In time for the New Year, the Federal Aviation Administration approved the single operating certificate for the new Delta Air Lines. What this means is that Northwest Airlines as an entity ceases to exist. With this change, the only lingering reminders of Northwest is its separate reservations system, which will be integrated in the first part of this new year, and Philadelphia, the only station still branded as Northwest.
This morning, to cap off the TSA Subpoena Saga, blogger Steven Frishling of Flying with Fish appeared on morning show, FOX and Friends.
Around 5:20PM on January 3rd, a man was observed walking the wrong way down the exit lane out of the secure area of Newark Liberty Airport’s Terminal C. Why no one stopped this man, as we always see a TSA agent stationed at the exit, we do not know. The response of the TSA was to shut down screening, but then two and a half hours later, then ordered the terminal evacuated and all passengers be rescreened. They estimated this would be complete by half past midnight. The event caused a great amount of disruption, as inbound planes were delayed due to lack of gate space, as were outbound planes due to lack of passengers.
The Irish government is demanding answers after an unsuspecting passenger carried high-grade explosives on a flight to Dublin as part of a botched training exercise. Slovakian Agents planted RDX explosives in the bag of a 49-year old electrician without his knowledge. The explosive was one of eight items planted by the Slovakian authorities in the baggage of unsuspecting passengers at Bratislava airport this past weekend.
President Obama said today that the December 25th attempted bombing of a Detroit-bound flight was not a failure of the U.S. Intelligence gathering system, but a failure to analyze that information and respond to it. Instead of focusing solely on defending the performance of his government, which his predecessor might have done, he came out and said that this was unacceptable and we had to do better. We may not do better, but we choose to respect him for being so direct about making a mistake, if nothing else.
This is not the first time this has happened, and that is sad. Today, a US Airways regional flight, flight 3079 operated by Chautaqua Airlines, from New York’s LaGuardia Airport to Louisville, Kentucky was diverted to Philadelphia over a religious issue.
We did want to followup on last week’s story, where a religious Jewish teen caused a plane to be diverted by praying using his tefillin. In case you missed it the first time, the above is an Associated Press video of the initial announcement. Note the police referring to the device as an “Olfactory.”
JetBlue is switching its reservations system from Navitaire to SABRE this weekend. As a matter of practicality, this will cause disruptions. If you are travelling Friday, Saturday or Sunday of this weekend(January 29-31), you may want to show up early.