Weird news: Man did not get a sandwich, punches stewardness

The amount of anger and rage that is seen in society has been increasing for quite some time. This is also seen in the air, where the incidence of some sort of anger directed at other passengers or at the cabin crew has increased. At the same time, while in earlier decades, this was tolerated or not treated harshly, with the 2001 hijacking attacks at the World Trade Center, air security has been incredibly tightened up and tolerance for any kind of problems in the air has reduced significantly.
So, while earlier troubles would have been hushed up, now, at the sign of trouble, other passengers get involved; if there is an air warden on board, he or she would also get involved; and the pilot could make a quick unplanned landing at the earlier airport in order to deboard such a person; and the report from the pilot while requesting the landing would ensure that security was available at the airport to arrest the offending passenger (link to article):

An easyJet flight was forced to make an emergency landing in Rome after an infuriated passenger allegedly assaulted a flight stewardess ‘because he was waiting too long for a sandwich’. A male passenger on a flight travelling from Geneva to Pristina in Kosovo on Tuesday morning allegedly punched the female flight attendant and knocked her to the floor. A witness told the Mail Online he had shouted: “I’ve been waiting for hours, I’m hungry,” and claimed that he carried on hitting her while she was on the floor. The witness said fellow passengers quickly stepped in and restrained him.

Weird news - A hacker could make the plane fly sideways by getting into the network

There are hacker movies a dime a dozen, which claim that hackers can do anything. If you are a fan of such doom movies, then they occupy prime time movie status, with the Die Hard version 4 showing a hacker bringing the United States down to its knees through a systematic attack on the infrastructure. And if you read articles that appear once in a while, they promise that eventually Chinese hackers will be able to get into everything - will be able to stop power networks, hobble infrastructure, stop water movements, basically at some point, when your household instruments are also connected to the internet, then you could see your fridge also being taken over by hackers.
These stories are mostly ignored by people, being seen as something out of the world, too far into the future and maybe with a belief that the Government will be eventually able to stop things like this from happening. However, then you see a news story which seems pretty horrifying. Already, with the recent plane crash of a German airline, where the co-pilot locked the pilot out of the cockpit and then crashed the plane, flying suddenly got much scarier (where you can't even depend on the pilot); now you read a news story where a person on board the flight was able to hack into the plane though the entertainment system and then control the engine; this is going to make you even more scared than you thought (link to article):

A computer security expert hacked into a plane's in-flight entertainment system and made it briefly fly sideways by telling one of the engines to go into climb mode. Chris Roberts of One World Labs in Denver was flying on the plane at the time it turned sideways, according to an FBI search warrant filed in April. The warrant was first publicized on Friday by APTN, a Canadian News Service. Roberts told the FBI he had hacked into planes "15 to 20 times," according to court documents first made public on 15 May. Roberts first made news in April when he was told he couldn't fly on United Airlines because of tweets he had made about whether he could hack into the flight's onboard computer settings.

Weird news: Man tied up by airline staff after creating drunken ruckus

There are a lot of stories about airline travel. In earlier days when airline travel was more cushy and comfortable (and there were fewer worries about security risks, weight restrictions, leg-room issues, etc), the stories used to be about mile-high experiences and escapades (although there were the occasional stories about hijacking and such). However, over a period of time, as there were regular shut-down of airlines due to costing and losses, things got tighter with more restrictions and charges for everything. The 2001 attacks also made it easier for airlines to discipline unruly passengers or those who were overly argumentative, since the crew and captain would declare that they were uncomfortable with such persons on board and security would be properly accommodating.
However, one area remained that causes problems to the crew, and that is the availability of alcohol on flights (no longer free on some airlines). Eventually there will be times when somebody will go overboard and decide that enough alcohol needs to be added to their system to make them unable to control themselves and then create a fuss. It gets tricky for the crew as to how to handle these passengers, in many cases, they are handed over to security after the plane makes a quick stop-over at the closest airport. However, in this case, the crew had an interesting way of restraining the passenger, they tied him up (link to article):

After a few drinks on flight AI-301 on Wednesday, the passenger allegedly got into a tiff with some crew members and passengers and then tried to hit them and tore the clothes of two attendants, airline sources said. As the incident turned into a major row, the passenger was overpowered by some crew and passengers and tied him up on the seat, they said. This led the captain to consider diverting the flight to Singapore because of the threat posed to the other passengers.

In the end, the passenger does get handed over to security for further processing; there is much less patience with passengers who get unruly or misbehave with staff.

Weird: Recruiting more ladies to reduce weight to save fuel costs

Fuel costs are high, and airlines claim that they are bleeding costs for a long time. So, over a period of time airlines have done a number of cost saving measures - these include reducing the amount of weight allotted to a person (many years back flights to and fro the US allowed 64 kg, which is now down to 20 kg), more and more flights are now charging for other services such as seats on the emergency exits (which have more leg space), and low cost airlines would even start charging for going to the rest room on the flight. So, there is a lot of focus on trying to find new places where money could be saved, but this airline has taken an interesting turn. Carrying more weight on board the flight means that it takes more in fuel charges, and fuel is expensive, so the airline is actually now preferring to hire females rather than male attendants because they tend to be 10-15 kg less in weight (link to article):

An Indian airline has hit on possibly the worthiest excuse yet for hiring slim women as cabin crew -- it saves fuel and therefore money. While some airlines admit to hiring women for their sex appeal, budget carrier GoAir has told The Times of India it will be hiring predominantly female flight attendants in future because they are 15-20 kilos lighter on average than men. The airline estimates each extra kilo on board costs Rs3 ($0.05) per flying hour, and the new policy will save it up to $500,000 annually. A spokesman for the airline denied to CNN that it had implemented a gender-biased recruitment policy. But he confirmed that the airline's male-female cabin crew ratio of 40:60 was among the most male-heavy in the industry in India.

Maybe this is also an opportunity for the most slim people to come forward and claim a preferential right when applying for jobs in airlines. :-)

Weird news - Family kicked off flight because cut on daughter's face cited as hazards

In the light of the 9/11 attacks, a lot more authority was given to the captain and the crew of the flights, and any disturbances during the flight were treated more seriously. So if there was somebody who was disturbing the flight or causing problems to the crew, the captain could land the place at the nearest possible airport where the local police would take away the person causing the disturbance, and that was that. So, there were misunderstandings, people who tried to act funny by speaking jokes about bombs in the flight were reported by co-passengers and captains would refuse to let the flight go until such a person was taken off the flight; in other cases, people were turbans and speaking languages other than English were reported and forced off the flight. There were genuine cases, but a lot more cases about misunderstandings.
However, sometimes things goes beyond such cases and people have to suffer a lot of inconvenience when something like this happens. In the following case, a family was forced to be moved out of the aircraft when the crew saw a small cut on their daughter's cheek and worried that this could be a health hazard when the flight was in the air. The family was embarrassed at being forced off the plane, and had to make their own way since the next flight was only 3 days later. They also had no option since the crew threatened to call the police (link to article):

A British family was kicked off a local plane flight because the pilot reportedly thought a small cut on their toddler’s face was a health and safety hazard. John Maitland, 33, and his partner, Laura Bishop, 36, were traveling with their 19-month old daughter, Robyn, between the Isle of Jersey and Newcastle, England this month when they boarded an easyJet flight, Sky News reported. A stewardess noticed a scrape on Robyn’s cheek that she got after falling on a radiator while on vacation. The couple did not think the small cut was serious. The stewardess alerted the pilot to the injury and the family was told they had to exit the plane.

Weird news - Fight between 2 Chinese on board Swiss flight forces it to turn back

When people book a ticket on a flight, their need can be very critical. They could be going to meet a sick relative on the deathbed, could be going for an important business meeting, or the flight could be part of a vacation. In such cases, the delay or cancellation of such a flight can be very tricky, and cold cause huge effort for the people involved. Such delays and cancellations also have impacts on airlines; it means impact on their customers, it means heavy new logistics including maybe having to arrange for food and lodging for the flying customers, means having to pay charges at the airport (could be the one from where the flight was delayed, or a different airport in case their flight was diverted), and extra fuel that any change in their flight plan can cause. And for these extra costs, they cannot get more from the passengers, and in fact, they face some loss of goodwill for any such thing.
On a flight, any nuisance is treated very severely (the captain of the flight has responsibility and authority over whoever is on the flight) and in many cases, disturbances creators can face trial and jail terms depending on what they had done. Given the problems that can happen, it seems strange that a flight had to get diverted because of some quarreling passengers. The quarrel must have been very intense and the crew would not have been able to get the passengers pacified; as a result, the Swiss International flight bound to Beijing had to return to Zurich. The passengers were then taken off and arrested by the police at Zurich after disembarking (link to article):

A mid-air brawl between two Chinese passengers onboard a Swiss International airplane disrupted the Beijing-bound flight and forced it to return to Zurich, where the duo were arrested. According to media reports, a 57-year-old Chinese man travelling on the flight last Sunday felt disturbed while eating his meal when the passenger in front of him , another Chinese citizen, aged 27 reclined his seat. The elderly person who was reportedly drunk, hit the younger passenger when he did not respond to his protests. A fight then broke out between the two, which caused one of the passengers to bleed, state-run China Daily reported.

Weird news - Airline shuts down leaving passengers in the lurch

An airline, when in operation ferries a number of people to and from different locations in a country our around the world. People book their tickets and plan their leisure time based on these to and fro journeys. So what happens when the airline suddenly comes to a halt (because of lack of money or other such reasons) ? People get really stuck, sometimes in places distant from their home cities and without a way to get back. Buying alternate tickets on other airlines can be expensive at short notices and the entire vacation can get badly ruined because of such cancellations, and lead to monetary losses as well, with the possibility of getting the money back also not possible (refer this case)  

Thousands of travelers have been left in the lurch around the world after the carrier Air Australia went into administration and grounded its fleet Friday.

"It currently appears that there are no funds available to meet operational expenses so flights will be suspended immediately," the company said in joint statement Friday with its newly appointed administrators, KordaMentha.

About 4,000 passengers in total have been left stranded in Hawaii, Thailand, Indonesia and Australia as a result of the suspension, said Michael Smith, a spokesman for KordaMentha.

Weird news - Charter airline forces passengers to withdraw money from ATM's midway

Seems horrid. Imagine booking a charter airlines for your group, getting to the airport, getting all the formalities done, and finally taking off. You would have covered the most of your flight time relaxing, getting together with friends, and generally having a good time (and if you are on the return journey of your trip, you would be thinking about the good times that have been spent).
But would you ever think that at the midway flight stop, the airline would force you to withdraw additional money from any ATM that you could find, just so that you could complete your trip, else they would not leave the airport (and this is neither your departure nor your arrival airport).
What would you do in such a case ? You would mostly pay up, right ? You would be very angry, but you would pay up - which is what the people in this particular case also did (link to article):

A six-hour stay on the tarmac left passengers with no choice but to withdraw money from cash machines in the terminal building and pay the operator to complete the journey. The incident involved four chartered Austria-based carrier Comtel Air flights over the weekend and occurred during refuel stops in Vienna. Three of these have now reached Birmingham ; the other is said to be indefinitely delayed.
Dalvinder Batra, whose 80-year-old visually-challenged relative was forced to go without medicine during the ordeal, told the UK's Daily Mail website: "It is absolutely disgusting how they treated us. There are still people stuck out there. We have been told that the company has gone bust mid flight."

Weird news - Lady strips in Bermudas airport after security check

Modern aviation suffers from increasing security issues. Hijacking of planes has happened for many decades now, and as a result, security measures have only increased over the years. As technology has advanced, and the concealment and miniaturization of terrorist technology has increased, the level of security scanning has become more intensive. Further, earlier hijacking still ended up killing at the maximum, only a few of the passengers of the plane, but the 2001 New York attacks showed up a breed of terrorists who were determined, who were not averse to killing all the passengers of the plane, and who were hard to totally exterminate. Then, in 2001 again, there was the shoe bomber who tried to blow up a plane by setting fire to his shoes. And in the recent past, there was the case where explosives were sought to be smuggled onto a plane in the form of printer cartridges.
This has in turn led to a much higher level of security before a plane can take off, and this security is getting more intense, and seemingly much more invasive of the privacy of people. When explosives can be hidden in body cavities, it gets much more difficult; however, this increased security (including devices such as deeper penetrating X-rays that reveal the outline of the body) also puts off a lot of people. This in turn led to a weird reaction from one lady (link to article):

A 36-year-old woman faced with a customs search at Bermuda's LF Wade International Airport rather brilliantly responded by instantly shedding her clothes and telling officers: “If you want to see me naked, you can do it right fucking here.”
Loukai Phillips, a Bermudian native now living abroad, had just flown in from London on 19 August to close her bank account, but had to schedule in an appearance before magistrates on a "indecent exposure in a public place" rap following her protest strip.
Her lawyer, Charles Richardson, explained to the court that because of an unspecified "past association", his client had been strip-searched every time she faced customs operatives.

Weird news - Precious items stolen, even after death

One of the biggest fears that people have with respect to airline travel is not about the fear of some accident, but more about losing their luggage. So, consider that you reach a different location after a long flight, and then find that your luggage has not made it, or something has been pilfered from your luggage (and the airline authorities are not really concerned about what has happened). What would you do ?
In this case, something even more horrific happened. When somebody dies in a different land, their relatives are worried about the process of getting the body back to their native land, and then, if they find that things have been stolen from inside the coffin, they would be shocked. This is what happened in the current case, where items were actually stolen from inside the coffin, including valuables that belonged to the person who dies (link to article):

Conception D'Souza died of natural causes in Singapore on June 5, while on her way back from New Zealand after visiting her daughter, Zulfiya Chawdhary.
After the post-mortem, the body was sent to Mumbai in a coffin, which also contained some of her other belongings- jewellery, cash, clothes and some chocolates she had bought during her trip.
When the coffin reached Mumbai on June 7, it was kept at the morgue at the Bhabha Hospital in Bandra, where it was opened by D'Souza's son, only to find that the cash and jewellery was missing.

Pilot dies while flying a Qatar Airlines flight, flight diverted to safety

When a flight is in the air, the only thing standing between the passengers and danger is the skill of the pilot, keeping the plane flying or landing safely. Towards this end, the pilot needs to be in perfectly good health, quick to react, able to think quickly, and very skilled. But, what happens when some sudden misfortune strikes the pilot ? There is a co-pilot who can take over, but typically the pilot has a much higher level of skill than the co-pilot. Consider the tragedy that occurred to this pilot, and the danger to the passengers of the Qatar Airlines flight (link to article):

Qatar Airways diverted its Manila-Doha flight to Kuala Lumpur early yesterday after the pilot suffered a massive heart attack on board and later died. The co-pilot flew the plane (Flight No QR645), with roughly 260 passengers on board, to Kuala Lumpur International Airport (KLIA) for emergency landing. He requested the KLIA authorities for permission to land after the pilot complained of chest pain, and urged that a medical team be kept ready so that the pilot could be provided medical care.
But the medical team declared the pilot dead after the flight landed at KLIA. The passengers on board were not told about the pilot’s condition, it is learnt. The deceased, Ajay Kukreja, was an Indian in his early forties. The flight took off from Manila’s Ninoy Aquino International Airport early yesterday.

Weird news: Newborn baby left in the trash bin of an aircraft

Sometimes we come across some news stories that can shock even the most hard person. Stories about how babies are left are shocking, but we mostly come across cases where the baby has been left at the doorstep of some sort of orphanage, or left where they can be found quickly and the appropriate care given. However, in extreme cases (such as where the mother fears social pressures or the threat of physical violence) the baby may even be abandoned in such a situation where the baby may die quickly. This is also a sad reflection of social mores where the mother feels so pressured that she would rather abandon a baby like this. In this case (link to article), the baby was found in the trash of an aircraft, probably born during the flight, and found by a security officer who detected movement in a bag:

Philippine authorities on Monday tried to identify the mother of a baby born on a commercial flight from West Asia and found abandoned in the airplane’s trash, evoking pity and outrage among Filipinos.
The baby — still attached to the placenta — could have died had a security officer on the tarmac not noticed the movement in one of the trash bags unloaded from the aircraft. When he opened the bag and dug through the rubbish, the officer was stunned to find the baby, which was brought to an airport clinic, airport press officer Connie Bungag said.

Pilots and cabin crew fight in mid-air

Taking a flight is now a normal state of affairs. You get into the flight, meet the smiling cabin crew, hear the voice of the captain (but normally don't get to see the captain), and after food and the flight duration, the flight lands, and you get off, not thinking about the flight again. What happens when things do not happen like this ? Passengers were shocked to witness a fight between the cabin crew and the pilots, with the pilots on one side and the cabin crew on the other side. This horrid scene (witnessed by passengers) was seen on a flight of the Indian Airlines, running between Sharjah and Delhi (link to article):

Endangering the lives of 106 passengers and grossly violating safety norms, the airline staffers came to blows in the cockpit and galley of the Indian Airlines Airbus A-320 as the aircraft cruised over Pakistan en route to Delhi via Lucknow from Sharjah. The cabin-vs-cockpit tiff originated on the ground in Sharjah itself and then turned into a full-blown fight once IC 884 took off soon after midnight.
The cabin crew alleged that pilots harassed a 24-year-old female colleague who later filed a molestation complaint against them with the cops after the flight landed in Delhi. The pilots, on the other hand, accused a male flight purser of misconduct that seriously compromised flight safety, and said the accusation of molestation aimed to protect the complainant's purser friend—who has a commercial pilot licence (CPL)—from facing action.

One can only hope that the airline and the flight regulators make sure that these people are penalized for their misconduct, and the airline is also prosecuted for this happening.

Air France disaster hoax fools Bolivian TV

The Air France disaster over the Atlantic Ocean in July was a mystery, with investigators unable to find a lot of wreckage, were only able to find 51 bodies overall (most of them were lost to the sea), and unable to find the black boxes that would be able to help them figure out what actually went on. Right now, the most investigators have been able to do is to use a series of automated messages that the plane sent out over a 2 minute minute, and speculate over what went wrong. They seem to have determined that the crash happened because the speed detectors on the plane threw wrong information, and hence caused the plane to go into a spin.
However, as with any such disaster, there are a lot of people who try to make some mileage out of this tragedy, or spin some new stories. One of these is a hoax about a camera being found in the wreckage, that apparently caught a few shots as the plane went down. One Bolivian TV channel apparently got caught in this hoax and showed this on the TV (link to article):

Bolivian TV channel PAT has been left looking a bit daft after broadcasting extraordinary images of the last moments of Air France flight 447, lost over the Atlantic on 1 June.
In fact, the camera can be traced to ABC Studios and sharp-eyed readers will notice that the photographs feature well-known actress Evangeline Lilly, aka Kate Austen from TV series Lost.

Air India overbooks - carried more passengers than capacity

Airlines frequently overbook, given that there is always a number of people who will cancel, and hence there is a mathematics related to the number of people who overbook. Sometimes airlines land up in a situation whereby they find that this mathematics goes awry, and they find that there are more passengers than seats available. In such cases, the airline has to placate irate passengers, and decide who can go and who needs to be refused. Such cases typically cause a lot of unhappiness. However, it is not accepted that an airline boards more passengers than there are seats available. Even in these bad economic times, it is unacceptable to have more passengers on board than there are seats, given that these are paying passengers who have a right to proper treatment. Modern airlines have automated systems whereby boarding passes are issued which prevents extra passengers from getting loaded. However, if the airline wishes to violate such conditions, there is very little that can be done.
Further, after the terrorist incidents, the cockpits of planes are now high security zones where passengers are no longer allowed. So, if there is a case when a passenger is allowed inside the cockpit, that is against all security norms and needs to be thoroughly investigated.
We have a case, whereby all this happened. Air India, the national carrier of India, had a case whereby it was found that the airline had boarded 3 extra passengers; this case is now being investigated by the regulator, the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA). In order to ensure that this case is brought to its logical conclusion, the investigation needs to be thorough (link to article):

In these recessionary times, airlines globally are operating on half-empty seats. But Air India, which is passing through its worst ever financial crisis, is in fresh trouble for allegedly carrying extra passengers on a fully loaded flight. What adds to the irony is that the excess passengers were discovered in a probe into the aircraft's door falling apart when it started moving while attached to an aerobridge!
"Of these three, one woman passenger was accommodated in the cockpit and two others on the foldable seats where cabin crew sits during take off and landing," said sources. The DGCA can now take criminal action against AI for this violation. The cockpits in modern aircraft have three seats. While two are for the pilot and co-pilot, the third is called a jump seat which is usually vacant. Since the process of issuing boarding passes is completely computerized, the system stops generating passes once a flight is full. In this case, however, the probe has found that boarding passes were allegedly issued manually to enable the extra passengers to clear the different levels of pre-embarkation security checks.

This action by the airline was a gross violation of the air safety norms. In this case, the airline was caught because of another incident, and this fact came out during the investigation.