Tag Archives: air travel

FAA To Investigate Near-Collision On JFK Runway

CNN reports: The Federal Aviation Administration announced it is starting a probe into how a commercial airliner taxied in front of a flight that was taking off from New York’s John F. Kennedy International Airport Friday evening. The crew of a Delta Air Lines Boeing 737 aborted its takeoff, ultimately stopping within 1,000 feet of the taxiing American Airlines Boeing 777, the …

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Shareholders Sue Southwest Over Holiday Meltdown

Reuters reports: Shareholders filed a lawsuit against Southwest Airlines Co on Thursday, accusing the carrier of fraudulently concealing problems that led last month to an operational meltdown and more than 15,000 flight cancellations. According to the proposed class action filed in federal court in Houston, Southwest publicly downplayed or failed to disclose serious shortcomings in its flight scheduling software technology. …

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FAA System Outage Blamed On “Honest” Human Error

ABC News reports: The ground stop and Federal Aviation Administration systems failures Wednesday morning that impacted thousands of flights across the U.S. appear to have been the result of a mistake that occurred during routine scheduled systems maintenance, according to a senior official briefed on the internal review. An engineer “replaced one file with another,” the official said, not realizing …

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FAA Lifts Nationwide Ground Stop After System Outage

Reuters reports: U.S. flights were slowly beginning to resume departures after Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) scrambled to fix a system outage overnight that impacted thousands of flight. U.S. President Joe Biden has been briefed on the FAA system outage, press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said on Twitter. There is no evidence of a cyber-attack at this point, but the president has …

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WHO Calls For Face Masks On Long-Haul Flights

Reuters reports: Countries should consider recommending that passengers wear masks on long-haul flights, given the rapid spread of the latest Omicron subvariant of COVID-19 in the United States, World Health Organization (WHO) officials said on Tuesday. In Europe, the XBB.1.5 subvariant was detected in small but growing numbers, WHO and Europe officials said at a press briefing. Passengers should be …

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FAA Grounds All Flights Over Computer Outage

NBC News reports: Flights across the United States were affected Wednesday morning after the Federal Aviation Administration said it experienced a computer outage. All flights in the U.S. were grounded following the incident, a source with knowledge of the situation told NBC News. About 1230  flights within, into and out of the U.S. were delayed as of around 6:30 a.m. …

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Southwest Offers Customers 25K Frequent Flier Points

CBS News reports: Southwest Airlines, which angered customers with thousands of flight cancellations over the holidays, is offering 25,000 frequent-flier points to travelers who were affected by the epic meltdown. Southwest CEO Bob Jordan wrote in a letter to impacted travelers that the 25,000 points have a value of more than $300, will never expire and carry no blackout dates. …

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Flights To And From Florida Halted Over Radar Issue

Orlando’s NBC affiliate reports: Shortly after 1 p.m. on Monday, social media began swarming with reports of flights heading into Florida being halted or canceled. The FAA told WESH 2: “The FAA has slowed the volume of traffic into Florida airspace due to an air traffic computer issue that is being resolved.” Miami International Airport stated that there was a …

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Southwest CEO Vows To Reimburse Passengers [VIDEO]

The Hill reports: The CEO of Southwest Airlines, Bob Jordan, promised that the airline will provide reimbursements to those who were affected by its thousands of cancellations over the past week, saying the “desire is to go above and beyond.” Jordan said in an interview on ABC’s “Good Morning America” on Friday that the storm that led to the airline …

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Southwest Claims Return To “Normal” Schedules Today

CNN reports: Southwest Airlines says it’s set up to resume normal schedules on Friday after a tumultuous eight days that left hundreds of thousands of passengers delayed or stranded and prompted its executives to make apologies to the riding public and government officials. In a statement released Thursday — following another bruising day in which a further 2,362 flights were …

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Southwest Passengers Battle Airline Over Lost Bags

USA Today reports: It’s not just thousands of people with canceled Southwest Airlines flights being stranded at airports across the nation, but also thousands of pieces of their checked in luggage – even if the owner never got on a flight.  Some passengers said they have been separated from baby gear, medicine and other important items. In the immediate aftermath …

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Chaos Continues For Southwest Airlines Passengers

The Associated Press reports: Families hoping to catch a Southwest Airlines flight after days of cancellations, missing luggage and missed family connections suffered through another wave of scrubbed flights, with another 2,500 pulled from arrival and departure boards Wednesday. According to the FlightAware tracking service, more than 91% of all canceled flights in the U.S. Wednesday were from Southwest. This …

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Southwest CEO “Truly Sorry” About Travel Meltdown

The Associated Press reports: In a video that Southwest posted late Tuesday, CEO Robert Jordan said Southwest would operate a reduced schedule for several days but hoped to be “back on track before next week.” Jordan blamed the winter storm for snarling the airline’s “highly complex” network. He said Southwest’s tools for recovering from disruptions work “99% of the time, …

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Biden Vows To Hold Airlines Accountable For Chaos

USA Today reports: President Joe Biden said his administration will hold airlines accountable after nationwide flight cancellations following an extreme winter storm this past week. Thousands of flights were canceled this week, with many being from Southwest Airlines. “The Committee will be looking into the causes of these disruptions and its impact to consumers,” Sen. Maria Cantwell, D-Wash., chair of the …

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Flight Makes Emergency Landing Due To Laptop Fire

ABC News reports: A Lufthansa flight from Los Angeles to Frankfurt, Germany, made an unscheduled landing at Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport after a passenger’s laptop caught fire, the airline said. Monday night’s landing at O’Hare was a precautionary step after an overheated laptop caused a small fire in the passenger cabin, the airline said. None of the passengers were injured, …

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Feds To Investigate Operations At Southwest Airlines

The Associated Press reports: Major U.S. airlines were broadsided by the massive weekend winter storm that swept across large swaths of the country but had largely recovered heading into Monday, except for one. Problems at Southwest Airlines appeared to snowball after the worst of the storm passed. The disparity has triggered a closer look at Southwest operations by the U.S. …

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Southwest Has Already Canceled 2500+ Flights Today

CNN Business reports: Air travelers in the US hoping for clear skies on Tuesday following a disastrous week of weather-related flight cancellations and delays will have to extend their patience a few more days — particularly if they’re flying with Southwest Airlines. More than 2,845 flights within, into or out of the US have already been canceled for Tuesday as …

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Air Travel Chaos As Southwest Cancels Most Flights

The New York Times reports: Thousands of travelers were stranded at U.S. airports on Monday as a wave of canceled flights — many of them operated by Southwest Airlines — spoiled holiday plans and kept families from returning home during one of the busiest and most stressful travel stretches of the year. More than 3,700 flights in the United States …

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Mayhem Continues For Air Travelers Nationwide

USA Today reports: More than 3,000 flights were cancelled across the U.S. on Christmas Day as a brutal winter storm and frigid cold weather swept much of the country over the weekend. Flight-tracking website FlightAware reported 3,487 cancellations on Sunday and 7,163 delays in the U.S. As of Monday morning, another 1,452 flights were canceled and 980 were delayed across …

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Plane Carrying NFL Team Makes Emergency Landing

Fox Sports reports: A celebratory flight home turned scary for the Cincinnati Bengals. Following their win over the New England Patriots on Saturday, the Bengals’ team plane had to make an emergency landing at JFK International Airport after an engine failed, according to multiple reports. The team was switching planes at around 9 p.m. at the New York airport. Read the full article. …

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