Free Republic

Gov. J.B. Pritzker defended his decision Wednesday to arrange for two charter flights to transport millions of masks and gloves from China to Illinois to bolster the state's limited supply of personal protective equipment as it responds to the COVID-19 pandemic. The flights, which cost about $1.7 million, were listed in a new state comptroller portal that tracks state spending on the public health crisis. Details of the fights are being kept secret out of fear President Donald Trump's administration might seize the cargo, Pritzker said. “It is true that the federal government seems to be interrupting supplies that are...

PANAMA CITY BEACH, Fla. — When Panama City Beach resident, Jeff Elkins, was a kid, he says he knew one thing for sure. “I knew there would be flying cars by the year 2000,” he said in an interview. The year 2000 came and went without flying cars, so, Elkins took matters into his own hands. With screws and sheet metal, propellers and joysticks, he created an early version of the “Air-board.”

A British man who was molested on a plane by a drunk mom who abandoned her 7-year-old daughter to try to have public sex with him is furious she avoided jail — insisting it’s only because she’s a woman. Single dad Gary Kirby, 31, was flying his 10-year-old son, Connor, to Turkey for a birthday treat last May when he was groped by Louise Whyte, 38, who had left her daughter alone to hit on the humiliated dad.

Horrific coincidence that might not entirely be a coincidence. A Ukraine 737 Airliner, Flight 752 from Tehran to Ukraine, is lost shortly after take-off. The incident takes place only hours after Iran fires ballistic missiles into Iraq targeting U.S. bases Video of the plane crashing shows the airliner in flames as it nears the ground and explodes. Some preliminary reporting indicated the flight might have been accidentally shot down by Iranian anti-aircraft defenses.

They come in the night: Drones — lots of them — flying in precise formations over the Colorado and Nebraska prairie. Whose are they? Unknown. Why are they there? Unclear. “It’s creepy,” said Missy Blackman, who saw three drones hovering over her farm outside Palisade, Neb., on a recent evening, including one that lingered right above her house. “I have a lot of questions of why and what are they, and nobody seems to have any answers.” Since before Christmas, sheriff’s departments in the region have been bombarded with reports of large drones with blinking lights and wingspans of up...

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) will fly out Sunday with a large delegation of congressional Democrats heading 3,781 miles across the Atlantic to the United Nations COP25 climate change conference in Madrid. A key element of the conference will seek to place financial penalties on global commercial aviation to stop people flying and making “unnecessary contributions to atmospheric carbon dioxide pollution.”  The Pelosi delegation will join almost 25,000 people and 1500 journalists flying into the Spanish capital to attend the meeting.The members of the taxpayer-funded Pelosi Democrat delegation include: Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA)Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI)Chairman Frank Pallone (D-NJ), Committee on Energy and CommerceChairwoman...

If one invention in mankind's history has connected people and places, helped raise the standard of living for billions of people, and allowed anyone to travel the world freely, it is the modern jet airliner. Yet environmental activists are now sprouting another offshoot of the "global warming" movement to recklessly contract and diminish this advancement in human ingenuity because they fret over aircraft as one of the most "carbon-intensive" forms of travel. Your new word for the day is "flygskam" (pronounced: "fleeg-skam"). It is a Swedish word introduced by the nascent — still mostly European — environmental movement to "flight-shame"...

Plane has landed in Bermuda. No word as to why it was diverted. It's Sept. 11th, so heightened alert. JetBlue flight 1347.

Boeing has bested Airbus as the world's largest aircraft maker for most of this decade. That's about to change in dramatic fashion. Airbus' commanding lead is especially significant because the race between the two companies has historically been tight. Last year, for example, Boeing delivered 806 aircraft last year to Airbus' 800. 2015 was the only year this decade in which one of the two airplane manufacturers delivered 100 more planes than the other. The gap between them is almost certainly going to get wider. Boeing has not been able to deliver any of its bestselling 737 Max planes since...

Flight logs for Epstein were posted on Gawker. The article: https://gawker.com/flight-logs-put-clinton-dershowitz-on-pedophile-billio-1681039971 The flight manifests: https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/1507315-epstein-flight-manifests.html If you search at the FAA site, you can find information based on a plane's tail number ID. https://registry.faa.gov/aircraftinquiry/ An August 6, 2002 flight lists a plane with the ID: N474AW. Serial Number 155488 Certificate Issue Date 10/21/1997 Manufacturer Name ROCKWELL Mode S Code (base 8 / oct) 51350013 Model OV-10D Mode S Code (base 16 / hex) A5D00B Year Manufacturer None Cancel Date 05/14/2010 Reason for Cancellation Cancelled Export To None Type Registration Government Aircraft Registration prior to Deregistration Name UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF...

For most of the history of powered flight, the United States has been a world leader in aviation. But now, our credibility as leaders in aviation is being damaged. Boeing and the FAA have been found wanting in this ugly saga that began years ago but has come home to roost with two terrible fatal crashes, with no survivors, in less than five months, on a new airplane type, the Boeing 737 Max 8, something that is unprecedented in modern aviation history. For too many years, the FAA has not been provided budgets sufficient to ensure appropriate oversight of a...

Somehow I wasn’t familiar with the story of Aeroflot flight 6502 from Yekaterinburg to Kuibyshev to Grozny. On October 20, 1986 the pilot of the Tupolev Tu-134A bet his co-pilot that he could land the plane blind. He would draw the curtains on the cockpit windows and make an instrument-only approach. One of the many bizarre things about this incident is, why would the co-pilot accept a bet in which if he wins he likely dies? There’s only the narrowest window in which he might win the bet and actually collect. On approach to Grozny the pilot ignored the ground...

The incredible story of Robert Timm, and John Cook's 1958 flight that set the World record for flight endurance.

Full Headline: CDC Investigating After Multiple Passengers Fall Ill On Separate International Flights Coming Into Philadelphia International Airport Officials say 12 passengers arriving at the airport on American Airlines flights from Paris and Munich experienced flu-like symptoms. Multiple ambulances were dispatched to the airport.

Mexican airline Volaris is offering free flights home for illegal immigrant children in the United States to be reunited with their families. In a statement released on Friday, the airline said, “It hurts us to see these children without their parents and it is our vocation to reunite them.” So, what’s the plan? Coordinating with authorities in the U.S, Mexico, and numerous Central American countries, Volaris said it will provide free seating for the children to all the locations on their pre-existing routes — roughly 65 destinations in North and Central America. Volaris also said in its statement that “Since...

The first fighter jet F-35A bought by the Turkish Armed Forces made its maiden flight in Fort Worth, Texas, the Dutch Aviation Society announced on Twitter. The jet produced by Lockheed Martin had tail number 18-0001 and was flown by Commander Wilson. The Turkish Armed Forces (TSK) is expected take delivery of the first batch of 30 Lockheed Martin F-35 single-engine fighters at a ceremony in the United States on Jun. 21, in spite of a U.S. Congress bill calling for a halt in weapons sales due to faltering relations between the two countries. Lockheed Martin has not issued any...

Full title: Boy, 12, stole mum’s credit card, booked flight to Bali and spent four days living life of luxury after fight with parents. A cheeky schoolboy stole his mum's credit card and flew to Bali, spending four days living a life of luxury, after getting into a fight with his parents. The boy, who has not been named, booked the cheap flight after researching online which airline would allow him to travel by himself without parental permission. He managed to find a ‘cheap deal’ to the Indonesian island and booked the flight on a school day, 9news reports ....

I KNOW I shouldn’t think about it, I’ll scare myself to death but after seventeen hours in the air, I can’t get the worst case scenario out of my head. No, not a plane crash. I am convinced that I am breathing more farts than air. I’m on Qantas’ inaugural Perth to London flight, the longest to and from the UK, and the atmosphere in the pressurised tube I’ve been sharing with over 200 other bodies has gotten quite stale.

American Airlines flight AA732 was diverted several hours into a trip from Charlotte to Heathrow. It turned around over the Atlantic and wasdiverted to Philadelphia. It has now arrived safely at Philadelphia

We are getting reports that all international travelers in the United States are weathering horrendous lines as the computer system for passports operated by U.S. Customs and Border Patrol has failed late Monday night. On one of the busiest travel nights of the holiday season. A video of the nightmare in Miami’s airport is being played out throughout the United States. Twitter posts at Link