In the minutes before he boarded an Alaska Airlines flight home last month, Joseph Emerson, a pilot for the airline, texted his wife. He was eager to be home with their two young children and longing to be next to her. “I just want to hold you,” he wrote. The flight was full, and Emerson was off duty, so he settled into the cockpit jump seat, making small talk with the pilots as the plane climbed southward out of Everett, Wash. The plane reached cruising altitude and crossed into Oregon on its way to San Francisco. But Mr. Emerson appeared to grow agitated, throwing off his headset, the other pilots told the authorities later. “I’m not OK,” he told them. Emerson suddenly reached up and yanked the plane’s two fire-suppression handles — designed to cut the fuel supply and shut down both engines. The pilots snatched his wrists, wrestling his hands away in a frantic attempt to avert disaster. They radioed that the flight needed to make an emergency diversion to Portland. In his first interview since the Oct. 22 incident, Emerson painted a terrifying picture of the hourlong flight, one where he was overcome with a growing conviction that he was only imagining the journey and needed to take drastic action to bring the dream to an end. “I thought it would stop both engines, the plane would start to head towards a crash, and I would wake up,” he said, speaking in a cramped visitation room at the county jail in Portland, where he was being held without bail. Upon landing, police officers took Emerson, 44, into custody, and Multnomah County prosecutors charged him with 83 counts of attempted murder — one for every passenger and crew member he was accused of trying to kill. Separately, federal prosecutors accused him of interfering with a flight crew. Emerson’s account of what happened during the flight is corroborated in its key details by what flight attendants and pilots told the police, as well as text messages and his wife’s description of her conversations with her husband both before and after the flight. Prosecutors did not discuss the case beyond the charging documents. Emerson, who has pleaded not guilty, said he had no intention of hurting anyone that day. Instead, he said, he was desperate to awaken from a hallucinogenic state that had consumed him since taking psychedelic mushrooms two days earlier, during a weekend getaway with friends to commemorate the death of his best friend.<br/>
oneworld
One day after United Airlines submitted an application to the US Department of Transportation (DOT) to operate more flights to Tokyo’s Haneda airport, its Fort Worth-based rival American Airlines has done the same. American applied to operate daytime flights between New York’s John F Kennedy International airport and Haneda, the airline said on 10 November. The carrier hopes to access slots vacated by Delta Air Lines earlier this year. American proposes to operate the flight daily and year-round with Boeing 777-200s. “American looks forward to presenting our competitive application to provide new and enhanced service to Tokyo’s convenient Haneda Airport,” Molly Wilkinson, American’s vice-president of regulatory and international government affairs, says. “Joining American’s existing flights from Dallas-Fort Worth and Los Angeles, JFK to Tokyo service adds an East Coast gateway for flights to Haneda, while offering the largest metropolitan area in the US more options for travel to one of the most-important business hubs in the world.” “The new flight will complement existing frequencies operated by American’s partner, Japan Airlines, providing more convenient arrival and departure times in New York City and optimal connections across Japan and Asia with one stop in Tokyo,” American says. American’s proposed Haneda flight would be the “only accretive service between the United States and Japan proposed by a US carrier”, it adds. The airline already flies to Haneda from Los Angeles and Dallas Fort Worth International airport. Delta had held the slots, which permitted it to fly from Portland to Haneda, but lost them after failing to start the route this year. Now other airlines are vying to scoop up the right.<br/>
Cathay Pacific Airways Ltd. plans to hire about 5,000 people across the group in 2024 as flight capacity is gradually restored to pre-pandemic levels, the Hong Kong-based carrier’s CEO said. “Recruitment and training is really the key factor that we need to get right in order to achieve our goal for next year,” Ronald Lam told Bloomberg News at an Association of Asia Pacific Airlines meeting in Singapore on Friday. “The scale of the rebuild is massive,” he said. Cathay was one of the hardest-hit airlines in the world during Covid as Hong Kong became isolated due to its strict entry and quarantine rules. The company, which raised billions of dollars in a recapitalization, had about 21,900 staff at the end of June, including at its subsidiaries, down from 34,000 in 2019. “We are moving mountains to rebuild as quickly as we can,” Lam said Friday. Including catering and cargo handling units, the group has hired 5,000 people in 2023 and is at 70% of pre-Covid flight capacity, ahead of schedule, he said.<br/>