Today’s New Zealand Herald newspaper reports that the Lan Chile Airbus A340 flying from Santiago, Chile, to Auckland, New Zealand, on Tuesday night came close to being hit “by blazing pieces of a Russian satellite hurtling into New Zealand airspace. The disintegrating satellite was so close to the aircraft that the pilot could hear the roar it made as it broke the sound barrier.…At the aircraft’s cruising speed of 880km/h it was within about 40 seconds of a potential catastrophe.”
On board the plane, asleep and unaware of this drama, were Neil Tennant and Chris Lowe and the entire Pet Shop Boys touring party. Lan Chile flight 801 left Santiago late on Monday evening and, crossing the International Date Line, arrived safely at Auckland at 4 am on Wednesday morning.
Pet Shop Boys perform their debut New Zealand concert tonight at the St James Theatre, Auckland.
PSB plane “40 seconds from air disaster”
We have today received the sad news that Jack Bond, the director of our feature film, “It Couldn’t Happen Here” and the videos for “Always on my mind” and “Heart”, died yesterday. Jack had a distinguished career making both feature films and documentaries. He supervised the Blu-ray re-release of our film in 2020 by the British Film Institute and, during a meeting about it, suggested making another film with us! He was a warm and funny man who we very much enjoyed working with and we send our love and condolences to his family and those close to him. x
Recent News
“Pet Shop Boys Annually 2025” will be published on April 4th, 2025 and is available to pre-order now at the link below. A brand new exclusive “Annually 2025” T‑shirt is also available to pre-order now.
We would like to wish all fans, friends and visitors to this site a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.
A new lyric video for Pet Shop Boys’ “It doesn’t often snow at Christmas” is now available on YouTube.
Pet Shop Boys today release the expanded edition of their acclaimed new album, “Nonetheless”.
A new studio recording of the “All the young dudes” / “West End girls” medley, performed by PSB and the Manchester Camerata, and produced by Stuart Price with strings arranged by Anne Dudley, is available to stream now at the link below. The medley was performed at the MTV EMAs last night. It’s accompanied by a different “orchestral” mix by Stuart Price.
Kicking off the weekend which will see Pet Shop Boys performing at the EMAs in Manchester, the official video for their new version of David Bowie’s “All the young dudes” is now available to watch on YouTube at the link below.
Pet Shop Boys’ new double A‑side single, “New London boy / All the young dudes”, and an accompanying remixes single, are out now on CD and digitally at the link below.
Pet Shop Boys are pleased to announce that they will be performing at this year’s MTV EMAs in Manchester, where they will also receive the inaugural “Pop Pioneer Award” celebrating their 40 years in pop music. They will be performing with a local orchestra, the Manchester Camerata.