Tag: air travel

Airport Nightmares Over TSA Lines Have Returned

The Transportation Security Administration is getting affected again by the Democrats, and now those long lines at airports are back. Most of these workers are exempt from the immediate effects of the shutdown in Washington. They have to show up for work, but they aren’t paid. The Democrats believe punishing TSA agents over Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s deportation activities will work. It won’t. As we saw in an NBC News poll, ICE is more popular than the Democratic Party. Also, ICE’s operations remain funded and unaffected—paid through the Big, Beautiful Bill.  

So, what are we even doing here? Democrats could sign off on a DHS funding bill after the January Minneapolis drama. Their base wouldn’t allow it, so most of the government was funded through September, with a short-term CR providing DHS funding until a longer-term funding measure could be hashed out. It failed. Republicans wanted another two-week extension, but Democrats rejected it. The agency was shut down over Presidents’ Day weekend, and now the mayhem has returned. In New Orleans, things looked like an Afghan refugee camp.

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US Arranging Charter, Military Flights for Americans in the Middle East

The U.S. State Department is looking to help Americans in the Middle East find a way home.

The State Department said on March 3 it is working to charter aircraft to fly Americans home following the start of the U.S.–Israel military strikes on Iran.

“The State Department is actively securing military aircraft and charter flights for American citizens who wish to leave the Middle East,” said Dylan Johnson, assistant secretary of state for global public affairs.

The Middle East war has caused major disruption in commercial air travel in the region.

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said the State Department “is actively working on plans to help Americans in the Middle East return home.”

She said U.S. citizens in the region should register at step.state.gov.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio said in a March 3 presser that to date, 9,000 Americans have been able to leave the Middle East since the start of the war with Iran.

According to the diplomat, more U.S. citizens are still attempting to leave the area, and in addition to military and charter flights, the government is working to secure expanded commercial flight options to facilitate the repatriation.

“Here’s the message I want to deliver [to] Americans who are in the Middle East and in need of assistance,” Rubio said. “We need to know where you are. We need to have contact information for Americans that need assistance. They have to register with us, because as these options begin to open up, and as they open up, we have to be able to call you.”

Johnson said the department has been in touch with almost 3,000 Americans seeking information on how to leave the area.

Nearly 500 of those inquiries came from Americans in Israel alone. Thus far, the Department of State has helped about 130 of those citizens leave the country, and 100 more are expected to leave on March 3.

Additional resources and departure options for Americans abroad can be found by calling 1-202-501-4444.

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Tucker Carlson Addresses “Detainment” Incident at Israeli Airport for the First Time

Tucker Carlson has addressed the Daily Mail’s report that claimed he was detained in Israel.

In his latest interview, in which he sat down with U.S. Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee, Tucker addressed the report on the detention incident.

Tucker at the start of the video shared that after the interview concluded with Huckabee, Israeli authorities were holding on to his and his producers’ passports.

The former Fox News host further shared that two of his producers “were called into rooms and given the third degree.”

After one of his producers left the room where he was being asked questions, he came out of the room and told Tucker, “That was the weirdest experience of my life. They asked me questions about the interview.”

Tucker added, “They were doing an intel op and humiliation exercise on my producer. This isn’t security. We are leaving right now!”

However, during his statement on the incident, Tucker Carlson never mentioned that he himself had been taken to a room and interrogated or detained, contradicting the Daily Mail’s report.

Shortly after the report went viral, security footage of Tucker Carlson taking a picture of a man at the airport went viral, with many users on X using the clip to refute Tucker’s claims about his team’s treatment at the airport.

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Kristi Noem’s $70m luxurious private ICE jet sparks scandal: Stunning image shows mile-high bedroom

Kristi Noem’s use of a luxurious private jet has raised alarm among powerful players in the Republican Party, as Donald Trump’s top immigration enforcer seeks to deploy it for migrant deportations.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), which falls under Noem’s jurisdiction inside the Department of Homeland Security, is seeking approval from the White House to purchase a $70 million luxury Boeing jet, according to NBC News.

The jet is already being leased by DHS – Noem used it to travel to Tel Aviv, Israel – but now the agency wants to own it. 

ICE claims the jet will be used for deportations and travel for Cabinet officials, including DHS leadership like Noem. 

But some DHS officials privately expressed concern to NBC whether the luxury 747 jet is necessary for Noem to carryout the president’s mass deportation agenda. 

When asked how the plane would be used for deportations, a DHS spokesperson said ‘at least one of the bedrooms is currently being converted for seating to prepare the aircraft to meet the demands of its deportation mission’. 

NBC’s scoop caused the Republican National Committee to blast the story to the top power brokers and media pundits in the Republican party. The story was sent on Thursday morning to an email list filled with some of the most important operators in the GOP, including RNC members.  

‘Knives are out for Noem. They only send out stories they want folks to know about,’ one GOP operator on the RNC’s list told the Daily Mail. ‘They don’t send out every clipping.’

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Two U.S. Pilots ILLEGALLY ARRESTED in West Africa During Routine Fuel Stop Beg President Trump for Immediate Help

Two innocent American citizens have been rotting in a brutal, third-world West African prison for nearly two months after being ambushed by a heavily armed military squad during a routine fuel stop.

Now, facing horrific conditions with no end in sight, they are begging President Donald Trump to step in and save them.

Veteran pilot Brad Schlenker, 63, of Illinois, and fellow American pilot Fabio Espinal Nunez, 33, of New Jersey, were operating a Gulfstream IV charter flight transporting a Brazilian family from Suriname to Dubai when they made a scheduled refueling stop in Conakry, Guinea in late December 2025.

They did everything by the book. They communicated with air traffic control.

They requested—and received—clearance to land at Ahmed Sékou Touré International Airport in the Republic of Guinea for a simple refueling stop.

Instead of a fuel truck, they were met by a terrifying military ambush.

As soon as the plane touched the tarmac, nearly 100 heavily armed Guinean military personnel swarmed the aircraft. They pointed AK-47s at the terrified American pilots, screaming at them in French, and dragged them off the runway.

The two American pilots were immediately detained.

Guinean authorities later accused the pilots of:

  • Violating national sovereignty
  • Entering airspace illegally
  • Making an unauthorized landing
  • Endangering national defense

Aerotime reported:

A family source familiar with the trip told AeroTime that the crew believed required permits for the fuel stop had been arranged by a local handler, raising questions about whether the detention stems from a paperwork failure or something more deliberate. The same source alleged that, after initially being held at a police station for roughly 10 days, the pilots were moved into Conakry’s prison system and threatened with a sentence of up to 20 years.

Conditions inside the prison have become a central point of concern for relatives. Stevenson told People.com that the facility is severely overcrowded and detainees rely on outside support for food. She described dirt floors, limited sanitation, and prisoners taking turns sleeping. A US State Department spokesperson said that the department is aware of the detention and that consular officers have visited the pilots multiple times since late December 2025.

The pilots’ families are now publicly urging the Trump administration to intervene. In an interview with CBS News, Schlenker directly appealed to President Trump for help.

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EPSTEIN FILES FALLOUT: UK Police ‘Assessing Information’ on Stansted Airport, Suspected To Have Been Used for Sex Trafficking Young Women Into Britain

Sex traffickers’ entry gate?

The UK is reeling over the allegations that the Jeffrey Epstein trafficking ring would have used Stansted airport with impunity, trafficking women into Britain.

The issue has even been taken up by a former Prime Minister who is calling for a full investigation.

By now, Essex Police has said it is ‘assessing information’ about private flights coming and going from Stansted Airport, after it was featured in the US DOJ’s Epstein files.

This ‘assessing information’ ruse may well mean that the whole business will be quashed.

BBC reported:

“Last year a BBC investigation found 87 flights linked to the convicted sex offender had arrived at or departed from UK airports between the early 1990s and 2018.

Ex-Prime Minister Gordon Brown wrote in the New Statesman last week that police ‘urgently’ need to re-examine whether Jeffrey Epstein’s victims were trafficked within and outside of the UK.”

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This Is The LOCUST Laser That Reportedly Prompted Closing El Paso’s Airspace

An AeroVironment LOCUST laser directed energy weapon owned by the U.S. Army was central to the chain of events that led to the recent shutdown of airspace around El Paso, Texas, according to Reuters. Though many questions still remain to be answered about how the flight restrictions came to be imposed, LOCUST was designed to respond to exactly the kinds of drones that regularly fly across the southern border from Mexico.

Readers can get caught up on what is known about the clampdown in the skies above El Paso on Wednesday in initial reporting here.

Multiple outlets had already reported yesterday that the use of a laser counter-drone system was a key factor in the Federal Aviation Administration’s (FAA) sudden decision to impose the temporary flight restrictions over El Paso. Reuters‘ report says “two people briefed on the situation” identified the laser system in question as LOCUST. TWZ has reached out to AeroVironment and the U.S. Army for more information. U.S. Northern Command (NORTHCOM), which oversees U.S. military operations in and around the homeland, declined to comment.

Last July, the U.S. military released a picture, seen below, showing Army personnel assigned to Joint Task Force-Southern Border (JTF-SB) conducting sling-load training with a LOCUST mounted on a 4×4 M1301 Infantry Squad Vehicle (ISV) at Fort Bliss. This had prompted some speculation that LOCUST systems might be in use along the U.S. border with Mexico. JTF-SB was established in March 2025 to oversee a surge in U.S. military support to the border security mission. Fort Bliss, situated in El Paso, is a major hub for those operations. It is also home to the 1st Armored Division and a significant number of Army air defense units.

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Eyewitness video of mysterious craft hovering over El Paso upends Trump administration ‘party balloon’ claims

Claims that US airspace was shut down because of a party balloon have been popped by new video appearing to show a large, hovering UFO over El Paso, Texas.

An eyewitness driving near El Paso International Airport on Tuesday pulled over to record what they described as a mothership floating above the ground in the distance, which was releasing smaller objects from its underside.

The sighting, shared with crowdsourced UFO-reporting platform Enigma, occurred just hours before a large swath of US airspace was abruptly closed for ‘special security reasons’ at 11.30pm MT on February 10.

The mysterious shut down was originally announced to last for ten days and included all commercial, cargo, and general flights within a ten-mile-wide area roughly five miles southwest of El Paso, from the ground up to 18,000 feet.

However, the chaotic shut down by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) was quickly called off, with the Trump Administration changing the story of what triggered the alert multiple times within a matter of hours on Wednesday.

White House officials initially announced the US had taken down a Mexican cartel drone flying across the southern border, only to claim hours later that the object struck by a high-powered laser was a party balloon.

Now, UFO researchers and witnesses in the area have alleged that something other than a balloon or drone was spotted on multiple days near the US-Mexico border before the FAA warning.

‘Looks like the mothership. It’s huge. And there are stuff coming out from the bottom of it and going off to the left a little bit as it landed,’ the driver on Tuesday said. 

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Affirmative Action Quotas in Question as Female, Minority Pilots Caused Half of Pilot-Error Crashes

Daniel Huff, a former White House lawyer, noted in a recent analysis that the drive toward diversity and inclusion in the airline industry has put passengers at risk.

In an article for the New York Post, Huff wrote that President Donald Trump was right to rescind diversity efforts at the Federal Aviation Administration.

That’s because female and minority pilots — many of whom entered the industry amid a drive toward diversity among pilots — were responsible for half of pilot-error crashes.

Despite making up 10 percent of pilots, they were responsible for four out of eight such crashes since 2000.

“The sample size is small,” Huff wrote. “But precisely because crashes are so rare, the few times they occur it’s important to scrutinize who is at the controls; under DEI’s guiding principle of relying on statistical disparities, it’s certainly enough to raise questions.”

“It’s not that women and minorities are inherently unable to fly planes, but in practice, pressure for affirmative action too often leads airlines to lower their standards to meet quotas,” Huff added.

The attorney referenced the 2019 Atlas Air Crash as an example.

Conrad Aska, a black pilot, “panicked after accidentally initiating a go-around procedure and flew the plane into the ground,” Huff wrote.

There were signs that such behaviors were a risk even as he was training.

In simulator exercises, he would “get extremely flustered and could not respond appropriately.”

Even worse, not all diversity-driven safety incidents even reach the public eye.

“Most diversity disasters leave far-from-complete paper trails. Training failures happen behind closed doors. Near-misses can go unreported,” Huff wrote.

“Crashes can be blamed on mechanical failure, understaffing or other politically acceptable causes.”

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ICE observer says her Global Entry was revoked after agent scanned her face

Minnesota resident Nicole Cleland had her Global Entry and TSA PreCheck privileges revoked three days after an incident in which she observed activity by immigration agents, the woman said in a court declaration. An agent told Cleland that he used facial recognition technology to identify her, she wrote in a declaration filed in US District Court for the District of Minnesota.

Cleland, a 56-year-old resident of Richfield and a director at Target Corporation, volunteers with a group that tracks potential Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Customs and Border Protection (CBP) vehicles in her neighborhood, according to her declaration. On the morning of January 10, she “observed a white Dodge Ram being driven by what I believed to be federal enforcement agents” and “maneuvered behind the vehicle with the intent of observing the agents’ actions.”

Cleland said that she and another observer in a different car followed the Dodge Ram because of “concern about a local apartment building being raided.” She followed the car for a short time and from a safe distance until “the Dodge Ram stopped in front of the other commuter’s vehicle,” she wrote. Cleland said two other vehicles apparently driven by federal agents stopped in front of the Dodge Ram, and her path forward was blocked.

“An agent exited the vehicle and approached my vehicle,” Cleland wrote. “I remained in my vehicle. The agent addressed me by my name and informed me that they had ‘facial recognition’ and that his body cam was recording. The agent stated that he worked for border patrol. He wore full camouflage fatigues. The agent stated that I was impeding their work. He indicated he was giving me a verbal warning and if I was found to be impeding again, I would be arrested.”

Cleland acknowledged that she heard what the agent said, and they drove off in opposite directions, according to her declaration. Cleland submitted the declaration on January 21 in a lawsuit filed by Minnesota residents against US government officials with the Department of Homeland Security and ICE. Cleland’s court filing was mentioned yesterday in a Boston Globe column about tactics used by ICE agents to intimidate protesters.

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