Man kicked off plane in Detroit for dropping F-bomb may sue Delta carrier

Man kicked off flight for using F-word in boarding area in casual conversation. (www.freep.com) More...

Finnair has begun weighing passengers

Finnair has just begun a new program where it weighs passengers before take-off to help the Finnish airline collect more accurate data about weights on its flights. Paivyt Tallqvist, director for media relations at Finnair, confirmed that the airline was weighing passengers on Tuesday and Wednesday at the Helsinki airport. (money.cnn.com) More...

US court says seat size a safety issue

A US appeals court panel has said that federal officials must reconsider their decision not to regulate the size of airline seats as a safety issue. In a ruling on Friday, one of the judges called it “the case of the incredible shrinking airline seat”. (www.theguardian.com) More...

Phoenix Airport Damaged By Severe Thunderstorms

Severe thunderstorms have caused significant damage to Phoenix's international airport. The storms have also grounded all flights, according to the Phoenix Sky Harbor airport's Twitter account. Parts of the airport are reportedly flooding, and a portion of the airport's roof appears to have been ripped off in the storm. (www.businessinsider.com) More...

Details emerge about hole in jet's roof

The flight had to make an immediate emergency landing and descended without air traffic control approval. (www.azcentral.com) More...

Passenger planes to report position every 15 minutes under new UN tracking plan

The United Nations aviation agency will propose a new standard that requires commercial aircraft to report their position every 15 minutes as part of a global tracking initiative in the aftermath of the disappearance of a Malaysian jetliner. (www.theguardian.com) More...

Female airline pilots wish more women would join them

It's a career above the clouds, a sky full of opportunity. So America's female airline pilots have one question: Why aren't there more of us? "There have been women airline pilots for decades. But it is not a warm and fuzzy profession," says Karen Guadagni, 49, of St. Joseph, who is a captain for ExpressJet on flights for United and Delta airlines. In her 14 years as a pilot, Guadagni estimates that she has been paired with another woman only about 20 times on the… (www.freep.com) More...

AirAsia Co-Pilot Was at Helm Before Crash

Airbus planes have computerized protection systems designed to avoid an aerodynamic stall, a condition in which an aircraft’s wings lose lift because forward speed is too low or the wings are pointing upward too steeply. But under extreme circumstances, such as multiple failures or disconnection of redundant flight-control computers, the stall-protection system becomes inoperative. That is apparently what happened to Flight 8501, though questions remain about the primary and contributing… (www.wsj.com) More...

Nigerian boards flight with invalid boarding pass and expired student ID

He got through TSA with an invalid student ID and someone else's old boarding pass. Then they caught him in-flight, but he was not detained. Then they caught him later because he got through TSA again the next day and tried the same trick but finally failed at the gate. (Sorry if this has already been posted.) (www.freep.com) More...

How MH17 Came Apart Over Ukraine

Detailed maps and photos showing where the major pieces fell. (graphics.wsj.com) More...