Tag: air travel

MH370’s suicidal pilot entombed plane and its 239 passengers at bottom of the ocean after perfect ditching, says flight expert 10 years after plane disappeared

The ‘suicidal’ pilot of the MH370 Malaysia Airlines flight perfectly ditched the plane into the sea, entombing it and the 239 passengers aboard at the bottom of the ocean, a flight expert has claimed ten years after it disappeared.

British pilot Simon Hardy has said he believes that the plane was sunk into the ocean at a spot that has never been searched before.

The Boeing 777 aircraft vanished from radar while en route from Malaysia’s capital Kuala Lumpur to Beijing on March 8, 2014. Satellite data showed the plane deviated from its flight path to head over the southern Indian Ocean, where it is believed to have crashed.

There are fears that pilot Captain Zaharie Ahmad Shah, 53, was responsible for deliberately crashing MH370 in a murder-suicide of a shocking scale, which he committed because of problems in his personal life.

Shah had allegedly split with his wife Fizah Khan, and was said to be furious that a relative, opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim, had been given a five-year jail sentence for sodomy shortly before he boarded the plane for the flight to Beijing. But the pilot’s wife has angrily denied any personal problems, while other family members and friends said he was a devoted family man and loved his job.

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MH370 – the mystery that stunned the world: Ten years on, we look at the theories about what happened, the fight for a new search and the clues that hint equally at tragic accident.. or murder

Friday marks ten years since Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 vanished without a trace, tragically becoming one of the world’s great aviation mysteries.

The plane carrying 239 people bound for Beijing disappeared from radar screens on March 8, 2014, shortly after taking off from Kuala Lumpur.

Despite the largest search in aviation history, which combed 46,332 square miles of the sea floor of the southern Indian Ocean, only a few fragments of the Boeing 777-200ER plane have been found, scattered on beaches thousands of miles apart.

The operation was suspended in January 2017.

The families of those who were lost to the abyss have long hoped that by finding the missing plane, authorities would finally be able to give them an answer to the question that has haunted them for a decade: What happened to their loved ones?

In the years since, the void left by the missing wreckage has been filled by speculation and outlandish conspiracy theories, when the fact is that still – after ten years – no one alive today truly knows beyond reasonable doubt what happened.

Hopes were once again raised this week that the question could be answered with the announcement that Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim would be ‘happy to reopen’ the search if ‘compelling’ evidence emerged.

This came after Texas robotics firm Ocean Infinity said it had proposed a new search for the missing jetliner to the Malaysian government while claiming to have new evidence – six years after carrying out an unsuccessful search in 2018.

While it remains to be seen whether a new search will unearth any new clues, the families of the victims remain in limbo. Today, as they mark 10 years since their loved ones were lost, MailOnline looks back at the MH370 tragedy.

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TSA Launches “Invasive” Pat-Downs With “More Intimate Contact Than Before”

As a result of a study, which found that weapons routinely make it past airport security, the TSA is introducing “more rigorous” and “comprehensive” physical inspections at airports around the country, according to Bloomberg. The security agency, which until now had the option of using five different types of physical pat-downs in the screening line, is eliminating the “options” and replacing them with a single, universal method which would involve heavier groping.

The Transportation Security Administration made the announcement to its agents this week, and in the case of Denver International Airport employees, advised employees and flight crews on Thursday that the “more rigorous” searches “will be more thorough and may involve an officer making more intimate contact than before.”

In an ominous warning, TSA spokesman Bruce Anderson told Bloomberg that “people who in the past would have gotten a pat-down that wasn’t involved will notice that the [new] pat-down is more involved.” The shift from the previous, risk-based assessment on which pat-down procedure an officer should apply was phased in over the past two weeks after tests at smaller airports. In their notice, Denver airport officials said employees are subject to search at random locations: “If a pat down is required as part of the operation, badged employees will be required to comply with a TSA officer’s request to conduct a full body pat down.”

The new policy will also apply to pilots and flight attendants, classified as “known crewmembers” who generally receive less scrutiny at checkpoints. The TSA conducts occasional random searches of these employees, and airlines this week inquired as to whether their employees would be subject to more frequent pat-downs. The number of random searches for airline crews isn’t changing and will remain a “very small percentage” of the total, Anderson said. But airport employees may face more random checks.

Anyone who declines use of the TSA’s existing conventional scanner screen will be subject to the new pat-down. The TSA currently screens about 2 million people daily at U.S. airports. The agency doesn’t track how many passengers are subject to pat-down searches after they pass through an imaging scanner.

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Plus size travel influencer Jaelynn Chaney says she’s working with a US SENATOR to try and get fat flyers free extra plane seats – after admitting slimmer passengers may foot the bill

A 25-year-old plus-sized influencer claims she is working with a US Senator to provide overweight passengers with free airplane seats to accommodate their size. 

Jaelynn Chaney, a travel and lifestyle creator, initially ignited controversy when she demanded the Federal Aviation Authority and airlines give overweight flyers as many free seats as they require to fly comfortably. 

She also insisted that airlines refund overweight passengers for any extra seats they’re forced to purchase and admitted ticket prices would rise for slim passengers. 

In an effort to further her cause, Chaney released a TikTok video claiming that she has been ‘meeting with the team of a prominent Senator in the United States’. 

She did not clarify which Senator she had allegedly met. 

In the clip, she says: ‘Lately, I have been reaching out to stakeholders who can help us make progress and make change in the travel industry. 

‘This has included meeting with the team of a prominent Senator in the United States.’

According to Chaney’s Instagram page, she follows Senator Maria Cantwell along with Senator Patty Murray from Washington and Senator Tammy Duckworth from Illinois. 

DailyMail.com has approached Cantwell, Murray and Duckworth for comment. 

Chaney also claims she has been in contact with airline representatives about the issue. 

Apart from allegedly speaking with senators, she has released a petition for her cause and shared videos on her struggle. 

‘As plus-size travelers, my partner and I have unfortunately experienced discrimination and discomfort while flying,’ she wrote in her petition, which has been signed by around 38,354 and has a goal set at 50,000. 

She added: ‘All plus-size passengers should be provided with an extra free seat, or even two or three seats depending on their size, to accommodate their needs and ensure their comfort during the flight.’

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Air Marshals National Council Director STUNS Fox News Host When She Reveals Marshalls Are Quietly Following Every Person Who Flew to DC Around January 6, 2021

Sonya Labosco, Director of the Air Marshalls National Council said Air Marshalls are quietly following Americans who flew into the DC area around January 6, 2021.

Labosco said Air Marshalls are no longer going after terrorists or the bad guys because they are now stalking and following every single person who flew into the DC area around January 2021 even if they did not go to the US Capitol.

“We’re not flying right now. The only missions that we are doing are ‘Quiet Skies’ missions and those are missions that are following the January 2021 people,” Labosco said. “So we’re either on the border for illegal immigrants or we’re following folks from January 2021. We’re not doing our regular missions where we’re out there looking for the bad guys so for now most flights you’re not gonna have Air Marshalls.”

The Fox News host was stunned: “What do you mean that you’re following January 2021 people? What does that mean?

Labosco said their primary mission is to stalk every single person who flew into the DC area even if they never went to the Capitol and were never charged with any crimes.

“That means our primary mission is a little group called ‘quiet skies’ – it’s a mission called quiet skies that we’re following people that flew into the national capital region in January 2021 and they did not have to go to the Capitol or the rally and you’ve been put on a specific list that TSA has now assigned Air Marshalls to follow these people who have not had any type of criminal investigation – they haven’t committed a crime, but yet three years later we are following the same individuals day in and day out,” Labosco said.

The Fox News host asked Labosco, “So you’re saying the [Air Marshalls] aren’t…tracking terrorists at all?”

“Well, they didn’t even have to be at the Capitol…they could have just flown into the capital region so anyone who was there for a job interview or to visit family. We even have a gentleman who was there for a funeral. They’ve been put on this domestic terrorist list just because of their geographic location to Washington DC,” Labosco said.

The Fox News host was in shock as Labosco said Air Marshalls have been following the same innocent people for three years even though they have never committed a crime.

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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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