Air France Lands KLM, Alitalia Left To Grapple With
Bankruptcy
Air France and Holland's KLM Airlines completed their merger
Monday night, making the new airline the third biggest in the world
-- behind American and United.
The deal, reportedly worth $1.03 billion, did not include Alitalia,
the Italian carrier that had hoped to be part of the final package.
Now, Italian officials are scrambling for a way to bail out the
troubled airline, hoping that Alitalia can reach a restructuring
deal with its unions.
It's like watching a game of Russian roulette. The honchos of
the country's three biggest airlines, all sitting at the same
podium, all agreeing that a lot of legacy carriers will soon go the
way of the dodo. The biggest unasked question at the table: who's
gonna get it?
The TSA says eight airports have been selected to participate in
TSA's Access Control Pilot Program which will test Radio Frequency
Identification (RFID) technology, Anti-Piggybacking technology,
advanced video surveillance technology and various biometric
technologies.
There's probably nothing more embarrassing than an equipment
malfunction that draws attention to your aircraft. Well, on second
thought, there probably are more embarrassing things, but you can
be the captain of a Singapore Airlines Airbus A340-500 is wishing
all of them upon himself right about now.
The aircraft, headed from Singapore to Los Angeles, apparently
suffered a transponder malfunction which reset the transponder to
indicate a hijacking aboard (7500). That's the captain's story,
according to the FAA.
Governments of the European Union want the multi-national
parliament to go ahead and approve an agreement with Washington to
share passenger data, including credit card information and meal
preferences, with US intelligence services.
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