restaurants, hôtels et autres choix incontournables du journaliste. De quoi donner envie aux voyageurs du monde entier de nous rendre visite. http://www.cyberpresse.ca/voyages/nouvelles/200810/22/01-31725-montreal-fait-rever-les-passagers-de-swiss.php

Dans le "inflight" magazine de Swiss, la ville à l'honneur en ce mois de novembre est Montréal L'article sur Montréal http://www.swiss.com/web/EN/fly_swiss/on_board/Documents/Magazine_2013/Montreal.pdf City Guide http://www.swiss.com/web/EN/fly_swiss/on_board/Documents/Magazine_2013/Montreal_cityguide.pdf