WINGING IT

Drafted a Magpie then straight onto an international flight €” in recent months Luke Ball€™s world has hardly been black and white, writes Michael Gleeson.

Unions fret about Qantas jobs

UNIONS are bracing for forced redundancies at Qantas by the middle of next year if air travel does not recover.

Here comes Tiger

THE first time Tiger Woods played in an Australian Masters was in 1997 as a 21-year-old, when not only did he do so for an appearance fee of $300,000 (small change compared with the $US3 million he is getting this time) but he turned up late suffering from jetlag after his flight was delayed for nine hours in Thailand. No chance of that happening this time when the world's greatest golfer jets into Melbourne today for his much-awaited Masters appearance at Kingston Heath. Yep, no boring old first-class seat on an international flight for him €” his mode of transport this time will be his own privately leased plane, a multimillion-dollar NetJet. When you earn the sort of money he does €” he raked in $130 million last year alone €” you can afford to travel any way you want but for Tiger it's not just for luxury and comfort alone. It's also to ensure he has some privacy. "If you've seen me at a golf tournament, you know how big a crowd I attract," said Woods once (in his pre-private jet days). "It's the same way at an airport. And, once I get to my seat on the plane, there's no way I can sleep because people are always wanting autographs." So that's his privacy accounted for €” but what about once on board? We can't say for sure what Tiger ate and drank on his way to Melbourne but we can tell you, he's pretty fussy. Those close to the champ say he likes to drink Evian €” chilled, of course €” and that the caterers are required to be very careful what they give him to eat. Prepared on a recent trip before Woods boarded a NetJet flight, the memo handed to the airline crew included a "critical note" for attendants about him being allergic to garlic and a reference about his preference for bagels with peanut butter and sliced banana.