You may (or likely may not) remember about 16 months ago we shared the story of how Delta was launching Pittsburgh to Paris flights.  At the time we wondered how Delta could possibly make Pittsburgh – Paris work when at the same time Northwest, with its huge hub at Detroit, had canceled its Detroit – [...]

A few stories have passed by in the last couple of days that I thought were worth noting:
- Continental announced that it will give up its free food in coach (and, blessedly, stop running this incredibly awful ad) on domestic flights under 6 hours.  There has been a decent amount of discussion in ye olde [...]

An American Airlines flight from Miami to Washington Reagan was delayed by 90 minutes last month after crew found a roach colony living on board the aircraft.  Staff found a small colony of about 50 roaches living in a space between first class and the coach cabin.  Apparently, they were unable to get a full [...]

A sad note for lovers of the movie Airplane:  Peter Graves, who played Captain Oveur (among many, many other roles), passed away over the weekend at the age of 83.  He was responsible for quite possibly the best airline-related scene in movie history:
Oveur: Dunn… gentlemen, let’s get to work.
Curtz: Unger, didn’t you serve under Oveur [...]

Story 1:
The entire crew – flight attendants and pilots – scheduled to work a flight from Kiev to Simferopol on Ukrainian carrier Donbassaero was determined to be drunk and removed from the plane by police.  According to this article (in German, sorry) the crew all had blood alcohol levels above .3%.  Keep up the good [...]

An Air Transat passenger is suing the airline because during a 2008 flight from Montreal to Mexico flight attendants refused to examine his scrotum.  The end.
Wait – you wanted more details than that?  I’m happy to:  the passenger found that he had sudden (and unexpected, obviously) bleeding coming from his scrotum area during the flight [...]

Air India’s pilots have threatened to stop flying to Kabul if the airline does not give it clearer guidelines to protect their safety when they fly to the region.  The pilots blame poor air traffic control, guidelines for whether they can takeoff or land with poor visibility, and procedures for handling a hijacking.  For their [...]

I continue to be amazed that scheduled airlines are flying into Baghdad.  No civilian would ever consider traveling to the city at this point, but 13 airlines are making the trip (see the full list here).  Sure, most are obscure, but Royal Jordanian and Turkish are making the trip from Amman and Istanbul, respectively.  And [...]

Hm.  JAL, which has laid off 1,300 flight attendants recently, has found that there is an aftermarket for its uniforms, with some being listed on eBay for more than $3,000.  Why so much?  Apparently JAL’s uniforms are prized by fetishists (I don’t know and I don’t want to know the specifics on that).  JAL has [...]

An odd one:
A Ryanair passenger flying from Krakow to East Midlands (in the UK) received a scratchcard for a contest that Ryanair was holding.  Like an instant win lottery ticket, the winner would receive 10,000 Euro.  This passenger got on board the flight, scratched off his card, and learned that he won the prize.  He [...]