A Delta passenger was charged on Friday with instigating a mid-air brawl with flight attendants and other passengers who fought desperately to restrain him as he tried opening the exit door of a plane bound from Seattle to China. Joseph Daniel Hudek IV, 23, of Tampa, Florida, was arrested on Thursday when the Boeing 767-300 with 221 people aboard, flew back to Seattle-Tacoma International Airport for an unscheduled landing two hours after take-off. The plane was turned around due to an in-flight altercation detailed by the Federal Bureau of Investigation in an affidavit filed the next day as part of the criminal complaint against Hudek, who was a first-class passenger on the flight. According to the FBI, the incident began when Hudek lunged for an exit door at the front of the plane, grabbed the handle and tried to open it, prompting a desperate scuffle with crew members and passengers who battled to subdue him. Hudek repeatedly punched a flight attendant and a fellow passenger, and persisted in trying to pull open the door, even as a second flight attendant struck him over the head with two large wine bottles. Hudek was finally restrained with zip ties as several passengers joined the fray, but not before he managed to pull the door lever halfway to the open position, the FBI said.<br/>
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Air France-KLM Group signalled that a turnaround that began early this year is continuing as summer bookings rise and tourists from Asia and the US return to France after staying away in 2016. “The second quarter is good and the bookings for this summer are also quite positive compared to last year,” Jean-Marc Janaillac said in an interview at the Rencontres Economiques conference Aix-en-Provence, France late Saturday, calling the increase in bookings “healthy” while declining to give further details. Air France-KLM is only just recovering from the collapse in travel that followed terrorist attacks on cities including Paris and Nice over the past two years. In the first quarter ticket-price declines were almost halted and demand for profitable business-class seats surged. “We suffered from terrorist attacks, especially in 2016, but we have recovered this year. Visitors from the States and China and Japan are coming back,” Janaillac said. “This year we came back to the situation of two years ago and a bit more. We are quite hopeful that during the next year we are going to keep on increasing our visitors from overseas.” Air France-KLM reports June traffic bookings Monday and publishes second-quarter results on July 28. Janaillac, who took the helm of the airline a year ago, has a mandate to improve profit after years of losses and a series of costly strikes. The surge in traffic comes as the company is waiting for its main pilot union to give its opinion on a plan that includes the creation of Boost, a temporary name for a new, lower-cost long and medium-haul carrier. The SNPL union is consulting its members on the plan and will announce the result on July 17.<br/>
The CEO of Franco-Dutch airline group Air France-KLM urged French authorities Saturday to take "urgent" measures to reduce delays for passengers caused by security checks at Paris airports. The delays caused by police checks, in a country that was hit by deadly Islamist militant attacks in the last two years, come at a time when passenger traffic is picking up ahead of the crucial summer holiday season, according to Jean-Marc Janaillac. Janaillac said he had written to the French interior minister urging him to take quick measures. The queues at the police filters at Roissy-Charles de Gaulle airport, the country's largest in the north of the capital and Orly, in the south, can take more than two hours, Janaillac said. "Waiting times at police checks are very, very long, sometimes more than an hour and a half at Roissy and can go over two hours at Orly, which totally disrupts the transport chain and contributes to flight delays," he added. Janaillac called on French authorities to allow a greater use of facial recognition technologies that exist in London or Amsterdam, hire more air and border police and to ease on passport checks to some destinations.<br/>
Garuda Indonesia has confirmed the delay of 68 flights from Friday to Saturday as a result of a “technical constraint” at Soekarno-Hatta International Airport’s Terminal 3, resulting in long waits for passengers. The delays at the airport in Tangerang, Banten, had affected both domestic and international flights, including those to Japan and China, Garuda Indonesia said Saturday. "We apologize for the inconveniences in the situation, which is out of our authority, and we will continue to give our best effort to coordinate and reduce the length of the delays,” a Garuda Indonesia spokesperson said. Citing details provided by state air navigation firm AirNav, he explained that the cause of the delay was the limited movement at the newly opened terminal. "We have implemented a delay management policy to all affected passengers to ensure passenger rights can be fulfilled," Hengki added.<br/>