Free Republic

Decision Brief No. 05-D 44 2005-08-31 On eve of U.N. push for global government, advocates urge Senate to approve a building block: The Law of the Sea Treaty (Washington, D.C.): As concern grows that the United Nations is intent on replacing what the National Security Guidance calls "an orderly arrangement of sovereign states" with a proto-world government - complete with the ability to impose international taxes, a new push is being made for a treaty that would advance that purpose: the Law of the Sea Treaty (LOST). This sovereignty-sapping agenda is at the heart of a dispute now playing...

At least two passengers were removed from an LAX flight bound for New York's Kennedy Airport after a man insisted on using the restroom just before takeoff. According to LAX spokesperson Nancy Castles and passengers, United Flight 22 was preparing for takeoff when a passenger said he needed to use the restroom. An attendant asked the passenger to sit but he refused. The attendant considered the passenger's behavior suspicious and alerted the captain. The plane returned to the gate. Authorities removed two men and took them into custody, according to LAPD spokesperson Lt. John Romero. Passengers reported a third person...

By now, most everybody in the U.S. has seen or heard of the tragic airplane-helicopter collision over the Hudson River in which 9 people (all 3 on the plane, all 6 on the chopper) tragically lost their lives. Eyewitness reports seem to place the blame on the fixed-wing light aircraft (a Cessna), which apparently intruded on the airspace of the helo as the rotary-wing aircraft was merging into the traffic stream that runs up and down the river. This incident highlights a fact that was just highlighted in certain media reports the other day which laid out the nation's 5...

ExpressJet Airlines says it's sorry 47 passengers aboard a flight to Minneapolis were forced to spend a night trapped in a grounded plane during the weekend. Airline spokeswoman Kristy Nicholas told Monday's (Minneapolis) Star Tribune that weather problems at Twin Cities International Airport Friday night forced the pilot of a Houston-to-Minneapolis flight to land in Rochester, Minn., where the regional jet sat on the tarmac for nine hours. ExpressJet was operating the plane as a Continental Express flight, the newspaper said. ExpressJet's Web site says it flies more than 200 50-passenger Brazilian-made Embraer ERJ145 aircraft for Continental Airlines. Nicholas told...

June 10, 2009 -- Two passengers with names linked to Islamic terrorism were on board the Air France flight which crashed with the loss of 228 lives, it has emerged. French secret servicemen established the connection while working through the list of those who boarded the doomed Airbus in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, on May 31st. Flight AF447 crashed in mid-Atlantic en route to Paris during a violent storm.While it is certain that there were computer malfunctions, terrorism has not been ruled out. Soon after news of the fatal crash broke, agents working for the DGSE (Direction Générale de la...

June 1, 2009 No hope for 228 passengers and crew feared dead in Air France catastrophe Philippe Naughton and Charles Bremner in Paris All 228 people on board an Air France jet are feared to have been killed after the packed aircraft went missing over the Atlantic Ocean. The flight from Brazil was probably brought down by a lightning strike after hitting a fierce storm, the airline said today, as it faced up to the worst disaster in its history. Flight AF447, which had 228 people on board, took off from Rio de Janeiro at 7.03pm local time yesterday bound...

A Russian-born woman has been jailed in the U.S. state of Maine after purportedly consuming prescription drugs, wine and liquid soap from the lavatory and scuffling with flight attendants on a London-bound jetliner. U.S. prosecutors said Galina Rusanova, a British citizen born in Russia, punched and kicked flight attendants and at one point fell to the floor and began "snapping like a dog" while trying to bite a crew member's leg. Rusanova, who made a court appearance Friday in Bangor, Maine, remained in custody pending a detention hearing Monday in U.S. District Court, where she is charged with assault and...

Woman Starts Brawl On Flight Bound For Detroit POSTED: Saturday, March 28, 2009 UPDATED: 11:14 pm EDT March 28, 2009 DETROIT, Mich. -- Southwest Flight 1402 from Phoenix, bound to Detroit, was delayed Saturday and airline officials said one woman was to blame. A company representative said a woman became unruly and began acting erratically, fighting with passengers and crew alike. Travelers walked off the flight at Metro Airport, around 7:30 p.m., shaken and relieved their in-flight ordeal was over. “We had to pretty much restrain her because she started hitting some of the passengers,” said witness Aaron Nichols. Other...

Just when you thought you had the Transportation Security Administration rules all figured out, here comes a new procedure. Starting sometime in the next few months, you'll have to provide your birth date and gender whenever you buy an airplane ticket. The TSA is giving the airlines some time to change their websites and retrain their phone-reservations agents to be able to implement the agency's new Secure Flight program. Expect the changes on domestic flights by this summer. The change is supposed to help reduce the number of Americans who are misidentified as individuals on the agency's no-fly and "selectee-for-further-inspection"...

Musician Chris Llewellyn was among those who sprang into action after a man shoved a flight attendant and tried to open an exit door. Chris Llewellyn was staring out the window of Delta Airlines Flight 110, watching the landscape of Los Angeles rise up toward the plane, when he heard the screams of a male flight attendant: "Help me! Help me!" Turning quickly, he saw that a passenger had pushed the attendant to the floor and was trying to open the rear emergency exit. Chris Llewellyn Video: Passengers take down man..."Don't come near me," the man warned. "I have a...

The FAA has offered an unprecedented $100,000 bonus to air-traffic controllers throughout the country to lure them to the New York area's five understaffed radar centers - and has even begun trolling local high schools to recruit for the jobs. The FAA began its recruitment efforts in high schools and through online ads on MySpace and Craigslist because of a severe staffing shortage and lack of experience among workers at its air-control towers.   (edit) By 2011, 59 percent of all controllers will have less than five years on the job.  

A globe-hopping executive was grounded by JetBlue after she threw a hissy fit at Kennedy Airport and triggered a bomb scare aboard a flight, the Daily News has learned. Rosalinda Baez was arrested by the FBI for falsely claiming there was a bomb in her suitcase at JFK, according to a complaint filed last week in Brooklyn Federal Court. Baez, who earns $190,000-a-year and has homes in Manhattan and Texas, was returning from a business trip in Costa Rica last Tuesday when she was blocked by a gate attendant from boarding JetBlue Flight 1061 to Austin, Tex., because the jetway...

I JUST FLEW IN FROM BUFFALO (and boy, did it ever suck!)(not Buffalo; the flight) Why is commercial air travel in this country such a miserable experience anymore? Seems that every aspect of it has lost any enjoyment. It's gotten to the point that I avoid traveling altogether. While booking flights online has never been easier, flights cost more, take longer, include more tightly-scheduled stops and come with significantly diminished levels of customer service. No detail with which to nickle-and-dime the passenger appears to be too small, too petty. Even the boarding process has lost the semblance of order it...

"There comes a point in time where all the discussion and analysis has to stop. We are now six years away from 9/11. Simply kicking this problem further down the road is a time-tested Washington way of smothering a proposal with process," said Chertoff. "The time has come to bite the bullet." Or, as Jack Bauer might say (while in the midst of breaking half a dozen laws in the name of stopping an impending attack), "We're running out of time!" Chertoff summarized the major features of the final rules as follows: People must provide documentation that proves who they...

Health Authorities Check 44 Passengers On Flight From India To Chicago CHICAGO (STNG) ― Forty-four American Airlines passengers in 17 states -- including Illinois -- are being tracked down for testing after U.S. health authorities learned a woman on a flight from India to Chicago was suffering from a drug-resistant form of tuberculosis, officials said Friday. The 30-year-old Sunnyvale, Calif., woman was diagnosed with the deadly disease in India in August, authorities said. She was a passenger on Flight 293 from Delhi to O'Hare Airport to San Francisco on Dec. 13. "She certainly knew she had TB," said Dr. Marty...

Just in time for the busiest travel week of the year, we have this news from the General Accountability Office, Congress' investigative arm: It's relatively easy to get bomb-making materials through security checkpoints and onto airplanes. A group of undercover GAO workers apparently did so recently, managing to get past baggage screeners at 19 airports, despite new rules intended to prevent precisely this kind of thing. Is this just holiday hype, or are we really vulnerable to another September 11, 2001-style plot? According to the report, investigators found two types of devices terrorists could use to cause an explosion in...

If you think radical Muslims, bureaucrats and cops have made travel miserable for everyone in America, you might have to stay away from Britain. Gordon Brown, the new prime minister in London, revealed his new scheme yesterday for saying hello and goodbye to tourists and other travelers, and it's a scheme that could please only a busybody bureaucrat. The jihadists are working now on cracking the code. "Travelers," reported London's Daily Mail, "face price hikes and confusion after the government unveiled plans to take up to 53 pieces of information from anyone entering or leaving Britain." The relevancy of all...

As my taxi pulled up at Changi airport, I knew this was going to be a special day - the day of the first A380 commercial flight was finally here. The airport had long been adorned with banners and posters declaring Singapore "A380 ready" and anticipating the flight.

“Oh! I have slipped the surly bonds of earth And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings; Sunward I've climbed, and joined the tumbling mirth Of sun-split clouds...” -High Flight When John Gillespie Magee wrote the above famed lines describing the thrill and freedom of flying in September, 1941, it was still possible to enjoy the experience of powered flight. After all, Pilot Officer Magee had only the Nazi air force trying to ruin the experience for him; he had never encountered the soul-killing experience of traveling on a modern commercial airline. Snip...

It is, say critics, a graphic example of how Britain's busiest airport is bursting at the seams. This incredible picture shows how a British Airways jumbo jet lost part of its wing colliding with another plane as both waited to take off at Heathrow. Panic broke out on board both planes after a Sri Lankan A340 Airbus sliced through the BA plane's wingtip 'like butter'. More than 600 passengers and crew were left stranded after the incident at 10.20pm on Monday night as both flights had to be abandoned. A Danish journalist, Annasofie Flamand, was on board Sri Lankan flight...