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    Small Plane Crashes Into Simi Valley, Calif., Homes, Killing Pilot

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    Residents were in the two homes that were struck, but they were evacuated without injuries, the Ventura County Fire Department said.A small plane crashed into two homes in Simi Valley, Calif., on Saturday, killing the pilot, according to the Federal Aviation Administration and the Ventura County Fire Department.Residents were inside the two-story, single-family homes, and were evacuated without any injuries, the fire department said. The homes suffered structural damage and fire damage.The identity of the pilot was not released.Video posted on social media by the fire department showed firefighters on a roof tending to a smoking area of one of the houses.The plane, a single engine fixed-wing Van’s Aircraft RV-10, had departed from General William J. Fox Airfield in Lancaster and was heading to Camarillo Airport near the city of Thousand Oaks before it crashed around 2:10 p.m., the F.A.A. said.Simi Valley is a city of 125,000 people about 40 miles northwest of downtown Los Angeles.Photos from the scene showed smoke billowing shortly after the crash and, later, a gaping hole in the roof of a structure.“The plane was flying very low and attempted to gain altitude a couple of times but looked like it could not,” an X user, who posted a photo after the crash, said on social media. More

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      2 Planes Abort Landings as Army Helicopter Flies Near D.C. Airport

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      The episode followed a fatal collision between a military helicopter and a commercial jet in January, and prompted concern and outrage among officials.Federal transportation safety officials were investigating on Friday after two commercial flights aborted landings because an Army helicopter had entered the airspace around Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport, where helicopter traffic has been restricted since a fatal collision in January.Air traffic controllers instructed Delta Air Lines Flight 1671 and Republic Airways Flight 5825 to abort their landings around 2:30 p.m. Thursday because of the helicopter’s presence, according to the Federal Aviation Administration, which has begun an investigation along with the National Transportation Safety Board.The helicopter was a Black Hawk headed to the nearby Pentagon, the safety board said.Both planes later landed safely, but the episode prompted outrage among officials in Washington.“Our helicopter restrictions around DCA are crystal clear,” Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said in a social media post, using the airport’s code. He said he would speak to the Defense Department about “why the hell our rules were disregarded.”The Army said in a brief statement that the helicopter had been “directed by Pentagon air traffic control to conduct a ‘go-around,’ overflying the Pentagon helipad in accordance with approved flight procedures,” as it headed to the Pentagon.“The incident is currently under investigation,” the Army said. “The United States Army remains committed to aviation safety and conducting flight operations within all approved guidelines and procedures.”The F.A.A. had restricted nonessential helicopter traffic around the airport, which is just miles from the Capitol and the White House, after a Jan. 29 midair collision between an American Airlines flight and Army Black Hawk helicopter killed 67 people.The episode on Thursday also renewed concerns by lawmakers, many of whom use the airport.Senator Ted Cruz, the Texas Republican who leads the Senate’s committee that handles transportation, said the incident underscored continuing risks posed by military flights near the airport and called for legislation to improve civilian air safety.“Just days after military flights resumed in the National Capital Region, the Army is once again putting the traveling public at risk,” Mr. Cruz said on social media. “Thank God there was a decisive response from air traffic controllers and pilots, or else these two close calls could have resulted in the loss of hundreds of lives.”Senator Maria Cantwell of Washington, the committee’s top Democrat, criticized the military flight’s proximity to commercial traffic.She called it “far past time” for Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and the F.A.A. “to give our airspace the security and safety attention it deserves.” More

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      Newark Airport Is Experiencing Major Flight Delays. What’s Causing Them?

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      Staffing shortages at an air traffic control center have added to the effects of a runway closure, prompting United Airlines to cut flights at the hub.Flying into or out of Newark Liberty International Airport has brought plenty of misery in the last week, with cancellations, delays stretching well past five hours and flight diversions that have stranded travelers far from their destinations.Passengers are reporting on social media that they have missed flights and spent hours stuck on the tarmac aboard planes. Some are still struggling to make new travel arrangements.The disruptions, which stretched into Friday with delays averaging over two hours, have highlighted ongoing air traffic control staffing issues. The troubles prompted United Airlines, Newark’s largest carrier, to cut nearly three dozen round-trip flights per day at the hub beginning this weekend, the carrier’s chief executive, Scott Kirby, announced on Friday.Here’s what anyone heading to Newark Airport needs to know.Air traffic control staffing is limiting capacityLast summer, management of the airspace surrounding Newark shifted from New York to Philadelphia. This move, which involved relocating at least a dozen air traffic controllers, was meant to ease air traffic delays.The Federal Aviation Administration has attributed this week’s flight disruptions at Newark to equipment failures and unspecified staffing issues at the Philadelphia air traffic control center as well as to construction on one of Newark’s runways.These ongoing staffing issues are “effectively limiting the capacity of Newark Airport,” said Aidan O’Donnell, the general manager of New Jersey airports at the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Boeing Will Sell Its Digital Businesses for $10 Billion

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      The deal, with the private equity firm Thoma Bravo, will help the struggling aerospace manufacturer pay down debt and streamline its operations.Boeing on Tuesday announced that it would sell a handful of navigation, flight planning and other businesses for more than $10.5 billion as the company works to refocus on manufacturing planes and other aircraft.The company, which also wants to reduce its large debt, said it would sell four businesses from a digital unit to Thoma Bravo, a private equity firm specializing in software. Those include Jeppesen, which provides navigational charts and information to pilots, and ForeFlight, an app that helps plan flights and monitor weather.“This transaction is an important component of our strategy to focus on core businesses, supplement the balance sheet and prioritize the investment grade credit rating,” Kelly Ortberg, Boeing’s chief executive, said in a statement.The company said that it expected to close the all-cash deal by the end of the year. The digital unit that houses those businesses employs about 3,900 people, though some of the unit will remain at Boeing. The company employed about 172,000 people as of the start of the year.Mr. Ortberg, who joined the company last summer, made streamlining Boeing’s operations a strategic goal as he tries to address concerns about the quality of the company’s planes that were raised after a panel blew off a 737 Max plane during a January 2024 flight near Portland, Ore.No one was seriously injured in that incident, but it renewed worries about Boeing’s planes several years after two fatal crashes of the 737 Max in 2018 and 2019. Safety and quality issues have stymied Boeing’s commercial plane production in recent years. Then last fall, production of the 737 Max, Boeing’s most popular commercial plane, came to a near standstill during a two-month worker strike.In January, Mr. Ortberg said that the company had resumed production of the Max, and was making more than 20 of those planes per month as well as five of the larger 787 Dreamliners.That is well below the goal the company had set before last year’s panel incident of delivering 50 of its 737s and 10 of its 787s per month. Boeing has about 5,500 outstanding commercial plane orders, valued at hundreds of billions of dollars. More

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      Small Plane With 4 Aboard Crashes in Illinois

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      The authorities said they were conducting a “fatal aircraft investigation” but did not provide details about the number of people who died.A small plane with four people on board crashed in a field beside a roadway in rural Illinois on Saturday morning, officials said.The authorities did not say how many people died in the crash, but the Illinois State Police said that it was “an active and ongoing fatal aircraft investigation.”The plane crashed around 10:15 a.m. in Trilla, which is about 65 miles south of Champaign. Airplane debris was scattered on the roadway, which was closed several hours after the crash, the State Police said.The plane, a single-engine Cessna 180, crashed about a dozen miles from Coles County Memorial Airport in Mattoon, Ill., the Federal Aviation Administration said.The F.A.A. and the National Transportation Safety Board are investigating. It was unknown whether anyone on the ground was injured.“We keep those impacted by the plane crash in our thoughts today,” Gov. JB Pritzker of Illinois said on social media. “Thank you to the first responders who rushed to the scene.”In the last week, small plane crashes have killed at least nine people.On Friday night, a small plane crashed into a river in eastern Nebraska, killing three people on board, officials said. On April 12, a small twin-engine plane crashed in a muddy field in New York, killing all six people on board.Flying remains the safest mode of transportation, experts say, but an unusual spate of crashes involving commercial airliners at the start of the year has raised travelers’ anxieties about flying. More

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      Small Plane Crashes Into Nebraska River, Killing 3

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      The plane was traveling along the Platte River when it crashed into the water south of Fremont, Neb., on Friday night, officials said.A small plane crashed into a river in eastern Nebraska on Friday night, killing three people on board, officials said.The plane was traveling along the Platte River when it crashed into the water south of Fremont, which is about 40 miles northwest of Omaha, just after 8 p.m., Sgt. Brie Frank of the Dodge County Sheriff’s Office said at a news conference late Friday night.All three bodies were recovered from the crash site with help from agencies that responded, including with airboats, Sergeant Frank said.The identities of the victims were not immediately known. It was not immediately known where the plane was headed or from where it departed.The National Transportation Safety Board said the plane was a Cessna 180 and that an investigator was expected to arrive at the crash scene Saturday afternoon.The board said that once the investigator documented the scene and examined the aircraft, the plane would be taken to a secure facility for further evaluation.The Federal Aviation Administration will also investigate, Sergeant Frank said.Local news reports showed parts of the plane still in the water on Saturday morning.The crash was the latest in a string of small plane crashes across the United States, including in Florida, Minnesota, New York and Pennsylvania. More

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      Stocks Edge Higher Amid Trump Tariff Uncertainty

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      The Trump administration’s chaotic tariff rollout continues to spur volatility in the markets.Stocks inched higher in early trading on Tuesday, as the Trump administration’s chaotic tariff rollout continues to spur volatility in the markets.The S&P 500 opened up 0.5 percent, and the technology-heavy Nasdaq also gained slightly. President Trump’s whipsawing tariff policies are still driving sentiment on Wall Street, especially in sectors facing the threat of more levies or potential reprieves.Here’s what else to know:Bank stocks rose on Tuesday, as major U.S. lenders reported their latest earnings. Bank of America surpassed Wall Street’s profit and revenue expectations, and its shares rose about 5 percent Tuesday morning. Citigroup’s profits also beat estimates, sending its stock more than 2 percent higher.Tariff threats are taking center stage in the pharmaceutical and technology sectors, after the Trump administration on Monday took steps that appeared likely to result in new tariffs on pharma products and semiconductors. Shares in drugmaker Eli Lilly were up slightly on Tuesday morning, while Novartis stock was trading roughly flat. Shares in chip giant Nvidia were nearly 2 percent higher, after the company on Monday said it would invest in artificial intelligence infrastructure in the United States.Shares in Boeing, the aviation giant, fell about 1.5 percent on Tuesday following a report from Bloomberg News that China had instructed its airlines to halt deliveries of Boeing planes after the Trump administration imposed steep tariffs on Chinese goods.In the auto industry, shares in General Motors, Ford Motor and Stellantis — which jumped on Monday after Mr. Trump signaled that he might offer car companies some relief from tariffs — were mixed on Tuesday morning. Shares in General Motors and Ford both fell more than 1 percent, while Stellantis rose about a half percent. The sector, which is grappling with a 25 percent tariff on imported vehicles, is bracing for new levies on imported car parts.The U.S. dollar, long a haven in global financial markets, has been falling against other major currencies. But an index that tracks the currency against a basket of major trading partners stabilized early Tuesday, ending a five-day slide. More

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      At Least One Dead After Private Plane Crashes in Upstate New York

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      The plane, a Mitsubishi MU-2B carrying two passengers, went down Saturday in the town of Copake close to the Massachusetts border, according to the authorities.A plane crashed in a field on Saturday near the town of Copake, N.Y., leaving at least one dead, according to the Columbia County Sheriff’s Office.The plane, a Mitsubishi MU-2B bound for Columbia County Airport near Hudson, N.Y., was carrying two passengers and crashed a little after noon, the Federal Aviation Administration said in a statement.The aircraft went down near Two Town Road and did not damage any structures, Undersheriff Jacqueline Salvatore told reporters at a news conference on Saturday afternoon. Ms. Salvatore did not say how many people had been killed or if there were any survivors. The two passengers have not been identified.A private plane of the same model departed Westchester County Airport in White Plains, N.Y., shortly after 11:30 a.m., flying north toward Hudson before turning east at about noon, according to the tracking site Flightradar24. Minutes later, the craft disappeared from the site near Copake, a small town bordering Taconic State Park near the Massachusetts border.That plane was registered to a company based outside Boston, according to F.A.A. records.Ms. Salvatore said that, in addition to officers from the sheriff’s department, personnel from the New York State Police and a local fire department responded to the scene. Law enforcement officials received a 911 call about the crash at around noon, she said.At that time, the weather in the area was mostly mild, with overcast skies and wind gusts up to 26 miles per hour, according to the National Weather Service.Snow and moisture on the ground were hampering response efforts, Ms. Salvatore said.“It’s in the middle of a field and it’s pretty muddy, so accessibility is difficult,” she said.It was not immediately clear Saturday afternoon what had caused the plane to crash, Ms. Salvatore said, but local law enforcement planed to conduct interviews in the neighborhood to learn more.The F.A.A. and the National Transportation Safety Board are also investigating the crash, according to the aviation agency’s statement.In November of last year, a small plane carrying a pilot and four rescue dogs crashed roughly 50 miles west of Copake, in a remote area of the Catskill Mountains. In June, five members of a family were killed about 40 miles northeast of Binghamton, N.Y., when their small plane crashed en route from Cooperstown to Georgia. More

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      Grandmother Is Stranded When Her Parrot ‘Plucky’ Can’t Board Flight

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      Plucky, an African gray parrot, accompanied its owner on a Frontier Airlines flight to Puerto Rico in January. But a gate agent would not let it on board the return flight.Maria Fraterrigo, a grandmother from the Bronx, was booked in seat 4A on a flight from San Juan to Kennedy International Airport on Saturday night. But when she got to the gate for her return flight to New York, she said, an agent for Frontier Airlines stopped her.Her companion, an African gray parrot named Plucky, which Ms. Fraterrigo has claimed as an emotional support animal and can say the names of her grandchildren, was on a no-fly list.Despite being allowed to bring Plucky on her outbound Frontier flight without incident in January, she said, the agent told her that parrots were among several types of birds and other animals prohibited by the airline. She said that rule essentially left her stranded.“This guy from the counter yells at me and tells me, ‘You’re not going to make this flight,’ ” Ms. Fraterrigo, 81, recalled in a phone interview on Wednesday. “ ‘Give it to somebody. Get rid of it.’ I said, ‘No way, I’m not going to get rid of my baby.’”For four days, her travel plans were stuck in limbo, until Frontier appeared to have relented, ticketing her on another flight scheduled for Wednesday night. Plucky was expected to be in tow when Ms. Fraterrigo, completing her first trip since losing her husband in 2019, finally got to board.Her situation illustrated the tension between airlines and passengers over what kinds of animals are permitted on commercial flights, which at times might have gotten confused with a petting zoo until the federal government tightened rules for service animals on them. Miniature horses, pigs and other unusual pets found their way onto planes, but an emotional support peacock did not.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More