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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Fare Alert: Europe Roundtrip from Many U.S. Cities From $290 on British Airways, Finnair

by Gary Leff

plane tails
Sep 06 2019

For travel between mid-October and early December, and again January through mid-May (in other words outside of peak holiday dates and before peak summer) you can get some amazing coach fares to Europe from across the U.S.

Travel is available to Zurich, Munich, Geneva, Frankfurt, Hamburg, Stuttgart, Vienna, Brussels, Berlin, and Dusseldorf and this deal is available for people departing from at least 30 different U.S. cities.

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American Airlines Mechanic Charged With Sabotaging an Aircraft About to Depart

by Gary Leff

american-airlines-plane
Sep 06 2019

We haven’t reached the point of a strike, and the airline and its mechanics are headed back to the bargaining table with the National Mediation Board next week. However tensions have certainly been high. For instance a video of an American Airlines supervisor yelling at a mechanic went viral in June (though note there’s NSFW language):

Now we’ve learned that at least one mechanic took things way too far

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The Pan Am Flight Attendant Who Gave Her Life Saving Passengers on a Hijacked Flight 33 Years Ago

by Gary Leff

Sep 05 2019

Pan Am flight 73 flew from Mumbai to the U.S. with a stop in Karachi, Pakistan on September 5, 1986. It was hijacked by four Palestinian Abu Nidal Organization terrorists who wanted to use the Boeing 747-121 to free prisoners in Syria and Israel.

There were 380 passengers and 13 crew on board the aircraft. All but 22 survived, and much of the credit goes to the flight’s purser, 22 year old Neerja Bhanot who died near the end of the standoff.

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When Pilot No Shows, easyJet Lets One of the Passengers Fly the Plane

by Gary Leff

easyjet
Sep 05 2019

An easyJet flight from Machester, England to Alicante, Spain was delayed without one of its pilots to fly the plane. The airline had called in a reserve pilot who was going to take 90 minutes just to get to the airport. Passengers would be taking off a couple of hours late, if they were lucky. With other delayed inbound flights last weekend, the pilot might wind up assigned to a different aircraft.

Fortunately there was a passenger on the plane with flying experience that easyJet could turn to.

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German Government Leader Wants Poor People Traveling By Rail, Not By Air

by Gary Leff

airplane
Sep 05 2019

In the grand tradition of regulators protecting the profits of large businesses at the expense of consumers, a member of of Germany’s governing coalition wants to set legal minimum prices for airline tickets.

This comes after Lufthansa’s CEO called Ryanair’s low fares “economically, ecologically, and politically irresponsible” and sought government protection in the form of a ban on low fares.

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4 Things I Learned From a Presentation to Investors By 2 United Airlines Executive Vice Presidents

by Gary Leff

united-plane
Sep 05 2019

Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer Gerry Laderman and Executive Vice President and Chief Commercial Officer Andrew Nocella answered questions from Helane Becker at the Cowen and Company 12th Annual Global Transportation Conference.

During the discussion there were four things that stood out to me as being interesting, even if some were relatively tangential for analysts covering the stock.

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Lufthansa Wouldn’t Assist Wheelchair Passenger Onto a Plane, So Other Passengers Stepped in to Help

by Gary Leff

Sep 05 2019

On Monday Lufthansa left a wheelchair passenger to fend for themselves boarding an aircraft at a remote stand in Frankfurt. Reportedly Lufthansa ground staff asked passengers on the Frankfurt – Austin flight LH468 to lift the man onto the plane, because no one from the airline would do it. One of the passengers was injured in the process.

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