New Medievalism

Smoker tried to open plane door
A French woman has admitted attempting to open an aeroplane door mid-flight so that she could smoke a cigarette.
... Defence lawyer Helen Shilton said her client had no memory of what had happened on the flight on Saturday, and that she had a history of sleepwalking.

Passenger Urinates In Aisle, Diverts Orlando Flight
CHARLOTTE, N.C. -- An intoxicated passenger who lit a cigarette and urinated in the aisle led pilots to divert a United Airlines flight from Orlando to Washington, D.C., an airline spokeswoman said.

Man threatens to kill baby on Northwest flight
Passengers and crew aboard a Northwest Airlines flight last night from Los Angeles to Honolulu overpowered an unruly passenger who threatened a sleeping baby girl, said passengers and officials yesterday.

"He looked mentally affected. His mind was not all there. ... He had a (cell phone) cord in his hand," the baby's 30-year-old father, Jean-Francois said, "We started to be afraid of that because it could be a weapon. ... He said to the flight attendant that he wanted to kill the baby."

Experts: Steward flew doomed Greek plane
ATHENS, Greece (Reuters) -- A flight attendant was in control of the Cypriot Helios Airways plane before it crashed on a Greek hillside on August 14, killing all 121 people on board in Europe's worst air disaster this year, experts said on Monday.

Aviation experts said after re-enacting the doomed Boeing 737-300 flight from Larnaca in Cyprus to Prague, that the steward who had some flight training and used an emergency oxygen kit actually flew the plane for 10-12 minutes.

'Get your plane off my kids'
Blood running down his face, Leroy Woods looked up at the Southwest Airlines jetliner on top of his brand-new car -- his wife and three boys pinned inside.

Locking eyes with the two pilots, Woods hollered at them with all that he had: "Your plane is on top of my kids. ... Get your plane off my kids. Now."

Man fired 'rockets' at aircraft
A landscaper has admitted blasting fireworks into the path of passenger planes landing at Edinburgh Airport.
...
At an earlier hearing, prosecutor Malcolm Stewart the exploding rockets could have harmed the landing gear or wiring of the planes or disturbed the pilots at a difficult time of the flight.

Jet pilot leaves drunken passenger on tiny island
An inebriated passenger on a jet that took off from England has been dumped on a tiny volcanic island in the Atlantic after he launched a foul-mouthed tirade at the crew.

The unwilling Robinson Crusoe can only leave Porto Santo, a tiny patch of land off the North African coast, if he books a 2.5-hour ferry trip to Madeira. He will then have to book a flight to his original destination, Tenerife, or return to England.

Saturday night, just a day after Alaska Airlines increased its monitoring of ramp operations at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport, a baggage worker threw a crate containing a border collie into the cargo hold of a plane instead of using a conveyor belt.

The dog's owner, Lisa Ross of Woodinville, was watching from inside the terminal around 11 p.m. when a ramp worker picked up the crate holding her 40-pound dog, Jace, tipped it at a 45-degree angle and then heaved it over his head into the jet.

Unruly woman forces flight to land in SLC
According to a criminal complaint filed Wednesday in federal court in Salt Lake City, Bogdana A. Georgieva, 35, grabbed another passenger and threw her into the aisle aboard Skywest-United Express Flight 6664 from Eugene, Ore., to Denver.

Georgieva then yelled she had a baby named Jesus, that her uncle impregnated her and that "President Bush was behind it all," according to the complaint, which charges her with interference with a flight crew.

Voice Recorder Shows Pilots in 2004 Crash Joked, Shirked Duties
WASHINGTON, Jan. 24 - Tired and punchy, the two pilots of a twin-engine turboprop approaching the airport in Kirksville, Mo., on a cloudy night in October 2004 ignored required duties, descending far too low and far too fast without being able to see the runway, and were near treetop level before they recognized their error, the National Transportation Safety Board said on Tuesday.

... The captain, Kim Sasse, 48, and his co-pilot, Jonathan Palmer, 29, joked and yawned as they descended through the clouds, according to a transcript released by investigators. At one point an air traffic controller asked them to "say your new heading," meaning to indicate the direction the plane was flying. The two joked that rather than giving the direction in degrees, it would be amusing to reply simply, "New heading."

Canadian jets to join Superbowl XL air defense
Terrorists and clueless pilots were the targets of a wide array of military aircraft filling the skies over Windsor and Detroit in the wee hours this morning as NORAD conducted a Super Bowl XL defence air exercise.

... Among the hardware being used to test the military's binational interception and identification capabilities being put in place to defend Super Bowl Sunday: CF-18s out of Bagotville, Que., F-16s out of Michigan's Selfridge Air National Guard Base, a CH-146 Griffon helicopter out of Kingston, air refuelling tankers and an E-3 AWACS (Airborne Early Warning and Control System) aircraft out of Oklahoma.

U.S. airlines mishandle 9,700 bags a day
WASHINGTON (AP) -- More bags were lost, damaged, delayed or pilfered by U.S. airlines last year than in at least eight years, according to the Bureau of Transportation Statistics.

Reports of mishandled bags on domestic flights rose 23 percent in 2005, from 4.91 per 1,000 passengers in 2004 to 6.04 per 1,000. That's an average of about 9,700 lost or damaged bags each day.

Air hostess sparks panic
A PANIC-STRICKEN air stewardess sparked terror on her turbulence-hit flight by screaming: "We're going to crash."

The hostess, named only as Wendy, stunned hundreds of passengers on the Gatwick-to-Las Vegas Virgin flight by repeating the outburst three times.

Scramjet engine launched in Australian outback

SYDNEY (AFP) - A prototype engine that could ultimately lead to two-hour jet flights from Australia to Britain was launched in the South Australian outback, researchers said.

The two million dollar (1.42 million US) HyShot III test involved a scramjet engine being flown into space by a Terrier-Orion rocket before it returned to earth about 400 kilometres away from the launch pad.

Airbus: A380 Passes Key Drill; 33 Injured
By CLAUS-PETER TIEMANN, Associated Press Writer

HAMBURG, Germany - Thirty-three people suffered minor injuries Sunday during a crucial evacuation drill for the new Airbus A380 superjumbo jet.

One man broke his leg and 32 other people suffered minor injuries during the exercise in which 853 people and 20 crew members from airline Lufthansa AG exited the plane on slides in a darkened hangar.
[..]
Despite the injuries, Airbus said the plane passed its test, with everybody out of the airplane in about 80 seconds. The European Aviation Safety Agency will confirm the test results this week. If the agency decides the test was a failure, the simulation would be repeated next Saturday.

'Hex' on a plane lands woman in jail
A 50-year-old woman is accused of getting violent on a Delta Airlines flight from Las Vegas to New York City, slapping a flight attendant in the face, putting a "hex" on the plane, announcing that it would crash and declaring that all the passengers, their children and their grandchildren would die early Tuesday.

... But when flight attendants tried to calm Svetlana Yankovsky down, she allegedly told them, "Not good, plane crash, all die."

Va. Man Convicted Of Sexual Contact With Child On Plane
ALEXANDRIA, Va. -- A federal jury convicted a man from Mechanicsville on an abusive sexual contact charge after an incident on an airplane.

... Authorities accused Ryan Douglas Jennings, 24, of assaulting a 13-year-old girl on a United Airlines red eye flight from San Diego to Dulles Airport. Police said Jennings befriended the girl and her 11-year-old brother as they waited to board the flight. Instead of going to his assigned seat, Jennings sat next to the girl as she slept.

One Day, That Economy Ticket May Buy You a Place to Stand
... Airbus has been quietly pitching the standing-room-only option to Asian carriers, though none have agreed to it yet. Passengers in the standing section would be propped against a padded backboard, held in place with a harness, according to experts who have seen a proposal.

... With a typical configuration, the A380 will accommodate about 500 passengers. But with standing-room-only seats, the same plane could conceivably fit in 853 passengers, the maximum it would be permitted to carry.