unaligned

A Southwest Airlines plane that had flames shooting out of an engine returned to a Houston airport about 30 minutes after takeoff this week. The Boeing 737 had been bound for Cancun International Airport in Mexico on Tuesday but returned to William P. Hobby Airport. Videos showed the flames coming from one of its engines. “We felt like a little air pocket going up. And then I heard the boom ... and then you started smelling kind of the fuel,” passenger Jordan Kleinecke told ABC News. The Dallas-based airline said the plane experienced a “mechanical issue” shortly after takeoff. It landed safely and was taken out of service for review. A different plane took the passengers on to Cancun, the airline said.<br/>

A federal judge has delayed his order that three Southwest Airlines lawyers attend “religious-liberty training” while the airline appeals the sanction to a higher court. US District Judge Brantley Starr on Thursday issued a 30-day stay of penalties against Southwest for, he ruled, mostly disregarding a previous order in a case involving a flight attendant who says she was fired for expressing opposition to abortion. Southwest objected to the contempt sanctions, which include religious-liberty training conducted by a conservative Christian legal-advocacy group, Alliance Defending Freedom. The airline filed an appeal with the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans. Some legal experts have criticized Starr for ordering the Southwest lawyers to undergo training by a group that is aligned with a particular facet of one religion. The leader of Fix the Court, a small, nonpartisan group known mostly for monitoring the U.S. Supreme Court, filed a judicial-misconduct petition against the judge. A jury ruled last year that Southwest and the Transport Workers Union had violated the flight attendant’s rights by firing her over religious speech, and she won a judgment of roughly $800,000. The airline says she was fired for violating its policy against harassment. Southwest and the union are also appealing the jury verdict.<br/>

Allegiant Travel said Thursday it has ratified a two-year extension of a contract agreement with Teamsters union representing some of its workers. Allegiant Air carrier parent said the agreement provides for significant increases in compensation rates and extends the contract by two years till Oct. 31, 2028 for 683 workers. The employee group includes line and heavy maintenance technicians as well as stores employees and some administrative maintenance staff, the company said. In the past two years, unions across the aerospace, construction, airline and rail industries have put up fights for higher wages and more benefits in a tight labor market. Earlier this week, Southwest reached a tentative labor agreement with the union that represents about 17,120 transport workers who handle ramp, operations, provisioning and cargo.<br/>

A federal appeals court revived a lawsuit accusing Mesa Air Group of racially profiling two Muslim men from Texas when the pilot canceled their flight because she found them suspicious. The 5th US Circuit Court of Appeals on Wednesday said Issam Abdallah and Abderraouf Alkhawaldeh, both U.S. citizens, could try to prove that Mesa violated federal civil rights law by subjecting them to disparate treatment. Both men said they were returning to Dallas from Birmingham, Alabama, on Sept. 14, 2019, when their pilot, from the East African country of Eritrea, canceled the flight based on their "Arabic, Mediterranean" ethnicity, and told security personnel she refused to fly the plane "with a brother named Issam on it." Mesa rebooked both men on a later flight. In a 3-0 decision, the New Orleans-based appeals court found nothing "so obviously suspicious" about the plaintiffs to eliminate the possibility that Mesa treated them differently based on race. It also rejected a trial judge's finding that there was no disparate treatment because all passengers had their flight canceled. "To hold otherwise would lead to intolerable results," Circuit Judge Jerry Smith wrote. "Would an employer avoid ... liability if it merely started a hiring freeze every time a black man added his name to the applicant pool? Could a school fire a female employee so long as it fired a male employee as well? The Supreme Court tells us that the answer is no." Smith said Phoenix-based Mesa was not excused because its ticket rules gave it broad discretion to cancel flights. The case was returned to US District Judge Reed O'Connor in Fort Worth, Texas. The plaintiffs had bought their tickets from American Airlines, where they were frequent fliers.<br/>

Aer Lingus is expanding its North American network from Dublin by returning to Minneapolis-St Paul and adding a new route to Denver, both from summer 2024. Four-times-weekly flights between Dublin and Minneapolis-St Paul International airport will commence in April 2024, the IAG carrier said on 17 August, before becoming daily in October. Aer Lingus notes that it intends to deploy its incoming Airbus A321XLRs on the route, from winter 2024. Four-times-weekly flights between Dublin and Denver International airport will launch in May 2024, in what is a new route for the carrier. Aer Lingus describes the services as being part of a “strategic expansion that reflects the airline’s commitment to its Dublin hub strategy”, through which it also offers connections to Europe. The routes mean Aer Lingus will soon offer connections to 18 North American cities from its Dublin base. It previously launched flights to Minneapolis-St Paul in summer 2019, using Boeing 757-200s that were wet-leased from ASL Airlines. The route was dropped when Covid-19 hit early the next year. IAG placed a firm order for 14 A321XLRs at Paris air show in 2019, with six earmarked for Aer Lingus. Cirium fleets data indicates the Irish carrier is due to receive its first example in mid-October 2024, then three more in 2025 and the remaining two in 2026. The first A321XLR is scheduled to enter service in the second quarter of next year, but in common with most aircraft programmes coming out of the pandemic, deliveries will be subject to delays. Aer Lingus currently uses a mixture of A330s and A321LRs for its transatlantic services.<br/>

Emirates and Philippine Airlines (PAL) have expanded their interline agreement, enabling Emirates’ passengers to access domestic points in Philippine Airlines’ network via Cebu and Clark, adding to the previously announced interline connections via Manila. Covering all three gateways in the Philippines served by Emirates – Manila, Cebu and Clark – this partnership expansion will provide seamless connectivity for passengers to reach even more destinations in the Philippines using a single ticket and convenient baggage policy. Emirates’ passengers can enjoy a convenient booking process to destinations in Philippine Airlines’ network including Bacolod, Butuan, Cagayan De Oro, Davao, Iloilo, Caticlan and Puerto Princesa via Cebu; as well as Cebu, Caticlan and Busuanga via Clark. Philippine Airlines’ passengers can also benefit from the enhanced interline agreement and book Emirates-operated flights to Amman, Birmingham, Cape Town, Dammam, Dublin, Lisbon, Manchester, Muscat, and Riyadh via Dubai. The Philippine national carrier operates daily flights between Manila and Dubai, enabling convenient and seamless connections to cities in Europe, Africa, and other parts of the Middle East. The arrangement allows for passengers to obtain their boarding passes and check through their baggage all the way to final destination.<br/>