Tag: aviation
US Capitol Evacuation Over False Alarm Provokes Fear And Fury

US Capitol Evacuation Over False Alarm Provokes Fear And Fury

Washington (AFP) - The US Capitol was briefly evacuated Wednesday after authorities sounded a threat alarm over a harmless parachute stunt, prompting top lawmaker Nancy Pelosi to blast aviation officials for an "inexcusable" failure.

Police tasked with protecting the complex at the heart of US government in Washington issued an initial statement shortly after 6:30 PM ET saying they had ordered an evacuation as they were "tracking an aircraft that poses a probable threat."

They did not give further details. But it turned out the mini-crisis was triggered by a pre-planned flyover at nearby Nationals Stadium.

The news became a top headline within minutes in the United States, where the memories of September 11, 2001 attacks -- which saw Al-Qaeda fly passenger jets into the World Trade Center in New York and the Pentagon in Washington -- and the January 6, 2021 storming of the Capitol by protesters are still powerful.

US Capitol Police swiftly issued a second statement to say the order had been given "out of an abundance of caution," that there was now "no threat" to the complex and that buildings had reopened for use.

Neither the House of Representatives nor the Senate, the chambers of Congress that are located in the Capitol, were in session at the time of the scare.

But the incident enranged Speaker of the House Pelosi, who fired off a withering statement soon after the evacuation order was lifted blasting the Federal Aviation Administration over the apparent misunderstanding.

The FAA's "apparent failure" to notify Capitol police of the planned flyover was "outrageous and inexcusable," Pelosi said.

"The unnecessary panic caused by this apparent negligence was particularly harmful" for those still facing trauma from the January 6 attack on the Capitol, she said, adding that Congress would review "what precisely went wrong today and who at the Federal Aviation Administration will be held accountable for this outrageous and frightening mistake."

There was no immediate explanation for the order, but Pelosi was clear it came after a parachute display that was part of a baseball pregame show for "Military Appreciation Night" at Nationals Stadium.

'Very Stressful 15 Minutes'

NBC's Capitol Hill correspondent Garrett Haake tweeted that he had "Just watched some people parachute down over/near the US Capitol amid an evacuation order."

NBC, citing police, said they were part of a demonstration by the Golden Knights at the stadium. The Golden Knights are the US Army's official aerial parachute demonstration team.

"Seems they might not have told Capitol Police they'd be in the airspace. One officer here told me she saw the small plane appearing to circle before the parachuters jumped," Haake tweeted.

The stadium is roughly 1.5 miles (2.5 kilometers) from the Capitol. The Nationals were playing the Arizona Diamondbacks there Wednesday.

The US Capitol was the focal point of an actual violent attack just 15 months ago, when supporters of then-president Donald Trump stormed the building in an effort to stop certification of Joe Biden's presidential election victory.

Despite Wednesday's scare being a false alarm, lawmakers and visitors were shaken by the warning.

"We just went through a very stressful 15 minutes, but we are thankful that everyone is safe," Rep. Teresa Leger Fernandez (D-NM) said on Twitter.

CNN's congressional correspondent Ryan Nobles said he was among those evacuated, and that "for a good 15 minutes it was pretty frantic."

"The alarms were loud and intense and Capitol Police were not messing around getting people out," he tweeted.

Two young Swiss tourists visiting Washington said they were walking towards the historic white domed Capitol to take a tour when police waved them away from the structure.

"They shut the security barriers behind us. They didn't tell us why and I thought it was better not to ask," one of the tourists, who asked not to be named, told AFP.

US Air Travel Still Messy With Another 2,600 Flights Scrapped

US Air Travel Still Messy With Another 2,600 Flights Scrapped

Washington (AFP) - Americans returning home from holiday travel had to battle another day of airport chaos Sunday, with more than 2,600 flights cancelled due to bad weather or airline staffing woes sparked by a surge in Covid cases.

Further disruptions are predicted for Monday, as a winter storm blows eastward.

As of 10:00pm (0300 GMT Monday), more than 2,650 domestic flights or international ones starting or finishing in the United States had been canceled -- almost as many as the 2,750 scrapped over the course of Saturday, said the flight-tracking service FlightAware.

That figure represented well over half of the nearly 4,400 flights canceled around the world. Almost 8,600 US flights were delayed.

Southwest Airlines, one of the hardest-hit carriers, had to cancel some 400 flights Sunday morning, a spokesperson said in an email to AFP, adding that it expected further cancellations.

Passenger Nick Kagy was beside himself after his Southwest flight was cancelled.

"ARE YOU KIDDING ME @SouthwestAir," he wrote on Twitter. "We waited on hold for almost 3 hours to rebook because we couldn’t rebook online, and after getting things (not really fully) resolved, you cancelled our second flight to out of another airport."

On Saturday, poor weather, much of it linked to Winter Storm Frida, forced Southwest to cancel 490 flights, most of them in the center-north states south of the Great Lakes and reaching west to the Great Plains.

The result: intense frustration for many travelers.

Missed Connections

"This is insane," tweeted Haley, another Southwest passenger who was trying to fly out of Chicago. "This is the 3rd cancellation and still not home. Was supposed to be home 4 days ago!!!"

Airports in Chicago -- a major transit hub -- were the most affected Saturday, but by Sunday the airports in Atlanta, Denver, Detroit, Houston and Newark were also hard hit.

A woman named Kayla described her own ordeal: "I was supposed to get home at 10:30 yesterday morning. and at this point I've had 3 flights cancelled and one delayed to the point where I missed my connection."

Around the world, air traffic has suffered snarls since Christmas because of airline staffing issues linked to the spread of the highly contagious Omicron coronavirus variant.

Many pilots and flight attendants have called in sick after testing positive for the virus or being forced to quarantine due to contact with someone who has the virus.

This has left carriers with staffing shortages and forced them to delay or cancel flights.

The latest travel chaos carried echoes of a frustrating Christmas weekend, when around 7,500 flights around the world were scrapped.

And rebooking canceled flights has been a major challenge for many.

One traveler, Eric Crawford, described his frustration at trying to call a Delta Airline agent to reschedule.

"An estimated wait time of 22+ hours to speak with a rep about a cancelled flight," he said on Twitter, "is not the best look for starting 2022."

And Kowshick Boddu offered this account, also on Twitter, about his troubles with Alaska Air: "We were supposed to fly out from Fairbanks to San Jose on Dec 30, but our flights got rescheduled to today which is eventually cancelled again??? Long customer call wait hours, no response and flights not been rebooked? Need help!!"

Travel woes are expected to continue into Monday, the first working day of 2022.

Storm Frida will continue on a disruptive path eastward, meteorologists said, bringing snow to a wide swath from Washington located on the mid-Atlantic coast up to Boston, Massachusetts in the north.

Nearly 1,400 Monday flights have already been canceled within, into or out of the United States.

Trudeau Says Iran May Have Mistakenly Downed Ukraine Air Jet

Trudeau Says Iran May Have Mistakenly Downed Ukraine Air Jet

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau on Thursday said there is credible evidence to show that Iran was responsible for the crash of a Ukrainian passenger flight that killed more than 170 people — including dozens of Canadian citizens.

“Intelligence from multiple sources indicates the plane was shot down by an Iranian surface-to-air missile,” Trudeau said Thursday at a news conference, adding that the incident “may well have been unintentional.”

Sixty-three Canadians were onboard the Boeing 737, which crashed Wednesday, shortly after taking off from Tehran en route to Kyiv. There were no survivors.

The plane crashed hours after Iran fired missiles at military bases in Iraq that housed American troops. The attack was carried out in retaliation for a drone strike last week that killed Iranian Gen. Qassem Soleimani as his convoy departed Baghdad International Airport.

Iran has claimed that a “technical” error was responsible for the plane crash. However, aviation experts said the evidence pointed more toward the plane being shot down.

Video obtained and verified by the New York Times this week and published on Thursday also showed the Ukrainian jetliner being struck by what the outlet said appeared to be a missile “above Parand, near Tehran’s airport,” in the area where its signal stopped transmitting on Wednesday.

“A small explosion occurred when a missile hit the plane, but the plane did not explode, the video showed. The jet continued flying for several minutes and turned back toward the airport,” the Times reported.

Earlier on Thursday, Donald Trump suggested that Iran was behind the plane crash, and that the country might have fired at the plane by “mistake.”

“It’s a tragic thing when I see that, it’s a tragic thing. But somebody could’ve made a mistake on the other side,” Trump said. “It was flying … in a pretty rough neighborhood. … Some people say it was mechanical. Personally, I don’t think that’s even a question.”

Unnamed U.S. officials told reporters the same: that Iran fired missiles at the plane, though the attack may have been a mistake.

Trudeau, for his part, vowed to seek justice.

“Canadians want answers, I want answers,” he tweeted on Thursday afternoon. “That means closure, transparency accountability, and justice. And this government will not rest until we get that.”

Published with permission of The American Independent Foundation.

Aviation Unions Warn Shutdown Is Harming Air Safety

Aviation Unions Warn Shutdown Is Harming Air Safety

Reprinted with permission from Shareblue.

 

Airline safety is “deteriorating by the day” because of the Trump shutdown, warns a terrifying statement from unions representing 131,000 airline workers. As the government shutdown drags into its second month, workers in the airline industry can’t even imagine the amount of risk Trump’s actions are causing.

“In our risk averse industry, we cannot even calculate the level of risk currently at play,” presidents of the National Air Traffic Controllers Association (NATCA), Air Line Pilots Association (ALPA) and Association of Flight Attendants-CWA (AFA) said in a statement. The situation is so dire that the group said it can’t “predict the point at which the entire system will break.”

“It is unprecedented,” they added.

This letter follows upon an early January letter from the ALPA to Trump warning the shutdown was “adversely affecting the safety, security and efficiency of our national airspace system.”

The new statement picks up on the same theme, expressing a “growing concern for the safety and security of our members, our airlines, and the traveling public due to the government shutdown.”

Trump initiated the shutdown in late December when he threw a tantrum demanding $5.7 billion to build a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border. Democratic leaders in House of Representatives have repeatedly tried to end the shutdown by passing funding bills and promising to have discussions about border security once the shutdown was over.

These efforts have been rebuffed by Trump, and his loyal minions in the Senate previously called votes on the House-passed bills “absolutely pointless.

Since Trump started the shutdown, 800,000 federal workers have stopped receiving paychecks. Yet the Trump administration is forcing hundreds of thousands of workers to show up and do their job even without pay. These workers include many federal workers in the airline industry, represented by these unions.

In addition to the safety concerns, the unions are not happy about forced unpaid labor.

“As union leaders, we find it unconscionable that aviation professionals are being asked to work without pay and in an air safety environment that is deteriorating by the day,” the statement says, before urging Congress and Trump to reopen the government as soon as possible.

The American public overwhelmingly supports the way Speaker Nancy Pelosi is handling the shutdown — which is by passing legislation to reopen the government. Unfortunately, Trump and complicit Republicans continue to put the nation at risk through their reckless obsession with a border wall.

Published with permission of The American Independent.