News and notes from around the interweb:
- In the final round of the qualifying event for the national finals of debate my senior year of high school the opposing team from West Bakersfield High declared they wanted to ‘go cow tipping’ in Fargo, North Dakota where nationals would be held. It was only with the advent of YouTube that I discovered cow tipping wasn’t actually a thing — if it was there’d be video.
There are far fewer reported UFO sightings in the YouTube era, too. Otherwise there’d be video. But what about these air traffic control tapes of an incident in Oregon?
- Southwest is raising the fee to upgrade boarding position to A1-15 at the airport to as high as $50 in some cases.
That’s distinct from Southwest’s $15 EarlyBird check-in which “netted Southwest $358 million in revenue last year.”
- More on the mysterious 737 abandoned in Bali
- English is the international language of air traffic control, how’s that working?
- We’re past the laptop ban but the US has imposed a new screening program “for the six Middle East airlines operating from five countries (Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates)”
The carriers will now be required to “submit a subset of required advance air cargo data to CBP at the earliest point practicable prior to loading of the cargo onto the aircraft destined to or transiting through the United States,” according to TSA. England said the ACAS program “leverages Department of Homeland Security (DHS) threat information and other data to employ a risk-based approach to improve air cargo security through targeted vetting.”
- Delta will go to outrageous lengths to avoid cancelling a flight. They’ve been known to ‘delay’ a flight by a day rather than calling the flight cancelled and rescheduled, and fly the plane even if nearly everyone has been rebooked onto another aircraft.
So it doesn’t surprise that passengers endured a 12 hour delay and Delta only gave up when the crew went illegal. Passengers were given the opportunity to get off the aircraft so Delta could avoid tarmac delay fines, however.
Ann Ngo waited on a @Delta plane for just under 12 hours yesterday as an ice storm made for a hellish day at KCI pic.twitter.com/tKFz8pml3H
— Max Londberg (@MaxLondberg) February 22, 2018
@DeltaAssist @Delta and now the crew for flight 2195 has officially timed out as we were about to take off. The worst air travel day experience in 20+ years of flying.
— Matt Montgomery (@MPaulMontgomery) February 20, 2018
- So there’s that.
According to Google Earth Pro, the Bali 737 was brought in pieces around March 24, 2013 and assembled on-site.