Jetiquette | The Sky Steward

Now the birds and the plane are grounded in Alabama while the Federal Aviation Administration investigates whether the journey violates regulations because the pilot was being paid by a conservation group to lead the cranes on their first migration instead of working for free.

Agency regulations say only pilots with commercial pilot licenses can fly for hire. The pilots of the plane for the group, Operation Migration, are instead licensed to fly sport [...]

BRUSSELS — The European Commission said on Thursday that airlines that did not follow a new European law requiring them to account for their emissions of greenhouse gases could face being banned from European airports.

The warning was the latest stage in an escalating war of words between the European Union and countries like China, which have expressed fierce opposition to a law that represents the European Union’s boldest move to date to [...]

Updated 4:36 p.m. | Minutes before a single-engine plane crashed onto Interstate 287 in northern New Jersey last week, its pilot radioed air-traffic control to say that he was in ”icing conditions” and requested clearance to climb higher, according to a preliminary report from the National Transportation Safety Board.

The pilot, Jeffrey F. Buckalew, was given permission to climb 3,000 feet to an altitude of 20,000 feet, but the plane, a Socata TBM-700, rose by only 900 feet before it [...]

AT a big gun show here a couple of weeks ago, J. D. Schechter was busy signing up new members for the Arizona Citizens Defense League.

“We apply pressure on our hired hands in the state legislature in Phoenix to expand the rights of Arizonans to carry guns,” explained the elaborately mustachioed Mr. Schechter, who was wearing a park ranger-style hat and a khaki uniform. Next to his table in the sprawling exhibition [...]

My business partner Jon Greenlee and I would strap ourselves to the wing to save money. When we travel, we rarely sleep because we have to book these bizarre trips. It’s crazy.

Our first international business trip was pretty terrible. We needed to get to Asia and our first thought was that we couldn’t afford it. But then we got online and found a way to get there without going completely broke. [...]

The Federal Aviation Administration has its reasons for preventing passengers from reading from their Kindles and iPads during takeoff and landing. But they just don’t add up.

Since I wrote a column last month asking why these rules exist, I’ve spoken with the F.A.A., American Airlines, Boeing and several others trying to find answers. Each has given me a radically different rationale that contradicts the others. The F.A.A. admits that its reasons have nothing to do with the undivided attention of [...]

I knew a campaign assignment would mean spending hours in overlighted terminals, waiting for flights. What I did not know was how much time and energy I would spend figuring out the logistics of travel — everything from how to get from Iowa to New Hampshire as quickly as possible the morning after the caucuses, to how to snag a hotel reservation on Mackinac Island, Mich., during a Republican conference when nearly every room had been taken by political operatives. [...]

PARIS – British Airways and the Spanish carrier Iberia beat out Virgin Atlantic on Thursday in the bidding for British Midland International, the unprofitable airline being sold by Lufthansa of Germany.

The International Airlines Group, the parent company of British Airways and Iberia, will pay 172.5 million (about $270 million) for the airline, known as B.M.I. That topped a competing bid from Virgin Atlantic Airways.

The purchase would give the group 56 additional daily takeoff and landing slots at Heathrow Airport, Europe’s [...]

Two years had passed since our move from Southern California to suburban Atlanta, and it had been a painful extraction, uprooting my boys from their schools and friends — all for my love of a man, Jon, who then remained entangled in his previous marriage and hesitant to forge ahead with me.

My own first marriage had dissolved nearly a decade before when my boys were little, and in Jon I knew I [...]

A Russian-made passenger jet of a type that is known to be accident-prone skidded off a runway and caught fire on Wednesday while landing in fog in Osh, Kyrgyzstan, injuring about 31 people. After another jet of that type, a Tupolev, crashed in Russia last June, killing 44 people, President Dmitri A. Medvedev said most of the airplanes should be taken out of service by Jan. 1.

Beginning Jan. 24, the Transportation Department will enforce a rule requiring that any advertised price for air travel include all government taxes and fees. For the last 25 years, the department has allowed airlines and travel agencies to list government-imposed fees separately, resulting in a paragraph of fine print disclaimers about charges that can add 20 percent or more to a ticket’s price.

But with airlines now promoting fares on Web ads, Facebook [...]

The live training exercises that take place on the nearly two-million-acre bombing range near the border here are as realistic as can be. Jets swoop down to take out enemy tanks. They strike mock airports or terrorist training camps. The terrain, with its vast expanse of desert scrub ringed by rugged mountains, could be a far-away hostile place, as veterans of American conflicts in the Middle East who have used the range can attest. [...]

Beginning Jan. 24, the Transportation Department will enforce a rule requiring that any advertised price for air travel include all government taxes and fees. For the last 25 years, the department has allowed airlines and travel agencies to list government-imposed fees separately, resulting in a paragraph of fine print disclaimers about charges that can add 20 percent or more to a ticket’s price.

But with airlines now promoting fares on Web ads, Facebook [...]

I’m a former infantry officer, and I’ve had a number of scary military flights. But when I’m on a civilian flight, I don’t even think about what can go wrong. I have a lot of respect for pilots and aviation, so I just sit back and relax.

I did experience a really horrible landing one time on a commercial plane. People let out audible screams when we hit the runway. When we were [...]

After decades of frenzied competition and staggering losses, domestic airlines have taken a more sober approach to the business of flying, with their first priority making money. And so the fancy fuselages and lively paint jobs — remember TWA’s bold red lines? — have gone the way of free meals, pillows and checked bags.

The color of choice these days is sensible white. White does not fade as fast in the sun and [...]

A group of United States airlines had argued that forcing them to participate in the potentially costly emissions-trading system infringed on national sovereignty and conflicted with existing international aviation treaties.

But in a final ruling, the European Court of Justice in Luxembourg affirmed an opinion issued in October by its advocate general, who had rejected that claim.

“The court confirms the validity of the directive that [...]

Opinion »
Fixes: Why ‘Solutions Journalism’ Matters, Too

Our problems are well covered in the media, but solutions often aren’t. That can change.