Hundreds of flights were canceled Saturday as a potent nor’easter disrupted air travel in the Northeast for a second consecutive day. Nationwide, 585 flights had been canceled an another 1,350 delayed as of 1:15 pm ET. But the problems were a far cry from the problems a day earlier. Friday, airlines canceled a whopping 3,423 flights in the US and more than 4,700 of those that did fly were late. Combined, nearly 4,000 flights have been canceled in the US since the storm began grounding flights Friday. The impact on flight schedules was severe. Nearly two-thirds of Friday’s flights were grounded at New York LaGuardia and 30% to 50% were canceled at other key airports like Boston, Philadelphia, Washington Reagan National, New York JFK and Newark Liberty. <br/>
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Swiss airlines had to deal with more unruly passengers than ever before last year: 795 incidents occurred with people endangering other passengers and the flight itself. This figure is up from 755 the previous year and 637 in 2015, according to the Federal Office of Civil Aviation. “The consumption of alcohol, drugs or medication is by far the most common cause of obstinate and unmanageable passengers,” said a spokeswoman for SWISS. Helvetic Airlines and Edelweiss also reported problems, for example ignored safety instructions, verbal confrontations with flight attendants, smoking in the lavatories and drinking alcohol that passengers had brought onto the plane themselves. In addition, arguments between passengers, for example over hand luggage, continued to cause headaches for the cabin crew. <br/>
Hundreds of international flights by Israel’s 3 airlines are no longer at risk of being canceled after the finance and foreign ministries, together with the National Security Council, reached an agreement Thursday to cover the financial costs of security. The agreement, finalised over the last few days, calls for increasing funding for 1,200 security personnel – up from 950 – stationed at foreign airports to supervise boarding. The Finance Ministry agreed to allocate the funds to the Foreign Ministry to cover the added costs. However, the agreement is only for 2018. The lack of funding for security personnel had reached a crisis in recent weeks, as airlines said they were going to pull scheduled flights during the Passover holiday and summer season because there was no security. <br/>