A tire fell off of a United Airlines flight in San Francisco on Thursday afternoon and damaged multiple cars in a nearby parking lot.
United Flight 35, which was supposed to be headed to Japan, landed safely in Los Angeles after the incident, according to a local NBC News affiliate. The Boeing 777-200 has six tires on its two sets of rear landing gear.
There were 249 people on board, including passengers, pilots, and flight attendants.
WATCH:
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here is video of a tire falling off a united flight today at SFO
this comes one month after a wheel fell off a Delta plane in atlanta just prior to takeoff <a href="https://t.co/OrednBxQ7g">pic.twitter.com/OrednBxQ7g</a>
&mdash; Gregg Re (@gregg_re) <a href="https://twitter.com/gregg_re/status/1765860893710057532?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">March 7, 2024</a></blockquote>
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Additional footage of car damage <a href="https://t.co/ReK06dcFnp">pic.twitter.com/ReK06dcFnp</a>
&mdash; Gregg Re (@gregg_re) <a href="https://twitter.com/gregg_re/status/1765863297037807749?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">March 7, 2024</a></blockquote>
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This is the second major incident from just this week that the airline has had to deal with.
A United Airlines flight that took off from Houston to Fort Myers on Monday was forced to turn around after one of its engines erupted in flames.
United Flight 1118 was in the air less than 15 minutes before it had to turn around, according to data from FlightAware.
&#8220;United flight 1118 returned to Houston shortly after takeoff due to an engine issue,&#8221; the airline said in a statement. &#8220;The flight landed safely, and the passengers deplaned normally. We arranged for a new aircraft to take our customers to their destination, which departed for Fort Myers later that evening.&#8221;
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The FAA is investigating a mechanical issue on a United Airlines flight that caused flames to shoot from the rear of an engine minutes after takeoff on Monday. <a href="https://t.co/jrwnIglEGT">https://t.co/jrwnIglEGT</a> <a href="https://t.co/8VoCBoDHfk">pic.twitter.com/8VoCBoDHfk</a>
&mdash; ABC News (@ABC) <a href="https://twitter.com/ABC/status/1765841535088590890?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">March 7, 2024</a></blockquote>
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The airline only offered passengers a $15 meal voucher and a $200 travel credit for experiencing the traumatic ordeal.
&#8220;I remember there was just this bright, flashing light that came through the window, and it sounded like a bomb went off, and then it was just a strobe of fire out the window,&#8221; one passenger told ABC 13. &#8220;And then it just turned into chaos. People were screaming and crying and trying to figure out what was going on.&#8221;
Another passenger said that everyone thought that they were going to die and that he emailed his wife that he loved her and she should feel free to move on.
This is a breaking news story; refresh the page for updates.

Los Angeles Exteriors And Landmarks – 2020

WATCH: Tire Falls Off United Boeing Flight During Takeoff, Damages Multiple Cars

Airlines

Boeing

San Francisco

Transportation

U.S.

For the second time in a week, a plane from the Israeli flagship airline El Al was targeted by hostile elements trying to divert the aircraft from its planned course.
The newest incident involved a plane traveling across airspace on Saturday night where the Iran-backed Houthis reside; Somalian sources insisted to the Israeli broadcaster Kann that a group in Somaliland that issued false instructions to the flight crew was responsible. Suggestions were made that the effort was an attempt to steer the plane toward dangerous areas. But the plane’s staff used other communication methods to avert any trouble, <a href="https://www.i24news.tv/en/news/israel/defense/1708262276-hostile-attack-attempted-el-al-communication-network-takeover-report" target="_blank" rel="noopener">cross-referencing data</a> with other air traffic controllers.
“In Somalia, there have been communication interruptions all week, not only for El Al planes, and the official authorities have issued instructions to all pilots that as soon as this happens with a certain frequency, not to listen to the instructions and to switch to another communication method,” an El Al source <a href="https://www.jpost.com/middle-east/article-787572" target="_blank" rel="noopener">stated</a>, adding, “Our pilots are instructed on how to deal with this incident, such as the problematic frequency, and how to handle the flight professionally when it happens.”
The first El Al plane targeted was flying to Bangkok, KAN Reshet B reported
El Al issued a statement after the latest incident, saying that the “disturbances are not aimed at El Al planes and that this is not a security incident. The disruption did not affect the normal course of the flight thanks to the professionalism of the pilots who used the alternative means of communication and allowed the flight to continue on the planned route.”
Avner Yarkoni, the former head of Israel’s Civil Aviation Authority, <a href="https://www.jpost.com/israel-news/article-787692" target="_blank" rel="noopener">told</a> Maariv, “It was a communication interference by someone who was in contact with the plane. I don&#8217;t know exactly what was said and how,” but the false controller&#8217;s “manner of speaking apparently raised suspicion among the pilots.”
<a href="https://onelink.to/dwapp" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" aria-describedby="sk-tooltip-9096" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://onelink.to/dwapp&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1700760801843000&amp;usg=AOvVaw2PQrVSrJfhxNb4LcARqniG">CLICK HERE TO GET THE DAILYWIRE+ APP</a>
“It should be remembered that from the plane&#8217;s communication, it does not go anywhere,” he continued. “That is, the communication system guides the pilots, but if there is doubt – they don&#8217;t comply. &#8230; There are other systems where one can verify and check the communication readiness, some of them digital [ones] that are not based on verbal communication at all and are relied upon in international flights. &#8230; In addition, there is also a regional broadcast network that provides instructions, and the most important thing is that communication disruptions there are not new – not only toward El Al planes but towards all sorts of planes.”

An El Al Israel Airlines Boeing 737-800 landing at Frankfurt

El Al Flight Targeted By ‘Hostile Elements’ Trying To Take Over Communication Network

Air &amp; Space

El Al

Israel

Terrorists

World

If you&#8217;ve followed my show regularly over the past few months, you know that I&#8217;ve done a couple of monologues on the aviation industry. 
The frequency of near-disasters in the sky has increased dramatically in recent years, and as I&#8217;ve noted, the increase began around the time that the Obama administration began a concerted effort to &#8220;diversify&#8221; the FAA, including air traffic control. According to a NASA database, which tracks self-reported data from pilots, we now <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/how-government-diversity-initiatives-are-leading-us-to-a-major-airline-disaster">average</a> roughly five near-misses per week — more than double the number from a decade ago. And that&#8217;s not even getting into the obvious maintenance issues that have been popping up — including doors and wheels that have been flying off planes lately.
Given how terrible all of this looks from the outside, I wanted to get a better idea of what&#8217;s happening internally at the FAA and major airlines in this country. We hear a lot about DEI in the abstract sense, but we rarely get a glimpse of what it looks like in practice. We don&#8217;t often hear firsthand testimonials from people affected by DEI because they&#8217;re worried about protecting their careers. They know if they speak out, they&#8217;ll face termination, and they&#8217;ll probably be blackballed from the industry forever. But with social media, some level of anonymity is possible. So to take a closer look at how far this DEI rot has spread, I <a href="https://x.com/MattWalshBlog/status/1744869138151924174?s=20" target="_blank" rel="noopener">tweeted</a>: &#8220;If you&#8217;re an airline pilot and have firsthand knowledge about the DEI agenda being forced into your profession, send me a DM and tell me about your experiences. Curious yet terrified to see how bad it is at this point.&#8221;
To say my inbox was completely flooded would be an understatement. I received too many DM&#8217;s to count from pilots and other professionals in the aviation industry. Virtually every single message told me the same thing: that the ideology of &#8220;diversity, equity, and inclusion&#8221; is the top priority in their workplaces. It goes without saying, but this is an industry where one mistake can kill hundreds or even thousands of people. This is not comparable to DEI departments in universities or corporate America, as destructive and as wasteful as those departments are. DEI in the aviation industry could lead to a catastrophic disaster. That&#8217;s why — even though it was a risk — several of these sources provided me identifying information to validate their identities, along with permission to post some of the internal documents and footage they&#8217;ve obtained. These people knew they might lose their jobs, but they decided that getting the word out was more important.
<h4><a href="https://www.dailywire.com/episode/ep-1311-i-ve-obtained-internal-footage-revealing-the-faa-s-plans-to-reduce-the-number-of-white-males-in-aviation-member-exclusive" target="_blank" rel="noopener">WATCH: The Matt Walsh Show</a></h4>
Yesterday, I posted some of these materials on my Twitter feed. They reveal that, at the very highest levels of the FAA, there&#8217;s an effort underway to reduce the number of white men who work in the aviation industry. In April of 2022, the FAA&#8217;s acting deputy chief operating officer — a woman named Angela McCullough — led a meeting with the FAA&#8217;s Flight Operations division. This division is responsible for all aspects of aviation operations, including overseeing airline maintenance. 
But McCullough did not spend the call talking about ways to make sure that airplane doors don&#8217;t fly off mid-flight. She didn&#8217;t say a word about the importance of keeping the wheels attached to jetliners as they&#8217;re taking off. Instead, McCullough talked extensively about DEI. As you&#8217;ll see, she was prompted to do so by a man named Wil Riggins, who&#8217;s the FAA&#8217;s Vice President of Flight Program Operations. 
If that name sounds familiar at all, it&#8217;s probably because Riggins is the same guy who <a href="https://nypost.com/2023/09/15/faa-dot-coordinated-to-hide-cost-of-buttigiegs-flights-report/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">conspired</a> to find ways to hide Pete Buttigieg&#8217;s spending on government aircraft. So this is a completely corrupt group of bureaucrats who have assembled here. Watch:
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2/ The footage begins with FAA acting deputy chief operating officer Angela McCullough saying more workers need to go from &quot;ramp to cockpit,&quot; meaning she wants to see more baggage handlers become airline pilots. <a href="https://t.co/2KAeHNcJA2">pic.twitter.com/2KAeHNcJA2</a>
&mdash; Matt Walsh (@MattWalshBlog) <a href="https://twitter.com/MattWalshBlog/status/1755319180306346029?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">February 7, 2024</a></blockquote>
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&#8220;We&#8217;re looking at a need across the agency to recruit and retain a diverse population of folks,&#8221; says Wil Riggins. In response, McCullough talks about the arms race of DEI that&#8217;s occurring in the industry. She mentions &#8220;partnerships with universities.&#8221; And then she says the FAA wants to look at something called &#8220;ramp to cockpit.&#8221;
Let&#8217;s think about this. When she&#8217;s talking about &#8220;partnerships with universities&#8221; in the name of diversifying aviation, McCullough is referring to relationships that airlines have established with historically black colleges and universities. For example, United Airlines has <a href="https://www.northcarolina.edu/news/elizabeth-city-state-university-united-airlines-launch-partnership/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">allied</a> with Elizabeth City State University. The airline describes this as, &#8220;a partnership that seeks to not only train future pilots, but also bring more women and people of color into the ranks of commercial aviation.&#8221;
In case it&#8217;s not obvious, Elizabeth City State University is not a hotbed of engineering or aviation talent. In fact it&#8217;s not a hotbed of any kind of skill whatsoever. The average SAT score at the school is 960 out of 1600, which is one of the lowest scores that you&#8217;ll find anywhere in the country. The only reason for partnerships like this is because of the racial makeup of Elizabeth City State University, which is overwhelmingly black. This is the kind of partnership that, based on this video, senior FAA officials want to see more of. 
They aren&#8217;t interested in seeing the best pilots in the cockpit. They&#8217;re interested in seeing more black pilots in the cockpit.
That also could explain why McCullough is promoting something called &#8220;ramp to cockpit&#8221; in that footage. When she says &#8220;ramp,&#8221; she&#8217;s referring to ramp agents, who are responsible for loading and unloading baggage on airplanes. Evidently, the FAA believes that these employees deserve some sort of specialized program to encourage them to become pilots. But nowhere in this footage does McCullough explain why this makes any sense whatsoever. It doesn&#8217;t follow in any way. The job of a baggage handler is completely different from the job of an airline pilot. There are precisely zero transferable skills or even interests. Just because you have a job working around a plane doesn’t mean you should be flying them. This is like having a “janitor to surgeon” pipeline at a hospital, or setting up a program so that the window washer cleaning the outside of the skyscraper can one day become an architect designing skyscrapers. These two lines of work have almost nothing to do with each other. So what’s the point of this?
A few seconds later, McCullough provides something of an answer. She tells the FAA&#8217;s senior leadership in Flight Operations that their whole division is &#8220;white-male dominated.&#8221; Then she says that should change. And Wil Riggins, rather than reacting with surprise to this suggestion, agrees with her. Watch:
<iframe loading="lazy" title="008 FAA COO Angela McCullough" width="500" height="281" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/m9MmG1zYRg0?feature=oembed" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" allowfullscreen></iframe>
There&#8217;s no pushback from anyone in that clip, as they listen to this. No one says, &#8220;wait a minute — why should baggage handlers become pilots? And what&#8217;s wrong with having a lot of white men in Flight Operations, exactly?&#8221; Instead, this woman gets complimented for her insights.
But of course, not everyone on the call was in agreement. They didn&#8217;t want to speak up because they&#8217;d be fired. But they knew this was going to happen. So one individual recorded the meeting. This source had seen several white men get passed over for jobs because of their skin color, and he or she heard these kinds of remarks all the time at the FAA. That&#8217;s why the source saved it, and it&#8217;s why we have it now.
As of this morning, neither the FAA nor the secretary of transportation, Mayor Pete, has responded to this footage. That&#8217;s because it reflects exactly what they believe. This is what they talk about behind closed doors. They want fewer white people flying planes and working in Flight Operations, including maintenance. They want more baggage handlers to become pilots. And they are not remotely concerned about professional standards or competence. That topic just doesn&#8217;t come up in their discussions.
This what DEI is all about, and it&#8217;s not limited to Pete Buttigieg&#8217;s agency. In response to my post, I received several other tips from sources outside of the FAA who say they&#8217;re seeing similar policies all across the aviation industry. Airlines are promoting DEI as well, even when it clearly endangers passengers. One source — a pilot at Delta Airlines — told me this: &#8220;We recently had a transgender pilot repeatedly receive negative reviews during his first-year probationary period from Captains he flew with regarding attitude, CRM, and judgment, yet the Chief Pilot’s Office (CPO) was unwilling to address the issue. Had this not been a transgender pilot, the individual would likely not have successfully completed their probationary period. Coincidentally, that CPO has a management pilot on staff who recently transitioned who is able to weigh in on these matters.&#8221;
This is what the airlines and the FAA will never admit publicly. They&#8217;ll never admit that they&#8217;re lowering standards, and endangering the public, in order to get more &#8220;diverse&#8221; pilots flying planes. But that&#8217;s exactly what&#8217;s happening. The source also sent along this internal Delta Airlines manual that&#8217;s designed to help Delta pilots &#8220;transition&#8221; into another gender. Here&#8217;s what that looks like:
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7/ The source also notes that Delta routinely makes exceptions for trans-identifying pilots concerning grooming and behavioral standards. Internally, Delta has even published a lengthy guide for pilots who believe they were born in the wrong body. <a href="https://t.co/8aQszhqVJw">pic.twitter.com/8aQszhqVJw</a>
&mdash; Matt Walsh (@MattWalshBlog) <a href="https://twitter.com/MattWalshBlog/status/1755319191123439760?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">February 7, 2024</a></blockquote>
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It reads, &#8220;Helpful Steps for Transitioning at Delta.&#8221; And of course there&#8217;s the pilot with the trans pride flag draped over his body.
It goes without saying that this is incredibly irresponsible for several reasons. Put aside the fact that Delta is discriminating against qualified pilots on the basis of their skin color and gender, and promoting incompetent pilots instead. This document shows that Delta is also going out of their way to recruit trans-identifying pilots — people with extremely high rates of mental illness, and a propensity for suicide. Remember, these are people who, according to the trans activists themselves, are at risk to kill themselves if they’re misgendered or if they don’t receive all of the “affirmation” they feel they need. And the FAA and Delta want to more of them flying commercial aircraft.
In fact, in private, they&#8217;re open about the fact that they&#8217;re willing to endanger the public in order to hit diversity goals. Recently on Twitter, someone named Trace Woodgrains has been looking closely at FAA documents that were unearthed in a long-running class action lawsuit filed against the agency back during the Obama years. And he found further proof that the agency does not care if &#8220;diversity&#8221; costs people their lives. They&#8217;ve put it in writing. In 2013, for example, FAA leaders reviewed this slide:
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Interesting questions being posed by the FAA in 2013 <a href="https://t.co/tnit9ipsRx">pic.twitter.com/tnit9ipsRx</a>
&mdash; TracingWoodgrains (@tracewoodgrains) <a href="https://twitter.com/tracewoodgrains/status/1752378790846796038?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">January 30, 2024</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
It reads: &#8220;Key questions for leadership: What are the relative values of diversity and the prediction of performance/outcomes? There is a trade-off between diversity (adverse impact) and predicted job performance/outcomes. How much of a change in job performance is acceptable to achieve diversity goals?&#8221;
So there it is, as clear as it could possibly be. The answer to that question should be: No trade-off in job performance is acceptable to achieve any diversity goals. The mission of the FAA is to make sure people don&#8217;t die on airplanes. But increasingly it&#8217;s clear that&#8217;s not important to the FAA. I didn&#8217;t mention this on Twitter, but one of the sources who DM&#8217;d me sent this information over: &#8220;I was unaware of this until recently, but the FAA has authorized special issuance medical certificates to individuals on SSRIs &#8230; The FAA and the [airline pilots association] are looking to broaden/expand the SSRI and mental health on-ramps back to being able to exercise a first class medical certificate.&#8221;
In other words, the agency is doing everything it can to ensure that pilots taking antidepressants can fly. At the same time, the source says: &#8220;The FAA just sent a letter requesting Congress NOT to raise the mandatory retirement age from the current age of 65, and the FAA primarily states safety as a justification. Obviously, there’s zero safety data that shows a switch is flipped when you turn 65 and you are somehow instantly less competent; we all know competent 70 year olds and incompetent 50 year olds running around. &#8230;The point is that the FAA and [the pilot&#8217;s association] are much more willing to go along with the idea that SSRIs and transitioning pilots being at the controls is somehow more safe than someone who just woke up on their 65th birthday.&#8221;
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These are the kind of incoherent medical standards we&#8217;ve come to expect in the FAA. A year ago, for example, the FAA abruptly lowered its medical certification guidelines for pilots with heart block. This is a serious condition; it makes it harder for the heart to pump blood effectively. Before the change, pilots with first-degree block had to provide medical documentation proving they had, “no evidence of structural function or coronary heart disease.&#8221; Now, many pilots with first-degree heart block can fly without this documentation. There was a lot of speculation this was due to complications of the COVID shot, or that this might implicate the safety of passengers. The FAA denied that, but of course we have no reason to believe anything they say anymore. This is what we can expect from the federal government at this point. Even on matters of life-or-death, they have absolutely no credibility.
There are some more documents I posted on Twitter along these lines, including some insider information on how the FAA awards contracts to various small businesses. These small businesses handle important engineering and logistics tasks for the agency. But it turns out that these contracts, like everything else these days, often prioritize &#8220;socially disadvantaged&#8221; businesses, which according to federal regulations, typically means businesses that aren&#8217;t owned by white people. In the FAA&#8217;s &#8220;eFast&#8221; contract system, these &#8220;disadvantaged&#8221; businesses get first dibs at contracts valued under $150,000.
What this means is that the FAA has adopted a gender and race-based spoils system for pretty much everything. At every step — whether you&#8217;re a baggage handler, a pilot, or a contractor — you will get priority treatment if you look a certain way. The only way to bring an end to this is for more whistleblowers to do what they did yesterday, and speak out about it. Record the meetings where they tell you they don&#8217;t want white people working for them. Save the documents showing they&#8217;re promoting incompetent pilots because they&#8217;re &#8220;trans.&#8221; If we expose enough of this, then it might finally collapse under the weight of its absurdity. If we don&#8217;t — if we allow it to fester, as everyone on that FAA videoconference did — then before long, people will die as a result.

Cockpit of a modern passenger aircraft. Pilots at work.

I’ve Obtained Internal Footage Revealing The FAA’s Plans To Reduce The Number Of White Males In Aviation 

I've Obtained Internal Footage Revealing The FAA's Plans To Reduce The Number Of White Males In Aviation 

American Airlines

Delta Airlines

Diversity Equity and Inclusion (DEI)

Federal Aviation Administration (FAA)

Flights

Matt Walsh

Racism

Readers Pass

Transgender

Airlines have added <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/taylor-swift-travis-kelce-insiders-have-something-to-say-about-those-engagement-rumors" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Taylor Swift</a>-themed flights for trips to Super Bowl LVIII in Las Vegas — including the singer&#8217;s boyfriend <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/travis-kelce-shuts-down-retirement-speculation" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Travis Kelce</a> — following the Kansas City Chiefs&#8217; 17-10 victory over the Baltimore Ravens in the AFC Championship on Sunday.
<a href="https://x.com/SouthernbeLLSU/status/1751761798192042333?s=20">American Airlines</a> has listed flights from Kansas City to Las Vegas on Feb. 9 and Feb 10 with the flight number 1989, a reference to the superstar singer&#8217;s birth year and her most successful album &#8220;1989,&#8221; <a href="https://www.cbsnews.com/news/taylor-swift-travis-kelce-flights-super-bowl-2024-patrick-mahomes/">CBS</a> reported.
The airline also included flights from Vegas back to Kansas City at midnight on Feb.12 — just hours after the 2024 Super Bowl concludes — with the number AA87, which matches the number on Kelce&#8217;s 87 jersey. There&#8217;s also flight 1521 the morning of the Super Bowl from KC to Vegas with Chief&#8217;s star QB <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/patrick-mahomes-says-brittany-is-the-key-to-his-success-i-have-a-great-wife" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Patrick Mahomes</a> (number 15) and KC safety Mike Edwards&#8217; jersey (number 21) getting the nod, <a href="https://people.com/united-airlines-taylor-swift-travis-kelce-themed-flight-numbers-8551153?utm_campaign=peoplemagazine&amp;utm_content=new&amp;utm_medium=social&amp;utm_source=twitter.com&amp;utm_term=65b79ac62fcc0f0001ff5f21">People magazine</a> noted.
&#8220;The excitement surrounding this year&#8217;s sporting events has never been greater,&#8221; an American Airlines spokesperson told CBS in a statement, which included references to Swift&#8217;s songs over the years.
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
Wow: American Airlines created a flight right after the <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/Chiefs?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#Chiefs</a> win from Kansas City to Las Vegas.
Flight number 1989 &#8211; one of Taylor Swift’s albums.
Return flight from Vegas to Kansas City is flight number 87 &#8211; Travis Kelce’s number.
W Marketing!
(h/t <a href="https://twitter.com/alexgarcia_atx?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@alexgarcia_atx</a>) <a href="https://t.co/2LDbHBksal">pic.twitter.com/2LDbHBksal</a>
— Dov Kleiman (@NFL_DovKleiman) <a href="https://twitter.com/NFL_DovKleiman/status/1752007359109444077?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">January 29, 2024</a></blockquote>
&#8220;You could say that after last night&#8217;s games, we are in our football era, and we are thrilled to provide direct flights from Kansas City to Las Vegas,&#8221; the statement added. &#8220;To our customers who are huge sports fans, look what you made us do.&#8221;
United Airlines also jumped in on the fun and announced several Kansas City to Vegas Swift-themed flights. UA 1989 and UA 2287 have been listed with clear references to the &#8220;Blank Space&#8221; hitmaker&#8217;s birth year, Kelce&#8217;s jersey number, and the 34-year-old singer&#8217;s other hit song &#8220;22.&#8221; There was also a reference to Chief&#8217;s QB Mahomes&#8217; number with flight UA 1587, People noted.
&#8220;These special flights will provide direct flights for more than 1,000 Kansas City fans to get to Vegas to cheer on the Chiefs,&#8221; the airline said in a statement to People.
&#8220;United is flying its largest Super Bowl schedule ever this year adding more than 40 special flights total, which will help 14,000 more fans across the country get to the big game,&#8221; it added.
After the Chiefs punched their ticket to the 2024 Super Bowl, the Detroit Lions hit the road to take on the San Francisco 49ers in the NFC Championship. Despite Detroit&#8217;s impressive 24-7 lead at halftime, the 49ers mounted an incredible comeback to win the game 34-31. The Chiefs and 49ers will face off in the biggest game of the year on Feb. 11 at Allegiant Stadium, marking Vegas&#8217; first time hosting the Super Bowl.

Jason Kelce and Taylor Swift

Airlines Add Taylor Swift-Themed Flights For Trips To Super Bowl LVIII

Patrick Mahomes

Super Bowl

Taylor Swift

Travis Kelce

The Secretary of Defense is out of commission, and no one&#8217;s even pretending anymore that the commander-in-chief has any idea what&#8217;s going on in the world. 
So, unless you&#8217;re heavily invested in weapons manufacturing, or sit on the board of Raytheon, you probably have a lot of urgent questions about last night&#8217;s U.S. military strikes in Yemen. You might wonder, for example, who exactly the Houthis are, and why they made the decision to shut down a critical international trade route by terrorizing ships in the Red Sea. It&#8217;s the kind of provocation that obviously justifies a response. It&#8217;s almost like they&#8217;re asking for U.S. military involvement in the region. You might also have questions about whether this is somehow a &#8220;wag the dog&#8221; scenario, given the Biden administration&#8217;s disastrous poll numbers.
Regardless of your position on yesterday&#8217;s missile strikes, these are fair concerns. You&#8217;re not a conspiracy theorist for asking about them. After years of relentless lies from cable news &#8220;experts&#8221;, the skepticism isn&#8217;t really noteworthy at all. In fact, at this point, even the experts themselves have basically conceded that they can&#8217;t be trusted. That&#8217;s become particularly clear in just the past few days. From the airline industry to medicine, we are witnessing the collapse of the expert class in this country. They have lost their legitimacy, and they know it.
You may have heard about Tony Fauci&#8217;s admission in a closed-door House committee hearing the other day. Fauci began by denying that he ever played a role in shutting down any schools in this country. That&#8217;s a lie, of course. Fauci&#8217;s agency provided official guidance calling on schools to shut down, which exposed those schools to civil liability if they refused. Then Fauci was asked about his infamous guidance that everyone needed to &#8220;socially distance,&#8221; or stand six feet apart. As you probably remember, this six-foot rule became gospel in this country, virtually overnight. Every business and school and government building and airport put up little placards and stickers on the floor, instructing everyone to obey. At the time, we were told that &#8220;the science&#8221; mandated this rule. But the other day, Tony Fauci admitted what he always knew all along, which is that there was, in fact, no scientific data justifying this whatsoever. He says, essentially, that they just made it up on the spot. Here&#8217;s a New York Post reporter describing Fauci&#8217;s closed-door testimony:
<iframe loading="lazy" title="COVID ‘6-ft’ social distancing ‘sort of just appeared,’ likely lacked scientific basis, Fauci admits" width="500" height="281" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/oQSLls9COUw?feature=oembed" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" allowfullscreen></iframe>
The guidance “just appeared,” miraculously, like manna from heaven. Nobody knows where it came from or why, but there it was. Six feet apart they said, for no reason. Why not seven? Why not 10? Why not 100? Why not three? No reason. Literally no reason. Six feet is just what was decided, by whoever decided it.
This isn&#8217;t the first time that Tony Fauci has admitted to lying to the public about COVID. At one point, you may remember, he told the New York Times that he had deliberately misled Americans about the concept of &#8220;herd immunity,&#8221; by continually moving the goalposts. 
Remember herd immunity? That was the idea that, once a certain number of people became immune to COVID — whether through infection or vaccination — then the virus becomes less of a threat, and we can resume our normal lives. Somehow, Fauci&#8217;s threshold for herd immunity kept changing throughout the pandemic. He kept saying that a bigger percentage of Americans needed to get the virus before herd immunity would apply. And then, when the Times asked him why he kept changing the percentage, he admitted it was just social engineering.
This week, though, Fauci dropped the pretense of &#8220;science&#8221; entirely. He just admitted he was making stuff up. He was misleading us about pretty much every aspect of COVID — from social distancing to masks to the COVID shot to herd immunity. And now that he&#8217;s out of power, he can finally admit it because he knows he won&#8217;t suffer any consequences.
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This is one of those stories that&#8217;s getting buried, for obvious reasons. For one thing, no one wants to hear about Fauci anymore. For a lot of different reasons, liberals and conservatives alike would prefer not to revisit that time in our recent history when Fauci was the most visible and powerful person in the country. Also, admittedly, there&#8217;s a lot going on in the world. Fine. But if you take ten steps back, you&#8217;ll see that the new expert class — the people who demand to be taken as seriously as Fauci — are struggling to replace him. They simply have no credibility. 
Recall again the story that broke the other day in Axios. Here&#8217;s what they <a href="https://x.com/axios/status/1744702577512509893?s=20" target="_blank" rel="noopener">wrote</a>: &#8220;BREAKING: The climate of 2023 was the hottest seen in at least 125,000 years; for the first time in instrument records, daily global average temperatures went well above a Paris guardrail of 2°C.&#8221; 
Along with that scary headline, Axios includes a chart that only goes back until the 1970s, strangely enough. But all the same, they&#8217;re insistent that 2023 was the hottest climate the world has seen in at least 125,000 years. Now, I could reference a bunch of experts who contradict this theory. I could tell you all about Steve Milloy, a senior fellow at the Energy and Environment Legal Institute, who <a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/hottest-days-ever-dont-believe-it-global-temperature-north-sole-poles-6e64a991" target="_blank" rel="noopener">debunked</a> this garbage science in the Wall Street Journal recently. Milloy pointed out that — if you can believe it — we didn&#8217;t have satellites or temperature stations to measure temperature 125,000 years ago. He also writes that even today, most of the world isn&#8217;t covered by temperature stations, and the temperature stations we do have are still quite inaccurate. In fact, he wrote, &#8220;it&#8217;s been estimated that 96% of U.S. temperature stations produce corrupted data.&#8221; So we can’t trust temperature data today — much less data from before human civilization was formed. But I really don&#8217;t have to cite any of this, because it&#8217;s all obvious to anyone with any common sense whatsoever. That’s why the comments on that Axios article are uniformly negative because people aren&#8217;t buying the lies anymore. 
This is a trend that&#8217;s been causing a lot of panic among experts and institutions that aren&#8217;t used to being challenged — including pretty much every corporate backer of the anti-white scam known as &#8220;diversity, equity and inclusion.&#8221; These are institutions that insist that DEI is a core part of their mission. They say their companies and universities simply cannot survive without it. But the moment you expose them, they run away in horror. All you have to do is shine a light on what they&#8217;re doing, and they give it up.
That&#8217;s what just happened to Spirit AeroSystems. That&#8217;s the manufacturer of the door that blew out on that Alaska Airlines flight recently, while the plane was taking off. Yesterday, I came across a TikTok video that was uploaded by a Spirit AeroSystems employee (or intern, possibly) about a year ago. This is footage from a conference for women in engineering. The video caught my eye, because the hashtags were &#8220;Women in Engineering&#8221; and &#8220;Spirit&#8217;s Dream Team.&#8221; So naturally I clicked on the video. I wanted to see what an engineering &#8220;dream team&#8221; looks like at a company that very clearly is incompetent at engineering. Here&#8217;s what I found:
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Ladies and gentlemen, meet the “dream team” at the manufacturer that made the plane door that just blew off in the middle of a flight <a href="https://t.co/gZ2AboGnpR">pic.twitter.com/gZ2AboGnpR</a>
&mdash; Matt Walsh (@MattWalshBlog) <a href="https://twitter.com/MattWalshBlog/status/1745524322138018064?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">January 11, 2024</a></blockquote>
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Well, hey, what they lack in engineering talent and skill, they make up for in sass. Now you can shout “girl power” while you’re being sucked out of the giant hole in the side of the plane at 30 thousand feet. This the &#8220;dream team&#8221; at the company that made the door that fell off a passenger plane flying over Portland the other day. And within about an hour of me posting that video on Twitter, the Spirit AeroSystems employee (or intern) took it down. They know this is absurd. They know it&#8217;s completely incompatible with their mission. All you have to do is expose it, and they fold.
The same thing just happened at Johns Hopkins Medicine. Hopkins&#8217; &#8220;DEI office&#8221; — which exists, for some reason — sent out an <a href="https://twitter.com/EndWokeness/status/1745161772057649648" target="_blank" rel="noopener">email</a> to employees alerting them to potential patients who have unearned &#8220;privilege&#8221;. The list includes &#8220;Males, Christians, White People, English-speaking people, Middle or owning class people, Cisgender People, Heterosexuals, and Able-Bodied people,&#8221; among others. I&#8217;ll say that again. Johns Hopkins Medicine believes that &#8220;males, Christians, White people, English-speaking people, Middle or owning class people, cisgender people, heterosexuals, and able-bodied people&#8221; are inherently &#8220;privileged.&#8221; And of course the word &#8220;privilege&#8221; is a very thinly veiled code. What Hopkins is really saying, of course, is that they don&#8217;t like Christians, or whites, or heterosexuals. They&#8217;re not looking at any real markers of privilege. They&#8217;re just indulging their bigotry. That&#8217;s the unmistakable message there.
Keep in mind, this is a hospital and a medical school we&#8217;re talking about. They have the ability to administer treatments that can save people or kill them. Their only job is treating people. They should not be making lists about groups of people who are inherently inferior to other groups of people. This kind of thing is threatening, actually. And they know that. That&#8217;s why, as soon as this was published online by the X account &#8220;End Wokeness,&#8221; Hopkins took their little hit list down. Their DEI office issued a completely insincere apology and scampered away.
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Again, this is a pattern. Also yesterday — the same day that Hopkins took down its DEI list, and Spirit took down its TikTok video — Southwest Airlines <a href="https://x.com/WallStreetSilv/status/1745592257254654264?s=20" target="_blank" rel="noopener">deleted a post</a> on X about its &#8220;all-female flight crew.&#8221; The post read: &#8220;All female flight crew? Go off, queens!&#8221; But as it turns out, people don&#8217;t care about the gender diversity of their flight crew. They care about competence. They care about not dying. And in no uncertain terms, thousands of people let Southwest know that. So, once again, they erased the post and pretended it never happened.
It&#8217;s easy to take this kind of thing for granted. But just a few years ago, it would have been unheard of. Fauci never would have admitted fault. Neither would Johns Hopkins, as they told us to stay socially distant and wear masks. Neither would the airlines, as they bombarded us with propaganda about the importance of DEI hiring. But now these frauds are being held to account. When they try to lie, like Axios did with their climate alarmists, no one buys it anymore. When they try to push their ham-fisted social engineering, people call them out on it.
What this means is that the rule of the experts is over.
They can&#8217;t tell us to swallow DEI anymore than they can tell us to wear a mask or stand six feet apart. For everyone who cares about competence and public safety, this is the best possible outcome. For bloated DEI bureaucracies, this development marks — at long last — the beginning of the end.

Anthony Fauci Returns To Capitol Hill For House Interview On COVID

The ‘Expert’ Class Is Crumbling Before Our Very Eyes

Anthony Fauci

Johns Hopkins University

In December of 2022, a Boeing 777 operated by United Airlines took off from Hawaii in heavy rain. About a minute into the flight, <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/screams-on-the-plane-united-flight-was-5-to-5-2-seconds-from-hitting-pacific-ocean-passenger-says" target="_blank" rel="noopener">the aircraft plummeted</a> towards the ocean. It came just 750 feet from hitting the water at high-speed, which almost certainly would have killed all 280 people on board. In the end, the pilots saved the aircraft by a matter of seconds.
For more than two months, no one heard about this incident. It was as if it had never happened. By the time mainstream news reports began appearing in February, more than two months later, United assured the public that the FAA had been notified and that an investigation would be forthcoming. Watch:
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Notice how there&#8217;s not much curiosity from the anchor about why this incident took so long for the airline to disclose to the public. There&#8217;s also not much of an explanation about what happened. It&#8217;s implied that the pilots may have made a mistake, because they&#8217;re getting more &#8220;training.&#8221; But what mistake did they make exactly?
Late last year, we got something of an official answer. It turns out that, according to the NTSB, the captain called for the flaps to be retracted to the 5 degree setting, which is a normal setting for takeoff. But the first officer thought the captain had called for a 15 degree setting, so he selected that one. That misunderstanding caused a major problem because the plane was going far too fast for that flap setting.
To avoid damaging the plane, the captain started to slow the aircraft while he tried to diagnose the problem. Instead of realizing his mistake, the first officer suggested that maybe the instruments were malfunctioning. The two pilots continued to troubleshoot the problem, and in the process they became disoriented as the plane quickly lost altitude. The pilots&#8217; confusion continued until the plane blared an alarm telling them they were about to die if they didn&#8217;t apply maximum power and pull up.
<h4><a href="https://www.dailywire.com/episode/240110me" target="_blank" rel="noopener">WATCH: The Matt Walsh Show</a></h4>
Incredibly, both pilots of that flight are still employed by United Airlines. They nearly killed everyone on board through their incompetence, but that&#8217;s not disqualifying apparently. Beyond some basic information about their flying experience, we still don&#8217;t know much about these two pilots. For example, we know that the first officer has a total of 5,300 hours of flying experience, which is respectable for his position. But at the time of the incident, he only had 120 hours in the Boeing 777. And according to a report by Tucker Carlson last year, which cited an anonymous source at United shortly after this near-catastrophe took place, this first officer was a &#8220;new hire&#8221; at the airline. Could that lack of experience have played a role? And more to the point, could either of the pilot&#8217;s identity have played a role in their hiring — or the airline&#8217;s refusal to terminate them after they almost steered a passenger jet into the ocean?
We don&#8217;t know. We&#8217;re not allowed to know because the federal government and the airline don&#8217;t want us to know any more information about the identity of these pilots, or any of their pilots who are involved in near-disasters. There is an ongoing information blackout about these kinds of events, and it&#8217;s deliberate. But in their various public statements and press releases, United Airlines has made it very clear that they&#8217;re mainly interested in hiring pilots on the basis of skin color and gender, rather than competence. In fact, they participated in a Vice documentary back in 2022 about their DEI initiatives. Watch:
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So a couple of years ago, United decided that 50% of its new pilot recruits are going to be women or people of color. They&#8217;re promoting flight attendants to make that happen. Later on in that Vice documentary, it&#8217;s suggested that the point of this initiative is to alleviate the pilot shortage. 
How&#8217;s that going? A few days ago, the conservative commentator Ashley St. Clair posed a few questions to United, based on some information she had received. Here&#8217;s what she wrote: &#8220;On July 29, a United plane was nearly totaled after a hard landing. Who was flying that aircraft? Was the co-pilot a former flight attendant who was FIRED and then rehired through United’s DEI program despite being on a list to not return to United? Am I correct that this individual failed multiple trainings including simulator training? Am I also correct that United has covered up this DEI disaster and many others?&#8221;
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Hey <a href="https://twitter.com/united?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@united</a> 
On July 29, a United plane was nearly totaled after a hard landing
Who was flying that aircraft? 
Was the co-pilot a former flight attendant who was FIRED and then rehired through United’s DEI program despite being on a list to not return to United?
Am I correct…
&mdash; Ashley St. Clair (@stclairashley) <a href="https://twitter.com/stclairashley/status/1743346866186514878?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">January 5, 2024</a></blockquote>
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United didn&#8217;t reply, which you may have noticed is something of a pattern. No one thinks we deserve to know anything about what&#8217;s going on in the cockpits of the planes that we&#8217;re flying in. You&#8217;re just supposed to assume everything&#8217;s fine, and that the flight attendants are transforming into master pilots at United&#8217;s training academy.
But the more you look into the specifics of United&#8217;s diversity initiatives, the less solid that assumption seems to be. It turns out that United partners with several historically black colleges and universities, or HBCUs, as a way of recruiting pilots. One of the popular <a href="https://twitter.com/eyeslasho?lang=en">statistics-focused</a> accounts on X, which uses the name i/o, noticed that two of the schools that United has decided to team up with — Delaware State and Elizabeth City State University — are, &#8220;in the bottom 2% of all undergraduate institutions in the United States.&#8221; Elizabeth State, the account noted, &#8220;had the distinction in the 1980s of being the only university in which the average SAT math score was lower than that score which would have been produced if a person had guessed &#8216;B&#8217; on all the multiple choice questions on the test.&#8221;
That&#8217;s a pretty sobering statistic, especially if you plan on flying United anytime soon. To be fair to United, they don&#8217;t just recruit from HBCUs with no standards. As a writer who goes by the pseudonym Peachy Keenan found, United also recruits from an organization called &#8220;Sisters of the Skies.&#8221; Yes, this is an organization that sends pilots to United Airlines, and their acronym is literally &#8220;S.O.S.&#8221; At least you can rest assured that they have a sense of humor at United, as your plane is plummeting to the ground. And it gets better. Watch:
<iframe loading="lazy" title="‘Sisters of the Skies’ aiming to inspire more Black women to become pilots" width="500" height="281" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/liOyAxRAl9Q?feature=oembed" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" allowfullscreen></iframe>
&#8220;If they see it, they can be it,&#8221; at least as long as their parents can pay for flight school. That&#8217;s the message. Again, this is an organization that&#8217;s training the pilots that are flying commercial aircraft. This isn&#8217;t training, really. It&#8217;s like a kindergarten classroom. At no point are these people concerned about safety or competence. They want to put black women in the cockpit because they want to inspire more black women, and that makes them feel good — not because they think they&#8217;re getting smarter or better pilots. 
This is not some P.R. stunt. United is actually following through with this. According to United&#8217;s latest corporate diversity report, of the 51 students that graduated from United&#8217;s first class of pilots, &#8220;nearly 80 percent were women or people of color.&#8221; So they vastly exceeded their target of 50%. They&#8217;ve almost completely eliminated white men in their training classes. We&#8217;re led to believe that this is progress. Pay no attention to the planes plummeting towards the ocean or smashing into the runway.
To be clear, this is a problem that extends far beyond United Airlines. They&#8217;re maybe the most vocal about their DEI practices, but every airline does this.
A few years ago, in February of 2019, an Amazon Air cargo plane — a Boeing 767 operated by a contractor called Atlas Air — plummeted into Trinity Bay near Houston. The reason for that crash? The first officer, Conrad Aska, accidentally pressed a button giving the plane a massive jolt in thrust, which pitched the nose up. Instead of reacting calmly to the situation, he panicked, and forced the control column all the way down. The plane broke through the clouds and disintegrated on impact with the water.
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Conrad Aska never should have been flying that plane. Prior to joining Atlas Air and Amazon, he had worked for seven different airlines, where he developed a reputation for pressing random buttons in emergencies. He would always panic in the simulator and just lose all situational awareness. But airlines kept putting him in the cockpit anyway. That&#8217;s why, in its final report on the crash, the N.T.S.B. cited, &#8220;systemic deficiencies in the aviation industry&#8217;s selection and performance measurement practices, which failed to address the first officer&#8217;s aptitude-related deficiencies and maladaptive stress response.&#8221;
What explains those &#8220;systemic deficiencies&#8221;? Well, we can&#8217;t say for sure. We do know that Conrad Aska was born in the Caribbean nation of Antigua. He was a black man, which certainly checks some diversity boxes. And we also know that Atlas Air&#8217;s website is full of platitudes about the importance of hiring candidates based on certain characteristics, like their race and gender. So, we can come to some unauthorized theories here about why Conrad Aska was flying that plane. None of them are encouraging.
This isn&#8217;t to single out United or Amazon or Atlas. This kind of diversity hiring is endemic in the aviation industry. Keenan says she&#8217;s received several messages from pilots warning her of the danger in recent days. Here&#8217;s one of them: &#8220;Every airline has an informal pilot assignment program that makes sure their unfireable DEI problem children are always paired with adult supervision. These programs are maintained by aging boomers who are immune to the kool-aid. As these guys retire &#8230; every flight will be a roll of the dice.&#8221;
This rampant DEI mandate doesn&#8217;t just extend to airlines. A few weeks ago on this show, when I predicted that we&#8217;re due for a major air disaster soon, I talked mainly about DEI-based hiring in air traffic control. There&#8217;s also a push to &#8220;diversify&#8221; the ranks of companies that manufacture and install various airline parts. That includes companies like Spirit AeroSystems (no relation to Spirit Airlines), which manufactured that door that blew out on the Alaska Airlines flight over Portland the other day. Like United and Atlas Air, Spirit AeroSystems&#8217; website is full of DEI propaganda. In fact, just days before the door blew out on the plane, Spirit executives were posting eagerly on LinkedIn about their next big diversity event.
Meanwhile the company knew that they had more serious problems. Shortly before their door fell off a passenger plane mid-flight, Spirit AeroSystems was hit with a class action lawsuit in federal court. In the lawsuit, investors alleged that Spirit was aware of systemic defects in its products, but ignored them and falsified documents to hide them. In one instance, the lawsuit alleges, &#8220;auditors repeatedly found torque wrenches in mechanics’ toolboxes that were not properly calibrated. This was potentially a serious problem, as a torque wrench that is out of calibration may not torque fasteners to the correct levels, resulting in over-tightening or under-tightening that could threaten the structural integrity of the parts in question.&#8221;
But the mechanics didn&#8217;t want to comply with the audit. According to the lawsuit, &#8220;Some mechanics would not even let auditors take such out-of-calibration tools, locking toolboxes or yanking them back out of the auditors’ hands to prevent the audit.&#8221;
Obviously, if these accusations are even remotely true, they reveal some very concerning problems at a company that makes critical components for passenger planes. So how did things get so bad? It turns out that, according to the lawsuit, <a href="https://www.bizjournals.com/wichita/news/2020/07/31/spirit-aerosystems-announces-more-wichita-layoffs.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Spirit fired</a> roughly 50% of its workforce in response to the COVID lockdowns. They terminated many &#8220;experienced mechanics&#8221; in response to the economic consequences of those shutdowns, according to the suit. How did Spirit decide who to retain after these completely unnecessary lockdowns? How did they decide who to hire after the lockdowns ended? Why did they keep the engineers who apparently don&#8217;t understand how to calibrate their torque wrenches?
If you take Spirit AeroSystems at its word, they probably hired a bunch of &#8220;diverse&#8221; mechanics. That&#8217;s what all of their marketing materials and investor pitches would dictate. But the truth is, at this point, we can&#8217;t be more specific than that. Is it possible that a crack team of mechanics manufactured the doors on all these United and Alaska Air planes? As of now, yes it is. Maybe the fault lies not with Spirit, but with Boeing, which has been in decline ever since it made the decision to to outsource key elements of its business to overseas programmers and penny-pinchers in Chicago. Maybe Boeing installed the door improperly.
But at a certain point, we&#8217;re entitled to some answers. We shouldn&#8217;t have to guess or speculate about this. We should know the qualifications and the identities of the people manufacturing and installing these airplane doors, just like we should know the qualifications and identities of the United pilots who are skimming the water with Boeing passenger jets. We shouldn&#8217;t have any doubts about their competence. We&#8217;re the ones who just funded the bailouts for all of these companies. We&#8217;re the ones risking our lives to board their planes.
And, yes, the situation is that dire. Last night I put out a general invitation to commercial airline pilots to message me — anonymously, if they prefer — to tell me their firsthand experience of how DEI is impacting their profession. I’m still going through all of the messages — I received a lot of them — but what I can tell you is that, as I sit here today, I am not at all eager to ever board a plane again. The airline industry is in the process of actively making itself less competent and reliable. To an incredibly dangerous extent. When it comes to the pilots, the old guard — the masters of their profession, who were hired and promoted based on their skill alone — are still mostly in control. But not for long.
Meanwhile the airline industry is hiding the truth and lying about the dangers that we face. Like the COVID cultists who wrecked the economy, the DEI cultists desperately don&#8217;t want you thinking about the downstream effects of their ideology. And as a result, every time an airplane takes off in this country, we&#8217;re getting closer and closer to discovering those downstream effects the hard way.

Travelers At Newark Liberty International Airport

The DEI Rot In The Airline Industry Is Way Worse Than You Think

United Airlines

Passengers are recalling a nightmare <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/topic/air-travel" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Alaska Airlines</a> flight on its way to California that suffered an emergency depressurizing situation when a chunk of the plane&#8217;s body was blown out.
Following an emergency landing, there were thankfully no serious injuries, though a child near the blown off portion had to be held down by his mother, and his shirt was sucked out of the plane and his skin was reddened from the fierce wind, one passenger <a href="https://www.kptv.com/2024/01/06/plane-window-blows-out-mid-air-makes-emergency-landing-portland-airport/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">told</a> KPTV.
“I open up my eyes and the first thing I see is the oxygen mask right in front of me,” a 22-year-old passenger named Vi Nguyen <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2024/01/05/business/alaska-airlines-flight-portland-landing.html?smtyp=cur&amp;smid=tw-nytimes" target="_blank" rel="noopener">told</a> The New York Times. “And I look to the left and the wall on the side of the plane is gone.”
“The first thing I thought was, ‘I’m going to die,’” she added.
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When the wall of the plane just breaks off mid flight <a href="https://twitter.com/AlaskaAir?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@AlaskaAir</a> <a href="https://t.co/pMWhpiHmFY">pic.twitter.com/pMWhpiHmFY</a>
&mdash; Kyle Rinker (@Kyrinker) <a href="https://twitter.com/Kyrinker/status/1743470896638300339?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">January 6, 2024</a></blockquote>
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“Portland approach, Alaska 1282 emergency! Aircraft is now leveling 12,000 in a left turn heading three four zero,” the pilot said during the flight, according to KPTV.
There were reportedly more than 170 passengers on the flight and six crew members.
One of the passengers posted video of the incident and suggests it was not the emergency door that was blown off the plane, as some other reports have <a href="https://katu.com/news/local/alaska-airlines-flight-1282-returns-to-pdx-after-a-depressurization-just-after-takeoff-boeing-737-max#" target="_blank" rel="noopener">claimed</a>. Narrating the video, the passenger adds that, thankfully, no one was sitting directly next to the blow off portion, which she identifies as a &#8220;window.&#8221;
WATCH:
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An Alaska Airlines flight was forced to make an emergency landing last night after a panel blew out shortly after takeoff. Thankfully, no serious injuries were reported.
The airline has temporarily grounded its fleet of Boeing 737-9 Max aircraft. <a href="https://t.co/tgnGe8thrI">pic.twitter.com/tgnGe8thrI</a>
&mdash; Morning Brew ☕️ (@MorningBrew) <a href="https://twitter.com/MorningBrew/status/1743635259168632864?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">January 6, 2024</a></blockquote>
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Following the incident, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) temporarily ordered U.S. airlines to stop using some Boeing 737 Max 9 planes, the Times <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2024/01/05/business/alaska-airlines-flight-portland-landing.html?smtyp=cur&amp;smid=tw-nytimes" target="_blank" rel="noopener">reports</a>.
“Safety is our top priority and we deeply regret the impact this event has had on our customers and their passengers,” Boeing spokeswoman Jessica Kowal said in a statement. “We agree with and fully support the F.A.A.’s decision to require immediate inspections of 737-9 airplanes with the same configuration as the affected airplane.”
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Alaska Airlines CEO Ben Minicucci said such aircrafts &#8220;will be returned to service only after completion of full maintenance and safety inspections.”
“We are working with Boeing and regulators to understand what occurred tonight, and will share updates as more information is available,&#8221; Minicucci&#8217;s statement said.
“My heart goes out to those who were on this flight – I am so sorry for what you experienced. I am so grateful for the response of our pilots and flight attendants,” he added.
Alaska Airlines is investigating the incident and said it will release more details as it learns more.

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The off-duty <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/off-duty-pilot-accused-of-attempting-to-shut-down-plane-engines-mid-flight-charged-with-83-counts-of-attempted-murder-reports" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Alaskan Airlines pilot arrested</a> on Sunday for allegedly trying to shut down the engines of a fully occupied passenger flight in midair has been charged in federal court.
Joseph Emerson of Pleasant Hill, California, was charged with one count of interfering with flight crew members and attendants, according to a <a href="https://www.justice.gov/usao-or/pr/duty-commercial-airline-pilot-charged-federal-court-interfering-flight-crew" target="_blank" rel="noopener">statement</a> from the District of Oregon Department of Justice.
Emerson, 44, was riding in the cockpit jump seat as a passenger on Horizon Air flight 2059 — an affiliate of Alaska Airlines — when he attempted to shut down the plane&#8217;s engines during a flight that departed from Seattle Paine Field International Airport and was scheduled to land at San Francisco International Airport.
Emerson was sitting in the jump seat located in the cockpit just behind the captain and first officer flying the jet. Pilots commonly ride in the jump seat to hitch a free ride when traveling personally or professionally.
Airline officials said in a news release following the incident that the pilots were forced to divert the aircraft to Portland International Airport in Oregon for an emergency landing because of &#8220;a credible security threat related to an authorized occupant in the flight deck jump seat.&#8221;
“The jump seat occupant unsuccessfully attempted to disrupt the operation of the engines,” the airline said in a portion of the news release <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/man-charged-attempted-murder-trying-shut-alaska-airlines-engines-fligh-rcna121681" target="_blank" rel="noopener">reported</a> by NBC. “The Horizon Captain and First Officer quickly responded, engine power was not lost and the crew secured the aircraft without incident.”
Federal authorities said the incident began halfway between Astoria, Oregon, and Portland.
&#8220;Emerson attempted to grab and pull two red fire handles that would have activated the plane&#8217;s emergency fire suppression system and cut off fuel to its engines. After a brief physical struggle with the pilots, Emerson exited the cockpit,&#8221; authorities said.
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During the flight&#8217;s descent into Portland, authorities said a flight attendant had to stop Emerson from attempting to grab another emergency exit handle after other attendants had already placed Emerson in wrist restraints and seated him in the rear of the aircraft.
Alaska Airlines released a follow-up statement on Monday night identifying Emerson, saying he tried to shut the engines down by engaging the Engine Fire Handle, also known as the fire suppression system.
&#8220;The fire suppression system consists of a T-handle for each engine,&#8221; the statement read in part. &#8220;If the T-handle is fully deployed, a valve in the wing closes to shut off fuel to the engine. In this case, the quick reaction of our crew to reset the T-handles ensured engine power was not lost.&#8221;
Audio recorded by LiveATC.net revealed that Seattle-area air traffic controllers were alerted about the attempt to turn off the plane&#8217;s engines.
&#8220;We&#8217;ve got the guy that tried to shut the engines down out of the cockpit, and he doesn&#8217;t sound like he&#8217;s causing any issues in the back right now,&#8221; the pilot told Seattle-area air traffic controllers in audio recorded by LiveATC.net. &#8220;I think he&#8217;s subdued. Other than that, we want law enforcement as soon as we get on the ground and are parked.&#8221;
Upon arrival, the Port of Portland Police Department arrested Emerson for trying to seize control of the flight filled with 80 passengers on board, including lap infants, two pilots, and two flight attendants in the passenger cabin, according to local media.
Emerson was charged with 83 felony counts of attempted murder, 83 counts of reckless endangerment, and one count of endangering an aircraft, according to Multnomah County Sheriff&#8217;s Office booking records.
Emerson remains in custody in Multnomah County on a federal hold pending his first appearance in federal court on a later date.
According to court documents <a href="https://abc7ny.com/pilot-joseph-emerson-alaska-airlines-pleasant-hill-david/13960619/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">reported</a> by ABC, Emerson told police he has been struggling with depression for six months and hadn&#8217;t slept in almost two days. He said he told the flight attendants to restrain him and said to authorities he was having a &#8220;nervous breakdown.&#8221;
Emerson also claimed to have used psychedelic mushrooms and wanted to wake up from what he thought was a dream.
Aubrey Gavello, a passenger on the plane, told ABC that a flight attendant alerted the other passengers that Emerson had suffered a mental breakdown.
&#8220;After we did land and the gentleman was escorted off, the flight attendant got back on the speaker and said, plain and simple, &#8216;He had a mental breakdown,'&#8221; Gavello said. &#8220;We needed to get him off the plane immediately.&#8221;
Alaska Airlines said in a statement <a href="https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12666655/pilot-joseph-david-emerson-trial-attempted-murder.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener">reported</a> by the Daily Mail that the crew responded without hesitation to the &#8220;difficult and highly unusual situation.&#8221;
&#8220;All passengers on board were able to complete their journey with a new crew and aircraft,&#8221; the statement continued. &#8220;We are grateful for the patience of our guests throughout this event and are reaching out to each of them individually to discuss their experience and check-in on their well-being.&#8221;
According to the airline, Emerson joined Alaska Air Group as a Horizon First Officer in August 2001. He left the company in June 2002 to join Virgin America as a pilot. After Alaska acquired Virgin America in 2016, Emerson became an Alaska Airlines First Officer.
He later became an Alaska Airlines Captain in 2019.
&#8220;Throughout his career, Emerson completed his mandated FAA medical certifications in accordance with regulatory requirements, and at no point were his certifications denied, suspended or revoked,&#8221; the statement said.

US-AIRPLANE-ACCIDENT

Off-Duty Pilot Accused Of Attempting To Shut Down Plane Engines Mid-Flight Hit With Federal Charge

Off-Duty Pilot Accused Of Attempting To Shut Off Plane Engines Mid-Flight Hit With Federal Charge

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An off-duty Alaskan Airlines pilot riding as a passenger in the cockpit of a fully occupied flight from Everett, Washington, to San Francisco was reportedly arrested on Sunday after allegedly attempting to shut down the plane&#8217;s engines in midair.
Horizon Air flight 2059 departed Seattle Paine Field International Airport to the Bay Area of California on October 22 when the pilots were forced to divert the aircraft to Portland International Airport in Oregon because of &#8220;a credible security threat related to an authorized occupant in the flight deck jump seat,&#8221; Airline officials said in a news release <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2023/10/23/alaska-airlines-pilot-diverts-flight-after-security-threat-in-cockpit.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener">reported</a> by CNBC.
&#8220;The jump seat occupant unsuccessfully attempted to disrupt the operation of the engines,&#8221; the airline said in a portion of the news release <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/man-charged-attempted-murder-trying-shut-alaska-airlines-engines-fligh-rcna121681" target="_blank" rel="noopener">reported</a> by NBC. &#8220;The Horizon Captain and First Officer quickly responded, engine power was not lost and the crew secured the aircraft without incident.&#8221;
Pilots commonly hitch a free ride when traveling personally or professionally to another airport in a jump seat located in the cockpit just behind the captain and first officer flying the jet.
Airline officials reportedly said the crew followed Federal Aviation Administration procedures and guidance from air traffic control for the flight to safely divert to Portland International Airport and is being investigated by law enforcement authorities.
Audio <a href="https://archive.liveatc.net/kpdx/KPDX-ZSE-Oct-23-2023-0100Z.mp3" target="_blank" rel="noopener">recorded</a> by LiveATC.net revealed that Seattle-area air traffic controllers were alerted about the attempt to turn off the plane&#8217;s engines.
&#8220;We&#8217;ve got the guy that tried to shut the engines down out of the cockpit, and he doesn&#8217;t sound like he&#8217;s causing any issues in the back right now,&#8221; the pilot told Seattle-area air traffic controllers in audio recorded by LiveATC.net. &#8220;I think he&#8217;s subdued. Other than that, we want law enforcement as soon as we get on the ground and are parked.&#8221;
Upon arrival, the Port of Portland Police Department arrested Joseph Emerson, an off-duty pilot accused of trying to seize control of the Alaska Airlines flight filled with 80 passengers on board, including lap infants, two pilots, and two flight attendants in the passenger cabin, according to <a href="https://www.seattletimes.com/business/boeing-aerospace/alaska-air-off-duty-pilot-tries-to-shut-off-engines-on-flight-from-everett/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">local media</a>.
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Emerson, 44, was charged with 83 felony counts of attempted murder, 83 counts of reckless endangerment, and one count of endangering an aircraft, according to Multnomah County Sheriff&#8217;s Office <a href="https://www.mcso.us/PAID/Home/Booking/1573087" target="_blank" rel="noopener">booking records</a>.
It was not immediately clear why Emerson attempted to disrupt the flight. However, Alaska Airlines officials said the crew secured the aircraft without incident.
&#8220;We are grateful for the professional handling of the situation by the Horizon flight crew and appreciate our guests&#8217; calm and patience throughout this event,&#8221; Alaska Airlines said.

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Off-Duty Pilot Accused Of Attempting To Shut Down Plane Engines Mid-Flight Charged With 83 Counts Of Attempted Murder: Reports

Southwest Airlines officials confirmed Wednesday that an off-duty pilot flying as a passenger on a flight out of Las Vegas helped take control of the aircraft shortly after takeoff when the plane&#8217;s captain suffered a medical emergency.
Southwest Flight 6013 departed Las Vegas, Nevada, around 6:30 a.m., heading to Columbus, Ohio, when the captain fainted from stomach pain, according to <a href="https://abcnews.go.com/US/southwest-pilot-suffers-medical-emergency-flight-off-duty/story?id=98073854">ABC</a>. Air traffic control audio obtained by <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2023/03/23/us/southwest-airlines-off-duty-pilot-steps-in-medical-emergency/index.html">CNN</a> recorded a flight crew member notifying officials that &#8220;the captain became incapacitated while en route.&#8221;
Chris Perry, a spokesperson for the airline, told <a href="https://nypost.com/2023/03/23/off-duty-pilot-helps-land-jet-after-captain-incapacitated/">The New York Post</a> a credentialed pilot from another airline flying with Southwest entered the cockpit and &#8220;assisted with radio communication while our Southwest Pilot flew the aircraft.&#8221;
According to air traffic audio reported by ABC, the unidentified off-duty pilot notified control tower operators that flight attendants were with the Southwest pilot in the back of the aircraft.
&#8220;But we need to get him on an ambulance immediately,&#8221; the pilot told air traffic controllers, according to air traffic audio.
Airline officials said the pilot re-routed the aircraft to Las Vegas, where emergency health crews stood by to attend to the captain&#8217;s medical needs. Southwest arranged an alternate flight crew to transport the passengers to their destination.
&#8220;We commend the crew for their professionalism and appreciate our customers&#8217; patience and understanding regarding the situation,&#8221; Southwest said in a statement.
Southwest officials did not immediately disclose the pilot&#8217;s condition.
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Southwest told The Post it was &#8220;standard procedure&#8221; to &#8220;request assistance from traveling medical personnel during in-flight medical events.&#8221;
&#8220;This situation just so happened to involve one of our Employees,&#8221; the airline said
The <a href="https://www.faa.gov/newsroom/faa-urges-airlines-pilots-and-others-take-key-safety-actions">Federal Aviation Administration</a> (FAA) has begun investigating the incident, reminding flight personnel of the &#8220;need for continued vigilance and attention to mitigation of safety risks.&#8221;
FAA authorities issued a safety alert amid six runway incidents since January, including &#8220;a near miss at JFK Airport in January, and a Southwest jet that recently came within 200 feet of slamming into an ambulance crossing the runway at Baltimore&#8217;s airport,&#8221; The Post reported.
&#8220;While the overall numbers do not reflect an increase in incidents and occurrences, the potential severity of these events is concerning,&#8221; the FAA said.

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Actress <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/topic/celebrities">Elizabeth Hurley</a> had some strong words for <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/topic/air-travel">British Airways</a> after being allegedly stranded at an airport for more than 20 hours following a flight delay.
The 57-year-old <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/topic/u-k">British</a> star took to Twitter to vent her frustrations over the lack of communication from the airline. She had been traveling from Antigua and got stuck there Monday.
&#8220;Stranded at Antigua airport with no food or water, taxis or hotels offered yet. Plane delayed 20 hours,&#8221; Hurley <a href="https://twitter.com/ElizabethHurley/status/1605107499006320640">shared</a> with more than 600,000 followers.
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<a href="https://twitter.com/British_Airways?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@British_Airways</a> Stranded at Antigua airport with no food or water, taxis or hotels offered yet. Plane delayed 20 hours.
&mdash; Elizabeth Hurley (@ElizabethHurley) <a href="https://twitter.com/ElizabethHurley/status/1605107499006320640?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">December 20, 2022</a></blockquote>
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&#8220;Still stranded- no food, water or hotel. Pretty dodgy service,&#8221; she wrote in an update an hour later.
“Still nothing from [British Airways],” the “Austin Powers” star posted in a third update. “Extraordinary service! Finally, managed to find a taxi ourselves to escape airport after more than 12 hours with no food or water #avoidflying.”
British Airways replied to the actress by saying, &#8220;We’re experiencing delays to some of our flights due to a technical issue with our flight planning. We&#8217;re sorry for the disruption to your journey, we’re urgently investigating this so that you travel as soon as possible.&#8221;
A rep from the airline also invited Hurley to DM them so they could look into her situation specifically.
This response drew ire from other Twitter users who said the actress was getting special treatment because she was a celebrity. 
“You left my 21 year old daughter stranded in Madrid airport on a Saturday night back in August, did nothing for her and haven’t responded to her compensation claim, yet when someone with some clout kicks off you can’t respond quick enough,” someone <a href="https://twitter.com/ElizabethHurley/status/1605169333914804224">retorted</a>.
“Love the way British airways reply immediately when someone famous posts about a delay, yet when it happens to a non celeb it takes 80 hours to respond. British airways congrats. You know you can automate replies so you could at least seem sincere,” another person agreed.
The airline shared an update on the flight delays on Tuesday.
&#8220;Our teams have now resolved a temporary issue that affected some of our long-haul flight planning systems overnight, which resulted in delays to our schedule,&#8221; the airline said in a <a href="https://www.foxnews.com/entertainment/elizabeth-hurley-vents-fury-british-airways-stranded-no-food-water-12-hours">statement</a> shared with FOX Business.
They also apologized for the &#8220;disruption caused to our customers&#8217; travel plans.”

William P. Lauder and Elizabeth Hurley light The Empire State Building pink in honor of The Est√©e Lauder Companies’ Breast Cancer Campaign’s 30th Anniversary

Elizabeth Hurley Blasts British Airways During Extended Delay With ‘No Food Or Water’

Elizabeth Hurley Blasts British Airways During Extended Delay With 'No Food Or Water'

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