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Salvation Army Bell Ringers Just One Way To Give {Gadling}
Dec 18th 2012 5:59PM With regard to gays and lesbians, the Salvation Army is a hate group. Your post shows contempt for your gay and lesbian readers. It slaps us in the face.
Child directs airplanes from JFK air traffic control tower - FAA not amused {Gadling}
Mar 4th 2010 7:20AM Some controller’s kid, for a few days, got to think his dad was the best guy in the world.
And a few pilots got to remember the cute kids waiting for them back home.
And then the FAA has to go and ruin it all.
What jerks.
Pocketknife found on plane causes major security drama at Dallas airport {Gadling}
Jan 20th 2010 9:43PM The TSA's continuing obsession with knives is a sign of the agency's inability to understand or address the real security threats we all face.
Current airport security devotes tremendous resources of time, money, and most importantly, the mental attention of screeners to intercepting completely harmless objects at the expense of looking for real threats. Knives and other pointy-things have been rendered harmless by current realities such as reinforced flight deck doors and passenger attitudes (as demonstrated by the passenger reaction to the Christmas bomber on Northwest Flight 253). Given these realities, there is virtually no chance that a sharp or pointy object can ever again be used to hijack an airliner, and such objects can never cause a plane to crash, yet screeners devote tremendous resources to intercepting pocket knives, cockscrews, nail files, and even flimsy toys from Disney World. And since it is natural for people to focus their efforts on tasks which are likely to be rewarded, and since pocket knives and nail files are encountered far more commonly than explosives, this further magnifies the attention that screeners devote to objects which are completely harmless but commonly found, at the expense of anomalies which are truly dangerous but rarely encountered (such as suspicious individuals, or explosives hidden in new and innovative ways). In other words, the hunt for pointy-things has become a distraction we can no longer afford.
If we want airport screeners to focus their energy on real threats, we must relieve them of the burden of identifying fake threats, and many of the objects we take so much trouble to intercept no longer pose any real threat to aviation safety in the first place.
Who knows what real threats might have been missed during the chaos surrounding an object (a pocketknife) that could neither hijack nor crash a plane?
British Airways innovates in the "new fees" department with a seat selection fee {Gadling}
Sep 26th 2009 8:07AM I can understand charging a seat selection fee in connection with the most deeply discounted coach tickets, but if BA is going to charge an extra fee to passengers buying full fare coach tickets, or even more bizarrely, full fare business class tickets, I think their executives should really go back on their medication.
US looking to deploy long-endurance hybrid airship over Afghanistan {Engadget}
Sep 24th 2009 8:18PM @randombloke
The covering of the Hindenburg was not painted with anything even close to thermite.
In fact, the covering may not have been flammable at all; large sections never burned. See the photographs at:
http://www.airships.net/blog/hindenburg-covering-rocket-fuel
And the detailed information at:
http://www.airships.net/hindenburg/disaster/myths
Delta's checked baggage fee to go up: A flawed, unfair practice {Gadling}
Jul 23rd 2009 8:41PM If the TSA doesn't start taking security seriously, and stop treating it like a game, I am very afraid that something bad may happen. There seem to be very real threats out there, and yet the TSA agents treat their job like it's a joke, distracting themselves with snow globes and apple butter and flip-flops when they should be keeping their attention tightly focused on things to keep us safe. To the TSA: PLEASE start taking our safety seriously!!
Pilot dies midflight, plane lands safely {Gadling}
Jun 18th 2009 11:34PM First, of course, my deepest sympathy to the family and friends of the deceased pilot.
But if I had been the First Officer on that flight, I might have been pretty insulted -- and ticked off -- that they had emergency equipment on hand for my landing. Captains and FO's routinely alternate who flies (and lands) the plane; 50% of the time, your plane is landed by the FO in any case... and no "emergency equipment" is required.
If a Part 121 carrier like Continental employed first officers who were NOT completely capable of making a routine landing.... now THAT would be the emergency. (But that is not the case.)
Galley Gossip: Nut allergies on the airplane {Gadling}
May 13th 2009 9:59PM For all of us who remember flying on commercial airliners in the 1980s, 70s, 60s, and 50s, when peanuts (and Smokehouse Almonds) were given out like candy.... how often was your flight met by a coroner with a body bag? Or even a paramedic with a gurney? Why do we allow mass hysteria to overrule common sense?
