Free Republic

Playing with Windows Movie Maker, the version in Win7. All these shots are with my Sony A200, Vilano Beach, St. Augustine.

PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) -- A Saudi Arabian teenager who authorities say swung his fist at a flight attendant and praised Osama bin Laden during a flight from Portland to Houston has appeared in court. An attorney for 19-year-old Yazeed Mohammed A. Abunayyan (ah-boo-NYE-an) told a federal judge in Portland Wednesday that he needs more time to meet with Abunayyan before he enters a plea. The indictment says Abunayyan interfered with a flight attendant and a flight crew member by refusing to stop smoking. He's also accused of hitting or attempting to hit several passengers. The indictment also says he spoke...

A cat escape caused a four-hour delay for an Air Canada flight Thursday as airline staff in Halifax struggled to get the feline from its hiding place in cockpit wiring. (Jan. 27) [Associated Press]

PALM BEACH COUNTY, Fla. - Three women were escorted off a New York bound flight at Palm Beach International Airport Monday afternoon by airline staff and Palm Beach County Sheriff's deputies. The women claim they did not do anything wrong and that a flight attendant on board was the only one behaving poorly. The women -- a lawyer, a therapist and a retired travel agent -- were complete strangers until they were seated near one another on AirTran Flight 1451 to White Plains, New York. They were buckled in and ready to take off when they said a male flight...

ALEXANDRIA — Holiday travelers may receive enhanced pat-downs at the hands of Transportation Security Administration agents in the next few days, but TSA failed to enforce a key foreign pilot screening process that could have prevented the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. For several months in 2010, TSA and Department of Defense contractor Mantech International Corp. failed to enforce the Alien Flight Student Program, which performs threat assessments and background checks on more than 38,000 non-citizens learning to fly every year. "This hasn't come back to bite us yet, but it only has to be one time," said one source with...

Former President George W. Bush gave a wonderful speech today in Shanksville, Pennsylvania for the 10 year anniversary of 9-11. It was one of his best. The audience including Vice President Joe Biden and former President Bill Clinton gave him a standing ovation.

A Southwest flight carrying 115 passengers from Albuquerque, New Mexico, to BWI Airport was diverted to Nashville International Airport due to a passenger's "suspicious behavior," an airline spokesman said.

The Federal Aviation Administration has cleared the way for the new Boeing 787 to take its first commercial flight. Both the FAA and European regulators certified the plane for flight on Friday. Boeing plans to deliver the first 787 to Japan's All Nippon Airways in September. The airline plans to fly it for the first time as a charter on Oct. 26 and begin regular service Nov. 1. Delivery is about three years late.

This is pretty cool- click on pic: At the link above you see the actual cockpit of the US Space Shuttle Discovery- note insulation panels installed over windows for re-entry- guess they get a little warm. Last week's final mission -completing 30 years of manned Shuttle flights- was completed by the Atlantis... some facts about the craft: The Space Shuttle was the first orbital spacecraft designed for reuse. It carried different payloads to Low Earth Orbit, provided crew rotation for the International Space Station (ISS), and performed servicing missions- the first one went up in the early days of the Reagan Administration,...

A passenger on a United Airlines flight had to be tied up and gagged and the flight diverted after he refused to come out of the bathroom and then turned violent when confronted by staff. The United Airlines flight 944 to Frankfurt, Germany, from Chicago was diverted to Cleveland on Friday night after the flight attendant found that the large man had been in the bathroom for almost 30 minutes and refused to come out. When he eventually did he started screaming at the flight attendants and put one in a headlock before wrestling him to the ground. That is...

Chicago-To-Germany Flight Diverted Because Of Unruly Passenger July 8, 2011 6:05 PM Federal agents investigate after a disruption on an international flight from Chicago to Germany that was diverted to Cleveland. (Photo provide by a passenger) Federal agents investigate after a disruption on an international flight from Chicago to Germany that was diverted to Cleveland. CHICAGO (WBBM) – Some Chicagoans have quite a story to tell about a flight from O’Hare to Frankfort, Germany that was diverted Friday to Cleveland when a passenger was found hiding in the bathroom and went ballistic when he was confronted. Joe Shulfer of Woodstock...

PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) — An Oregon man got a big surprise on a commercial flight from Seattle to Anchorage, Alaska, when he was stung by a scorpion while sitting in his plane seat. Jeff Ellis of West Linn said he was trying to sleep on a red-eye Alaska Airlines flight June 17 when he felt something in his sleeve and tried to brush it away. He said he felt the crawling again, looked down and saw the culprit. "I picked my hand up and said, 'Oh, my God. That's a scorpion,'" Ellis told KPTV. He said he grabbed the scorpion...

Police are questioning how a strange object got on a Delta Airlines flight that arrived at Newark Liberty International Airport from Minnesota. Authorities told The Star-Ledger of Newark the object was wedged between seats 21B and 21C. No one had been assigned the seats. The object had the body of a clear pen, with an electrical button trigger and a nail and alligator clip protruding from it. A battery was held by electrical tape, and next to it was a flashlight top.

Just crossed wire. No more info yet. Something is definitely up today. http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2716882/posts

They are the sort of striking images that wouldn't look out of place in a scene from a sci-fi movie. However, one of these could soon be the face of modern aviation with the unveiling of a new generation of passenger aircraft. NASA has revealed three concept designs for quiet, energy efficient aircraft that potentially could be ready for flight as soon as 2025. Three companies - Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman and The Boeing Company - came up with the designs and, at the end of last year, all three won a contract from NASA to research, develop and test...

White FlightPresident Obama’s path to a second term may rely on states shaped by the same social forces he embodies. By Ronald Brownstein Friday, January 7, 2011 | 6:05 a.m. By any standard, white voters’ rejection of Democrats in November’s elections was daunting and even historic. Fully 60 percent of whites nationwide backed Republican candidates for the House of Representatives; only 37 percent supported Democrats, according to the National Election Poll exit poll conducted by Edison Research. Not even in Republicans’ 1994 congressional landslide did they win that high a percentage of the white vote. Moreover, those results may understate...

Tampa International Airport's main runway is closed for repairs due to changes in the earth's magnetic pull. "Who over-thought this? And why?" asked one passenger, waiting for a flight. "It's a joke," said another. But it's no joke. Runways are aligned according to points on a compass and scientists say the Earth's magnetic North Pole is constantly shifting. That means Tampa's main runway is now six degrees off. The discrepancy could cause pilots to lose their sharp focus. "When a pilot navigates he needs to find which is the correct runway to land and takeoff on," said Airport Director Robert...

When Brooks Anderson boarded a Spirit Airlines flight from Chicago to Ft. Myer's, Fla., to spend Christmas with his family, he said he didn't expect to be standing for the next two-and-a-half hours. "I was in an aisle seat and I clearly didn't fit into the seat at all," he said. "I couldn't even stuff myself in there." The 25-year-old is 6'7" and as he tried to squeeze his knees under his chin, his tall frame proved to be too big to fit into Spirit's tiny coach seat. "This is the most crammed I've been by far," Anderson said. Even...

An Air Malta flight from London Heathrow was forced to return to the terminal after a passenger started praying and chanting in the aisle just before take-off. The man got to his knees on Tuesday and started chanting in Arabic and ignored instructions by cabin crew to return to his seat...Passengers panicked when they heard the man chanting, and he had to be restrained by passengers and crew...

A month after the mangled body of a North Carolina teenager was found in a quiet Milton neighborhood, Norfolk District Attorney William R. Keating said yesterday that evidence indicates he stowed away in the wheel well of a plane and fell from the sky as the landing gear came down on the approach to Logan International Airport. A shirt stained with what appeared to be grease used in airplanes and believed to be Delvonte Tisdale’s was recovered yesterday, along with sneakers, scattered along the flight path, Keating said. The items were found about a half-mile from where the 16-year-old’s body...