Tag: airline

Feds Pay Millions to Subsidize Air Service to Georgia Airport

The Center Square

The federal government pays millions of dollars annually to subsidize commercial air service at the Macon, Georgia, airport.

The Middle Georgia Regional Airport in Macon receives nearly $4.7 million annually — or more than $19.5 million over four years and two months — as part of the Alternate Essential Air Service program. AEAS is similar to the Essential Air Service program, which Congress created in 1978, except that the money may go to a community instead of directly to an air carrier.

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United Airlines to Become First Major Airline Requiring Staff be Vaccinated

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United Airlines plane on runway

United Airlines announced Friday that it will require all employees to be vaccinated against COVID-19 starting this fall, making it the first major airline to do so.

“We know some of you will disagree with this decision to require the vaccine for all United employees,” United CEO Scott Kirby and President Brett Hart announced in a memo. “But, we have no greater responsibility to you and your colleagues than to ensure your safety when you’re at work, and the facts are crystal clear: everyone is safer when everyone is vaccinated.”

The order requiring proof of vaccination will go into effect five weeks after the Federal Drug Administration officially gives full approval of the COVID-19 vaccines, or by Oct. 25, whichever comes first, The Hill newspaper reports. The FDA is expects to start giving full approval as early as next month.

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Your Flight’s Seat-Back Screen May Be Watching You

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Now there is one more place where cameras could be watching you — from 30,000 feet. Newer seat-back entertainment systems on some airplanes operated by American Airlines and Singapore Airlines have cameras, and it’s likely they are also on planes used by other carriers. American and Singapore both said Friday that they have never activated the cameras and have no plans to use them. However, companies that make the entertainment systems are installing cameras to offer future options such as seat-to-seat video conferencing, according to an American Airlines spokesman. A passenger on a Singapore flight posted a photo of the seat-back display last week, and the tweet was shared several hundred times and drew media notice. Buzzfeed first reported that the cameras are also on some American planes. Cameras standard features The airlines stressed that they didn’t add the cameras — manufacturers embedded them in the entertainment systems. American’s systems are made by Panasonic, while Singapore uses Panasonic and Thales, according to airline representatives. Neither Panasonic nor Thales responded immediately for comment. As they shrink, cameras are being built into more devices, including laptops and smartphones. The presence of cameras in aircraft entertainment systems was known in aviation circles at…

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Sun Country Airlines Announces New Service from Nashville

Jason M. Reynolds
suncountry

Sun Country Airlines announced it is growing its network with new routes and destinations, including new service to Nashville from Minneapolis/St. Paul. From Nashville, new service begins in November to Fort Myers, Miami, New Orleans, Orlando, and Tampa. If you book by August 22 you may take advantage of low introductory fares. Vacation packages and car rentals are also available in most of these destinations. You must purchase tickets 21 days in advance. Stated fares are for one-way, coach class travel. Other terms may apply. Sun Country Airlines is part of the Davis Family Holdings business empire in Minnesota, the Star Tribune reports. From Cambria quartz countertops to Davis Family Dairies to Sun Country Airlines, the Davis family owns and manages some of the state’s landmark homegrown businesses, the newspaper said. As of 2014, they employed 2,600 workers and raked in about $710 million a year in revenue, a figure that would rank the privately held business 38th among Minnesota’s 100 largest publicly traded companies. For years, the Davis operation was little known beyond southern Minnesota. That began to change in 2011 when the family engineered the purchase of Sun Country for $34 million. In 2014, the Davis family landed on…

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It’s Time to Let Supersonic Flight Soar Again

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Concorde airplane

by Jason Snead   Before he became the first American to orbit the Earth, John Glenn was famous for another pioneering achievement. In 1957, he became the first man to fly across the country faster than the speed of sound, traveling from California to New York in just three hours and 23 minutes. Glenn’s aptly named “Project Bullet” seemed at the time to herald a new age of supersonic flight, in which passengers could cross the globe in an afternoon, thanks to American ingenuity and technological prowess. Yet, 61 years later, supersonic commercial aviation remains an unrealized dream. [ The liberal Left continue to push their radical agenda against American values. The good news is there is a solution. Find out more ] Beginning in 1969, the Concorde proved that routine commercial supersonic flight was technically feasible. It carried passengers at an altitude high enough to see the curvature of the Earth and flew them fast enough to outrun a sunset. But for all its splendor, the Concorde had problems. It was an expensive, government-subsidized gas guzzler that flew just one commercially viable route—shuttling wealthy passengers back and forth between New York and London. When it was retired from service in 2003, it left…

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