Jetiquette | The Sky Steward

Much is at stake for Europe, which has sought to burnish its identity as a significant international actor partly by leading the world on climate protection.

Airlines would have to account for the emissions for the entirety of any flight that takes off from, or that lands at, any airport in Europe — even if that flight begins or ends in faraway cities like Beijing and San Francisco. [...]

His death was announced by the French Embassy in Washington.

When France fell to the Germans in June 1940, and a collaborationist government based in Vichy was being formed, Mr. Lafont, a noncommissioned officer, was stationed in Oran in Algeria, then a French colony. Shortly after midnight on June 30, Mr. Lafont and five fellow servicemen, several of them pilots, convinced an airfield sentry that they were on a patrol, then stole a [...]

The group emerged with a neatly bound 33-page proposal and an impressive 14-inch scale model of an airplane on a stand. Col. Pete Warden, the Air Force chief of bomber development, studied the result and pronounced, “This is the B-52.”

One of those six was Holden Withington, and on Dec. 9, at age 94, he became the last of the B-52 designers to die. His daughter, Victoria Withington, said he died at his [...]

Because of this, December has traditionally sparked a mad dash by frequent flier fanatics to preserve their ability to board first and get upgrades and other privileges, by topping off their accounts through so-called mileage runs — flying back and forth between, say, Newark and Seattle via Houston on a single day, just for the miles.

Recently, airlines have begun to allow loyalty members to retain elite levels without such antics. Indeed, airlines [...]

The young man had eluded law enforcement for more than two years, becoming something of a folk hero in the process before crashing a plane in the Bahamas.

The state had asked the court to sentence Mr. Harris-Moore, 20, to the maximum sentence of nine years and eight months. His lawyer, John Henry Browne, had asked for six years, saying that his client’s exploits could be explained, in part, by his troubled upbringing. [...]

The company also said it was deferring delivery of some Boeing freighter aircraft, adjusting for slowing volume in Asia.

FedEx expects continued moderate economic growth, with trade flows staying volatile, executives told analysts in a conference call after the company reported results on Thursday.

FedEx, driven by online holiday orders, delivered about 17 million packages on Dec. 12 — twice the average daily shipments — in [...]

The labor board’s acting general counsel, Lafe Solomon, said he had decided to end the case after the union that represents 31,000 Boeing workers in Washington urged the board to withdraw it. That union, the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers, had originally asked the board to file the case, but changed its mind after striking a deal with Boeing last week to raise wages and expand jet production in Washington.

The [...]

Any further flights would be regarded as a hostile act, the Iranian foreign minister, Ali Akbar Salehi, said in an interview with Iran’s official Islamic Republic News Agency. His warning threatened to drag Afghanistan directly into the dispute over American aerial surveillance of Iran.

There was no immediate response from the United States or Afghanistan to Mr. Salehi’s admonition. But Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta, visiting with Afghanistan’s president, Hamid Karzai, in Kabul [...]

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The cause was cardiopulmonary failure after several bouts of pneumonia, said his daughter Carole Helms Reichhelm.

Mr. Helms, a decorated pilot who left the Marine Corps as a lieutenant colonel in 1956, went on to a successful business career in aviation. In 1974, he became president and chief executive of Piper Aircraft — he was later named chairman — and was widely credited with turning around the company’s financial fortunes before Mr. Reagan [...]

“I didn’t get treated like a terrorist,” a man sipping a beer told me en route.

“Nobody patted me down,” added a woman, who joined the conversation.

O.K., the trip did take 26 hours, because it was by train — as opposed to more than two hours by air. I was experimenting with taking a long-distance train rather than flying. Would I do it again as [...]

“We have asked for it back — we’ll see how the Iranians respond,” Mr. Obama said of the drone in a short session with reporters at the White House. Mr. Obama appeared with Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki of Iraq, with whom he discussed issues including American concerns about Iran’s influence in the region.

Mr. Obama was answering this question: “And speaking of Iran, are you concerned that it will be able to [...]

She kept asking the young man seated next to her what he thought about various things she was pulling out of that folder. His eyes were practically rolling in the back of his head. I found it kind of amusing. Grooms-to-be are never much into planning.

The young woman and I started chatting. She recognized me and knew that I planned events. She was very polite and asked me if she could ask [...]

Pakistan had ordered the C.I.A. to leave the Shamsi air base in protest over NATO airstrikes that killed at least 25 Pakistani soldiers near the border with Afghanistan on Nov. 26. Pakistan has also blocked all NATO logistical supplies from crossing the border into Afghanistan since the clash.

Pentagon and Obama administration officials declined to comment publicly on the departure from the Shamsi air base.

But [...]

Almost all the nation’s big airlines have steered a course into Chapter 11 over the last decade. They all shared one main objective: getting out from under labor contracts they claimed they could not afford. American was one of the few that avoided bankruptcy in the 2000s. Its parent company, AMR, argues that its annual labor costs are about $800 million higher than those of its rivals. Bankruptcy will give American leeway to cut pay and benefits by allowing it [...]

According to Afghan officials, the drone was flown from the American and Afghan base at Shindand in western Herat Province. American officials have acknowledged the loss of an RQ-170, a C.I.A. stealth drone made by Lockheed Martin and designed to fly covert missions and collect information in hostile territory, but have declined to confirm or deny that it is the plane that Iran says it recovered.

The Afghan ambassador, Obaidullah Obaid, discussed the [...]

The plane burst into flames after hitting the school in Paranaque City, said the mayor, Florencio Bernabe. It is a suburb of Manila, the capital.

No classes were in session when the plane hit, but officials were determining how many people on the ground were injured or killed, he said.

Firefighters reported that the bodies were charred and that the dead included the pilot and the [...]

Q. In early September, I saw a good deal on a round-trip fare from San Francisco to Palau, in the South Pacific, on Korean Air. I booked two tickets for February — one for me, one for my girlfriend — for $510 apiece. In the weeks that followed, we booked hotels and planned activities, and I bought an underwater camera. We were looking forward to a great vacation.

But on Nov. 7 — [...]

The complaint, which appeared to have been made more for its propaganda value than for any Iranian hope of Security Council action, was announced a day after Iran showcased what it described as the captured drone on national television, as if it were a war trophy. Members of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps were shown displaying a bat-winged aircraft on a platform bedecked with anti-American slogans and a mock American flag with skulls instead of stars. [...]

Planning Child-Friendly Flights

To the Editor: Re “It’s Not the Carriers, It’s the Kids” (Practical Traveler, Nov. 27), while crying infants may be up to the fates, babes out-of-arms are another matter. While there is no perfect solution to the problem, perhaps the airlines could make available an online animation for kids that would take them through the flight, from entering the terminal to leaving it, including the boarding routines and the reasons [...]

When federal investigators announced they had broken up a cocaine-trafficking ring, the crime boss was not a member of a Mexican cartel or the Mafia.

The ringleader was Victor Bourne, a low-wage baggage handler for American Airlines at Kennedy International Airport. And his associates in the enterprise were other airline employees: baggage handlers and crew chiefs who delivered contraband while they delivered luggage to the baggage-claim area. [...]

GE Aviation has abandoned efforts to use its own money to keep alive development of its alternate engine for the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, a spokesman said Friday, effectively ending the project. The unit of the General Electric Company has decided its offer to pay for continued development did not make business sense, the spokesman, Rick Kennedy, said. Because of increased commercial business at the unit, based in Evendale, Ohio, a Cincinnati suburb, there was no immediate job loss, he [...]

About 74 percent supported the contract on Wednesday in a ballot among 31,000 union members, mostly in the Seattle area, who accepted the surprise proposal unveiled last week.

Boeing plans to increase output by 60 percent after four union walkouts since 1989 delayed hundreds of deliveries. Workers were promised that a revamped 737 jet would be built at a current factory near Seattle, and the union requested that the N.L.R.B. retract the complaint [...]

American officials viewing the video declined to confirm or deny that the aircraft shown was the one that they have said was lost several days ago by controllers in neighboring Afghanistan.

The two-and-a-half-minute video clip of the remote-controlled surveillance aircraft was presented by Iran as the first visual evidence that it had had possession of the drone since Sunday, when Iran asserted that its military downed the aircraft 140 miles inside Iranian territory. [...]