Two giant pandas arrive in Edinburgh, heading for Edinburgh Zoo, after an nine-hour flight from China.

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Giant pandas arrive in Edinburgh

In the Rockaways, on the 10th anniversary of the crash of American Airlines Flight 587, a bell tolled, and the names of 265 victims were read.

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City Room: Remembering Crash of Flight 587 in Belle Harbor, Queens

Passengers are stranded on a plane at Gatwick Airport for more than eight hours after fog caused their flight to be diverted.

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Passengers stranded on aircraft

DETROIT — As Northwest Airlines Flight 253 approached U.S. airspace on Christmas Day 2009, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the passenger in window seat 19A, began his final preparations for death, a federal prosecutor said at the opening of the Nigerian defendant’s terrorism trial here Tuesday. Abdulmutallab, now 24, went to the bathroom, where he purified himself with water, brushed his teeth and applied perfume to his body, Assistant U.S. Attorney Jonathan Tukel said in his opening statement before a jury of nine women and three men. Read full article > >

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Terror trial opens in plane bomb attempt

ROMULUS, Mich. — Police temporarily detained and questioned three passengers at Detroit’s Metropolitan Airport on Sunday after the crew of the Frontier Airlines flight from Denver reported suspicious activity on board, and NORAD sent two F-16 jets to shadow the flight until it landed safely, airline and federal officials said. Read full article > >

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No charges against 3 passengers detained for ‘suspicious’ behavior on Denver-Detroit flight

TRIPOLI — The Libyan man convicted of the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, is near death and barely conscious, his brother said Monday, echoing statements by the country’s new leaders that Abdel Basset Ali al-Megrahi should not be extradited for the 1988 terrorist attack that killed 270 people. Since rebel forces gained full control over the capital of Tripoli last week, American and European politicians have called for Megrahi to be returned to a foreign jail. A Scottish court released him in 2009 after Libya said he had been diagnosed with terminal prostate cancer and had only months to live. Read full article > >

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Lockerbie bomber ‘very, very sick,’ brother says

The fall of Moammar Gaddafi ends the rule of one of the most mercurial and menacing figures in recent history — the “mad dog” sponsor of international terrorism who allied himself with the George W. Bush administration’s war on terror; the pan-Arabist who at one time or another alienated nearly all of his Arab brethren; and the self-styled revolutionary philosopher who, in the end, was just another violent dictator clinging to power. With his trademark sunglasses, flowing robes and jut-jawed insouciance, Col. Gaddafi — he bestowed the rank on himself after seizing power in 1969 — has long been one of the world’s more recognizable figures. For many Americans, he is also the reviled author of the 1988 bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, which killed 270 people. And in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, fearing U.S. anger and needing international investment after years of sanctions, Gaddafi made himself over as a friend of the West, disavowing weapons of mass destruction and sharing intelligence on al-Qaeda. Read full article > >

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The rise and fall of Libyan leader Moammar Gaddafi

BOSTON — Smoke in the cabin has forced a US Airways flight from Spain to land in Boston, and an airline spokeswoman says four flight attendants have gone to the hospital to be evaluated. Spokeswoman Liz Landau says Flight 749 from Madrid was heading to Charlotte, N.C., Saturday morning with 192 passengers and a crew of nine, but had to land in Boston shortly after 11 a.m. Landau says the smoke had dissipated by the time the plane landed, and no passengers complained of any problems. She says she doesn’t know whether the flight attendants have been released from the hospital. Read full article > >

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Cabin smoke forces Spain-to-NC flight to land in Boston; 4 flight attendants taken to hospital

Shannon Beebe loved the thrill of piloting small planes, the kinds that could take off and land on water, fly through African conflict zones and impress women. The thick-bodied Army lieutenant colonel — who played competitive polo and co- authored an anti-weapons book that riled military colleagues — logged 1,000 hours of backcountry flying in Africa and Alaska. He boasted about flying across the Arctic Circle and the Equator. He enjoyed jumping out of airplanes, too. But the flight that ended Beebe’s life was in tranquil Fauquier County last Sunday, a clear afternoon. Beebe, 42, was piloting a single-engine plane toward Warrenton Air Park, carrying his girlfriend, Alexandria attorney Elizabeth Pignatello , when the aircraft banked steeply, crashed in a field and burst into flames, according to Virginia State Police, relatives and a witness. Read full article > >

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He thrilled at the most challenging flying but died in routine test flight

The landing gear of a Delta Air Lines jet apparently caught fire during a rough landing Saturday afternoon at Atlanta’s main airport, but the flight’s approximately 50 passengers and crew were evacuated safely, authorities said. (May 29) Read full article > >

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Delta plane catches fire; four hurt

Investigators say the flight recordings from the Air France plane that crashed in the Atlantic in 2009 have been preserved and are readable.

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Air France recorder data ‘intact’

Members of Prince William’s search-and-rescue unit say that all 27 of them have been invited to attend his wedding. All of the crew members of the C Flight 22 unit will be attending the ceremony with their partners. Flight Cmdr. Iain “Spike” Wright…

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Will Invites His Rescue Unit to Wedding

When the New York Times phoned my father’s office at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in 1993, the reporter had hopes of a gotcha moment. The article featured a short biography of my dad but focused on the age-old question, “So you’re a rocket scientist, but can you program your VCR?” My father said yes, and his kids could too. When I saw the article in the Times , I was the mature age of eight and assumed thousands — maybe millions – of my peers could also call their fathers rocket scientists. One of eleven NASA centers, Marshall Space Flight Center neighbors the town of Huntsville in Alabama. Most of my childhood friends’ families had transferred to Huntsville to engineer the Apollo program, the Space Shuttle or one of NASA’s science missions like the Hubble Space Telescope. My own grandfather had moved from the Midwest in the 1960s to work on the Army’s missile projects, also developed at the arsenal in Alabama. When I graduated high school, Huntsville had the highest number of Ph.D.s per capita in the entire United States. It seemed like everyone’s parents were rocket scientists. The Space Shuttle fleet retires this year and I have doubts that the next generation of eight-year-olds in Huntsville will also identify with rocket science or human spaceflight. The rocketry business is not booming. American efforts in space will rely upon Russian transport to and from the International Space Station. There is not yet a replacement for the Shuttle, as efforts to develop new vehicles throughout the 1990s and 2000s were overly ambitious, underfunded or full of political risk. The story of government-funded efforts in space is a timeline of highs and lows. Eight years after Yuri Gagarin became the first man to enter space in 1961, an elated American public cheered as Neil Armstrong and the Apollo 11 crew landed on the moon. The Apollo 13 mission, which did not reach the moon’s surface after an explosion crippled its craft, was a “successful failure” as its crew returned safely to Earth. The next transportation project was the Space Shuttle, designed in the 1970s to provide ready and reusable access to low Earth orbit. By design, the Shuttle made access to space more routine than any previous effort with its reusability and room for cargo. The achievements in science and engineering en route to and aboard the Shuttle were not at all boring, yet human spaceflight became routine and its risks diminished. NASA met its goal of exploring low Earth orbit with minimal drama. The images of harrowing tragedies like the Apollo 1 fire and the Challenger and Columbia disasters still remind Americans of the risks. Most of my peers do not think of government as a driver of technological advancement — that is Silicon Valley’s job. Few know how the early computer industry learned from Apollo or about experiments aboard the Shuttle to refine cancer treatments. Among NASA’s goals is to produce “practical breakthroughs,” according to Marshall Space Flight Center’s Director Robert Lightfoot. If you are thinking about using liquid hydrogen to power, say, a hybrid car, you might call him. The end of the Space Shuttle program means NASA centers around the U.S. will change drastically the scale and scope of their work. In a revised exploration strategy, NASA will develop far-reaching and heavy-lift capabilities more similar to Apollo than Shuttle, while supporting small, private firms’ development to enter low Earth orbit. Space tourism alone does not yet offer sufficient demand for firms like SpaceX and Virgin Galactic. A month before the Times reporter phoned my father, a Gallup poll surveyed American support for NASA. The lowest percentage in the poll’s history said NASA’s funds should increase — 46 percent — leading Gallup to conclude that in times of economic anxiety, Americans are less willing to spend on space exploration. Today, NASA remains in the middle of strategy and budget battles between the White House and Congress, without a clear, celestial destination. In the Washington policy debate of economic growth and innovation, human spaceflight seems an afterthought. As Congress cuts costs, NASA will have to motivate both policymakers and its staff to achieve a more complex set of human spaceflight missions that are equally ambitious and practical. In 2000, the respected Apollo flight director Gene Kranz wrote, “lacking a clear goal … [NASA] has become just another federal bureaucracy beset by competing agendas.” After fifty years, the challenges to human spaceflight are more managerial than technical.

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So, Your Dad’s a Rocket Scientist

Check your flight status: Southwest Airlines may cancel 300 additional flights on Sunday, having already canceled the same number of departures Saturday. The move, while necessary based on safety fears, will cost the carrier millions. The airline…

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Southwest May Cancel 600 Flights

Resident of the Grandmont Rosedale area are digging in to fight the flight and hold their community together.

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Detroit Journal: Trying to Save a City, or at Least a Part