A Delta Air Lines jet went off an icy taxiway after landing in a snowstorm in Minneapolis but no passengers were injured, the airline said. The Airbus A320 landed safely Tuesday night on a flight from Los Cabos, Mexico, Delta said in a statement. But the nose gear of the plane “exited the taxiway while turning toward the gate due to icy conditions,” it said. It happened around 6:40 p.m. It took about an hour to get the 147 passengers off the plane and bused to the terminal, Jeff Lea, a spokesman for the Metropolitan Airports Commission, told the Star Tribune. The plane was stuck in the snow until sometime between 9 and 10 p.m. when crews removed it from the taxiway, close to the north end of the runway, Lea said. The incident did not disrupt airport operations, he said. But unrelated to the stuck plane, the airport issued a “ground stop” at around 7:30 p.m., putting a temporary halt on planes operating on the airfield because of the icy conditions. One runway reopened at around 9:15 p.m., Lea said. The airport had received 10 inches of snow as of 6 a.m. Wednesday, the National Weather Service said. Another 3 to 5 inches was possible.<br/>
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Workers at Delta Air Lines are currently holding union organizing drives, citing tough working conditions in the US airline industry in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic and stagnant wages despite the airline making hefty profits. The unions are in the process of collecting a majority of union authorization cards to merit a union election with the National Mediation Board, announcing a joint collective effort several weeks ago. Flight attendants are organizing with the Association of Flight Attendants-CWA, ramp agents with the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers (IAM), and mechanics with Teamsters. Delta Air Lines has aggressively opposed unionization over the years. The company has the lowest percentage of workers currently represented by a labor union among major US airlines, currently at around 20% of more than 80,000 employees at the company. Kip Hedges, a former Delta Air Lines employee and current union organizer with IAM, explained that a previous union organizing drive before the pandemic wasn’t successful in obtaining enough union authorization cards for an election, but the new effort has taken off. Hedges cited a recent surge in union support across the US, grueling working conditions throughout the Covid-19 pandemic and the impact of inflation on stagnant wages while unionized pilots at Delta Air Lines recently won a contract that included a pay raise of 34% over four years. “This whole idea of frontline and essential workers permeated into the atmosphere and I think that is having an impact on what Delta workers are thinking about,” said Hedges. “A huge issue for Delta workers is short staffing on the ramp. We used to have breaks between flights that allowed your body to recuperate a little bit. Breaks are shorter, they’re less frequent and arbitrary discipline is a factor in all of this.”<br/>
Delta Air Lines is rolling out free Wi-Fi to most of its planes beginning February 1. “It’s going to be free, it’s going to be fast and its going to be available for everyone,” Delta CEO Ed Bastian said Thursday at Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. He added that the airline invested more than $1b in Wi-Fi technology over the past few years. Passengers will need to be a member of its free SkyMiles loyalty program to access the on-board internet. Customers who aren’t members will have to pay a flat fee of $10. More than 500 of Delta’s domestic narrow-body planes serving the airline’s “most popular routes” will be ready for free Wi-Fi at launch, the company said. Wide-body international and smaller regional jets will be coming online by the end of 2024. Customers will know if their flight has free Wi-Fi by a decal noting it near the boarding door. They also can connect multiple devices at one time. The announcement, made Thursday at the Consumer Electronics Show, is several years in the making. Bastian said in 2018 that offering free Wi-Fi across its fleet was a priority, but needed time to improve the technology so passengers wouldn’t have to struggle with sluggish speeds.<br/>
Mexican airline Aeromexico said the fuselage of a plane scheduled to fly from Culiacan, Sinaloa to Mexico City was hit by gunfire Thursday morning, though no clients or employees were harmed. Videos on social media showed gunfire at the Culiacan airport, which has since closed for the day amid violence across the city. Sources told Reuters drug lord Ovidio Guzman, son of Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman, had been arrested in Culiacan.<br/>
ITA Airways expects to debut the Airbus A320neo from the end of January after painting was completed for the Italian carrier’s first of the type. The airline, which launched flights as a successor carrier to Alitalia in October 2021, has already introduced Airbus A220s and A350s in the past year as part of major fleet renewal based around Airbus aircraft. It has now released pictures of its first A320neo in ITA colours after it was rolled out from a paint shop at Shannon airport in Ireland. Cirium fleets data show ITA Airways has 14 A320neos and nine A321neos on order. ITA, which began operations using former Alitalia aircraft acquired from the latter’s administrator, plans to take 39 new aircraft this year as it continues to renew its fleet. These include its first of another type, the A330-900, of which it expects to take nine this year. ITA Airways’ first A320neo is named after Inter Milan and Italy captain Giacinto Facchetti, in keeping with its move to call its aircraft after Italian sports stars.<br/>