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It wasn't exactly a Captain Sully Sullenberger moment, but a Southwest Airlines flight crew helped bring about the miracle of life Friday morning. A woman on a flight between Chicago and Salt Lake City went into labor and quickly gave birth before the plane could make an emergency landing in Denver, airline officials said. The flight, Southwest 441, was scheduled to fly to Boise after stopping at Salt Lake City. Southwest officials say it appears the woman and her family were on their way here. It is not clear if the woman and her family are from Boise or visiting....

Southwest Airlines has apologized to a San Jose mom who was kicked off a plane along with her unruly 2-year-old son earlier this week. But Southwest spokeswoman Marilee McInnis told the Mercury News the airline did not regret its decision to yank Pamela Root and her son, Adam, off the plane — which flight attendants made in the interests of safety, she said — just the inconvenience it caused the family. Root said Friday she accepts Southwest's apology, "and in the future we just hope that children are not separated from their luggage."

ON the road through the tree-studded high desert toward the small town of Chinle, Ariz., the car radio was bringing in the local Navajo station, with a playlist heavy in Top 40 hits, peppered with Navajo-language station breaks and car commercials. The sky was a cloudless blue, and I was on my way, with my childhood friend Esther Chak, to Canyon de Chelly, a geologic maze of towering red cliffs and deep-cut gorges dotted with pictographs and ruins of ancient cliffside villages. Lying in the heart of the 21st-century Navajo Nation, it is one of the oldest continuously inhabited places...

First, just a striking view of the Capitol Reef National Park from space. The picture below is labeled; the linked picture is bigger and isn't labeled. The link goes to the explanatory article. Big Thomson Mesa, Capitol Reef National Park, Utah Second, a couple of amazing photos from the Oasis Room in the unreal Lechuguilla Cave, Carlsbad Caverns National Park. Somewhere out there there's a 360-degree picture of this room. (Someone find it, post the link here.) There's more pictures at the link. 360 Degrees Of Lechuguilla Cave: Photo Shoot at Oasis

Seriously how much fun would it be to have the 40 year old David Holmes as your steward? I might actually pay attention to them more often if they were rappin’ the tips that could save my life in case of emergency.

You're gonna love this video - even if you're not into rap music. This guy has 10,000 times more talent than most of the gangsta rap punks who are making millions selling CD's with "fo-shizz" "smack ma-beetch" "shake yo booty" garbage. Click link for video.

Removing All Doubt Obama Would Cede Southwest to Mexico American Patrol Report -- December 19 "We are all Americans, whether you are legalized or not" Anyone who still doubts that Barack Obama is determined to grant de-facto amnesty to millions of illegal aliens should explain to the rest of us why he picked Hilda Solis to be Secretary of Labor. A long-time supporter of la Reconquista, the Mexican takeover of the American Southwest, Solis is also a leader in the movement to silence Americans who speaks out against the invasion, specifically Lou Dobbs, Glenn Beck and Bill O'Reilly. At a...

11/26/2008 - SOUTHWEST ASIA (AFNS) -- Beyond the wire of the 386th Air Expeditionary Wing spans an area covered not only in sand but potential explosive hazards, aging from as far back as the Gulf War fighting that took place here in the early 90s. This time of year, the same area is inhabited by host-nation locals who follow a tradition of setting up camps, often with their families and livestock, during the winter months. Airmen of the 386th Expeditionary Civil Engineer Squadron Explosive Ordnance Disposal Flight are clearing the way for these local campers to enjoy the area in...

PHOENIX -- Tony Hillerman, author of the acclaimed Navajo Tribal Police mystery novels and creator of two of the unlikeliest of literary heroes — Navajo police officers Joe Leaphorn and Jim Chee — died Sunday of pulmonary failure. He was 83. Hillerman's daughter, Anne Hillerman, said her father's health had been declining in the last couple years and that he was at Presbyterian Hospital in Albuquerque when he died at about 3 p.m. Hillerman lived through two heart attacks and surgeries for prostate and bladder cancer. He kept tapping at his keyboard even as his eyes began to dim, as...

FBI Warns of Potential Terror Attacks The FBI and Department of Homeland Security today issued an analytical "note" to U.S. law-enforcement officials cautioning that al-Qaida terrorists have in the past expressed interest in attacking public buildings using a dozen suicide bombers each carrying 20 kilograms of explosives. Authors with the U.S. Office of Intelligence and Analysis added that they have "no credible or specific information that terrorists are planning operations against public buildings in the United States." The FBI and DHS analysts said they were releasing the note because "it is important for local authorities and building owners and...

What is the world coming to when Vodka is turning against you? The Los Angeles Times had a startling report about a new Absolut Vodka Ad. The LA times wrote that "the billboard and press campaign, created by advertising agency Teran\TBWA and now running in Mexico, is a colorful map depicting what the Americas might look like in an 'Absolut' -- i.e., perfect -- world. The U.S.-Mexico border lies where it was before the Mexican-American war of 1848 when California, as we now know it, was Mexican territory and known as Alta California." (To see the ad for yourself visit...

The whistle-blowers who exposed maintenance and inspection problems at Southwest Airlines told Congress their jobs were threatened and their reports of noncompliance were ignored for years. Federal Aviation Administration inspector Douglas Peters choked up Thursday at a House hearing and needed a few sips of water to tell lawmakers about how a former manager came into his office, commented on pictures of Peters' family being most important, and then said his job could be jeopardized by his actions. Rep. James Oberstar, D-Minn., said FAA managers' actions displayed "malfeasance bordering on corruption," adding that if presented to a grand jury, the...

Southwest Grounds 41 Jets Mar 12 01:12 PM US/Eastern By DAVID KOENIG AP Business Writer DALLAS (AP) - Southwest Airlines grounded 41 planes overnight in the wake of its recent admission that it had missed required inspections of some planes for structural cracks. The move announced Wednesday comes as Southwest faces a $10.2 million civil penalty for continuing to fly nearly 50 planes after the airline told regulators that it had missed required inspections of the planes. The Federal Aviation Administration, which announced the penalty last week, has also come under fire for failing to immediately ground the Southwest jets...

Danes have always loved the US as a travel destination. But with the dollar at its lowest point in 30 years, residents are now gobbling up the many discount offers being pitched by the nation's travel companies. Several travel bureaus are reporting increases of up to 140 percent on sales of trips to the states, where Danes can feel like wealthy plantation barons. In the past two years, the dollar has fallen from a value of 6.4 kroner to a shocking 4.8 kroner today - its lowest point since 1977. Weekend trips to New York City have been a hot...

WSU Researchers Study Fate of an Ancient American Southwest Civilization Salem-News.com Evidence suggests that the Anasazi fled the region and joined related groups to the south and east. While the cliff dwellings of Mesa Verde are easily the best known of these settlements, the region is dotted with some 4,000 known archaeological sites, including communities which supported as many as several hundred families. (PULLMAN, Wash.) - Using computer simulations to synthesize both new and earlier research, a team of scientists led by a Washington State University anthropology professor has given new perspective to the long-standing question of what happened more...

DALLAS - Say goodbye to the Southwest Airlines "cattle call." The Dallas-based airline says it is making changes to its longtime open seating policy to assign a specific pecking order to travelers waiting to board their Boeing 737 jets. Starting in early November, customers of Southwest Airlines Co. will be assigned a letter-number combination on their boarding passes, which will reserve their spot in their boarding group. According to a Southwest statement, when a gate agent calls a boarding group, passengers will take their place in their numerical order. Southwest has tested the new boarding system since last month at...

Southwest fashion police set no-fly zone CRISSY PASCUAL / Union-Tribune A Southwest employee asked Kyla Ebbert, wearing this outfit, to change or leave the plane. As the mercury climbed over 100 on Labor Day, I called Southwest Airlines with a not entirely hypothetical question: Could a young woman board a flight to Tucson today wearing a bikini top? Angelique, the agent who took my call, assured me that a young woman could. “We don't have a problem with it if she's covered up in all the right spots,” she said. “We don't have a dress code.” Tell that to...

As the mercury climbed over 100 on Labor Day, I called Southwest Airlines with a not entirely hypothetical question: Could a young woman board a flight to Tucson today wearing a bikini top? Angelique, the agent who took my call, assured me that a young woman could. “We don't have a problem with it if she's covered up in all the right spots,” she said. “We don't have a dress code.” Tell that to Kyla Ebbert, who was escorted off a Southwest Airlines flight two months ago for wearing an outfit far less revealing than a bikini top. Ebbert, a...

As the mercury climbed over 100 on Labor Day, I called Southwest Airlines with a not entirely hypothetical question: Could a young woman board a flight to Tucson today wearing a bikini top? Angelique, the agent who took my call, assured me that a young woman could. “We don't have a problem with it if she's covered up in all the right spots,” she said. “We don't have a dress code.” Tell that to Kyla Ebbert, who was escorted off a Southwest Airlines flight two months ago for wearing an outfit far less revealing than a bikini top. Ebbert, a...

Matt interviewed Kyla Ebbert, a 23-year-old college student who works as a waitress at Hooters. Two months ago, she boarded a Southwest Airlines flight from San Diego to Tucson. Before the flight took off, she was escorted into the jetway by a customer service representative, who asked her to change clothes. She didn't have any other clothes with her -- she had no luggage -- so the customer service rep told her to go home and change, then get a later flight. She said she had an appointment that she couldn't change, so after getting a lecture on appropriate attire,...

Setara Qassim said she was flying home to Burbank, Calif., from Las Vegas in June when a Southwest Airlines flight attendant gave her a blanket and told her to cover up. "The flight attendant came up to me and asked me if I had a sweater, and I said, 'No, because why would I pack a sweater in the heat?'" Qassim said. "So I asked her why, and she said I needed to cover up." Just last Friday, a woman from San Diego told a similar story to the "Today" show. She said a Southwest Airlines flight attendant had also...

Does that sound like I’ve gone off my rocker? Am I asking you to support the White Citizen’s Council, or the KKK, or some such? No. Hold your fire. You’ll be angry when you finish this column. Not at me, but at an organization which pretends to be just a community-based, self-help group. La Raza, or the National Council of La Raza, claims to be just a self-help group. It says on its official website that the word “la raza” means “community.” It says it has “no interest” in reclaiming for Mexicans the lands from Texas to California which form...

SAN ANTONIO - Families with young children are usually invited to board their flights first, along with other special needs passengers. But what if families with children weren't among the first to board? Might the process go more smoothly? While it might sound counterintuitive, it's something Southwest Airlines has been experimenting with on flights from San Antonio. "The major goal is to try to give a better customer experience for boarding," said Susie Boersma, manager for airport performance improvement. The airline's effort to improve the boarding process comes at a time when the entire airline industry is struggling with increased...

Arizona hospitals and doctors are worried about the resurgence of some serious infectious diseases, and some believe illegal immigrants are the cause. A rise in diseases such as whooping cough, tuberculosis, malaria, measles and even leprosy are creating public health concerns and could hit hospitals and health care systems already financially burdened by indigent illegals flooding emergency rooms and urgent care centers. The resurgence also is fueling conservative calls for tougher border security and could cause problems for Arizona industries that rely on migrant workers for jobs in food services, construction, tourism and agriculture. The Maricopa County Health Department reported...

Contact: Suzanne Wu swu@press.uchicago.edu 773-834-0386 University of Chicago Press Journals Raiding for women in the pre-Hispanic Southwest? Study finds more female remains in graveyards during times of political influence A portion of the large 12th and 13th-century A.D. site of Aztec, near the contemporary town of Aztec, New Mexico. An important new archaeological study from the December issue of Current Anthropology is the first to document interregional movement of women in the pre-Hispanic Southwest. Using an analysis of grave sites, the researchers found more female remains during periods of political influence, providing an interesting insight into the ways warfare may...

td> Soldiers Help Citizens of Southwest Baghdad Multi-National Division – Baghdad soldiers delivered five tons of humanitarian- assistance supplies to a southwestern Baghdad neighborhood. By 2nd Brigade Combat Team Public Affairs Office, 1st Armored Division BAGHDAD, Aug. 22, 2006 -- Soldiers from Company B, 47th Forward Support Battalion, 2nd Brigade Combat Team (BCT), 1st Armored Division, Multi-National Division – Baghdad, delivered five tons of humanitarian-assistance supplies to the Neighborhood Advisory Council building in the southwestern Baghdad neighborhood of Ameriyah Aug. 15. The soldiers have been performing operations in this southwest section of Baghdad since Aug. 13. Vehicle traffic has been...

WASHINGTON, June 15, 2006 – About 800 National Guard troops have arrived for duty in four U.S. border states as "Operation Jump Start" gets under way. The Guard members reported to Texas, New Mexico, Arizona and California, to support the U.S. Border Patrol and are expected to begin their missions by next week, Michael Friel, a U.S. Customs and Border Protection spokesman, told American Forces Press Service. "They're in various stages of in-processing," Friel said. Some command-and-control elements are already standing up a joint task force, and many of the operators are expected to be working within days, he said....

Southwest willing to deal, CEO says By TREBOR BANSTETTER and DAVID WETHE STAR-TELEGRAM STAFF WRITERS DALLAS — Southwest Airlines’ top executive insisted Wednesday that his airline is willing to compromise on efforts to lift the Wright Amendment and accused rival American Airlines of trying to hinder negotiations. Gary Kelly, chief executive of Dallas-based Southwest, said he has offered three proposals to the mayors of Fort Worth and Dallas on the Wright issue. He also said Southwest has offered to give up some of its gates at Dallas Love Field in exchange for lifting the Wright restrictions, which allow flights from...

How much do you know about the U.S.-Mexican War of 1846? http://www.mysanantonio.com/salife/stories/MYSA051606.01P.mxwar.1162a2d9.html http://tinyurl.com/jywhy Web Posted: 05/16/2006 12:00 AM CDT Elaine Ayala Express-News Staff Writer For many, knowledge about the U.S.-Mexican War of 1846-1848 runs from nonexistent to sparse. Funny, given that without that major U.S. conquest, we might be living in Mexico, not Texas. Americans' knowledge of that crucial period may be limited to the U.S. takeover or purchase (depending on your perspective) of what today is the Southwestern United States ranging from Texas to California. But like many historical events, things were a lot more complicated than that. The...

4/21/2006 - SOUTHWEST ASIA (AFPN) -- Imagine being pinned down by enemy forces, with no relief in sight. Now, imagine picking up a phone and calling your friendly local fighter pilot, flying overhead only miles away, for help. With the new Fighter Aircraft Communication Enhancement, or FACE, pod, ground units in combat are now able to do just that. Fielded for the first time in late 2004, the FACE pod is a solution to communication problems often experienced by aircraft in the mountainous regions of Afghanistan. Used effectively in several theaters, the FACE pod allows ground units to communicate with...

A confident Southwest Airlines (LUV:NYSE) beat analysts' first-quarter targets Thursday and said it might very well meet or exceed its own goal of 15% earnings growth this year. On top of that forecast, the carrier said it plans to grow its fleet as well, by exercising options for 79 additional Boeing jets. Despite a 10% rise in unit costs, driven by sky-high fuel prices, the Dallas-based carrier made $61 million, or 7 cents a share, in the quarter, compared with $59 million, or 7 cents a share, a year earlier. Excluding hedging losses and gains, earnings rose to 8 cents...

Can We Please Stop Using This Argument? People can rationally come to different conclusions on what should be done about the presence of millions of illegal aliens in the United States, but as that matter is debated, we should at least try to avoid some of the most obviously absurd arguments. I therefore propose that we, as a nation, retire the "Illegal aliens take jobs Americans won't do/don't want" argument. This is patent nonsense. Anybody using this argument either has no grasp of economics or is being disingenuous due to the presence of an ulterior motive. (Them's yer two...

What Bush fails to see at the border By Ronald F. Maxwell Published April 6, 2006 Dear President Bush, Perhaps you know me from my work. I wrote and directed the movies "Gettysburg" and "Gods and Generals." Walking Civil War battlefields, soaking up the letters and diaries of that generation, re-creating the world of our ancestors -- all this has given me a deep appreciation for our country. My dad was with the Army Air Corps in North Africa while your dad was in the Pacific. My French mother was liberated in Tunisia and became a lawful immigrant to the...

3/29/2006 - SOUTHWEST ASIA (AFPN) -- An armed F-16 Fighting Falcon is “watching” the road below for the convoys rolling through a dangerous land. The concept of using fighter aircraft equipped with targeting pods to monitor the battlespace is known as non-traditional intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance, or NTISR. Air Force NTISR operations began only four years ago and are the result of increased demand for complete battlespace awareness. With the production and development of traditional ISR capabilities struggling to keep pace, leveraging fighters, bombers, and air mobility aircraft in a similar role is helping ensure information dominance. “Before NTISR, we...

What Christians should do regarding illegal immigration has been an ongoing debate for a long time. Recently, Christianity was entered into the debate over immigration bills being worked on in the US Congress by Senator Hillary Clinton. Hillary basically advanced the argument that opposing illegal immigration is "un-Christian" and claimed that such enforcement would be the same as making the Good Samaritan and Jesus criminals. Missing from Hillary's comments were quotes from the Bible. While immigration from Mexico is of course not mentioned, there are issues that illegal immigration bring up that are mentioned in the Bible. 1. Taxes Matthew...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Drought that has shriveled crops and sparked fires in bone-dry forests will persist and could even worsen across the Southwest and central and southern Plains through at least June, U.S. government forecasters said Thursday. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said in its spring weather forecast that these regions, which have already seen thousands of acres go up in flames, should brace for a "significant" wildfire season in 2006 as conditions become more severe. "We need to monitor this drought situation very closely," said David Johnson, director of NOAA's National Weather Service division. The return of La...

2/14/2006 - SOUTHWEST ASIA (AFPN) -- A high-flying prototype “Airman” is heading home after being deployed more than four years and flying 4,245 hours supporting Operation Iraqi Freedom, Operation Enduring Freedom and the Combined Task Force-Horn of Africa. Global Hawk Air Vehicle No. 3 began its journey back home at Edwards Air Force Base, Calif., Feb. 10, and is expected to land there Feb. 16. This unmanned aerial vehicle, AV-3, first deployed as a prototype during the build-up for Operation Iraqi Freedom in 2002. It returned to Edwards for a couple of months and then was recalled by U.S. Central...

Which would be the most effective way to address the illegal immigration crisis in the United States? *Enforce existing laws *Build a border fence *Pass Bush�s guest worker amnesty program *Hand the Southwest over to Mexico

"A jury on Friday said Southwest Airlines did not racially discriminate against an overweight passenger when she was asked to buy a second seat on her flight." "The jury deliberated for a little over an hour before finding against Nadine Thompson, who sued Southwest in federal court. She claimed that she was singled out because she is black and that the airline’s "customer of size" policy was unfairly applied to her after she boarded a flight at Manchester Airport in June 2003." " Southwest’s policy states that a "customer of size" is someone who can’t sit in a seat without...

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- The National Transportation Safety Board is urging that commercial airplane pilots change the way they calculate stopping distances on slippery runways to avoid a crash, such as the one in Chicago that killed a child.

This is a great site for Christmas recipes.

Eighty percent of the respondents to a Dallas Business Journal online poll about the Wright Amendment said the amendment should remain in place with 19 percent saying it should be repealed. The remainder of respondents were undecided. More than 9,400 people responded to the unscientific poll, which ran on the DBJ Web site, dallas.bizjournals.com, from Dec. 5 to Dec. 18. The Wright Amendment, passed in 1979, is a federal law that limits long-haul flights from Dallas Love Field, home of discount carrier Southwest Airlines (NYSE: LUV - News), which is trying to get the law repealed. Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport...

Expert says Midway plane crash was avoidable By Jon Hilkevitch Originally published December 15, 2005 CHIAGO // The city of Chicago and Southwest Airlines have "carelessly ignored" for years the risks of short runways and insufficient over-run areas at Midway Airport, an expert on transportation disasters said yesterday in a report on last week's fatal accident. The crash was avoidable, and the outcome would have been much worse if fuel tanks on the plane ruptured and caught fire, said Gunnar Kuepper, chief of operations at Emergency & Disaster Management Inc., a Los Angeles-based company that advises government agencies and private...

Southwest pilot violated braking policy December 14, 2005 BY MARK J. KONKOL Transportation Reporter The Southwest Airlines pilot at the helm during Thursday's snowy crash at Midway Airport told federal investigators he used the Boeing 737's "autobrakes," a device airline officials say their pilots are told not to activate. National Transportation Safety Board investigators said they found the autobrake switch in the "maximum" position on the flight panel. The system is designed to activate when the landing gear hits the runway.

<p>There were no immediate reports of injuries on the plane, which had flown from Baltimore. One person was initially reported as injured in a car that collided with the plane. The plane's nose was resting on the ground.</p> <p>Ambulances and fire trucks rushed to the scene, in the northwest corner of the airport, which is surrounded by roads and a residential area.</p>

HOUSTON, Oct. 28 - When she was growing up in a small town in southern Colorado, an area where her ancestors settled centuries ago when it was on the fringes of the northern frontier of New Spain, Bernadette Gonzalez always thought some of the stories about her family were unusual, if not bizarre. Her grandmother, for instance, refused to travel on Saturday and would use a specific porcelain basin to drain blood out of meat before she cooked it. In one tale that particularly puzzled Ms. Gonzalez, 52, her grandfather called for a Jewish doctor to circumcise him while he...

American Airlines and Southwest Airlines have used advertising campaigns, catchy slogans and dueling consultant studies to settle a dispute over air service in North Texas, and now their eye-gouging fight has spilled over to an online encyclopedia. Someone using an Internet service provider registered to American edited online encyclopedia Wikipedia last week to describe Southwest Airlines Co. as "a notoriously litigious company constantly seeking to change laws to gain an advantage." For a time, the site also said Dallas-based Southwest is "known for its PR machine and litigious nature." Wikipedia's volunteer monitors deleted the phrases within hours and traced them...

Southwest boots woman for shirt Lorrie Heasley to sue for being asked to leave a flight because of her politically charged T-shirt. NEW YORK (CNN/Money) - Southwest Airlines kicked a woman off one of its flights over a political message on her T-shirt, the airline confirmed Thursday, and published reports say the passenger will sue. Lorrie Heasley, of Woodland, Wash., was asked to leave her flight from Los Angeles to Portland, Ore., Tuesday for wearing a T-shirt with pictures of President Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and a phrase similar to the popular film...

A Portland woman's flight home was stopped short in Reno, all because the message on the T-shirt she was wearing. Lorrie Heasley claims it's a freedom of speech privilege, but airline officials say the message brings safety concerns. Heasley boarded her flight Tuesday morning in Los Angeles, headed for Portland, Oregon with a stopover in Reno. But when Southwest Airlines employees asked her to cover her shirt, her stop over became a stop off her flight. "I was told that basically that I had to cover my shirt, or I was told if I cover the shirt I can basically...

Source: University Of Arizona Date: 2005-09-07 Mystery Surrounds 'Porcelain Of The Southwest' Caitlin O’Grady hopes to crack a mystery that has puzzled archaeologists and potters for more than 100 years. Caitlin O'Grady, a Ph.D. student in Materials Science and Engineering, works on several pots in UA's Arizona State Museum. She's unraveling the secrets of the technology used to create prehistoric Sikyatki pottery. (Arizona State Museum Photo) It surrounds small pieces of broken Hopi pottery, some of which are now in O’Grady’s lab in the Materials Science and Engineering (MSE) department at The University of Arizona. O’Grady, an MSE Ph.D. student,...