It’s Ladies Night at American Airlines!

by Annie Scott on

Traveling is hard. Don’t you think you should get a special discount just for being a woman? American Airlines does!

In recognition of Women’s History Month … March (also, according to Wikipedia, American Red Cross Month and Fire Prevention Month), American Airlines is offering a special deal just for the ladies.

If you visit AA.com/women, you can:

“Print out a flyer and present it to any Admirals Club lounge representative on or before May 15 to save up to $50 off a new annual membership or $25 off a membership renewal. American, a founding member of the oneworld Alliance, has more than 40 Admirals Club locations worldwide.”

Awesome. The website also includes destination deals and articles on worldwide women. Check it out!

60 British soldiers, some bent on boozing, booted from plane

by Jamie Rhein on

Of the sixty British soldiers from the 2nd Battalion Duke of Lancaster’s Regiment who got on a plane ready for a holiday, not all of them had their own booze with them. Not all of them were already sloshed when they headed up the aisle to take a seat and determined to drink more– even if it meant drinking the alcohol that they had bought on board with them.

The flight attendant, you see, didn’t think giving these lads another drop was a good idea, so she feigned ignorance when asked if the cart had any libations. When those who forgot their manners said they would drink their own then, and she begged to differ, it didn’t help when one of them smarted off with, “‘You’re not going to stop us from drinking our own booze; we’re trained to kill.'”

Good one guy.

I can just see her thinking, “Oh, now you’ve gone and done it.”

The result of the nonsense was that all sixty soldiers were removed from the plane, a feat that involved getting the other passengers off the plane as well, unloading all the luggage, having the passengers pick out theirs, and then reloading the non-soldier passengers and their luggage back on the plane.

Kind of makes me tired thinking about it. I’m sure the passengers were relieved they wouldn’t have to live through a flight like those who had the misfortune to be on the flight in January with 40 drunk Irish guys.

The military is not too happy with the men who caused the problems and claim that they are sorting the bad apples from the ones that just happened to be in the barrel with them, thus having their leave spoiled by idiots. Charges haven’t been filed yet. Maybe there are a few fellows cleaning bathrooms with toothbrushes. I’ve seen that in the movies.

Click the pictures to read more tales of booze gone bad in the skies …

Tunisian pilot who prayed while crash landing a plane gets 10 years in jail

by Jamie Rhein on

If I were a pilot landing a plane after the engines had conked out on me, I might pray. That doesn’t mean I’d take my hands off the controls and stop doing my part to aim for a safe landing, but perhaps there would be words beseeching a power bigger than myself for a dose of divine intervention. It couldn’t hurt. Right?

For the Tunisian pilot I read about in the guardian.co.uk, uttering a prayer out loud got him in hot water when his case went to court. Back in 2005, he crash-landed a Franco-Italian ATR 72 charter plane into the Mediterranean off the coast of Sicily after the engine stopped working because the wrong fuel gauge had been mistakenly installed by a mechanic. The fuel gauge was too small, thus the plane didn’t have enough fuel. As a piece of information to keep in mind, the smaller gauge looked the same as the larger gauge.

At the time of the crash, the pilot was considered a hero since everyone on board didn’t die. Twenty-three people survived. After the investigation and trial, the tides have turned. The Italian court has decided that the pilot should have tried to glide the plane to Palermo. The court thinks that if he had done this, the 16 who died would not have. His prayers meant that he stopped doing his job correctly.

I guess these people didn’t hear about the US Airways plane crash landing on the Hudson River after the pilot was told to try to make it to an airport. What’s intriguing about this latest case is that the Tunisian pilot is Muslim. Calling out to Allah doesn’t seem to translate all that well in Italian court.

The co-pilot, mechanic and other airline executives are also going to jail. The charges include manslaughter.

These women were NOT praying — though they did cause problems in the air. Click the images to find out what they did.



How safe is your in-flight entertainment? Possibly, not very.

by Jamie Rhein on

There you are on your international flight flipping through the channels of your in-flight offerings. A movie? Music? TV? games? Movie then music? Music than movie? Parts of different movies? It’s remote heaven.

The problem with all that bounty is the power that allows it to happen. All those electronics generate enough heat to make an armrest reach 100 to 115 degrees–even when the in-flight system is not in use. Think of all those screens and all those armrests and all that wiring.

According to some experts and the people who maintain airplanes’ electrical systems, there are safety issues to think about. In-flight systems are disasters waiting to happen.

Reading this article in USA Today with this disasters waiting to happen news brought up images of an electrical strip with every gadget imaginable plugged into it. It seems to me there must be some way to install a switch that would break a circuit if one part of the system got too hot–sort of how a fuse works.

I’m not sure if I should worry or not when I settle in my seat this summer as I wing my way from Columbus to Venice. I’ll probably be too excited channel surfing to wonder if my arm rest is getting too hot. If I see smoke, I’ll tell the flight attendant and look for something to smother the flames just in case. [photo by davitydave]

Should Russian airline S7 apologize to the blind passenger they refused?

by Annie Scott on

On February 18th, Pavel Obiukh tried to board an S7 airline flight from Moscow to Kazan and was unceremoniously denied. Why? Because he’s blind.

Hold your outrage a moment. According to the Moscow Times:

“S7 rules are based on federal aviation regulations, which are dictated by the Transportation Ministry. The federal regulations say an airline is only required to carry a legally blind passenger if informed in writing about the condition in advance.”

Obiukh didn’t have a traveling companion or a guide dog, which would mean that in the case of an in-flight emergency, he would require the full attention of one of the flight attendants.

Obiukh, a disabled rights activist and member of Perspektiva (a disabled rights activist group), says it’s discrimination, and that he did indeed inform S7 of his condition ahead of time.

Currently, Obiukh is seeking a public apology — and says he would rather not have to settle this with a lawsuit (that sounds like a thinly-veiled threat to us). So. Should S7 apologize?
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