There’s Still an American Airlines MD80 in Dallas, After All

by Gary Leff

Sep 08 2019

The retirement of the American Airlines MD80 has been written about extensively and covered across all sorts of media. I am didn’t find the event nearly as momentous and many did, but there were plenty of celebrations as the plane made its last commercial flight – AA80 – from Chicago O’Hare to Dallas Fort-Worth and then media took a trip on an MD80 to park the aircraft in the desert.

While I’ve read reports that American sent the last of its MD80s to Roswell, New Mexico in fact there’s still an MD80 sitting in Dallas and it’s going to stay there.

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Airline Cancels Flight to Avoid Police – All Over $276

by Gary Leff

airline ticket
Sep 07 2019

Airlines often claim an exemption to European delay compensation rules due to “extraordinary circumstances” that couldn’t have been avoided, and there’s much litigation over this most of which having been resolved in favor of the passenger. For instance while strikes and weather can be extraordinary, mechanical issues generally aren’t.

When airlines don’t pay some passengers who have been stiffed have gotten creative, sending bailiffs to airline offices.

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The Moment Two Passengers Emerge Together From a United Airlines Lavatory

by Gary Leff

lavatory
Sep 07 2019

Women were lining up for the lavatory for about ten minutes, and no one was coming out. That’s usually when you hope a flight attendant will put some coffee grounds in there between uses. A flight attendant notices the line, saying to one of the women “you’re still right here” as no one has moved.

When the lavatory door opens a man appears and then “[j]ust a few seconds later, a woman in a matching red jumper also walks out from the cramped room, apparently having just joined the Mile High Club.”

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Man Loses Job After Demanding Only White Flight Attendants Serve Him on British Airways

by Gary Leff

plane tails
Sep 07 2019

Maybe this isn’t the strangest part of the story, but it strikes me that the racist would demand that minorities serve him, not that they not be allowed to perform in servile roles.

According to the man’s attorney his family is the real victim here, the man’s wife “suffered from stress due to the allegation” and he lost his job. They’re not even welcome at their kids’ school anymore. The man and his wife are New Zealanders and even considered moving back there.

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American’s Internal Memo on the Miami Mechanic Who Sabotaged a Plane

by Gary Leff

american-airlines-plane
Sep 06 2019

News that an American Airlines mechanic in Miami sabotaged an aircraft before it prepared to take off with passengers was truly shocking. The man admitted that he wanted to delay or cancel the flight out of frustration with union contract talks, and to force more overtime work to fix the problem he had caused.

American Airlines had to address the issue with employees as well. Here’s the memo that was sent internally:

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A West Virginia Heiress-Turned-Arms Dealer Bought Wow Air and Will Restart Flights Next Month

by Gary Leff

wow plane
Sep 06 2019

Michele Ballarin is a West Virginia heiress who served as a go-between with Somali pirates and tried to get the CIA to hire her to kill Al Qaeda jihadists. She was “a trusted confidante of Somali pirates and warlords.”

Ballarin ran for Congress in the 1980s in Morgantown but the 31 year old lost badly, paying for her campaign “with money from her first husband, a man several decades older than her who had landed on the Normandy beaches on D-Day and amassed a small fortune as a real-estate developer.” She and her second husband, a bartender at Manhattan’s 21 Club, moved to Georgetown and then moved to an estate in Markham, Virginia named “Wolf’s Crag,” which had belonged to a famous Confederate commander known as “The Black Knight of the Confederacy.”

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