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An emergency slide that fell from a Delta Air Lines flight just minutes after takeoff on Friday was recovered on Sunday along a jetty in a Queens neighborhood about six miles from Kennedy International Airport, officials said. The New York City Department of Parks and Recreation said that Delta Air Lines had recovered “a large piece of debris” from the jetty near Beach 131st Street in Belle Harbor, southwest of the airport. Delta Air Lines said in a statement on Tuesday that it had retrieved the slide from the jetty. It was unclear whether the slide had landed on the jetty, a small rock pier built to break apart waves, or it had washed up there. The plane had just taken off from New York on Friday morning on a flight to Los Angeles when the crew saw a flight deck indication about a problem involving the emergency-exit slide on the right wing, according the airline. The crew also noticed a “non-routine” sound from that wing, the airline said. The FAA, which is investigating the episode, said in a statement that the flight, which was carrying 176 passengers as well as two pilots and five flight attendants, safely returned to J.F.K. around 8:35 a.m. on Friday “after the crew reported a vibration.” Delta said that the crew had declared an emergency with air traffic control. The plane was a Boeing 767-300ER, an older model that has been in service since the 1990s. After the plane arrived at a gate, crews saw that the emergency slide was missing from the aircraft, according to the airline. Passengers on the flight continued to Los Angeles on a different plane. “As nothing is more important than the safety of our customers and people, Delta flight crews enacted their extensive training and followed procedures to return to J.F.K.,” the airline said in a statement on Friday. “We appreciate their professionalism and our customers’ patience for the delay in their travels.”<br/>

Air France-KLM will freeze the hiring for support staff as part of a cost-cutting drive after reporting a wider first-quarter operating loss amid higher expenses, the conflict in the Middle East and lower cargo unit revenue. The carrier’s operating loss widened to E489m compared with E306m in the year-earlier period, the Franco-Dutch group said Tuesday. Cash at hand decreased by E600m from the end of 2023 to E9.9b, following the repayment of a convertible bond in March, the company said. “Our operating income was impacted by disruption costs and a slower cargo business,” Chief Executive Officer Ben Smith said in the statement. Still, demand for air travel remains “structurally robust.” While the return of travel has held up since the end of the Covid-19 pandemic, European airlines have had to contend with other challenges, from rising costs to supply chain disruption, strikes and conflicts complicating flight paths. Rival Deutsche Lufthansa AG on Tuesday also said it would initiate a cost-cutting drive that includes freezing projects and reviewing hiring in some areas. Free cash flow was impacted by a E610m January deferred payment to an Air France pilot pension fund — payments that had been halted during the Covid-19 health crisis — as well as E120m in deferred social charges and wage taxes, also inherited from the pandemic. Air France-KLM reaffirmed full-year capacity guidance but trimmed its 2024 capital expenditure target to E3b, the low end of a previously given range. Still, the company remains bullish on summer bookings and is not expecting further air traffic controller strikes in France ahead of the summer Olympic Games kicking off in Paris in July.<br/>

Air France KLM said on Tuesday that weak demand for leisure travel to Egypt and Jordan since the Oct. 7 Hamas attack on Israel had forced the group to redeploy a big portion of that capacity to North Africa. CEO Ben Smith said during a call with analysts that the airline was "cautiously optimistic" that demand for Tel Aviv and Beirut flights will recover, but those in southern Egypt and Jordan are still not close to pre-October levels. Global travel demand has weakened since the conflict broke out between Israel and Hamas in October. Airlines have suspended hundreds of flights to and from Tel Aviv, as well as some to Lebanon and Jordan since the outset of the war and the conflict has also hurt bookings in the region. Earlier this month, global airlines were also forced to change flight routes over Iran, cancel some flights, divert others to alternate airports or return planes to the points of departure, as Israel's reported attack on Iran led to airspace and airport closures and security concerns.<br/>