Calling In Sick After Your Vacation? Union Says United Airlines Is Using Tech To Fire Flight Attendants [Roundup]

News and notes from around the interweb:

• United Airlines is firing flight attendants for sick leave abuse and they’re using technology to identify sick calls they believe are likely fake.

  For instance, United is flagging cabin crew who try and fail to trade trips they’re assigned, and then call in sick for them. And they’re flagging sick calls on days they’ve had time off requests denied. But those cases aren’t all open and shut!

  Take a crew member who goes on a legitimate vacation but doesn’t fly home as scheduled for his next work trip because he has fallen sick with stomach flu. The union warns that United could take his sick call as an excuse to fraudulently extend his vacation.

  Or, how about a flight attendant who challenges crew scheduling over a call-out, but then ends up cutting herself the same day, and then can’t work due to the injury. United could flag this as sick leave abuse due to the recent disagreement with crew scheduling over the trip assignment.

• British Airways Accidentally Leaks Seat Map For Reconfigured A380 Superjumbos But Refit Project Could Be in Trouble

  In total, there will be 421 seats, representing a 10% reduction in the current configuration of 469 seats, as British Airways seeks to capitalize on the popularity of its premium economy cabin.

  …Unfortunately, if the rumors are to be believed, aviation regulators are unhappy with this plan, and it all comes down to how cabin crew would deal with an unruly passenger on the upper deck. BA’s passenger restraint kit is designed to secure a disruptive passenger to a seat, effectively strapping them down for the duration of the flight, but the kit is currently only approved for use on economy and premium economy seats.

  

• Never gets old.

  There’s a perv on my flight…
  by
  u/nicolaswalker in
  americanairlines

• New EgyptAir Airbus A350-900 business class suites. (HT: @Singal3)

• Detroit airport says it can’t stop ICE flights which seems obvious – runways are basically like highways, and they have no authority over federal government charters – but it isn’t obvious to protestors.

• On the flight where Corey Lewandowski fired a pilot over DHS Secretary Kristi Noem’s missing blanket last year, Lewandowski reportedly violated the sterile cockpit rule (the Coast Guard has a similar rule to FAA).

  The new details about the pilot incident suggest Lewandowski may have violated the safety guidelines set out by the U.S. Coast Guard, which operated the plane.

  Lewandowski entered the cockpit before the plane had reached 10,000 feet (3,048 meters) and while the seatbelt sign remained on, one of the people said.

  This happened on a Coast Guard-operated Gulfstream, not on the $70 million DHS sex plane.