Tag: air travel

In Plane Sight: Drug agents searching passengers for cash at airport gates

That passenger standing next to you at the departure gate may actually be a plain-clothes drug agent.

Atlanta News First Investigates recently tailed U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) task force officers as they walked, otherwise unnoticed, from gate to gate at Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport. We watched them search passengers right after they scanned their boarding passes.

“He just approached me, and he asked me for my ID,” film director Tabari Sturdivant said. “He didn’t state who he was. He just asked me for ID, and I thought he was a Delta agent. He had airport credentials on, and so I gave it to him immediately.”

Sturdivant was flying to Los Angeles for a film project last year when he was approached by the DEA task force officers. They searched his bag in front of the other passengers boarding the flight, according to video recorded by an onlooker.

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The climate change proposal which means you’d never see the Mediterranean again

Steve Coogan is not the first person you think of when considering the climate crisis.  And yet, earlier this week, I found myself recalling one of his greatest sitcom scenes as I read through a study on how to cut carbon emissions in some of the world’s largest cities.

You probably know it – the six minutes of excruciating comic perfection where Coogan’s greatest creation, the failing chat-show host Alan Partridge, meets a BBC commissioning editor to pitch suggestions for new TV programmes. The lunch goes badly, and growing ever more desperate, Partridge starts throwing increasingly random ideas across the table. “Youth Hostelling with Chris Eubank”, he suggests. “Inner City Sumo! Monkey Tennis?”.

There is nothing about budget travel with retired middleweights in “The Future of Urban Consumption in a 1.5°C World” – a report from the environmental group C40 Cities that has found itself in the spotlight. But then, C40 Cities is a serious organisation, comprising 96 major urban centres, on six continents. It meets regularly to discuss how we can lessen our collective carbon footprint, and its dispatch contains some genuinely sensible ideas – reducing the amount of clothing we buy, the amount of electricity we use, the amount of meat we eat.

However, its suggestions on aviation are Full Partridge in their lack of connection to reality – seemingly muttered at random, in a bid to get something, anything on paper. The citizens of the C40 Cities (and with London, New York, Sydney, Madrid and Rome part of the club, as well as Mumbai, Dubai and Rio, that means a good many of us), it says, should rein in their use of aircraft to one return flight, of no more than 1,500km (932 miles) in total distance, every three years. Better still, they should do so by the year 2030.

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Janet Airlines flies secret jets out of Las Vegas to AREA 51

Here’s an airline you’ll likely never fly on – no matter how much money you have.

Janet Airlines Boeing 737 planes travel to one of the most mysterious and talked-about places on Earth – Area 51, deep in the Nevada desert.

There, the United States government develops its most secretive military technology.

The ultra-secret base is also rumored to host crashed extraterrestrial spacecraft – and even aliens themselves (although cynics claim this provides a useful distraction from exotic aircraft and weapons development that happens there).

But the Janet jets that take workers and government officials there are altogether more nondescript, with the passenger airliners not believed to contain any particularly exciting features. 

Janet – whose letters are rumored to stand for Joint Air Network for Employee Transportation, or Just Another None Existent Terminal – has a fleet of six Boeing 737 jets. 

Its pilots also fly seven smaller Beechcraft propeller planes.

Janet planes making the 87 mile trip from Vegas to Area 51 describe their destination as the mysterious-sounding Station 3. 

Flight trackers show the jets traveling part of the way there, but they turn their transponders off around 12 miles before they reach their final destination, according to journalist Matt Lillywhite. 

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KYRSTEN SINEMA MOVES TO SLASH PILOT TRAINING AFTER TAKING AIRLINE CASH

IN A BLISTERING attack on her Senate colleague last week, Sen. Tammy Duckworth, D-Ill., warned independent Arizona Sen. Kyrsten Sinema that a proposal to reduce the number of required in-flight training hours for pilots would result in “blood on your hands.” The attack from Duckworth was prompted by an amendment supported by Sinema and Sen. John Thune, R-S.D., that would allow pilots to meet training requirements by substituting hours spent in a flight simulator for actual flight time.

For Duckworth, who lost both of her legs to a rocket attack on the Black Hawk helicopter she was piloting in 2004 during the Iraq War, the issue is personal. “Now is not the time to put corporate profits ahead of the lives of our constituents who may want to board a commercial flight in the future,” Duckworth said. “A vote to reduce a 1,500-hour rule for pilot training will mean blood on your hands when an inevitable accident occurs as a result of an inadequately trained flight crew.”

The eleventh-hour amendment in the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation comes as the September 30 deadline to reauthorize the Federal Aviation Act looms.

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Giving up biometrics at US airports soon won’t be optional, transport security chief says

The chief of the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) David Pekoske said that the agency is considering biometric technology to reduce traveler processing times and reduce the number of screening officers. He made the comments at the South by Southwest conference, which focused on aviation security.

Pekoske noted that the TSA’s role is maintaining security and the transportation system and staying ahead of threats. For those reasons, it is “critically important that this system has as little friction as it possibly can, while we provide for safety and security.”

The TSA has been relying on biometric technology in the identification verification process. According to the agency, the newest technology it has been using is over 99% effective and does not have problems identifying darker-skinned people like the old technology.

“We’re upgrading our camera systems all the time, upgrading our lighting systems,” Pekoske said. “[We’re] upgrading our algorithms, so that we are using the very most advanced algorithms and technology we possibly can.”

Pekoske said that the agency will ensure it remains transparent with the public about the data that is taken, what it is used for, and for how long it will be stored. For now, he said that travelers can opt out of processes they are not comfortable with.

According to The Dallas Morning News, giving up biometric data for travel will eventually not be optional.

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The FAA has very quietly tacitly admitted that the EKGs of pilots are no longer normal. We should be concerned. Very concerned.

In the October 2022 version of the FAA Guide for Aviation Medical Examiners, the FAA quietly widened the EKG parameters beyond the normal range (from a PR max of .2 to unlimited). And they didn’t widen the range by a little. They widened it by a lot. It was done after the vaccine rollout.

This is extraordinary. They did it hoping nobody would notice. It worked for a while. Nobody caught it.

But you can’t hide these things for long.

This is a tacit admission from the US government that the COVID vaccine has damaged the hearts of our pilots. Not just a few pilots. A lot of pilots and a lot of damage.

The cardiac harm of course is not limited to pilots.

My best guess right now is that over 50M Americans sustained some amount of heart damage from the shot.

That’s a lot of people who will be very upset when they realize the vaccine they took to reduce their chance of dying from COVID actually worked in reverse making it:

  1. More likely that people will get COVID
  2. Be hospitalized from COVID and other diseases
  3. Die from COVID (and other diseases)
  4. You also have an excellent chance of getting a lifetime of heart damage for no extra charge.

But don’t worry; you can’t sue them. They fixed the law so none of them aren’t liable (the doctors, the drug companies, the government). After all, you took the vaccine of your own free will. It’s not like you were forced (or coerced) to take it or anything like that! And there were plenty of people warning you not to take the shots (even though they censored most of them).

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Buttigieg Knew: State AGs Warned Transportation Agency Of Airline Debacle Months Ago

Shortly before Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg said in September that airline issues would ‘get better‘ before the holidays, a bipartisan group of attorneys general warned him that regulators’ lax oversight over the industry was about to lead to chaos.

According to The Lever, federal officials stood by as Southwest Airlines executives, “flush with cash from a government bailout,” showered themselves in cash and dividends, instead of shoring up fundamental issues that have contributed to this week’s travel mayhem.

Four months before Southwest’s mass cancellation of flights, 38 state attorneys general wrote to congressional leaders declaring that Buttigieg’s agency “failed to respond and to provide appropriate recourse” to thousands of consumer complaints about airlines customer service. -The Lever

“Americans are justifiably frustrated that federal government agencies charged with overseeing airline consumer protection are unable or unwilling to hold the airline industry accountable,” the AGs wrote in August, urging Congress to pass legislation which would arm state officials to enforce consumer protection laws against airlines.

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Airlines Lobbying Congress To Allow Just One Pilot In The Cockpit

Airlines, in their infinite mission to balance costs, profits, and keeping planes full of passengers alive between two points, might be going a little too far in their latest attempt to cut back.

According to CBS News, the industry has been quietly lobbing Congress to allow them to use just one pilot in the cockpit instead of two, as is currently required by part 121 of the Federal Aviation Regulations.

The airlines claim it would quickly solve staffing issues caused by the ongoing pilot shortage, and say that technology has improved to the point where it would be perfectly safe to do so.

There’s language in a new bill now introduced in Congress — the Federal Aviation Administration reauthorization bill — asking the Federal Aviation Administration to reconsider part 121 and to allow the use of a single pilot operation, first in cargo aircraft. 

Not surprisingly, airline pilots are loudly protesting this idea, claiming that it would diminish a safety discipline and culture that has been responsible for the safest 25 years in commercial aviation in the history of aviation. Pilots unions argue it’s all about the airlines saving money and could compromise safety. -CBS News

 Unions have pointed to several examples of emergency situations in which two pilots were necessary – such as the “Miracle on the Hudson,” when pilots Chesley “Sully” Sullenberger and Jeffrey Skiles worked together to glide a US Airways flight down to New York’s Hudson river after it hit a flock of Canadian geese on takeoff, saving all 150 passengers and crew.

Meanwhile, 10 days ago an American Eagle flight from Chicago to Columbus had an emergency when one of the two pilots became incapacitated. The co-pilot was able to gain control of the plane, declare an emergency, and safely land back in O’Hare.

The pilot later died at the hospital.

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Researchers Suggest Newfound MH370 Debris Reveals Possible ‘Criminal Intent’

Researchers trying to solve the mystery of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 say that newly recovered debris from the lost aircraft suggests that there may have been “criminal intent” behind the plane’s peculiar disappearance. The intriguing assertion was reportedly put forward by engineer Richard Godfrey and investigator Blaine Gibson, who collect wreckage from the Boeing 777 that infamously went missing back in February of 2014. Last month, the pair acquired a particularly compelling piece of the airliner’s landing gear that, previously unbeknownst to them, had been found by a fisherman in Madagascar five years ago and, upon examining the debris, the duo believe that it provides a critical clue regarding MH370’s final moments.

Detailing their findings in a new report, they indicate that the object is a relatively small metal flap, known as a trunnion door, which is opened when an airliner is in the process of landing. This piece, they observe, features a significant “level of damage with fractures on all sides” that were inflicted with “extreme force.” The nature of the markings found on the flap led the pair to conclude that “the landing gear was highly likely extended on impact.” Chillingly, the duo theorize that whoever was in control of the plane at the time intentionally did this with a particularly nefarious outcome in mind.

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Mysterious GPS Disruptions Spread Across Texas; FAA Issues Warning to Pilots

The Federal Aviation Administration this week warned pilots about mysterious disruptions to GPS signals in Texas as a runway at the Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport was shut down.

The FAA told Bloomberg that it is investigating possible jamming of the global positioning system (GPS) that aircraft use to guide them to runways and during their flights. The FAA also confirmed that the Dallas airport runway was shut down temporarily.

So far, according to the FAA, it has found “no evidence of intentional interference.” However, the agency did not appear to say what might be the cause. The Epoch Times has contacted the FAA for comment.

American Airlines told Bloomberg that the GPS problem was not affecting its business, and Southwest Airlines said it isn’t experiencing any disruptions.

Flight tracking website ADS-B appeared to have been the first to report GPS interference around Dallas on Monday.

“Significant GPS interference being reported by pilots in the Dallas area. Aircraft being rerouted onto non-RNAV arrivals,” it wrote on Monday afternoon.

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