Airlines, Flight | featured news

U.S. federal telecommunications regulators are pushing ahead with efforts to bring faster Internet service to commercial and private airline flights. The Federal Communications Commission on Thursday started deliberations on a proposal that would offer a new type of in-flight broadband service promising U.S. fliers higher Wi-Fi speeds and better connections.

If you fly, chances are you have a story to tell about an uncomfortable airline seat. Vicki Morwitz does. Hers involves a long-haul plane trip, a minuscule economy-class enclosure and a circuitous routing that deposited her at her destination feeling exhausted and irritated.

If Kerry Drake missed his connecting flight, he wouldn't get to the hospital in time to say goodbye to his mother. Drake got the news on the morning of January 24 that his mother, who had been ill for years from rheumatoid arthritis and had been especially sick the last four months, was dying.

Some family members of Sept. 11 terror victims are angry over new flight-safety rules that will permit small knives on planes. The head of the Transportation Security Administration said Tuesday that air passengers will now be allowed to carry folding knives with blades that are 2.36 inches or less. The rules go into effect next month. They'll also permit souvenir baseball bats, golf clubs and other sports equipment. Debra Burlingame says small pocketknives can be just as lethal as the box cutters that are still banned.

A cross-country JetBlue flight diverted to Denver after a passenger reportedly became unruly because a flier moved to a seat next to her paid less for the seat.

United Airlines says it has fixed a computer problem that led to widespread delays for thousands of its passengers. The outage lasted for about two hours Thursday morning. The problem was that dispatchers couldn't send flight information to about half of the United's mainline flights.

Authorities at the Cologne-Bonn airport say 11 people have been injured after smoke filled the cabin of a Turkish airliner.

A strike by flight attendants on German airline Lufthansa disrupted hundreds of flights on Friday, leading to long lines of stranded passengers at Germany's biggest airport.

Federal authorities have charged a JetBlue Airways captain who sprinted down the cabin of a flight screaming about a bomb with interfering with a flight crew. An affidavit unsealed Wednesday states that captain Clayton Osbon told his co-pilots that "things don't matter" during a Las Vegas-bound flight Tuesday. Court documents say Osbon told the plane's first officer that "we're not going to Vegas" and began giving a sermon.

As an American Airlines plane taxied for takeoff at Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport on Friday morning, a flight attendant ranted on the plane's intercom, repeatedly telling passengers that she was not responsible for the safety of the plane and wrestling with another flight attendant for control of the plane's public address system, according to a passenger on the flight.