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    Why did Delta Air Lines tweet that the Palestinian flag is ‘terrifying’? | Arwa Mahdawi

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    There’s been a huge increase in scary airline incidents recently. Last week, there was yet another one when passengers on a Delta flight from Boston to West Palm Beach experienced extreme turbulence. No, this wasn’t a Boeing-related safety glitch; it was far more serious than that. A flight attendant was wearing a tiny Palestine flag pin on his uniform.Terrifying, right? Just unbelievable that, nine months into Israel’s relentless bombardment of Gaza, someone might feel the urge to publicly express solidarity with a group of people who are being bombed into oblivion. Absolutely mind-boggling that someone might feel moved by the fact that, according to United Nations rights experts, Israel has carried out a “targeted starvation campaign” in Gaza and babies are dying of malnutrition. Really chilling that an American felt upset by their taxpayer money being used to fund an assault which is killing civilians at a scale and pace many experts have called “unprecedented”.Luckily there was a brave passenger on the plane to call this foolishness out. Someone snapped a photo of the flight attendant and posted it on social media. Various anti-Palestinian accounts quickly mobilized to uncover the man’s identity and pressure Delta to get him fired. A Twitter account called iliketeslas then found another picture of a Delta employee wearing a Palestine flag and tweeted: “imagine getting into a @Delta flight and seeing workers with Hamas badges in the air. What do you do?”Well, personally, the first thing I’d do is explain to the person complaining that the Palestinian flag is not a “Hamas badge”. But I’m not the person manning Delta’s official Twitter/X account. Instead, that person replied from Delta’s official X account: “I hear you and I’d be terrified as well, personally. Our employees reflect our culture and we do not take it lightly when our policy is not being followed.”Let me just spell that out. Someone on Delta’s communication team thinks the Palestinian flag is terrifying and had no problem tweeting that out from the company’s official @Delta account.And this, by the way, isn’t the first time that Delta has been in the news for cracking down on pro-Palestinian messages. This week the non-profit news organization Truthout published a piece alleging that an anti-Zionist Jewish American man called Louie Siegel was told to remove a pro-ceasefire T-shirt during a recent Delta Air Lines flight from São Paulo to Chicago. The T-shirt said “Not in Our Name” on the front side and “Jews Say Ceasefire Now” on the back. Real extremist stuff, eh? Siegel had to cover it up to stay on the plane and was warned he would be put on a no-fly list if he didn’t comply.Delta’s tweet about the terrifying Palestinian flag, by the way, was quickly deleted. But a proper apology from the airline hasn’t been forthcoming. “Delta removed a mistakenly posted comment on X Tuesday because it was not in line with our values and our mission to connect the world,” a Delta spokesperson told me via email on Thursday. “The team member responsible for the post has been counseled and no longer supports Delta’s social channels. We apologize for this error.”Delta’s spokesperson also clarified that neither flight attendant was fired for wearing the pins and said they’d been offered support. They added: “However, as of [Thursday], Delta is shifting its pin allowance policy effective July 15. Beginning then, only US flags will be permitted to be worn on uniforms. Previously, pins representing countries/nationalities of the world had been permitted.”While it’s encouraging that Delta’s flight attendants haven’t been terminated for the crime of wearing a Palestinian flag pin, minimizing this incident as an “error” is insulting. Writing an important email that says “I hope you like tit!” instead of “I hope you like it!” (which is something I have unfortunately done) is what you call an error. Using an official corporate social media account to call the Palestinian flag terrifying, on the other hand, is a hell of a lot more than that.Rather, it’s yet another example of just how widespread and normalized anti-Palestinian bigotry has become in the US. Indeed, racism towards Palestinians is so acceptable that when Donald Trump used “Palestinian” as a slur against Joe Biden in the recent debate, there was barely any outrage. Biden certainly didn’t call Trump out on his racism.Gaza is hell on earth at the moment. Perhaps there will be a ceasefire at one point, but Gaza will never be the same. According to a recent piece by the Israeli paper Haaretz, “The IDF has taken control of 26% of the Gaza Strip … [and] the expulsion of hundreds of thousands of Gazans to the southern part of the Strip is becoming permanent. This, an IDF soldier told Haaretz, is ‘an effort at prolonged occupation’.”Meanwhile Israel is loudly and proudly annexing the occupied West Bank, recently approving the largest seizure of land in more than three decades, according to a report by an Israeli anti-settlement watchdog.We are witnessing ethnic cleansing and mass murder in real time and yet speaking out about these horrors – doing something as little as wearing a Palestinian pin in public – puts you at risk of being smeared, harassed and fired from your job. It’s become difficult to even speak about the death toll in Gaza now. The House recently passed an amendment preventing the state department from citing the Gaza health ministry’s death toll statistics for the war. That is the only official entity tracking death data in Gaza; banning these figures effectively halts any conversation about the death toll.“They want to erase the Palestinians who are living,” said Representative Rashida Tlaib in response to the amendment, “and now they are trying to erase the Palestinians who are dead.” As Tlaib says, there is a widespread effort to “dehumanize Palestinians and erase Palestinians from existence”. It’s this that should terrify you. Not a tiny Palestinian flag.

    Arwa Mahdawi is a Guardian columnist

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      Boeing bosses accused of ‘strip mining’ company for profit in Senate hearing

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      The CEO of Boeing has acknowledged “something went wrong” at the embattled planemaker after another whistleblower came forward, alleging that corners were cut on its production line.Dave Calhoun acknowledged some employees who raised concerns about safety and quality inside the company faced retaliation.The executive did not have the number of managers fired for retaliating against whistleblowers “on the tip of my tongue”, he told senators, “but I know it happens”.At a hearing entitled “Boeing’s Broken Safety Culture”, Richard Blumenthal, chair of the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, declared that the company was facing a “moment of reckoning” – and called for prosecutions.In heated exchanges, Calhoun – who has already announced plans to step down later this year – and Boeing executives were accused of “strip mining” the company for profit. “You’re cutting corners, you’re eliminating safety procedures, you’re sticking it to your employees,” said Josh Hawley, the Republican senator.“It’s working out great for you,” Hawley added, citing Calhoun’s “extraordinary” $33m pay package and asking why he had not yet resigned. “I’m sticking this through,” Calhoun replied. “I am proud of every action we have taken.”Hours before the session Sam Mohawk, a quality assurance inspector for the company in Renton, Washington, became the latest Boeing employee to go public with claims of safety issues. He alleged that he was instructed by his supervisors to conceal evidence from regulators.Boeing has come under intense scrutiny since a terrifying cabin panel blowout in January prompted fresh questions about quality and safety.View image in fullscreen“More than a dozen” whistleblowers have now come forward, according to Blumenthal, who urged other concerned workers at Boeing to contact his office. “Boeing needs to stop thinking about the next earnings call and start thinking about the next generation.”Calhoun insisted that he did not “recognize any of the Boeing you describe” when senators accused the company of weakening safety systems. “​Our culture is far from perfect,” he said, “but we are taking action, and we are making progress.”As he spoke, the families of victims of two Boeing plane crashes, in 2018 and 2019, in which 346 people were killed, and whistleblowers who spoke out about their experiences at the company, were sitting with him in the room.Turning to the families before starting his evidence, Calhoun apologized to them directly for their “gut-wrenching” losses.The company has delivered a quality improvement plan to the US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), and claimed that employees have been emboldened to come forward with safety and quality concerns on the factory floor.But accounts from inside Boeing’s facilities have raised further questions. Earlier this month the Guardian reported on claims the firm’s largest factory was in “panic mode”.Whistleblowers including Sam Salehpour, a current engineer at Boeing, and Roy Irvin, a former quality investigator, have gone public with allegations about safety in recent months.“This is a culture that continues to prioritize profits, push limits and disregard its workers,” Blumenthal said of Boeing before Tuesday’s hearing. “A culture that enables retaliation against those who do not submit to the bottom line. A culture that desperately needs to be repaired.”Blumenthal said Mohawk recently told the panel he had witnessed systemic disregard for documentation and accountability of nonconforming parts.In a report released by the committee, Mohawk said his work handling nonconforming parts became significantly more “complex and demanding” after the resumption of production of the 737 Max, its bestselling commercial jet, in 2020. Production had been suspended following the two crashes in 2018 and 2019.Mohawk alleged the number of nonconformance reports soared 300% compared with before the grounding of the Max. The 737 program lost parts that were intentionally hidden from the FAA during one inspection, he claimed.Mohawk filed a related claim in June with the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, a federal regulator.Boeing said: “We received this document late Monday evening and are reviewing the claims. We continuously encourage employees to report all concerns as our priority is to ensure the safety of our airplanes and the flying public.”Reuters contributed reporting More

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      ‘Very alarming’: US airport screenings see a surge in loaded guns

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      ‘Very alarming’: US airport screenings see a surge in loaded gunsYou can’t carry a bottle of water on board the plane, but plenty of people – knowingly and unknowingly – try to carry gunA Connecticut woman was the first of the week, walking her child through security at New York’s JFK airport with a loaded gun in her purse and “one in the chamber”, as officials put it.Over the following days, an X-ray machine detected a 9mm pistol and ammunition in the hand luggage of a passenger in Philadelphia, a .45 caliber handgun and seven bullets in the carry-on bag of a man boarding a plane at New York’s Westchester airport, and a loaded weapon carried through screening in Wisconsin. ‘The kids need help’: how young people want adults to tackle gun violenceRead moreSecurity officers confiscated two firearms in two days at the Columbus, Ohio international airport. Other arrests for guns turned up by searches were made at terminals in Virginia, Pennsylvania and Connecticut.And that was just a fraction of the 18 guns confiscated every day on average from passengers traversing flight security across the US – a number that has been rising for years and is likely to continue doing so as firearms sales rise and more states make it easier to carry concealed weapons – even in airports.Two decades after 9/11, thousands of passengers who are otherwise conditioned to remove their shoes, bag their liquids and all too often surrender their dignity at security screenings somehow manage to forget they are carrying an object that is the very reason they are being searched in the first place.Last year, the US Transport Security Administration (TSA) seized 6,542 guns from people about to board planes at 262 airports – a sixfold increase since 2010. Nearly nine in 10 of the weapons were loaded.Jeffrey Price, former assistant director of security at Denver international airport and co-author of a book on aviation security, said he wasn’t surprised.“One of our unique American traits is the number of people who purchase a weapon and forget they even have the thing with them. It seems like every time there’s another active shooter incident, a lot more people go out and buy guns because they feel scared,” he said.“A lot of those people who buy a gun in the heat of the moment, they toss it in their laptop bag or in their purse, and then they forget they have it. Next thing you know, they’re at the airport and oh, my gosh, I forgot I put that in there. Which in itself is pretty scary because it could mean they’re leaving a bag lying around at home with a gun in for a kid to get to.”The TSA says that passengers claiming to forget they even have a gun is the most common explanation and is frequently accepted by the police. Although officials were more skeptical about a man who blamed his mother for packing a rifle found in his bag at Baltimore airport.Price said other factors are also at work.”There’s also [a] certain percentage of people that think because they’ve been issued a permit (to carry a gun) they can carry it anywhere, anytime, which is not true. And then you’ve got people that just think they can slip it through. The TSA won’t notice,” he said.They would include the passengers caught trying to smuggle guns stuffed inside a raw chicken, jars of peanut butter, a PlayStation and an arm sling.Some cities and states press criminal charges, and the offending individual is marched out the airport in handcuffs. But it is not uncommon in gun-friendly parts of the country for a passenger to be allowed to put their weapon in their car and return to board their flight.Atlanta airport tops the gun seizure table with more than one a day found in passenger hand luggage.“It is very alarming,” Balram Bheodari, manager of Atlanta airport, told a congressional hearing last year about the record number of guns seized on his watch. “Eighty-six percent of those weapons had a round in the chamber or a loaded magazine in the weapon. Very, very alarming.”Bheodari had to contend with an incident 15 months ago in which a passenger “lunged” for a bag as a TSA agent began to search it and accidentally fired a gun inside, sending people around him diving for the floor and shutting down flight departures. The airport put out a message assuring passengers “there was not an active shooter”.The man ran out the airport with the gun but left his boarding pass behind and was arrested three days later.It was perhaps no surprise that Atlanta leads the nation. In 2014, Georgia’s Republican-controlled legislature passed a law pushed by the National Rifle Association allowing people to carry loaded guns in the state’s airports.Georgia was also one of 10 states to pass laws over the past couple of years no longer requiring a permit to carry a concealed firearm. Tennessee was another. The state’s TSA’s security director, Steve Wood, drew a direct line between weaker gun regulation and weapons at airports.“Since the implementation of new gun laws in the state last year, we’ve seen a significant increase in the number of firearms brought to Tennessee security checkpoints,” he said.There is also the disturbing question of how many guns go undetected.In 2015, ABC News revealed that the TSA sent undercover investigators through airport checkpoints carrying real guns and fake bombs. Security officers only discovered three of the 70 smuggled items.The TSA’s director was sacked. The Department of Homeland Security promised reforms but two years later security agents were still failing to detect about 80% of weapons in tests because of a mix of inadequate equipment and human failings.Since then the TSA has stopped talking publicly about such tests of its system.Ban on marijuana users owning guns is unconstitutional, judge rulesRead morePrice said travelers should assume that some guns get on to planes.“It’s really a matter of deterrence. Can we catch enough prohibited items to make it not worth a terrorist or criminal’s effort to try and get through the system with one? We’re never gonna catch everything. That some guns will get onto planes is just one of those things we have to accept if we’re going to accept aviation as part of our daily lives,” he said.Which makes it something of a miracle that no one has been shot accidentally mid-flight.“It is kind of amazing,” said Price. “One of the few that did go off accidentally was when a US Airways pilot, who was authorized to carry on a gun on the flight deck, fired off a round as he was putting it back in its holster.”The pilot said he was trying to stow the gun for landing when it went off, blowing a hole in the cockpit just below the window.TopicsUS gun controlGeorgiaAirline industryUS politicsnewsReuse this content More

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      ‘It’s been rough’: passengers weather another day of chaos at US airports

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      ‘It’s been rough’: passengers weather another day of chaos at US airportsFrom weather disruptions to computer problems to crew shortages, customers are once again caught in travel limbo After an $8bn makeover, New York’s new LaGuardia airport complex is finally an airport the city can be proud of. Unfortunately the same can not be said for the industry it serves.For the second time in almost two weeks thousands of flights were canceled across the US on Wednesday – this time because of what appears to be a snafu with an antiquated computer system. Passengers have had enough.“It’s been rough this last couple of years,” said Deb Alexis, who had traveled to New York from Orlando. “The flight was great but now there’s stress because the bags haven’t come. Seems like there’s a lot of confusion and delays nowadays.”‘A wild Christmas eve’: strangers stranded by airline chaos team up for road tripsRead moreAsked if airline travel is becoming altogether too much trouble, Danny Dividu, on his way to Georgia when his Southwest plane was canceled, said simply: “Hell yes. Now I’ve got to go back upstairs to check in again. I usually go Greyhound. Best way to go. I hate flying. It’s too much hassle, always has been.”Another day, another crisis at US airports.It might have been the cascading weather-related disruptions the US experienced over the holidays, or computer issues, scheduling, pilot or crew shortages but the outcome was familiar: customers left in a helpless state of air travel limbo.Whatever the precise cause of Wednesday’s issues, they are part of a wider set of problems for travelers, airlines and the FAA, said Robert Mann, a former airline executive who now runs the consulting firm RW Mann & Company.“The FAA runs on hardware and software that is in many cases decades old,” he said. “And it’s a multi-year effort to build and install them.”Even a small, regional failure can have knock-on effects for the entire network, he said, but this “seems to be a system failure” and travelers could expect more issues unless something is done.The FAA estimates that delayed and canceled flights cost the US economy $33bn in 2019. “Everyone – the department of transportation, the general accounting office, Congress – agree that there is a significant cost to this but nobody does anything about it,” Mann said.Congress is set to debate the funding of the FAA this year and the hearings are expected to be heated. The FAA is currently without a leader and has been since last March.Biden has nominated Phillip Washington, currently the chief executive of Denver International Airport, to the position. But his nomination has been clouded by criticism of his lack of experience in the aviation industry and ties to a corruption scandal.With Republicans now in charge of the House, Biden’s nomination looks more uncertain and the latest mess will expose the transport secretary, Pete Buttigieg, to more criticism following the chaos at US airports over the holidays.After the flight restrictions were lifted, Buttigieg said his department was not ruling out the possibility that nefarious activity was to blame for the computer system outage.“We’re not prepared to rule that out,” Buttigieg said in an interview on MSNBC. “There is no direct indication of any kind of external or nefarious activity, but we are not yet prepared to rule that out,” Buttigieg said.After the incident senator Ted Cruz, the top Republican on the Senate committee on commerce, science and transportation, called for congressional reforms to the FAA.Southwest Airlines under investigation as more flights canceled after stormRead more“The flying public deserves safety in the sky,” the Texas senator said in a statement. “The administration needs to explain to Congress what happened, and Congress should enact reforms in this year’s FAA reauthorization legislation.”Wednesday’s incident, Cruz added, “highlights why the public needs a competent, proven leader with substantive aviation experience leading the FAA”.By mid-morning, the FAA issued its fifth bulletin. “Normal air traffic operations are resuming gradually across the United States following an overnight outage,” the agency said in a statement.By then, it was too late for many passengers. Jordan Cousins, 25, on his way to Nashville on Southwest from New York’s LaGuardia, said his Southwest flight had been delayed twice and then canceled entirely.“It’s this and then it’s that. You never know. You may have a smooth flight or there may be a problem. It may be at the counter, with the plane, or something,” he said. “Plans never go as planned.”TopicsAirline industryUS politicsNew YorkAir transportfeaturesReuse this content More

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      Biden bans Russian aircraft in US airspace and vows to go after oligarchs

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      Biden bans Russian aircraft in US airspace and vows to go after oligarchsBiden says DoJ taskforce will stop ‘crimes of Russian oligarchs’Moves will further isolate Vladimir Putin, president says Joe Biden announced on Tuesday night that the US is banning Russian aircraft from its airspace and pledged to go after Russian oligarchs in retaliation for the invasion of Ukraine.Biden said the moves would further isolate Vladimir Putin. “The Ruble has lost 30% of its value,” he said. “The Russian stock market has lost 40% of its value and trading remains suspended. Russia’s economy is reeling and Putin alone is to blame.”State of the Union: Joe Biden pledges to make Putin pay for Ukraine invasionRead moreBiden said the US Department of Justice was assembling a dedicated taskforce to go after “the crimes of Russian oligarchs. We are joining with our European allies to find and seize their yachts, their luxury apartments, their private jets. We are coming for their ill-begotten gains,” he said.The announcements are the latest in a series of sanctions against Russia and follows similar actions by Canada and the European Union this week.Biden offered an ominous warning that without consequences, Putin’s aggression wouldn’t be contained to Ukraine.“Throughout our history we’ve learned this lesson: when dictators do not pay a price for their aggression, they cause more chaos,” Biden said. “They keep moving. And, the costs and threats to America and the world keep rising.”On Sunday, the EU and Canada announced they were closing their airspace to Russian airlines and private planes owned by wealthy Russians.Russia’s largest airline, Aeroflot, on Monday said that it had suspended flights to New York, Washington, Miami and Los Angeles through Wednesday because of Canada’s decision.No US airlines fly to Russia, though a few flights to India pass through Russian airspace. American Airlines routes its lone flight between Delhi and New York to avoid Russian airspace. FedEx and UPS both fly over Russia, although they announced this weekend that they were suspending deliveries to that country.European airlines fly over Russia far more often than their US counterparts. Before the war, about 600 flights to or from Europe passed through Russian airspace, according to aviation data firm Cirium.Aviation experts say Russia derives a sizable amount of money from fees that it levies to use its airspace or land at its airports.The ban would come on top of a wide range of sanctions the US, Europe and other countries have imposed on Russia that are expected to hammer its economy including cutting off Russian banks from the Swift international banking system, preventing the Russian central bank from deploying its international reserves, and freezing the assets of people close to Putin.Wires contributed to this reportTopicsJoe BidenRussiaUkraineUS politicsEuropeAirline industrynewsReuse this content More

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      US airline officials warn of ‘catastrophic’ crisis in aviation with new 5G service

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      US airline officials warn of ‘catastrophic’ crisis in aviation with new 5G serviceIntroduction of the new technology near airports could interfere with critical airplane instruments such as radio altimeters US airline chiefs have warned that the introduction of a new 5G service could cause US commerce to “grind to a halt” due to possibly grounding a significant number of aircraft and might “strand tens of thousands of Americans overseas”.Warnings of an impending “catastrophic” crisis in aviation came in a letter sent to White House National Economic Council director Brian Deese, transportation secretary Pete Buttigieg, Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) administrator Steve Dickson and Federal Communications Commission (FCC) chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel, Reuters reported Monday.Airbus and Boeing express concerns over 5G interference in USRead more“Unless our major hubs are cleared to fly, the vast majority of the traveling and shipping public will essentially be grounded,” the letter, signed by the chief executives of American Airlines, Delta Air Lines, United Airlines, Southwest Airlines and Jet Blue, as well as freight and parcel carriers UPS and FedEx, said.They warned new C-Band 5G technology could interfere with critical airplane instruments such as radio altimeters – which judge the distance from the ground to the bottom of the flying vessel – and have an impact on low-visibility operations.“This means that on a day like yesterday, more than 1,100 flights and 100,000 passengers would be subjected to cancellations, diversions or delays,” the letter cautioned, adding a call for urgent action to be taken.“To be blunt, the nation’s commerce will grind to a halt,” the executives said.Airlines for America, the lobbying group that organized the letter, and government agencies were not immediately available for comment.In a letter dated 4 January, the group thanked Buttigieg, Dickson and Deese for “reaching the agreement with AT&T and Verizon to delay their planned 5G C-band deployment around certain airports for two weeks and to commit to the proposed mitigations”.“Safety is and always will be the top priority of US airlines,” it said. “We will continue to work with all stakeholders to help ensure that new 5G service can coexist with aviation safely.”As part of the agreement – which was dated 3 January – AT&T and Verizon agreed to create buffer zones around 50 US airports to reduce interference risks and take other steps to cut potential interference for six months.But the agreement to delay wider implementation of the technology to 19 January is about to expire. The airlines had requested “that 5G be implemented everywhere in the country except within the approximate 2 miles (3.2 km) of airport runways” at some key airports.“Immediate intervention is needed to avoid significant operational disruption to air passengers, shippers, supply chain and delivery of needed medical supplies,” Reuters reported the letter as saying.It also warned that flight restrictions will not be limited to poor weather operations.“Multiple modern safety systems on aircraft will be deemed unusable causing a much larger problem than what we knew … Airplane manufacturers have informed us that there are huge swaths of the operating fleet that may need to be indefinitelygrounded.”The airlines urged action to ensure “5G is deployed except when towers are too close to airport runways until the FAA can determine how that can be safely accomplished without catastrophic disruption”.On Sunday, the FAA said it had cleared an estimated 45% of US commercial airplanes to perform low-visibility landings at many airports where 5G C-band will be deployed starting on Wednesday.The warning follows previous alerts that Medevac helicopters or the aircraft that hospitals and rescue missions may also be affected by the technology.According to a Bloomberg report, 5G interference on radio altimeters on emergency helicopters could ground operations. The 5G will not necessarily shut down the altimeter, but could cause it to give inaccurate readings.Topics5GAirline industryUS politicsnewsReuse this content More

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      US airlines facing ‘Thelma and Louise’ moment as government aid set to expire

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      US airlines are facing what one leading analyst calls a “Thelma and Louise” moment as the industry approaches a government-funding deadline that could decide its future.On 30 September a government aid packages used to protect workers expires, the airlines have already announced huge layoffs but what comes next could be even worse.“I don’t think people get the Thelma and Louise analogy here. The car is up to speed, it’s headed toward the cliff and we know what happens next because you’ve seen the movie,” said industry analyst Robert Mann.Along with leisure and retail, the airline industry has been one of the most direly affected by the Covid-19 pandemic. Passenger numbers are down 70% and the loss of business and frequent flyer travelers has pushed revenue down by as as much as 85%.In March, airlines were offered two sources of money as part of the US government’s coronavirus stimulus package, the Cares Act. The act gave the industry $25bn in loans to cover general costs and $25bn to keep workers on payroll. The payroll cash is made up of grants that don’t need to be paid back but the loans come with strings attached.Airlines will have to give the US government some equity stake in return for the loans. Some airlines, including American, Hawaiian Airlines and Spirit Airlines have agreed to take the cash. Others including Delta, United and Southwest, have yet to decide whether they will tap the loans. More

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      $2tn US coronavirus relief comes without climate stipulations

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