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This incident took place on United Airlines flight UA839, which operates the 7,488-mile journey from Los Angeles (LAX) to Sydney (SYD). Specifically, this involves the flight that was scheduled to take off at 10:55PM on Thursday, December 29, 2022, and land in Sydney at 9:15AM on Saturday, December 31, 2022. Presumably most of the 230 passengers onboard were excited to celebrate the new year in Sydney. The flight was operated by a seven-year-old Boeing 787-9 with the registration code N38955. For roughly the first seven hours, the flight operated as planned, flying southwest over the Pacific Ocean, including flying to...

M7.9 - Samoa Islands region - 2009 September 29 17:48:19

PAGO PAGO, American Samoa – A powerful Pacific Ocean earthquake spawned towering tsunami waves that swept ashore on Samoa and American Samoa early Tuesday, flattening villages, killing at least 34 people and leaving dozens of workers missing at devastated National Park Service facilities. Cars and people were swept out to sea by the fast-churning water as survivors fled to high ground, where they remained huddled hours later. Hampered by power and communications outages, officials struggled to assess the casualties and damage. The quake, with a magnitude between 8.0 and 8.3, struck around dawn about 20 miles below the ocean floor,...

ASG and McDonald's cancel Utulei Beach lease By La Poasa Samoa News Staff The close to one acre of land on Utulei Beach that was leased by the government to McDonald's American Samoa for its second restaurant is no more, after both parties mutually agreed to cancel the less than 10-year lease. Acting Governor Ipulasi A. Sunia sent a letter to the Acting Territorial Registrar on Thursday, Jan. 18 informing the office that the lease has been canceled. This was also revealed yesterday morning by government attorneys at the High Court during a hearing on the Senate's case against American...

The government's case against two Chinese nationals accused of numerous criminal charges in connection with an alleged prostitution operation that was uncovered in Pago Pago late last month has been bound over to the High Court. The Chinese nationals, Fu Shen Kuo and Ju Sheng Wang, will appear in High Court this morning for their arraignment where they are expected to enter not guilty pleas. After hearing sole testimony from police Det. John Cendrowski yesterday afternoon District Court Judge John L. Ward II ruled he found probable cause that the crimes for which the government charged Kuo and Wang may...

By Fili Sagapolutele Samoa News Correspondent American Samoa's "high risk" designation by the U.S. Department of Interior will not be lifted anytime soon even though the FY2005 audit was submitted on time. "One of the conditions for lifting the high-risk designations is that the ASG have two consecutive years of timely, clean single audit reports," DOI's deputy director for Insular Areas, Papali'i David B. Cohen told Samoa News by e-mail from Washington late last week. "The fiscal year 2005 audit was timely, but not clean. It therefore cannot be counted towards the lifting of the high-risk designation." "That does not...

Hawaiian Air seeking the federal government's intervention to respond to American Samoa's concerns was anticipated by his administration Governor Togiola said on his weekend radio program. Togiola said it is his personal opinion that Hawaiian does not want to respond directly to local concerns, especially on the issue of reducing air fares for the Pago Pago route, because the airline does not want to reduce the current high fares. So instead of addressing the high fares and excessive charges imposed on American Samoa's passengers, Hawaiian Air is dragging the issue around by asking DOT for a ruling on the executive...

Tours of the canneries and part of the National Park of American Samoa in Vatia is being planned for members of the U.S. House Committee on International Relations that are arriving on Wednesday. Their actual time of arrival has not yet been confirmed. The delegation, headed by committee chairman Henry Hyde (R-Ill.), includes Congressman Faleomavaega Eni, Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.), Melvin Watt (D-N.C.) and Dana Rohrabacher (R-Calif.) and support staff, will be on island for five to six hours. They have already visited the Philippines and South Korea. The governor said on his weekend radio program the delegation will be hosted...

The American Samoa Government (ASG) still needs to improve the way it accounts for its monies. An off-island firm contracted to audit ASG's financial statements for the year ended Sept. 30, 2004, said the system of financial accounting and reporting used by the local government is inadequate. RC Holsinger Associates, which issued their independent auditors' report in June, said the ASG audit reports show "significant failures in internal control structure related to general accounting and grants administration." The independent auditors also noted that there is "evidence of a failure of identified controls in preventing or detecting misstatements of accounting information...

Hawaiian Airlines has asked the U.S. Department of Transportation to officially declare whether the governor's executive order forcing Hawaiian to withdraw from the Honolulu-Pago route is enforceable. The carrier, which has operated its flights in this market for more than 20 years, filed a petition for declaratory relief with DOT yesterday. A copy of their petition was cc'ed to Governor Togiola. Samoa News asked Togiola to comment on Hawaiian Air's petition to DOT and asked the governor's press officer Vince Iuli for an official statement. None was forthcoming as of press time yesterday evening. "We believe that the executive order...

My wife, Kemberly, has left. That’s ordinary enough. It happens a few million times a year, assuming that half of all American divorces are the wife’s idea. But this is about the why, not the what, of that decision. The why is unique, and extraordinary. If I were she, and she were I, I would do the same thing. (Work on it. That sentence is grammatically correct.) My wife has been offered the job of Head Chef of a new restaurant out of town, to be built and run to her specifications. To that you say, well, some commuter marriages...

Toxic Tugs - Public Poisons by J.B. Stone - 04/17/02 What do Maryland, Utah, Alaska, Hawaii, Johnston Atoll, and the Marshall Islands have in common? BioChemical warfare tests were conducted in all of them behind a blinding haze of Cold War secrecy. And hardly a word of warning was ever issued, before during, or afterward the test conductors, subjects, or citizens living in surrounding areas. Marine jets and Army artillery sprayed "harmless simulants" and live biological and chemical agents on unsuspecting citizens for 15 years on land and sea during Operation Deseret. The randomly selected human test rats onboard ships...