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Speaking on stage at the Fortune Global Forum, Delta Air Lines CEO Ed Bastian said it himself. "Many times when I travel...
09/03/2026

Speaking on stage at the Fortune Global Forum, Delta Air Lines CEO Ed Bastian said it himself. "Many times when I travel, I'm sitting in coach."

Passengers notice. They walk back and ask him why he is sitting there.

"That's about what my ticket could afford," he tells them. He is usually next to the restroom, waiting on the snack cart for Biscoff cookies and a Coke Zero.

Bastian has given the same reason for years. Sitting back there is how he sees the airline the way customers do. How boarding actually flows. Whether the Wi-Fi holds up. How long the line for the lavatory gets.

He made it a rule for his executives too. Directors, and everyone senior to them, had to ride in the main cabin on any flight under 3 hours. The rule was for the people running the company, not the front line.

He also says he does not want the upgrade. If he takes a premium seat, he is taking it from a paying customer or from a Medallion member who earned it.

09/03/2026

Earlier today, a JetBlue crew refused the heading they were given and declared an emergency.

March 8, 1998. Members of the U.S. Air Force's 8th Fighter Squadron gathered around an F-117A Nighthawk at Ahmed Al-Jabe...
09/03/2026

March 8, 1998. Members of the U.S. Air Force's 8th Fighter Squadron gathered around an F-117A Nighthawk at Ahmed Al-Jaber Air Base in Kuwait. Behind them was a hardened aircraft shelter left bombed out from the Gulf War seven years earlier. The official U.S. military caption identifies the scene as part of Operation Southern Watch.

For its first years, almost nobody knew this aircraft existed.

The F-117 first flew in 1981 and entered service in 1983. It operated from Tonopah Test Range Airport, a remote field in the Nevada desert, and flew only at night so it could not be photographed. Pilots commuted in from Las Vegas on unmarked flights and told friends they flew something else. Air Force officials denied the plane existed at all.

That ended on November 10, 1988, when an assistant secretary of defense held up a single grainy photograph at a Pentagon press conference. It came 7 years after the aircraft's first flight.

In 1992 the fleet moved to Holloman Air Force Base in New Mexico. That is where the squadron in this photograph came from.

The Air Force retired the F-117 on April 22, 2008.

It never stopped flying.

A handful remain airworthy at Tonopah, the same desert field where the program began. They fly as adversary aircraft, giving pilots something stealthy to practice hunting. Reporting in January indicated the Air Force plans to keep them going until at least 2034.

The type was retired 18 years ago. It is scheduled to keep flying for 8 more.

Three-year-old Selena Flores of Long Island had spent much of her young life dealing with pediatric cancer. During hospi...
09/03/2026

Three-year-old Selena Flores of Long Island had spent much of her young life dealing with pediatric cancer. During hospital stays, she became especially attached to a comfort dog named Dutton, and her family began hoping she could have a dog of her own.

WHIP Pediatric Cancer decided to help make that happen. A breeder in Utah, Britt’s Darling Doodles, donated a 10-week-old Cavapoo named Goldie for Selena.

There was just one problem. Goldie was in Salt Lake City. Selena was more than 2,000 miles away in New York.

That was when Southwest flight attendant Johnny saw an opportunity to help.

Southwest’s Animal Transport Team stepped in. The group is made up of employees, retirees and dependents who volunteer their personal time and use their own flight benefits to move animals where they need to go.

Together, they carried Goldie across the country from Utah to Long Island, where Selena was waiting.

Selena had no idea what was waiting when she arrived at WHIP Pediatric Cancer’s headquarters on Long Island.

Then she saw Goldie.

She immediately wrapped her arms around the puppy and covered her with kisses. Her father, Junior, said the companionship would help his daughter in ways that went far beyond simply having a pet.

February 13, 1986. Richard Reinhardt was in Hartford Hospital waiting for a heart transplant when doctors got the call t...
09/03/2026

February 13, 1986. Richard Reinhardt was in Hartford Hospital waiting for a heart transplant when doctors got the call they had been hoping for. A donor heart had been found.

There was one problem. It was in Oklahoma City, 1,415 miles away.

Doctors wanted the heart transplanted within four hours of being removed from the donor. No available commercial or medical aircraft could get it to Connecticut in time, so the hospital called the U.S. Air Force.

Captain David Lefforge and radar navigator Captain Steven Bruger, based at Pease Air Force Base in New Hampshire, were on a routine training mission when they were redirected.

An FB-111A and a KC-135 tanker headed for Tinker Air Force Base in Oklahoma. A second FB-111A followed an hour later as backup.

The heart reached Tinker in the early hours of Valentine’s Day. The container was secured on Bruger’s lap because it was the only place in the cockpit where it would fit, and the cockpit was the aircraft’s only pressurized area.

By 3 a.m., they were airborne for Connecticut.

The FB-111A flew at just under 700 mph. Bruger sat beside Lefforge with a human heart in his lap.

“It was Valentine’s Day. We had this heart; we were going to save someone’s life,” Lefforge said afterward.

At about 5 a.m., they landed at Bradley Air National Guard Base. A helicopter was waiting to take the heart the final distance to Hartford Hospital.

From the moment the heart was removed from the donor until it was transplanted into Reinhardt: 3 hours, 59 minutes.

Five weeks later, Reinhardt met Lefforge and Bruger at the hospital and shook their hands. He went home the next day.

Reinhardt lived another 23 years with the transplanted heart. He died in 2009, survived by his wife, two children and four grandchildren.

In 1982, Delta Air Lines did something that made no business sense. After 35 straight profitable years, the airline post...
09/03/2026

In 1982, Delta Air Lines did something that made no business sense. After 35 straight profitable years, the airline posted a loss. Fuel was expensive, the economy was weak, and deregulation had turned the industry into a knife fight. Most airlines were cutting jobs.

Delta gave its employees a raise instead, and took public criticism for it.

What happened next started with 3 flight attendants. Diane Carvelli, Ginny Oxford, and Jean Owens decided the employees should give something back, and they landed on an idea that sounded absurd. They would buy Delta an airplane.

They called it Project 767. Word moved through every department, and employees started signing up for voluntary payroll deductions, a slice out of every paycheck. Retirees who no longer worked there gave. So did friends of the airline. More than 18,000 Delta people signed on, and the total reached $30 million, enough for a brand-new Boeing 767.

On December 15, 1982, more than 7,000 people packed into Delta's Technical Operations Center in Atlanta to hand the company its airplane. Ship 102 was sitting there with an enormous red ribbon wrapped around it. They named it The Spirit of Delta. Right after the ceremony, it left on its first passenger flight, to Tampa.

It carried passengers for more than 23 years. When Delta retired it in 2006, it went out on a 12-stop farewell tour, repainted in its original 1982 colors, so employees could say goodbye. Then it was towed off airport property and across 2 roads to the Delta Flight Museum, where 23 museum volunteers escorted the tug that pulled it into the hangar.

It is still there. You can still walk on board.

Looking back years later, Carvelli said they had been amazed at how many people volunteered. "Delta people are special folks," she said.

The EC-130H Compass Call flew for the last time on September 2, ending a career of more than 4 decades.The final aircraf...
09/03/2026

The EC-130H Compass Call flew for the last time on September 2, ending a career of more than 4 decades.

The final aircraft, registration 73-1590, departed Davis-Monthan Air Force Base in Arizona under the callsign VOLT01 for the type's last scheduled flight.

The Compass Call was a heavily modified C-130 Hercules built for one job: jamming enemy communications, radar and navigation so opposing commanders could not talk to their own forces. Only 14 were ever made, each one rebuilt from an ordinary C-130 transport.

Its replacement, the EA-37B, carries about 70 percent of the old aircraft's equipment inside a modified Gulfstream jet that flies higher and twice as fast. It inherits the name too. The new aircraft is also called Compass Call.

On the morning of September 11, 2001, 33 flight crew members reported for four ordinary domestic flights. Eight pilots (...
09/03/2026

On the morning of September 11, 2001, 33 flight crew members reported for four ordinary domestic flights. Eight pilots (pictured here). Twenty-five flight attendants. The youngest was 24.

One had picked up an extra shift for a sick colleague. One had volunteered for the trip. Two of them were married to each other, and were working the same flight.

They fought with what they had. Betty Ong and Amy Sweeney stayed on the phone with the ground, calm enough to give the seat numbers that identified the hijackers. Sandra Bradshaw told her husband the crew was preparing hot water to fight back. CeeCee Lyles reached her husband to say she loved him and their children.

None of them came home. These are their names.

American Airlines Flight 11, which struck the North Tower of the World Trade Center: Captain John Ogonowski. First Officer Thomas McGuinness. Flight attendants Barbara Arestegui, Jeffrey Collman, Sara Low, Karen Martin, Kathleen Nicosia, Betty Ong, Jean Roger, Dianne Snyder, and Madeline "Amy" Sweeney.

United Airlines Flight 175, which struck the South Tower: Captain Victor Saracini. First Officer Michael Horrocks. Flight attendants Robert Fangman, Amy Jarret, Amy King, Kathryn Laborie, Alfred Marchand, Michael Tarrou, and Alicia Titus.

American Airlines Flight 77, which struck the Pentagon: Captain Charles Burlingame, killed the day before his 52nd birthday. First Officer David Charlebois. Flight attendants Michele Heidenberger, Jennifer Lewis, Kenneth Lewis, and Renee May.

United Airlines Flight 93, which came down in a field near Shanksville, Pennsylvania, after the people aboard fought back: Captain Jason Dahl. First Officer LeRoy Homer Jr. Flight attendants Lorraine Bay, Sandra Bradshaw, Wanda Green, CeeCee Lyles, and Deborah Welsh.

Also aboard that morning, traveling as passengers: their airline colleagues Bud Flagg, Mary Jane Booth, Marianne MacFarlane, and Jesus Sanchez.

25 years, and every airline crew room in America still remembers.

Starting March 28, 2027, one of American Airlines' daily flights from Dallas Fort Worth to Nashville will be flight 925....
09/03/2026

Starting March 28, 2027, one of American Airlines' daily flights from Dallas Fort Worth to Nashville will be flight 925.

Until now it has been flight 1396.

925 is a reference to "9 to 5," her biggest hit, on a route into the city where she built her career.

It is not the only one. Allegiant announced its own Flight 925 back in February, a themed charter from Orlando to Knoxville with Dollywood experiences on the ground and in the air, numbered for the same song. It sold out so fast that a second flight was added, numbered 2925. Both fly on November 6.

Those were planned while she was alive, as a celebration.

09/03/2026

A JFK ground controller was told by a pilot to stop being rude after repeating instructions.

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