The attack on in El Al flight by rocket propelled grenades last December in Geneva, Switzerland was foiled  by Swiss and French intelligence divisions. The attack was to be carried out by Islamic Extremists.

The Yedioth Aharonot newspaper reported that a secret agent working undercover amongst an Islamic terror cell in the city discovered the plan after three immigrants of Arabic origin boasted of their attempts to smuggle weapons from Russia with the ultimate goal of shooting down an Israeli plane at the airport.
When the matter was reported to Israeli security, El Al changed the flight paths of all its Geneva-bound planes, landing them at Zurich Airport the following week.
Swiss officials reported that no arrests were made following the discovery since the plan had yet to reach its final operational stages.
El Al has reportedly installed the Flight Guard Self Protection System at a cost of one million dollars per plane on some of its fleet, and plans to install it in all its jets in the future. via the Jerusalem Post

With the new technologies, airports all across the country and world are looking to stop the loss of over 30 million bags a year. This represents a significant cost in terms of money and customer dissatisfaction for the airlines. There are  new technologies that are being looked at, the most prevalent being RFID to track bags. MASSPORT, the managing concern for Boston Logans airport is looking into the pros and cons of RFID as a baggage tracking technology.

With roughly 30 million suitcases lost during air travel every year and a tracking standard — a paper bar code on each item — that is only about 75 percent accurate, airport officials from Logan to Lisbon are searching for new technologies to help stem the tide of lost baggage.
Chip-based radio frequency identification (RFID) has been presented as a possible solution, and some airports, including the Beijing Capital International Airport, which launched a pilot program last month, have gone so far as to implement limited trials. But static electricity that builds up as suitcases rub and bump along conveyor belts can render chip-based tags impotent, while exposure to X-ray machines can affect data transmissions, say officials. via Mass High Tech

A tax change on aviation fuel has taken money from the national air traffic infrastructure and put it into the highway funds not to mention that it raised the taxes on an already burdened aviation industry. Conrad Burns, the Republican Senator from Montana is looking to remove this tax until 2007 when the tax is supposed to expire so that it can be studied. This is a very wise move.

The current rule, enacted last year, has raised the cost of business aviation only slightly. But it has irritated general aviation fuel vendors while directing millions of dollars to the highway trust fund that had previously gone to fund aviation infrastructure and operations.
Burns’ bill would suspend the rule until Sept. 30, 2007, when all aviation taxes will expire and need to be reauthorized. Proponents of the measure say the time is needed to study how difficult compliance with the rule change has been for fuel vendors and to further investigate the issue that prompted it.
The rule, which took effect October 2005, was created in response to reports of truck operators buying aviation fuel to fraudulently avoid the higher fuel tax rate, 24.4 cents per gallon compared with 21.9 cents per gallon. Organizations that fought the rule disagree that such fraud is widespread, saying they have yet to see statistical evidence of trucks filling up on aviation fuel. via The Business Journal of Jacksonville:.

The 167 passengers on board Ryanair Flight FR25 en route from Paris to Dublin was diverted to Glasgow’s Prestwick Airport on Wednesday after a passenger passed the captain a note saying there was a bomb on board. In a post 9-11 world this is one sure way of having your commercial flight be escorted by fighter jets to the nearest airport.

Ryanair Flight FR25, a Boeing 737 en route from Paris to Dublin, was escorted to Glasgow’s Prestwick Airport, which was closed for about two hours while army explosives experts searched the plane. No bomb was found, Strathclyde police said.

The 167 passengers and five crew were safely escorted off the plane and questioned at the airport, police said.

Later, all the passengers were allowed to continue their journey, arriving at Dublin International Airport aboard the aircraft shortly before midnight — about nine hours after the incident began, Ryanair spokeswoman Pauline McAlester said.
(USA Today)

During the incident that lasted hours, four aircraft scheduled to land at Prestwick were diverted to other airports. Authorities are trying to determine who had written the note. So far no arrests have been made.

The FAA and NTSB are both going to start investigations at Chicago O’Hare International Airport over the high incidents of near misses at the airport, including 2 this past week.

Pilots aborted takeoffs on Tuesday and Thursday to avoid colliding with other aircraft, the Federal Aviation Administration said. No one was injured.

“Both incidents look to be air traffic controller errors,” FAA spokesman Tony Molinaro said Friday.The National Transportation Safety Board, which typically responds to fatal accidents, also will investigate because the incidents were “major” enough, said spokeswoman Lauren Peduzzi.

On Tuesday, two planes were mistakenly instructed to take off at the same time on crisscrossing runways. On Thursday, one plane was sent to taxi across a runway where another plane had already started its take-off roll.So far this year, four so-called “runway incursions,” not counting last week’s incidents, have occurred. All have been ruled controller errors.via kutv.com

Chicago O’Hare has too much traffic for air traffic control not to have complete control over the airspace. This is not a little rural airport.

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My wife, the flight attendant, stays in hotels 2 to 3 nights a week and it is amazing the difference in quality of the hotel rooms she stays as she travels around the country. One night she will be in a 4 star hotel in downtown San Francisco and the next she will be at a less than stellar hotel/motel with no other businesses within range of the property.

Now with a reinvigorated hotel industry, many hotels are not  bidding on the  contracts for flight crew rooms. The rates airlines are paying for hotel rooms are closely guarded secrets as they do not want other companies to see these rates or other hotels in the area to bid on the contracts. The rates are not high, but crew rooms tend to be the worst in the hotel (think ice machines and elevators) and they are  filled year round.

Unless a hotel is running at 80 percent occupancy or better, it’s not a bad idea to have some flight crews, Berger said. The advantage they offer is that they are in the hotel seven days a week and 365 days a year, and that means some income for hotels during, say, Christmas, Thanksgiving and the dead of winter, when they otherwise might be relatively empty.  via Sacramento Business Journal

I will be curious to see the difference between the availability and convenience of the hotels that used by the flight crews. It could be a vicious circle for the airlines as room rates are going up and quality of the hotels that will bid on their business is going down. The  flight crews may  have to adjust to being in lower end properties in this time of airline bankruptcies and discord.

While I am not the biggest fan of the FCC, their blocking radio transmission to provide clear communication between the pilots and ground control is vital for airline safety. Now a  pirate radio station is causing havoc in Miami with pirated radio broadcasts.

Airline pilots departing from Miami International Airport are getting an earful of something unexpected: Hip-hop tunes from a pirate radio station that sometimes interfere with their communications with the control tower.
The music comes on a pair of frequencies from a station that calls itself Da Streetz.
“It’s intermittent. Not all day, everyday,” said Kathleen Bergen, a Federal Aviation Administration spokeswoman. “But clear communication between air control and the pilots is a critical part of flying.”
Authorities traced the signals to an antenna at a nearby warehouse but did not find the disc jockey, although they did confiscate equipment including three computers and a CD player.
Despite that discovery and the seizures, the broadcasts have continued, authorities said.
Pilots who pick up the broadcasts switch to a different frequency to speak with air traffic controllers, Bergen said. via FOXNews.com

This is not a heartening story, federal investigators were able to bring bomb making components through security at all  21 airports they tested. This is very disheartening after all that has been spent and done on airline and airport security.

Imagine an explosion strong enough to blow a car’s trunk apart, caused by a bomb inside a passenger plane. Government sources tell NBC News that federal investigators recently were able to carry materials needed to make a similar homemade bomb through security screening at 21 airports.

In all 21 airports tested, no machine, no swab, no screener anywhere stopped the bomb materials from getting through. Even when investigators deliberately triggered extra screening of bags, no one discovered the materials.

read the rest at MSNBC.com.

United’s exit out of bankruptcy following the pattern the majors have set for looking at long haul flights to destinations that will absorb higher costs. They have added new service to Honolulu from Seattle and San Diego starting June 10th.

United flew between Seattle and Honolulu a generation ago, but in recent years its direct U.S. flights to Hawaii have all come from Chicago, Denver, San Francisco and Los Angeles.

The Seattle-Honolulu service will compete with Northwest Airlines and Hawaiian Airlines, while San Diego-Honolulu service will compete with Hawaiian Airlines and Aloha Airlines

United also said it will launch service from Toronto to Denver, which will allow residents of eastern Canada to fly to Hawaii with one change of planes at the Denver hub. Pacific Business News