14 Passengers on a Pakistan International Airlines (PIA) flight from Islamabad, Pakistan, to Manchester, England, were arrested after they upgraded themselves to first class from the crowded coach section of a 747.  Economy class on the aircraft was quite full while the premium section went empty, so these 14 people (and who the hell can blame them) helped themselves to PIA’s plusher-than-you-might-suspect first class section after sitting on the tarmac at Islamabad’s sweltering airport for 4 hours.  The passengers then refused to leave the section after being asked by crew members and were, hence, arrested upon arrival at Manchester.

(Thanks to reader Sanj for the heads up)

There’s a pretty good article in Friday’s Wall Street Journal about US pilots taking jobs overseas because they’re paid much better in, say, Dubai than they are in, say, Pittsburgh.  Worth a read…

For those of you interested in why the Boeing 717 failed (and you know who you are), the Long Beach Press-Telegram has a pretty in-depth article about the aircraft.  (In short, the plane — which Boeing inherited from McDonnell Douglas and was originally the DC-9 — was viewed as a competitor to the wildly successful 737 and was killed off to avoid siphoning business from that aircraft.  Incidentally, Boeing has sold more than 5,000 737s.)

5 passengers–4 Angolans and an Israel–on an American Airlines flight from Dallas to Newark were detained for 3 hours because they were carrying pilot training materials and speaking a language other than English.  Turns out that the 5 men were heading home after attending a pilot training course (hence the pilot training materials).  This craziness will never end.

The title sorta says it all:  a British businessman traveling through Dubai’s airport is suing said airport because he slipped on a piece of watermelon and hurt himself.  For some reason, he feels this is worth about $550,000.

Salon’s always good Ask the Pilot column examines a story from a couple of weeks ago where a passenger was arrested for trying to open one of the plane’s door’s in mid-air.  If you ever wondered about this, wonder no more:  it is nearly impossible to open a door in mid-air because of the pressurization of the cabin.  And even if you were to somehow get the door open (say, by forcing the pilot to depressurize the plane as still-missing thief D.B. Cooper did), the plane would not crash — though people not wearing seatbelts would be at risk for getting sucked out.  It’s a good read…

I will give full credit here to long-time reader IAHPHX for excuse me here, calling bullshit on last week’s story about standing room only seats in the NY Times.  The Times issued a correction (last one on the page) saying that Airbus had looked into the seats in 2003, but dismissed the idea.  It also said that, had it known that, it would never have published the story on page 1.  (Meanwhile, I had written that I thought the story was "odd though not implausible," which is essentially true: Airbus considered the idea and dismissed it).  Shame on the Times for doing essentially zero research into this before stuffing it on page 1.

EOS Airlines, which flies all first class seats to London from New York, has lowered fares to $1,475 each way.  The airline had originally hoped to get $3200 each way, has lowered prices in a bid to win traffic from the myriad other airlines flying the same route.  EOS’ seats and service are at least as nice as anyone’s first class, so this is a bargain.  Even so, you can fly the all-business-class MAXjet for about $1000 round trip (sometimes less).  If price is no object, though, EOS is a steal. 

(via Travelzoo)
SAS has been running some great summer fare specials, and today’s is among the best:  $580 gets you a round trip ticket from New York or Chicago to a bunch of cities in Scandanavia (including Oslo, Copenhagen and Stockholm) as well as Poland and the Baltics (Latvia, Lithuania or Estonia).  Best part?  It’s good for travel in May and August.  What a bargain.

An Armavia Airlines A320 crashed into the Black Sea, killing all 113 aboard.  The flight on Armenia’s largest airline was headed to Sochi, Russia, when it crashed on approach to the airport.