Skip to main content

Home/ History Readings/ Group items tagged flight

Rss Feed Group items tagged

Filter: All | Bookmarks | Topics Simple Middle
Javier E

Europe's flight-shame movement has travelers taking trains to save the planet - The Was... - 0 views

www.washingtonpost.com/...9-9411-a608f9d0c2d3_story.html

climate change trains airline travel carbon policy

shared by Javier E on 08 Aug 19 - No Cached
  • Budget airlines such as Ireland’s Ryanair and British easyJet revolutionized European travel two decades ago, when they first started offering to scoot people across the continent for as little as $20 a flight. That mode of travel, once celebrated as an opening of the world, is now being recognized for its contribution to global problems.
  • Tourists have been spooked by the realization that one passenger’s share of the exhaust from a single flight can cancel out a year’s worth of Earth-friendly efforts
  • “Now, when people tell me why they are taking the train, they say two things in the same breath: They say they are fed up with the stress of flying, and they want to cut their carbon footprint,
  • ...18 more annotations...
  • So far, the biggest shift has been in green-conscious Sweden, where airline executives blame increased train travel — up one-third this summer compared with a year ago — for a drop in air passenger traffic.
  • The newly coined concept of flygskam, or “flight shame,” has turned some Swedes bashful about their globe-trotting. A guerrilla campaign used Instagram to tally the planet-busting travels of top Swedish celebrities.
  • Hilm, 31, a health-care consultant who was on his way to hike across Austria for eight days, said he tried to live an environmentally responsible life. “I don’t drive a car. I eat mostly vegetarian. I live in an apartment, not a big house.”
  • He was stunned when he assessed the impact of his flights. “I did one of those calculators you can do online,” he said, “and 80 percent of my emissions were from travel.
  • “I don’t want to say I’ll never fly again, but I do want to be conscious about the decisions I make,”
  • What was it worth? Measuring carbon dioxide emissions from travel can be an inexact science. One popular online calculator suggested that Hilm’s trip would have led to about 577 pounds of carbon dioxide emissions if he had flown, compared with 118 pounds by rail, a savings of 80 percent.
  • In the first six months of 2019, air passenger traffic was down 3.8 percent in Sweden compared with the previous year. Climate concerns are among several reasons for the downtur
  • Across Europe, air travel still ticked up — by 4.4 percent — in the first quarter of 2019
  • for young, green Europeans, saying no to flying is becoming a thing.
  • The shift has been inspired in part by Greta Thunberg
  • Thunberg has not been on a plane since 2015. This week, she said she would soon travel to the United States — by sailboat.
  • called Tagsemester, or Train Vacatio
  • The aviation sector generates about 2.5 percent of global carbon dioxide emissions — meaning it’s only a small fraction of the problem
  • Jet fuel is currently untaxed in the E.U., unlike in the United States. France this month announced it would introduce an eco-tax on flights originating at French airports, with the money to be reinvested in rail networks and other environmentally friendly transport. Several other European countries have imposed or increased flight taxes. The Dutch government is lobbying for an E.U.-wide tax on aviation.
  • SAS, the largest airline in Scandinavia, is ending in-flight duty-free sales and asking passengers to pre-book meals so planes can be lighter and more fuel-efficient. Pilots have been urged to taxi on the ground with only one engine switched on.
  • He said the airline was pushing to expand its use of renewable fuels as quickly as possible.
  • Climate change experts caution that meaningful shifts will need to happen on a structural level that goes beyond any individual’s private actions. 
  • “In terms of personal climate activism broadly, whether you’re talking about aviation, reducing the amount of meat you eat, consumption choices, the answer is always: It is important, but it is insufficient,” said Greg Carlock, a manager at the World Resources Institute, a Washington think tank.
carolinehayter

How Belarus 'hijacking' will affect flights in Europe | CNN Travel - 0 views

edition.cnn.com/...index.html

politics policy crisis Economics

shared by carolinehayter on 01 Jun 21 - No Cached
  • In the week since Ryanair flight FR4978 from Athens to Vilnius was forcibly diverted to Minsk, travel in Europe already looks very different.
  • The directive, issued Wednesday by the European Union Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) under the form of a Safety Information Bulletin (SIB), called on all airlines "with their principle place of business in one of the EASA member states" to avoid Belarusian airspace. They advised that all other airlines should do the same, wherever they are based.
  • There were other implications, with Russia -- an ally of Belarus -- taking several days to grant Air France and Austrian Airlines flights to Moscow the clearance to use Russian airspace to divert around Belarus, prompting cancelations.
  • ...16 more annotations...
  • So how big a deal is this? Huge, say industry insiders -- big enough to have already shaken the aviation map of Europe, and big enough to have knock-on effects beyond the continent -- particularly if the situation escalates further.
  • If it did, passengers could see their flight times increased, a rise in fares across the networks, and even long-haul, nonstop flights needing to make refueling stops along the way.
  • "Now that they're not flying over its airspace, that's good -- governments have acted swiftly to restore confidence -- but I think it'll throw up questions for consumers over who they're flying with, which points they're flying between and how they're flying between them. If you were flying from Athens to Lithuania, or in the region around Russia, you might think twice.
  • The events, described by some governments as a state-sponsored hijacking, have "inevitably redrawn the aviation map of Europe," says one airline industry insider, who wanted to remain anonymous due to the risk of being identified. (
  • But the issues don't just end there, they say. "The problem you have is the challenge around where you draw the new map -- that whole region has restrictions."There are already restrictions flying over Ukraine"
  • "So Belarus had seen a huge increase in traffic because people were going around Ukraine."
  • "Airlines will either have to go very far north into the polar region, or to go down to the Gulf States -- but then most European carriers would avoid flying over Iraq and Iran. So, they'd probably go over Egypt, Saudi Arabia and across India.
  • "There's a big lump of airspace which is strategically important to airlines and is now being denied them -- and there'll be a knock-on effect on flight times, cost, and environmental impact."
  • Everyone in the industry agrees that if diversions become a long-term thing, it'll be a headache.
  • As well as the increased fuel burn and longer flight times, he says, any unplanned stops can send crews over their allotted hours. "They might need to be swapped out, with a new crew being flown in. There are significant consequences to this sort of disruption," he says.
  • The rules and regulations around airline safety are "absolutely sacrosanct," he says -- and have been enshrined in international law since 1944, in the Chicago Convention, which established freedom of the skies after the Second World War.
  • "This is the first time that a mechanism designed to ensure the safety and security of air travel has allegedly been used for political ends, and what's also worrying is that the political response to that has also been to use another mechanism designed to ensure flight security for political ends.
  • If you start playing politics with flight safety, you're setting out on a slippery slope, he argues.
  • "This symbolizes something really big -- since the Chicago Convention, freedom of the skies has been laid out. It's supposed to be universally accepted that airlines have a right to overfly a foreign country without being forced to land," they say.
  • "Clearly that has been violated. What Belarus is said to have done is really horrible -- and if it turns out to be a precedent, it's even worse. It's a terrible signifier of what could happen."
  • In short?"Everyone is worried about what this incident means for the future."
nrashkind

China eases flight curbs after U.S. order targeting Chinese carriers - Reuters - 0 views

www.reuters.com/...chinese-carriers-idUSKBN23B081

shared by nrashkind on 04 Jun 20 - No Cached
  • China said on Thursday it will allow more foreign carriers to fly into the mainland, shortly after Washington barred Chinese passenger carriers from flying to the United States citing Beijing’s restrictions on American airlines.
  • The Civil Aviation Administration of China (CAAC) said in a statement that qualifying foreign carriers currently barred from operating flights to mainland China will be allowed once-per-week flights into a city of their choosing starting on June 8.
  • Hong Kong and Macau, though part of China, have their own aviation authorities and set their own rules.
  • ...3 more annotations...
  • But because U.S. passenger airlines had stopped all flights by March 12, they have been unable to resume flights to China.
  • U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration has barred Chinese passenger carriers from flying into America starting June 16 as it pressures Beijing to let U.S. airlines to resume flights to the country.
  • The CAAC also said all airlines will be allowed to increase the number of international flights involving China to two per week if no incoming passengers on their flights test positive for COVID-19 for 3 consecutive weeks.
lilyrashkind

On 9/11, Heather Penney Tried to Bring Down Flight 93 - HISTORY - 0 views

www.history.com/...eather-penney-united-flight-93

history

shared by lilyrashkind on 16 Jan 22 - No Cached
  • September 11, 2001 was supposed to be a typical day for Lieutenant Heather Penney of the District of Columbia Air National Guard. As Penney recalled in a 2016 interview with HISTORY, that morning she was attending a briefing at Andrews Air Force Base, planning the month’s training operations. At about 8:45 a.m., someone leaned into the room and said, “Hey, somebody just flew into the World Trade Center.”
  • The weather in New York City that day was very clear with blue skies. "We thought it was a small general aviation airplane or, you know, some small aircraft that maybe had...messed up their instrument approach," Penney recalled. It was assumed that a general aviation plane had made a terrible mistake, and they went back to their meeting.
  • They scrambled to the pre-flight area and donned their flight suits. There was no time to arm their F-16 fighter jets, so they would be flying this mission virtually unarmed, packing only their undaunted courage.
  • ...8 more annotations...
  • Pentagon was hit by hijacked American Airlines Flight 77. Reports circulated that a fourth plane, United Flight 93 out of Newark, New Jersey, was out there. Air command speculated it was also headed to D.C. for another strike on the Pentagon, or a strike on the White House or the Capitol building.
  • As she powered up the engines, she shouted to the ground crew to pull the chock blocks holding the wheels.
  • They had agreed upon the plan of attack. Sasseville would head for the 757’s cockpit and Penney would aim for the plane's tail. As they sped out beyond Andrews Air Force Base, flying low at about 3,000 feet, they could see black, billowing smoke streaming from the Pentagon.
  • Beyond the mission at hand, there wasn’t much else on First Lieutenant Heather Penney’s mind. She had accepted the fate of Flight 93’s passengers, believing whether she succeeded or not, they were going to die. She briefly toyed with the idea of ejecting from her plane just before impact, but quickly dismissed the idea, knowing she had only one shot and didn’t want to miss. It didn’t even cross her mind that there was a possibility the pilot of United Flight 93 was her father, who often flew out of East Coast cities. As it turned out, he wasn’t.
  • Now the mission changed from intercept to sanitizing the airspace. Not every aircraft aloft that morning was aware the FAA had ordered a national ban on takeoffs of all civilian aircraft regardless of destination. With the assistance of civilian air traffic controllers, Penney and Sasseville began to divert any aircraft away from the D.C. area and ordered them to land as soon as they could. They also identified the first-responding aircraft assisting the rescue at the Pentagon.
  • Penney and other pilots were instructed to guard the President of the United States as he flew home
  • In the evening hours, it was time to bring the president home. Penney's plane and the others patrolling the skies around Washington, D.C. had been equipped with live ammunition. They were also given “free-fire” authority, meaning pilots could make the decision to fire on any civilian aircraft deemed to be a threat, instead of waiting for authorization. Several hours after the initial attack, it was still unclear whether more attacks were pending.
  • "I made a decision with my life and I swore an oath to protect and defend, but these were just average, everyday people, mothers, fathers, school teachers, businessmen," Penney told HISTORY. "They're true heroes."
anonymous

European Union Bans Flights From Flying Over Belarus Airspace : NPR - 0 views

www.npr.org/...es-flights-around-its-airspace

shared by anonymous on 05 Jun 21 - No Cached
  • International relations are still tense following the shocking arrest of journalist Roman Protasevich by the Belarusian government last month in which it forced the plane he was aboard to land in Minsk.
  • European Union ambassadors on Friday approved a plan to ban Belarus airlines from flying over EU territory or landing in EU airports.
  • That affects about 400 civilian flights that usually fly over Belarus every day, according to European air traffic control agency Eurocontrol. That includes 300 overflights, about 100 operated by EU or British carriers.
  • ...5 more annotations...
  • On Thursday, the Belarusian government ordered the number of staff at the U.S. Embassy in Minsk to be reduced effective June 13.
  • The Belarusian Foreign Ministry said it was cutting an unspecified number of both "diplomatic and administrative-technical" staff at the embassy. The agency also announced that Belarus would restrict visa procedures and revoke permission for USAID to work in the country.
  • The moves come after the Biden administration reimplemented full sanctions against nine state-owned enterprises in Belarus, effective Thursday.
  • U.S. State Department spokesperson Ned Price blamed Belarus for the poor state of relations, saying it's due to the "relentless and intensifying repression against" Belarusian citizens, culminating in the arrest of Protasevich.
  • For two days this week, airline traffic between Russia and Germany was suspended. Germany halted landings of Russian airlines in the country because Russia didn't allow arrivals of Lufthansa flights into its airports.
nrashkind

Trump administration to bar Chinese passenger carriers from flying to U.S. - Reuters - 0 views

www.reuters.com/...om-flying-to-u-s-idUSKBN23A248

shared by nrashkind on 04 Jun 20 - No Cached
  • President Donald Trump’s administration on Wednesday barred Chinese passenger carriers from flying to the United States starting on June 16 as it pressures Beijing to let U.S. air carriers resume flights amid simmering tensions between the world’s two largest economies.
  • The move, announced by the U.S. Department of Transportation, penalizes China for failing to comply with an existing agreement on flights between the two countries. U.S.-Chinese relations have soured in recent months amid tensions surrounding the coronavirus pandemic and Beijing’s move to impose new national security legislation for Hong Kong.
  • Delta Air Lines (DAL.N) and United Airlines (UAL.O) have asked to resume flights to China this month, even as Chinese carriers have continued U.S. flights during the pandemic.
  • ...4 more annotations...
  • United said it looks forward to resuming passenger service between the United States and China “when the regulatory environment allows us to do so.”
  • China “remains unable” to say when it will revise its rules “to allow U.S. carriers to reinstate scheduled passenger flights,” a formal order signed by the Transportation Department’s top aviation official Joel Szabat said.
  • The Chinese embassy in Washington did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
  • The Chinese carriers are flying no more than one scheduled round-trip flight a week to the United States but also have flown a significant number of additional charter flights, often to help Chinese students return home.
Javier E

How the White House Coronavirus Response Went Wrong - The Atlantic - 0 views

www.theatlantic.com/...613591

pandemic US response history analysis system failure

shared by Javier E on 01 Jul 20 - No Cached
  • oping with a pandemic is one of the most complex challenges a society can face. To minimize death and damage, leaders and citizens must orchestrate a huge array of different resources and tools.
  • I have heard military and intelligence officials describe some threats as requiring a “whole of nation” response, rather than being manageable with any one element of “hard” or “soft” power or even a “whole of government” approach. Saving lives during a pandemic is a challenge of this nature and magnitude.
  • “If he had just been paying attention, he would have asked, ‘What do I do first?’ We wouldn’t have passed the threshold of casualties in previous wars. It is a catastrophic failure.”
  • ...55 more annotations...
  • Aviation is safe in large part because it learns from its disasters. Investigators from the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board go immediately to accident sites to begin assessing evidence. After months or even years of research, their detailed reports try to lay out the “accident chain” and explain what went wrong
  • with respect to the coronavirus pandemic, it has suffered by far the largest number of fatalities, about one-quarter of the global total, despite having less than one-20th of the world’s population.
  • What if the NTSB were brought in to look at the Trump administration’s handling of the pandemic? What would its investigation conclude?
  • This was a journey straight into a mountainside, with countless missed opportunities to turn away. A system was in place to save lives and contain disaster. The people in charge of the system could not be bothered to avoid the doomed course.
  • Timelines of aviation disasters typically start long before the passengers or even the flight crew knew anything was wrong, with problems in the design of the airplane, the procedures of the maintenance crew, the route, or the conditions into which the captain decided to fly. In the worst cases, those decisions doomed the flight even before it took off. My focus here is similarly on conditions and decisions that may have doomed the country even before the first COVID-19 death had been recorded on U.S. soil.
  • What happened once the disease began spreading in this country was a federal disaster in its own right: Katrina on a national scale, Chernobyl minus the radiation. It involved the failure to test; the failure to trace; the shortage of equipment; the dismissal of masks; the silencing or sidelining of professional scientists; the stream of conflicting, misleading, callous, and recklessly ignorant statements by those who did speak on the national government’s behalf
  • As late as February 26, Donald Trump notoriously said of the infection rate, “You have 15 people, and the 15 within a couple of days is going to be down close to zero.” What happened after that—when those 15 cases became 15,000, and then more than 2 million, en route to a total no one can foretell—will be a central part of the history of our times.
  • 1. The Flight Plan
  • the most important event was the H5N1 “bird flu” outbreak, in 2005. It originated in Asia and was mainly confined there, as the SARS outbreak had been two years earlier. Bush-administration officials viewed H5N1 as an extremely close call. “
  • Shortly before Barack Obama left office, his administration’s Pandemic Prediction and Forecasting Science and Technology Working Group—yes, that was a thing—released a report reflecting the progress that had been made in applying remote-sensing and AI tools since the early days of Global Argus. The report is freely available online and notes pointedly that recent technological advances “provide opportunities to mitigate large-scale outbreaks by predicting more accurately when and where outbreaks are likely to occur, and how they will progress.”
  • “Absolutely nothing that has happened has been a surprise. We saw it coming. Not only did we see it, we ran the models and the gaming exercises. We had every bit of the structure in place. We’ve been talking about a biohazard risk like this for years. Anyone who says we did not see this coming has their head in the sand, or is lying through their teeth.”
  • The system the government set up was designed to warn not about improbable “black swan” events but rather about what are sometimes called “gray rhinos.” These are the large, obvious dangers that will sooner or later emerge but whose exact timing is unknown.
  • other U.S. leaders had dealt with foreign cover-ups, including by China in the early stages of the SARS outbreak in 2002. Washington knew enough, soon enough, in this case to act while there still was time.
  • During the Obama administration, the U.S. had negotiated to have its observers stationed in many cities across China, through a program called Predict. But the Trump administration did not fill those positions, including in Wuhan. This meant that no one was on site to learn about, for instance, the unexplained closure on January 1 of the city’s main downtown Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market, a so-called wet market
  • “It was in the briefings by the beginning of January,” a person involved in preparing the president’s briefing book told me. “On that there is no dispute.” This person went on: “But knowing it is in the briefing book is different from knowing whether the president saw it.” He didn’t need to spell out his point, which was: Of course this president did not.
  • To sum up: The weather forecast showed a dangerous storm ahead, and the warning came in plenty of time. At the start of January, the total number of people infected with the virus was probably less than 1,000. All or nearly all of them were in China. Not a single case or fatality had been reported in the United States.
  • 2. The Air Traffic Controllers
  • In cases of disease outbreak, U.S. leadership and coordination of the international response was as well established and taken for granted as the role of air traffic controllers in directing flights through their sectors
  • in normal circumstances, its location in China would have been a plus. Whatever the ups and downs of political relations over the past two decades, Chinese and American scientists and public-health officials have worked together frequently, and positively, on health crises ranging from SARS during George W. Bush’s administration to the H1N1 and Ebola outbreaks during Barack Obama’s.
  • One U.S. official recalled the Predict program: “Getting Chinese agreement to American monitors throughout their territory—that was something.” But then the Trump administration zeroed out that program.
  • “We had cooperated with China on every public-health threat until now,” Susan Shirk, a former State Department official and longtime scholar of Chinese affairs at UC San Diego, told me. “SARS, AIDS, Ebola in Africa, H1N1—no matter what other disputes were going on in the relationship, we managed to carve out health, and work together quite professionally. So this case is just so anomalous and so tragic.” A significant comparison, she said, is the way the United States and the Soviet Union had worked together to eliminate smallpox around the world, despite their Cold War tensions. But now, she said, “people have definitely died because the U.S. and China have been unable to cooperate.”
  • What did the breakdown in U.S.-Chinese cooperation mean in practice? That the U.S. knew less than it would have otherwise, and knew it later; that its actions brought out the worst (rather than the merely bad) in China’s own approach to the disease, which was essentially to cover it up internally and stall in allowing international access to emerging data; that the Trump administration lost what leverage it might have had over Chinese President Xi Jinping and his officials; and that the chance to keep the disease within the confines of a single country was forever lost.
  • In addition to America’s destruction of its own advance-warning system, by removing CDC and Predict observers, the Trump administration’s bellicose tone toward China had an effect. Many U.S. officials stressed that a vicious cycle of blame and recrimination made public health an additional source of friction between the countries, rather than a sustained point of cooperation, as it had been for so many years.
  • “The state of the relationship meant that every U.S. request was met with distrust on the Chinese side, and every Chinese response was seen on the American side as one more attempt to cover up,”
  • Several officials who had experience with China suggested that other presidents might have called Xi Jinping with a quiet but tough message that would amount to: We both know you have a problem. Why don’t we work on it together, which will let you be the hero? Otherwise it will break out and become a problem for China and the whole world.
  • “It would have taken diplomatic pressure on the Chinese government to allow us to insert our people” into Wuhan and other disease centers, Klain said. “The question isn’t what leverage we had. The point is that we gave up leverage with China to get the trade deal done. That meant that we didn’t put leverage on China’s government. We took their explanations at face value.”
  • 3. The Emergency Checklist
  • The president’s advance notice of the partial European ban almost certainly played an important part in bringing the infection to greater New York City. Because of the two-day “warning” Trump gave in his speech, every seat on every airplane from Europe to the U.S. over the next two days was filled. Airport and customs offices at the arrival airports in the U.S. were unprepared and overwhelmed. News footage showed travelers queued for hours, shoulder to shoulder, waiting to be admitted to the U.S. Some of those travelers already were suffering from the disease; they spread it to others. On March 11, New York had slightly more than 220 diagnosed cases. Two weeks later, it had more than 25,000. Genetic testing showed that most of the infection in New York was from the coronavirus variant that had come through Europe to the United States, rather than directly from China (where most of the early cases in Washington State originated).
  • Aviation is safe because, even after all the advances in forecasting and technology, its culture still imagines emergencies and rehearses steps for dealing with them.
  • Especially in the post-9/11 era of intensified concern about threats of all sorts, American public-health officials have also imagined a full range of crises, and have prepared ways to limit their worst effects. The resulting official “playbooks” are the equivalent of cockpit emergency checklists
  • the White House spokesperson, Kayleigh McEnany, then claimed that whatever “thin packet of paper” Obama had left was inferior to a replacement that the Trump administration had supposedly cooked up, but which has never been made public. The 69-page, single-spaced Obama-administration document is officially called “Playbook for Early Response to High-Consequence Infectious Disease Threats and Biological Incidents” and is freely available online. It describes exactly what the Trump team was determined not to do.
  • What I found remarkable was how closely the Obama administration’s recommendations tracked with those set out 10 years earlier by the George W. Bush administration, in response to its chastening experience with bird flu. The Bush-era work, called “National Strategy for Pandemic Influenza” and publicly available here, differs from the Obama-era playbook mainly in the simpler forms of technology on which it could draw
  • consider the one below, and see how, sentence by sentence, these warnings from 2005 match the headlines of 2020. The topic was the need to divide responsibility among global, national, state, and community jurisdictions in dealing with the next pandemic. The fundamental premise—so widely shared that it barely needed to be spelled out—was that the U.S. federal government would act as the indispensable flywheel, as it had during health emergencies of the past. As noted, it would work with international agencies and with governments in all affected areas to coordinate a global response. Within its own borders it would work with state agencies to detect the potential for the disease’s spread and to contain cases that did arise:
  • Referring to the detailed pandemic playbooks from the Bush and Obama administrations, John R. Allen told me: “The moment you get confirmation of a problem, you would move right to the timeline. Decisions by the president, actions by the secretary of defense and the CDC, right down the list. You’d start executing.”Or, in the case of the current administration, you would not. Reading these documents now is like discovering a cockpit checklist in the smoking wreckage.
  • 4. The Pilot
  • a virtue of Sully is the reminder that when everything else fails—the forecasts, the checklists, the triply redundant aircraft systems—the skill, focus, and competence of the person at the controls can make the difference between life and death.
  • So too in the public response to a public-health crisis. The system was primed to act, but the person at the top of the system had to say, “Go.” And that person was Donald Trump.
  • n a resigned way, the people I spoke with summed up the situation this way: You have a head of government who doesn’t know anything, and doesn’t read anything, and is at the mercy of what he sees on TV. “And all around him, you have this carnival,”
  • “There would be some ballast in the relationship,” this person said. “Now all you’ve got is the trade friction”—plus the personal business deals that the president’s elder daughter, Ivanka, has made in China,
  • 5. The Control Systems
  • The deadliest airline crash in U.S. history occurred in 1979. An American Airlines DC-10 took off from O’Hare Airport, in Chicago—and just as it was leaving the ground, an incorrectly mounted engine ripped away from one of the wings. When the engine’s pylon was pulled off, it cut the hydraulic lines that led from the cockpit to the control surfaces on the wings and tail. From that point on, the most skillful flight crew in the world could not have saved the flight.
  • By the time the pandemic emerged, it may have already been too late. The hydraulic lines may already have been too damaged to transmit the signals. It was Trump himself who cut them.
  • The more complex the organization, the more its success or failure turns on the skill of people in its middle layers—the ones who translate a leader’s decision to the rest of the team in order to get results. Doctors depend on nurses; architects depend on contractors and craftsmen; generals depend on lieutenants and sergeants
  • Because Donald Trump himself had no grasp of this point, and because he and those around him preferred political loyalists and family retainers rather than holdovers from the “deep state,” the whole federal government became like a restaurant with no cooks, or a TV station with stars but no one to turn the cameras on.
  • “There is still resilience and competence in the working-level bureaucracy,” an intelligence-agency official told me. “But the layers above them have been removed.”
  • Traditionally, the National Security Council staff has comprised a concentration of highly knowledgeable, talented, and often ambitious younger figures, mainly on their way to diplomatic or academic careers.
  • “There is nobody now who can play the role of ‘senior China person,’” a former intelligence official told me. “In a normal administration, you’d have a lot of people who had spent time in Asia, spent time in China, knew the goods and bads.” Also in a normal administration, he and others pointed out, China and the United States would have numerous connective strands
  • The United States still possesses the strongest economy in the world, its military is by far the most powerful, its culture is diverse, and, confronted with the vicissitudes of history, the country has proved resilient. But a veteran of the intelligence world emphasized that the coronavirus era revealed a sobering reality. “Our system has a single point-of-failure: an irrational president.” At least in an airplane cockpit, the first officer can grab the controls from a captain who is steering the aircraft toward doom.
  • Every president is “surprised” by how hard it is to convert his own wishes into government actions
  • Presidents cope with this discovery in varying ways. The people I spoke with had served in past administrations as early as the first George Bush’s. George H. W. Bush came to office with broad experience in the federal government—as much as any other president. He had been vice president for eight years, a CIA director, twice an ambassador, and a member of Congress. He served only four years in the Oval Office but began with a running start. Before he became president, Bill Clinton had been a governor for 12 years and had spent decades learning and talking about government policies. A CIA official told me that Clinton would not read his President’s Daily Briefs in the morning, when they arrived, but would pore over them late at night and return them with copious notes. George W. Bush’s evolution from dependence on the well-traveled Dick Cheney, in his first term, to more confident control, in his second, has been well chronicled. As for Obama, Paul Triolo told me: “By the end of his eight years, Obama really understood how to get the bureaucracy to do what he wanted done, and how to get the information he needed to make decisions.” The job is far harder than it seems. Donald Trump has been uninterested in learning the first thing about it.
  • In a situation like this, some of those in the “regular” government decide to struggle on. Others quit—literally, or in the giving-up sense
  • The ‘process’ is just so chaotic that it’s not a process at all. There’s no one at the desk. There’s no one to read the memos. No one is there.”
  • “If this could happen to Fauci, it makes people think that if they push too hard in the wrong direction, they’ll get their heads chopped off. There is no reason in the world something called #FireFauci should even exist. The nation’s leaders should maintain high regard for scientific empiricism, insight, and advice, and must not be professionally or personally risk averse when it comes to understanding and communicating messages about public safety and health.”
  • Over nearly two decades, the U.S. government had assembled the people, the plans, the connections, and the know-how to spare this nation the worst effects of the next viral mutation that would, someday, arise. That someday came, and every bit of the planning was for naught. The deaths, the devastation, the unforeseeable path ahead—they did not have to occur.
  • The language of an NTSB report is famously dry and clinical—just the facts. In the case of the pandemic, what it would note is the following: “There was a flight plan. There was accurate information about what lay ahead. The controllers were ready. The checklists were complete. The aircraft was sound. But the person at the controls was tweeting. Even if the person at the controls had been able to give effective orders, he had laid off people that would carry them out. This was a preventable catastrophe.”
ethanmoser

Germany-bound flight from Oman lands in Kuwait over bomb threat | Fox News - 0 views

www.foxnews.com/...n-kuwait-over-bomb-threat.html

bomb threat germy kuwait oman terrorism

shared by ethanmoser on 16 Jan 17 - No Cached
  • Germany-bound flight from Oman lands in Kuwait over bomb threat
  • A Germany-bound Eurowings passenger flight from Oman landed in Kuwait on Sunday over a bomb threat but no explosives were found on board, authorities said.
  • In a statement, Eurowings said there were 286 passengers on board the flight, which was being flown by SunExpress on its behalf. The discrepancy in passenger numbers could not be immediately resolved, though the KUNA figure may have included flight personnel.
  • ...1 more annotation...
  • The plane was diverted to Kuwait "for security reasons and in consultation with the relevant authorities," Eurowings said in an emailed statement, without elaborating.
Javier E

The flight from the 'Flight 93 Election' - The Washington Post - 0 views

www.washingtonpost.com/...ht-from-the-flight-93-election

election 2016 trump

shared by Javier E on 11 Apr 18 - No Cached
  • “The Flight 93 Election” is a nasty piece of hackwork. Decius blasted D.C. conservatives as the “Washington Generals” of politics, somehow losing to the left on a regular basis (which I suspect would be news to those on the left)
  • Anton’s departure highlights the ways in which his prediction of Trump’s dovish tendencies proved laughably wrong
  • In “The Flight 93 Election,” Anton made the case that Trump was “to the left (conventionally understood) not only of his own party, but of his Democratic opponent” on questions of war.  It is therefore fitting that Anton exits the stage as Bolton arrives. It is safe to say that Bolton is to the right (conventionally understood) of his own party when it comes to the use of force.
  • ...4 more annotations...
  • Decius railed against many things, most notably that “the ceaseless importation of Third World foreigners with no tradition of, taste for, or experience in liberty means that the electorate grows more left, more Democratic, less Republican, less republican, and less traditionally American with every cycle.”
  • For foreign policy hawks, this will be the best of times … because they are running the entire foreign policy show now. There is no bureaucratic constraint, no countervailing faction, no informed president to block their moves. They have no more impediments.
  • For decades, they have fantasized about the right ways to take out Iran, defang North Korea and checkmate China. Trump has given them the keys to the kingdom.
  • In 2016, Anton joined Trump in rushing the cockpit. He decamps after 14 months to join Hillsdale College’s Kirby Center, the kind of D.C. outpost that Decius would have raged against. The administration he leaves behind is far more hawkish than promised in that essay.
criscimagnael

China Eastern Pilots Were Experienced, Adding to Mystery of Crash - The New Y... - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...china-eastern-crash-pilot.html

shared by criscimagnael on 25 Mar 22 - No Cached
  • The pilot of the China Eastern Airlines flight that crashed in southern China with 132 people aboard was an industry veteran with more than 6,000 hours of flying time.
  • His co-pilot was even more experienced, having flown since the early days of China’s post-Mao era, training on everything from Soviet-model biplanes to newer Boeing models.
  • How they piloted the Boeing 737 will be closely examined as investigators seek to explain what is probably China’s worst air disaster in more than a decade. Experts have said it is unlikely that anyone survived the crash.
  • ...10 more annotations...
  • On Thursday, rescuers said they had found engine components, part of a wing and other “important debris” as they searched the mountainside in a rural part of the Guangxi region for a fourth day.
  • Mr. Zhang, who was born in 1963, was one of China’s most experienced pilots,
  • A day earlier, the workers had found a black box, believed to be the cockpit voice recorder, which could provide investigators with crucial details. Officials said it was damaged but that its memory unit was relatively intact. The plane’s second black box, which records flight data, has yet to be recovered.
  • Their past performance was “very good,” Sun Shiying, the chairman of China Eastern Airlines’ Yunnan branch, said on Wednesday. When reached by phone, an airline representative declined to answer further questions about the crew.
  • At the main crash site, a state broadcaster showed the workers digging with shovels around a large piece of wreckage that the reporter described as a wing, which bore part of the China Eastern logo and was perched on a steep, barren slope fringed by dense thickets of now-flattened bamboo. Heavy rains had left the roads slick and inundated the earth with muddy pools.
  • Over his career as a commercial pilot with China Yunnan, which later merged with China Eastern, Mr. Zhang flew four different models of aircraft and accumulated 31,769 hours of flight experience.
  • The airline commonly paired young pilots with older pilots, and Mr. Zhang had mentored more than 100, CAAC News said. Mr. Yang was one of them.
  • Experts said that investigating the crash, which involved a sudden dive from cruising altitude in good weather, would require a close look at both the aircraft and the pilots, including the possibility that the plane was deliberately brought down. But they stressed that the cause was far from determined.
  • “Certainly an intentional downing is always a part of any investigation, and especially with this particular flight profile,” said Hassan Shahidi, chief executive of the Flight Safety Foundation, a nonprofit organization created after World War II to promote aviation safety. But he cautioned that it was “premature to jump onto any possibilities.”
  • “If the captain were intending to commit suicide, they’d have to overcome the other flight crew members,” Mr. Marks said.
jongardner04

Russia and Ukraine suspend direct flights between countries | World news | The Guardian - 0 views

www.theguardian.com/...rect-flights-between-countries

russia ukraine

shared by jongardner04 on 25 Oct 15 - No Cached
  • Direct flights between Ukraine and Russia were grounded on Sunday, as mistrust between the two countries boiled over into a new trade war that could affect hundreds of thousands of people.
  • I never thought it would come to this,” said 30-year-old Alexander Mikhaylin, from Moscow, after walking off the last Russian flight into Kiev’s Boryspil airport late on Saturday night.
  • Moscow also says that at least 70% are Ukrainians trying to visit Russian relatives and that it was Kiev’s main airline that was likely to be financially hurt the most by the air blockade. Travellers must now look into other less convenient, more expensive options including slow overnight train rides and flights via other countries on relatively good terms with both sides.
  • ...1 more annotation...
  • People without the required passport must stay cooped up – often for many hours – in the grim waiting areas because they cannot legally leave the airports.
anniina03

Trump administration suspends US commercial flights to 9 destinations in Cuba except Ha... - 0 views

www.cnn.com/...index.html

us politics

shared by anniina03 on 26 Oct 19 - No Cached
  • Flights to nine destinations in Cuba, not including Havana, will be suspended by the Department of Transportation.The department issued a notice on Friday suspending US commercial flights from flying to the Cuban destinations.
  • The announcement is another step in the Trump administration's attempt to tighten the relationship between the US and Cuba in a direct reversal of President Barack Obama's Cuba policy.
  • The Cuban government slammed the US just hours after the announcement. Read MoreIn a tweet, Cuban Foreign Ministry General Director Carlos Fernández de Cossio criticized the US, accusing it of not caring about the consequences of its actions. He asserted that his country's "response will not vary."
  • ...2 more annotations...
  • "to further the Administration's policy of strengthening the economic consequences to the Cuban regime for its ongoing repression of the Cuban people and its support for Nicolas Maduro in Venezuela."
  • "In an effort to punish Cuba's unbreakable rebelliousness, imperialism takes aim at regular flight service to various Cuban cities," de Cossio tweeted. "They don't care if they impact family contacts, the limited means of Cubans in both countries or unjust inconveniences."
rachelramirez

EgyptAir Flight Believed to Have Crashed at Sea; Egypt Cites Possible Terrorism - The N... - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...egyptair-flight-804.html

terrorism egypt

shared by rachelramirez on 19 May 16 - No Cached
  • EgyptAir Flight Believed to Have Crashed at Sea; Egypt Cites Possible Terrorism
  • the Greek authorities said debris believed to be from the wreckage had been found at a site around 205 nautical miles southeast of Crete and 190 nautical miles south of the Greek island of Karpathos.
  • Mr. Fathi said. Still, he said, “if you analyze the situation properly,” the possibility of “having a terror attack is higher than the possibility” of technical failure.
  • ...6 more annotations...
  • At 2:37 a.m., shortly after entering Egyptian airspace, the plane made a 90-degree turn to the left and then a full circle to the right, first plunging to 15,000 feet from 37,000 feet and then to 9,000 feet
  • 30 were from Egypt, 15 from France, two from Iraq and one each from Algeria, Belgium, Britain, Canada, Chad, Kuwait, Portugal, Saudi Arabia and Sudan.
  • American and European officials have expressed concerns about security gaps in North African airports. Advertisement Continue reading the main story
  • Intelligence analysts who monitor jihadist websites and social media said there had been no claims of responsibility by terrorist groups.
  • At 4:26 a.m. — nearly two hours after the last radar contact — the plane emitted a signal, although it was not clear whether that was an emergency distress signal sent by a crew member or an automated signal from the plane’s onboard computers.
  • Egypt has come under criticism in the past for its lack of transparency in aviation accidents. In 1999, an EgyptAir flight crashed into the Atlantic Ocean shortly after takeoff from John F. Kennedy Airport in New York, killing all 217 on board.
cjlee29

Putin Suspends Russian Flights to Egypt Amid Security Fears - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...egypt.html

shared by cjlee29 on 06 Nov 15 - No Cached
  • President Vladimir V. Putin on Friday suspended all flights from Russia to Egypt, the most popular tourist destination for Russians
  • Mr. Putin also ordered that measures be taken to ensure that the Russian tourists already in Egypt, including the resort city of Sharm el Sheikh, from which the doomed Russian jet departed, could be brought home safely.
  • until now played down the possibility of terrorism
  • ...3 more annotations...
  • Nearly all of the victims on the plane were Russian citizens.
  • On Friday, a growing number of airlines banned passengers from checking their bags on Sharm el Sheikh flights, including the British carriers easyJet
  • EasyJet said that eight scheduled flights from Sharm el Sheikh — seven bound for London, and one for Milan — would not be departin
redavistinnell

Syrian Refugees Greeted by Justin Trudeau in Canada - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...refugees-arrive-in-canada.html

refugees canada new york times

shared by redavistinnell on 11 Dec 15 - No Cached
  • Syrian Refugees Greeted by Justin Trudeau in Canada
  • Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and a battery of politicians from across the political spectrum were on hand at the Toronto airport to greet the refugees.
  • The widespread embrace of the plan by the Canadian public stands in stark contrast with the controversy raging over the issue in the United States, where many politicians, especially on the right, have called for bans or restrictions on the admission of Syrian refugees.
  • ...6 more annotations...
  • The plan also appears to enjoy widespread public support. All of the refugees on the first flight have been sponsored to come to Canada, either by individual Canadians or by small groups. Sponsors have had to raise just over 28,000 Canadian dollars for each family.
  • “We suffered a lot,” said Kevork Jamkossian, who arrived with his wife, Georgina Zires, and their 16-month-old daughter, Madeleine. “Now, we feel as if we got out of hell and we came to paradise.”
  • To avoid a crush that might overwhelm the exhausted refugees, the government asked the public not to go the airport to see the flight arrive
  • The building has been converted into a special processing center, where arriving refugees will not only go through the usual customs, immigration and health screenings, but will also be given all of the other paperwork necessary for their new lives, including public health insurance cards
  • But 43 will be flying again on Friday, to meet sponsors in British Columbia or Alberta, and a small number will head to other parts of Ontario.
  • Some have already been arriving on scheduled commercial flights — some 400 since the Liberals took power last month. The government said earlier this week that more than 11,000 refugees’ applications had been processed, and that chartered civilian flights would be used for most of the airlift.
Javier E

Chinese fleeing coronavirus in the West, returning to China - The Washington Post - 0 views

www.washingtonpost.com/...a-b199-3a9799c54512_story.html

china Covid-19

shared by Javier E on 17 Mar 20 - No Cached
  • on Friday, the day the number of cases in New York state rose 30 percent overnight, she boarded a flight home to the Chinese capital. It just feels safer, she said, because authorities there have made more of an effort to ensure public health.
  • “The Chinese government basically pays for a patient’s recovery, so we don’t have to worry about how much treatment is going to cost,” she said, making a contrast with the American health care system.
  • Plus, Americans didn’t seem to be taking the epidemic seriously enough. “When the virus first broke out in the United States, no one wore a mask. The U.S. government even told people they didn’t need to wear a mask,” Zhang said. “That lack of awareness really surprised me.”
  • ...9 more annotations...
  • In a matter of weeks, China has gone from being the epicenter of the virus to almost the only refuge from it, prompting hundreds of thousands of Chinese citizens abroad to flock home. Some 20,000 people are arriving on flights into China every day
  • “Certainly, China is indeed very safe now,” said Li, while the United States is just becoming more dangerous.
  • “The U.S. can’t test everyone, like in China. Testing an entire planeload of passengers and providing results the next day is impossible in the U.S.,” he said, referring to the entry procedures he went through on arrival in his home country.
  • There has also been a rush of returned from Britain since a government adviser advocated a “herd immunity” strategy, suggesting that it could be helpful if 60 percent of the population was infected.
  • Beijing’s municipal government on Sunday introduced new rules requiring all people arriving in the capital go into “centralized quarantine” at hotels for 14 days upon arrival, at their own expense.
  • Areas around the country, from Inner Mongolia in the north to Sanya on the island of Hainan in the south, have instituted similar measures, requiring stays in quarantine centers rather than trusting people to isolate themselves at home. More local authorities are expected to follow suit.
  • Beijing police authorities have made an example of a 37-year-old Chinese woman who works at Massachusetts biotechnology company Biogen and attended the Boston conference that has been linked to other infections, according to local media reports
  • She failed to report she was feeling sick before boarding her flight, took painkillers to suppress her fever and then lied to flight attendants about her condition, local police said.
  • The suspicious attendants reported her to police authorities upon arrival, who quarantined her and had her tested for the virus. It came back positive. In addition to being sick, she is now under criminal investigation for obstructing infectious disease prevention.
martinelligi

NASA Helicopter Hovers Over Mars In 1st Powered Flight On Another Planet : NPR - 0 views

www.npr.org/...s-first-powered-flight-on-mars

Science

shared by martinelligi on 19 Apr 21 - No Cached
  • NASA's Ingenuity helicopter has made the first-ever powered flight on another planet, 117 years after the Wright Brothers' historic flight on this planet.
  • The helicopter arrived on Mars on Feb. 18, attached to the belly of the six-wheeled Perseverance rover. Last weekend, the rover dropped the helicopter to the Martian surface, and then drove to a viewing point about 60 yards away.
  • Unlike a drone, the helicopter maintains stability in the air by making fine adjustments in the pitch of the rotor blades.
Javier E

Airplanes don't make you sick. Really. - The Washington Post - 0 views

www.washingtonpost.com/...anes-dont-make-you-sick-really

airline pandemic research measures response

shared by Javier E on 26 May 20 - No Cached
  • You don’t get sick on airplanes any more than anywhere else. Really, you don’t.
  • consider this fact: The ventilation system requirements for airplanes meet the levels recommended by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for u
  • There are fairly simple things you can do, if you do need to travel, to reduce the odds of getting sick.
  • ...15 more annotations...
  • the fact that airplanes help spread disease across geographies does not mean that you are necessarily at risk during flight.
  • Airplanes also use the same air filter — a HEPA filter — recommended by the CDC for isolation rooms with recirculated air. Such filters capture 99.97 percent of airborne particles.
  • Consider one study that examined a passenger with tuberculosis on an airplane. It found that the median risk of infection to the other 169 passengers on the airplane was between 1 in 10,000 to 1 in a million.
  • Wearing a mask, as some airlines now require, reduced the incidence of infection another 10-fold.
  • The required aircraft systems do a really good job of controlling airborne bacteria and viruses.
  • To get technical, airplanes deliver 10 to 12 air changes per hour. In a hospital isolation room, the minimum target is six air changes per hour for existing facilities and 12 air changes per hour for new.
  • If planes made you sick, we would expect to see millions of people sick every year attributable to flights. We haven’t seen it because it’s just not happening.
  • What’s more, airplanes are essentially designed to isolate airflow. Even if someone coughs on your flight without a mask, it is likely those virus particles will travel one or two rows,
  • To guard against transmission via large droplets and contaminated surfaces, we do need to take some additional steps. Wearing a mask on planes should be mandated, and wiping down tables and arm rests with a disinfectant provides an additional layer of defense.
  • you are more at risk of getting sick when traveling, but it’s not the airplane that’s making you sick.
  • Every time you fly, you may also take a cab, bus or subway; stand in long lines in the airport; eat unhealthy foods; sit for extended durations; spend time in spaces with hundreds or thousands of other travelers; stay at a hotel or friend’s home; arrive in a different climate and change time zones, disrupting your sleep. All of these factors are known to affect your immune system.
  • In 2013, I was one of the lead authors of a report for the Transportation Research Board of the National Academies on infectious disease mitigation in airports and airplanes. Let me distill some of the recommendations from that report
  • For starters, airports should mandate mask wearing; increase ventilation rates; make bathrooms touchless; consider deploying upper-room germicidal UV fixtures in areas with high-occupant density; institute temperature screening; deploy hand-sanitizer stations; and, once passengers arrive at their gates, require that they stay in their designated area except for bathroom usage.
  • Airlines should ensure gate-based ventilation is operating during boarding and disembarkation; carefully choreograph the loading of airplanes; mandate mask use; and provide meals and bottled water during boarding and discontinue in-flight meal and drink service.
  • Individuals have an important role to play, too. First, stay home and do not travel if sick. Comply with rules for mask wearing; wash hands before and after each step at the airport; keep the personal overhead ventilation on and pointed down; and maintain physical distancing to the extent possible.
sidneybelleroche

Emirates Plans Return To South Africa & 4 More African Countries - Simple Flying - 0 views

simpleflying.com/emirates-returns-south-africa

shared by sidneybelleroche on 28 Jan 22 - No Cached
  • Emirates is set to resume flights to South Africa, as well as Ethiopia, Tanzania, Kenya, and Zimbabwe. The route resumptions will come as soon as Saturday. These flights had been suspended due to fears over COVID-19.
  • When the Omicron variant was first discovered in South Africa, many countries and airlines panicked, leading to large-scale flight cancelations and strict travel bans. As Omicron has become the dominant variant in many countries, such restrictions have been relaxed. Now Emirates is following suit.
  • While flights will resume, Emirates isn’t opening the floodgates to unencumbered travel. Passengers will still need to meet COVID-19 requirements that may be stricter than elsewhere on the network.
Javier E

Britain entering first world war was 'biggest error in modern history' | World news | T... - 0 views

www.theguardian.com/...r-biggest-error-niall-ferguson

history UK WWI

shared by Javier E on 22 Feb 14 - No Cached
  • google_ad_client = 'ca-guardian_js'; google_ad_channel = 'worldnews'; google_max_num_ads = '3'; // Comments Click here to join the discussion. We can't load the discussion on theguardian.com because you don't have JavaScript enabled. if (!!window.postMessage) { jQuery.getScript('http://discussion.theguardian.com/embed.js') } else { jQuery('#d2-root').removeClass('hd').html( '' + 'Comments' + 'Click here to join the discussion.We can\'t load the ' + 'discussion on theguardian.com ' + 'because your web browser does not support all the features that we ' + 'need. If you cannot upgrade your browser to a newer version, you can ' + 'access the discussion ' + 'here.' ); } comp
  • Britain could have lived with a German victory in the first world war, and should have stayed out of the conflict in 1914, according to the historian Niall Ferguson, who described the intervention as "the biggest error in modern history".
  • Britain could indeed have lived with a German victory. What's more, it would have been in Britain's interests to stay out in 1914,
  • ...4 more annotations...
  • "Even if Germany had defeated France and Russia, it would have had a pretty massive challenge on its hands trying to run the new German-dominated Europe and would have remained significantly weaker than the British empire in naval and financial terms. Given the resources that Britain had available in 1914, a better strategy would have been to wait and deal with the German challenge later when Britain could respond on its own terms, taking advantage of its much greater naval and financial capability."
  • "Creating an army more or less from scratch and then sending it into combat against the Germans was a recipe for disastrous losses. And if one asks whether this was the best way for Britain to deal with the challenge posed by imperial Germany, my answer is no.
  • He continued: "The cost, let me emphasise, of the first world war to Britain was catastrophic, and it left the British empire at the end of it all in a much weakened state … It had accumulated a vast debt, the cost of which really limited Britain's military capability throughout the interwar period. Then there was the manpower loss – not just all those aristocratic officers, but the many, many, many skilled workers who died or were permanently incapacitated in the war.
  • He concedes that if Britain had stood back in 1914, it would have reneged on commitments to uphold Belgian neutrality. "But guess what? Realism in foreign policy has a long and distinguished tradition, not least in Britain – otherwise the French would never complain about 'perfidious Albion'. For Britain it would ultimately have been far better to have thought in terms of the national interest rather than in terms of a dated treaty."
1 - 20 of 257 Next › Last »
Showing 20▼ items per page