Tag Archives: air travel

CBS News reports: The FBI responded Friday after a Delta flight from Los Angeles to Nashville was diverted to Albuquerque after a passenger approached the cabin in a way that forced flight attendants to act. Delta said Flight 386 landed in Albuquerque without incident and the passenger was removed by law enforcement. According to Delta, the crew and passengers of …

TechCrunch reports: United Airlines is the first official U.S. customer for Boom Supersonic, a company focused on making supersonic commercial flight a reality once again. Boom unveiled its supersonic sub-scale testing aircraft last year, and intends to start producing its Overture full-scale commercial supersonic passenger jet beginning in 2025, with a planned 2029 date for the beginning of commercial service …

CNBC reports: American Airlines said it won’t sell alcoholic beverages in the main cabin through Sept. 13, when the federal mask mandate is set to expire. It will still offer alcohol beverages in first and business class but only in flight. “Over the past week we’ve seen some of these stressors create deeply disturbing situations on board aircraft,” Brady Byrnes, …

USA Today reports: Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg on Sunday urged travelers to respect flight attendants and other crew members who enforce federal mask mandates on planes, pledging strict federal enforcement against such abuse at a time of increasingly unruly behavior by passengers. “The flight crews and other workers you encounter, they’re doing their job,” he said. “They’re following regulations and …

The Associated Press reports: A retired Southwest Airlines pilot was sentenced to probation Friday after pleading guilty to exposing his genitals to a female first officer and watching pornography on a laptop during a flight from Philadelphia to Florida last year. Michael Haak, 60, apologized and expressed remorse for his actions before U.S. Magistrate Judge J. Mark Coulson sentenced him …

USA Today reports: Southwest Airlines has ditched its plans to resume alcohol sales in June and July given a spike in in-flight incidents, including a an altercation between a flight attendant and passenger that sent the flight attendant to the hospital Sunday. “Given the recent uptick in industry-wide incidents of passenger disruptions in-flight, we have made the decision to pause …

Axios reports: Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas on Friday told ABC’s “Good Morning America” that the U.S. is “taking a very close look” at the possibility of requiring vaccine passports for international travel. While vaccine passports could be seen as helpful to reopening international travel, there is no one central international vaccine passport system, making them a target for …

The Hill reports: Seventy percent of Americans favor vaccine verification while traveling by plane or staying in a hotel, a new PwC survey found. Over half of respondents to a survey released on Friday said they support policies that would prevent people who don’t show proof of vaccination from traveling. Only 14 percent said they would be upset if they …

Bloomberg News reports: U.S. government officials monitoring the airways say they won’t tolerate passengers who refuse to don masks as airline travel surges ahead of the summer season. A recent spike in unruly passenger reports, many of them involving people refusing to cover their faces, prompted Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas on Tuesday to issue a stern warning to travelers. …

The Washington Post reports: European leaders on Monday agreed to impose sectoral sanctions on Belarus and to bar E.U. airlines from flying over the country’s airspace, dealing a potentially crushing blow to the economy, a day after Belarusian authorities forced down a civilian jet and pulled off a dissident journalist. The measures, backed by all 27 E.U. leaders, were an …

Just in via press release: United Airlines is offering its loyalty program members the chance to win free flights for a year’s worth of travel, in support of the Biden administration’s national effort to encourage more people to get their COVID-19 vaccination. Under the terms of the “Your Shot to Fly” sweepstakes, any new or existing MileagePlus® member who uploads …

The Washington Post reports: European leaders on Monday were considering a plan to sever Belarus from the rest of the continent’s airspace, a day after Belarusian authorities forced a commercial airliner to land and arrested a dissident journalist who had been flying from Athens to Lithuania. Latvian Foreign Minister Edgars Rinkevics said that AirBaltic, a major airline in the region, …

“There are organizations, particularly universities and colleges who are saying, not withstanding what the federal government is requiring, if you want to come into campus and be in in-person learning, you’re going to have to show proof of vaccination. “Cruise ships will likely be doing that. Airlines will likely be doing that. So you’re going to have at, a local, …

ABC News reports: An unruly passenger on a Delta flight in December is now facing the largest proposed fine from the Federal Aviation Administration this year — a whopping $52,500. According to the agency, the passenger tried to open the cockpit door on the flight from Honolulu to Seattle before striking a flight attendant in the face and pushing them …

San Francisco’s ABC News affiliate reports: A tense situation on a flight from JFK Airport in New York to SFO after an unruly passenger refused to wear a mask, began snorting a white substance, and then was accused of touching at least one female passenger. The plane was diverted to Minneapolis where the man was arrested. “So we as a …

CNN reports: Delta Air Lines is requiring new employees to get the Covid-19 vaccine, making it one of the largest US companies to issue a mandate. “Any person joining Delta in the future we will mandate to get vaccinated before they can sign up with the company,” CEO Ed Bastian told CNN’s Richard Quest in an exclusive interview. Bastian said …

The Points Guy reports: U.S. airline customers are sitting on more than 20 million expiring airline vouchers and flight credits worth more than a combined $10 billion. Now, two U.S. senators are demanding that airlines waive those expiration dates for all credits issued during the pandemic. Sens. Edward Markey (D-Mass.) and Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) co-signed a letter to each of …

The Associated Press reports: Americans set a record for pandemic-era air travel, then broke it again over the Mother’s Day holiday weekend. The Transportation Security Administration said that slightly more than 1.7 million people were screened at airport checkpoints on Sunday, the highest number since March 2020, when travel was collapsing because of the coronavirus outbreak. However, those crowds were …

Gallup reports: COVID-19 vaccinations continue to climb in the U.S., but significant vaccine hesitancy persists. Majorities of Americans support businesses requiring people to show proof of vaccination in order to participate in some public activities, but not others. Specifically, U.S. adults favor mandated vaccination certification for travel by airplane (57%) and to attend events with large crowds, such as concerts …

NBC News reports: The Federal Aviation Administration is warning air travelers about what it describes as a dramatic increase in unruly or dangerous behavior aboard passenger airplanes. In a typical year, the transportation agency sees 100 to 150 formal cases of bad passenger behavior. But since the start of this year, the agency said, the number of reported cases has …