Two passengers on an Air Canada flight were reportedly escorted off an airplane for refusing to sit in wet, vomit-covered seats.
Susan Benson was fellow passenger on the same Aug. 26 flight from Seattle to Montreal sitting near the vomit. She shared the incident in a now-viral Facebook post to hold the airline accountable because she felt it was unfair to the passengers.
"There was a bit of a foul smell but we didn’t know at first what the problem was,” Benson wrote in the post. “Apparently, on the previous flight someone had vomited in that area. Air Canada attempted a quick cleanup before boarding but clearly wasn’t able to do a thorough clean.”

According to Benson, the seatbelt and seat were still visibly wet and there was vomit residue around the seats. The smell of vomit mixed with the scent of perfume and coffee grinds, which were put in the seat pouch to mask the smell.
The passengers flagged down a flight attendant to tell her they couldn’t sit in those seats for the five-hour flight, calling the incident “unacceptable,” Benson told USA TODAY over the phone. 

“The passengers were clearly upset and clearly bothered,” Benson said. “They were not rude, not yelling, not belligerent. They were firm and just insistent that she couldn’t sit in that.”
According to Benson, the flight attendants were “extremely apologetic” and said, “it was a miscommunication with the cleaning crew the night before and the seat didn’t get cleaned properly.” They also told the passengers there was nothing they could do because all the seats were full.

After some back and forth, the passengers were given blankets, wipes and more vomit bags and settled in for the flight. ​

Security came soon after and escorted the women off the flight. “Air Canada literally expects passage (sic) to sit in vomit or be escorted off the plane and placed on a no-fly list!” Benson wrote. 
The flight ended up being 31 minutes delayed but made it to Montreal safely. 
Benson told USA TODAY that she posted details of the incident online to hold Air Canada accountable so “they would do something about it.” She feels as if the airline treated the passengers unfairly. 
Air Canada did not respond immediately to USA TODAY’s request for comment but shared a statement with Insider saying, “We are reviewing this serious matter internally and have followed up with the customers directly as our operating procedures were not followed correctly in this instance. This includes apologizing to these customers, as they clearly did not receive the standard of care to which they were entitled and addressing their concerns.”
“I really hope they actually do something and not just say they do to keep the peace,” Benson said. “(The passengers) weren’t unreasonable at all in my opinion.”

A Boeing 737-8 MAX straight from the factory was flying when the pilot declared an emergency, telling the ATC tower that they had no autopilot trim and no electrical trim system and had to trim the aircraft manually.
Southwest Airlines Boeing, registration N8844Q, was flying from Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport (PHX) to William P. Hobby Airport (HOU). The pilot reported a trim and autopilot issue and declared an emergency, requesting a return to the airport.
​

The crew requested to level off at 11,000 feet and began running checklists. The pilot and ATC tower calmly communicated the situation and were able to navigate back to the airport safely. The plane returned to Phoenix about 23 minutes after departure and the pilot was able to navigate back to the airport, trimming manually, and safely land without any injury to the 164 passengers on board or damage to the aircraft.
The plane had arrived in Phoenix on its delivery flight from Boeing Field the day before and successfully entered service roughly 14 hours later, according to the Aviation Herald. Trimming an aircraft means adjusting the aerodynamic forces on the control surfaces, allowing the pilot to maintain the set attitude without using any control input.

Air racing enthusiasts are inviting the community and race fans from all over the world to join them in sending the Reno Air Races off in style one last time.
The organization will continue to discuss the future of the races but are forever grateful for the decades spent at the Reno-Stead Airport and their partnership with the Reno Tahoe Airport Authority.
The final event is set to return more than 150 planes and pilots as well as several 'hands-on' displays and experiences.

Hydrogen-branded plane, equipped with the largest hydrogen fuel cell ever to power an aircraft, made its maiden test flight in eastern Washington, co-founder and CEO Paul Eremenko declared the moment the dawn of a “new golden age of aviation.”
The 15-minute test flight of a modified Dash-8 aircraft was short, but it showed that hydrogen could be viable as a fuel for short-hop passenger aircraft. That is, if Universal Hydrogen — and others in the emerging world of hydrogen flight — can make the technical and regulatory progress needed to make it a mainstream product.
Dash-8s, a staple at regional airports, usually transport up to 50 passengers on short hops. The Dash-8 used in Thursday’s test flight from the Grant County International Airport in Moses Lake had decidedly different cargo. The Universal Hydrogen test plane, nicknamed Lightning McClean, had just two pilots, an engineer and a lot of tech onboard, including an electric motor and hydrogen fuel cell supplied by two other startups.

The stripped-down interior contained two racks of electronics and sensors, and two large hydrogen tanks with 30 kg of fuel. Beneath the plane’s right wing, an electric motor from magniX was being driven by the new hydrogen fuel cell from Plug Power. This system turns hydrogen into electricity and water — an emission-free powerplant that Eremenko believes represents the future of aviation.
The fuel cell operated throughout the flight, generating up to 800kW of power and producing nothing but water vapor and smiles on the faces of a crowd of Universal Hydrogen engineers and investors.
“We think it’s a pretty monumental accomplishment,” Eremenko said. “It keeps us on track to have probably the first certified hydrogen airplane in passenger service.”
Aviation currently contributes about 2.5% of global carbon emissions, and is forecast to grow by 4% annually.

The test flight, which was a success, doesn’t mean entirely zero-carbon aviation is just around the corner.
Beneath the Dash-8’s other wing ran a standard Pratt and Whitney turboprop engine (notice the difference in the photo above), with about twice as much power as the fuel-cell side. That redundancy helped smooth a path with the FAA, which issued an experimental special airworthiness certificate for the Dash-8 tests in early February.
One of the test pilots, Michael Bockler, told TechCrunch that the aircraft “flew like a normal Dash-8, with just a slight yaw.” He noted that at one point, in level flight, the plane was flying almost entirely on fuel cell power, with the turboprop engine throttled down.
“Until both motors are driven by hydrogen, it’s still just a show,” said a senior engineer consulting to the sustainable aviation industry. “But I don’t want to scoff at it because we need these stepping stones to learn.”
Part of the problem with today’s fuel cells is that they can be tricky to cool. Jet engines run much hotter, but expel most of that heat through their exhausts. Because fuel cells use an electrochemical reaction rather than simply burning hydrogen, the waste heat has to be removed through a system of heat exchangers and vents.
ZeroAvia, another startup developing hydrogen fuel cells for aviation, crashed its first flying prototype in 2021 after turning off its fuel cell mid-air to allow it to cool, and was then unable to restart it. ZeroAvia has since taken to the air again with a hybrid hydrogen/fossil fuel set-up similar to Universal Hydrogen’s, although on a smaller twin-engine aircraft.
Mark Cousin, Universal Hydrogen’s CTO, told TechCrunch that its fuel cell could run all day without overheating, thanks to its large air ducts.
Another issue for fuel cell aircraft is storing the hydrogen needed to fly. Even in its densest, super-cooled liquid form, hydrogen contains only about a quarter the energy of a similar volume of jet fuel. Wing tanks are not large enough for any but the shortest flights, and so the fuel has to be stored within the fuselage. Today’s 15-minute flight used about 16kg of gaseous hydrogen — half the amount stored in two motorbike-sized tanks within the passenger compartment. Universal Hydrogen plans to convert its test aircraft to run on liquid hydrogen later this year.

Eremenko co-founded Universal Hydrogen in 2020, and the company raised $20.5 million in a 2021 Series A funding round led by Playground Global. Funding to date is approaching $100 million, including investments from Airbus, General Electric, American Airlines, JetBlue and Toyota. The company is headquartered just up the road from SpaceX in Hawthorne, California, with an engineering facility in Toulouse, France.
Universal Hydrogen will now conduct further tests at Moses Lake. The company will work on additional software development, and eventually convert the plane to use liquid hydrogen. Early next year, the aircraft will likely be retired — with the fuel cell heading to the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum in Washington, DC.
Universal Hydrogen hopes to start shipping fuel cell conversion kits for regional aircraft like the Dash-8 as soon as 2025. The company already has nearly 250 retrofit orders valued at more than $1 billion from 16 customers, including Air New Zealand. John Thomas, CEO of Connect Airlines, which plans to be the first U.S. carrier to use Universal Hydrogen’s technology, said the “partnership provides the fastest path to zero-emissions operation for the global airline industry.”
Universal Hydrogen isn’t just producing the razors — it’s also selling the blades.
Almost all the hydrogen used today is produced at the point of consumption. That’s not only because hydrogen leaks easily and can damage traditional steel containers, but mainly because in its most useful form — a compact liquid — it has to be kept at just 20 degrees above absolute zero, usually requiring expensive refrigeration.
The liquid hydrogen used in the Moses Lake test came from a commercial “green hydrogen” gas supplier — meaning it was made using renewable energy. Only a tiny fraction of hydrogen produced today is made this way.
If the hydrogen economy is really going to make a dent in the climate crisis, green hydrogen will have to become a lot easier — and cheaper — to produce, store and transport.
Eremenko originally started Universal Hydrogen to design standardized hydrogen modules that could be hauled by standard semi-trucks and simply slotted into aircraft or other vehicles for immediate use. The current design can keep hydrogen liquid for up to 100 hours, and he has often likened them to the convenience of Nespresso units. Universal Hydrogen says it has over $2 billion in fuel service orders for the decade ahead.
Prototype modules were demonstrated in December, and the company hopes to break ground later this year on a 630,000-square-foot manufacturing facility for them in Albuquerque, New Mexico. That nearly $400 million project is contingent on the success of a previously unreported $200+ million U.S. Department of Energy loan application. Eremenko says the application has passed the first phase of due diligence within the DOE.

Some experts are skeptical that hydrogen will ever make a meaningful dent in aviation’s emissions. Bernard van Dijk, an aviation scientist at the Hydrogen Science Coalition, appreciates the simplicity of Universal Hydrogen’s modules, but notes that even NASA has trouble controlling hydrogen leaks with its rockets. “You still have to connect the canisters to the aircraft. How is that all going to be safe? Because if it leaks and somebody lights a match, that is a recipe for disaster,” he says. “I think they’re also underestimating the whole certification process for a new hydrogen powertrain.”
Even when those obstacles are overcome, there is the problem of making enough green hydrogen using renewable electricity, at a price people will be prepared to play. “If you want to get all European flights on hydrogen, you’d need 89,000 large wind turbines to produce enough hydrogen,” says van Dijk. “They would cover an area about twice the size of the Netherlands.”
But Eremenko remains convinced that Universal Hydrogen and its partners can make it work, with the help of a $3 per kilogram subsidy for green hydrogen in Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act. “Of all the things that keep me awake at night,” he says, “the cost and availability of green hydrogens is not one of them.”

Between October 2021 and August 2022, close to 200,000 Cubans were intercepted by US authorities, according to CBP, after entering through the border with Mexico or crossing by sea through the Florida Straits.
That is a dramatic increase over the same period last year, when the United States intercepted some 30,000 Cubans.
Cubans are the only people who are eligible for immediate US asylum if they flee their homeland and reach United States soil.
However, if they are intercepted at sea, they are returned home.
Critics say the policy encourages Cubans to make dangerous bids to reach US soil in planes and makeshift boats.

On the morning of Monday, May 23, an electric aircraft took off from Plattsburgh International Airport in eastern New York, near Lake Champlain and the border with Vermont. From there, it pushed west and south. It landed and took off again two more times in New York, and then flew into Akron, Ohio the next day. After seven stops in total, it finally landed on Monday, May 30, in Bentonville, Arkansas, completing a start-and-stop journey of 1,403 miles. 
The craft is called Alia, and it was created by Beta Technologies, an aviation startup based in Burlington, Vermont. A single propeller, powered by two electric motors, gives it its thrust through the air. Electric aviation is in its infancy, and the burgeoning industry—which includes other firms like Joby, Wisk, Kitty Hawk, Archer—has generally focused on the idea of using electric aircraft as air taxis, like Ubers in the sky, for travel around cities. With this longer series of flights, Beta CEO Kyle Clark says that they wanted to show that aircraft like these can be more than just a vehicle for local transport. ​

“I think that with this type of flight, at a very high level, we change the image of what electric aviation is,” he says. “It’s not an aircraft that’s hopping within a city; it’s not flying test flights around a range, unmanned; it’s you put a couple pilots in it, you put some cargo in it, and you go halfway across the country.” 
He says that the “launching point” for their business is to start with a focus on flights for cargo and logistics that span about 150 miles in length. “And we just went and proved that you can do that, and you do it over and over and over again,” he says.


After the stop in Akron, Ohio, it flew to Springfield, Ohio, then Bloomington, Indiana, before pushing into Illinois, Missouri, and then Arkansas. The flight legs ranged from about 159 miles to as long as 211, and had an average flight time of around 88 minutes. All told, over the eight days that the mission lasted, the aircraft was in the air for nearly 12 hours. 
Two pilots from Beta took turns flying the aircraft: Lochie Ferrier and Camron Guthrie. The pilot not flying the electric plane for each leg took the controls of a Cessna Caravan that acted as a chase plane. 
Guthrie, one of the pilots for the mission, notes that the journey took them through “really sleepy areas” of the country, attracting onlookers. “People just came out to see the folks from Vermont and their spaceship,” he says. In Ohio, the landing garnered an article in the Springfield News-Sun about the aircraft, which arrived at the Springfield–Beckley Municipal Airport on May 24. The website Electric VTOL News previously reported on part of the aircraft’s journey.

To be clear, the flying machine is not a spaceship. It’s an electric aircraft with a 50-foot wingspan that The New York Times has referred to as “a flying battery” that has an “exotic, almost whimsical shape.” (The company notes on its website that the plane’s design “takes inspiration from the Arctic tern.”) While Beta and its competitors are designing aircraft that can take off and land vertically from small areas, this particular model did not do that—it took off and landed like a regular airplane, just as it did in March when two Air Force pilots tried flying it. 
​The journey also included a delay due to bad weather in Ohio. After landing in Springfield on Tuesday, May 24, it didn’t take off again until Saturday, May 28, when it flew to Indiana. The multi-leg journey was a chance for real-world testing of a new kind of aircraft. “We ran into weather, we operated out of austere locations, we tested our recharging network,” Guthrie says. “There’s a lot of things we learned about our design that we’ll put back in the hopper.”

About the charging network: An electric aircraft produces zero tailpipe emissions while flying, but the juice in its batteries has to come from somewhere. For this journey, Beta says that they were able to recharge the aircraft using their own charging stations at four locations, including their departure airport of Plattsburgh, New York. (Another charger is located in Bentonville, Arkansas.) At other locations, they relied on a mobile generator that can burn fossil fuel to make electricity. “We try to minimize that, but yes, we have those provisions, and we used it on this flight,” Clark notes. 
Ferrier, one of the two test pilots, says that one issue driving where and how they charged was the performance of the aircraft, which he says exceeded their expectations. “Our charging network was actually spaced for a little bit less range than we’re currently making,” he says. “The airplane is actually outperforming the charging network—so we could have actually used more of our own charges, but we ended up with a better airplane than we expected, and so we had to skip some of the charges.” In short: briefer flights would have allowed them to utilize more of their stationary chargers instead of their mobile solution.
“The charging network is an evolving thing, and every week we get more chargers online,” adds Clark. 


The permission for this multi-state journey—the aircraft soared through six states in total—came in the form of a market survey certificate from the FAA. It’s not the longest flight on the books for an electric aircraft: between 2015 and 2016, a solar-powered airplane circled the world. 
Beta doesn’t intend to operate its own cargo or passenger airline; instead it plans to make the aircraft itself so that companies such as UPS could use it to carry goods. 
For now, the Alia aircraft, after flying just over 1,400 miles, remains in Arkansas. It will be at an event called the UpSummit, and then will eventually fly back east.

A passenger with no flying experience landed a plane in Florida after the pilot passed out.
In a audio recording from the flight, the passenger, Darren Harrison, can be heard telling air traffic control a "serious situation" was unfolding.
An air traffic controller - who also teaches new pilots - helped guide the man down to Palm Beach International Airport just after noon on Tuesday.
The two later met on the tarmac for a hug.
The pilot of the Cessna 208 had been flying to Florida from the Bahamas when he told his two passengers he wasn't feeling well, according to the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA).
He fell against the controls, putting the small aircraft into a nosedive and a sharp turn.
The nature of the medical emergency has not been revealed, but the pilot is being treated in hospital.
An on-board conversation between Mr Harrison and air traffic control caught the drama:
HARRISON: "I've got a serious situation here. My pilot has gone incoherent. I have no idea how to fly the aeroplane."
CONTROL: "ATC: 333 Lima Delta, Roger, what's your position?"

HARRISON: "I have no idea. I can see the coast of Florida in front of me but I have no idea."
CONTROL: "Maintain wings level and just try to follow the coast, either northbound or southbound. We're trying to locate you."
Robert Morgan, an air traffic controller at Palm Beach International Airport, was on his break when a colleague came to alert him to the situation.
A long-time flight instructor with more than 20 years' experience in air traffic control, Mr Morgan had never flown the specific model - a single-engine Cessna 208 - but was able to use a map of the aircraft's cockpit to give instructions to the flier.
"I knew the plane was flying like any other plane. I just knew I had to keep him calm, point him to the runway and tell him how to reduce the power so he could descend to land," Mr Morgan told WPBF-TV.
He told the FAA the surreal experience was "like a movie".
​

In the recording, Mr Morgan is heard teaching the man to "push forward on the controls and descend at a very slow rate" as he approaches for landing.
After the plane landed, Mr Morgan can be heard in the recording praising the heroic passenger to other pilots on the tarmac.
"Did you say the passengers landed the airplane?" the pilot responded. "Oh, my God. Great job."
The passengers had planned to land at Boca Raton in Florida, but Mr Morgan instead guided Mr Harrison to Palm Beach airport because it had a longer runway, was less congested, and had much-needed radio coverage, the FAA said.
Under Mr Morgan's tutelage, Mr Harrison flew the plane into its final approach, successfully landing the aircraft at 16:37 local time. Neither passenger had any injuries.
The FAA is investigating.

The Federal Aviation Administration has found that Trevor Jacob, a daredevil YouTuber who posted a video of himself last year parachuting out of a plane that he claimed had malfunctioned, purposely abandoned the aircraft and allowed it to crash into the Los Padres National Forest in Southern California.
In a letter to Mr. Jacob on April 11, the F.A.A. said he had violated federal aviation regulations and operated his single-engine plane in a “careless or reckless manner so as to endanger the life or property of another.”
The agency said it would immediately revoke Mr. Jacob’s private pilot certificate, effectively ending his permission to operate any aircraft.
Reached by email on Wednesday, Mr. Jacob appeared unaware of the F.A.A.’s ruling and replied, “Where’d you get that information?”

He did not immediately respond to follow-up emails.
In a video posted on his YouTube channel last week, Mr. Jacob, a former snowboarding Olympian turned YouTuber with more than 100,000 subscribers, briefly addressed the airplane controversy, saying, “I can’t talk about it, per my attorney.”
“But the truth of that situation will come out with time,” he added, “and I’ll leave that at that.”
The F.A.A. does not have the ability to prosecute; it can only revoke and suspend certificates and issue fines. The agency ordered Mr. Jacob to surrender his private pilot certificate and said he could face “further legal enforcement action” if he did not do so, including a civil penalty of up to $1,644 for each day that he did not return it.

A spokeswoman for the Transportation Department’s Office of Inspector General said in a statement that the agency, which oversees the F.A.A., could “neither confirm nor deny the existence of an investigation” into Mr. Jacob’s flight on Nov. 24.
A 13-minute video of the crash, titled “I Crashed My Plane,” has more than 1.7 million views. It shows Mr. Jacob piloting a small 1940 Taylorcraft plane with several cameras attached, recording the sweeping views of Los Padres National Forest.
Mr. Jacob said in a statement in January that he had flown that day to spread the ashes of his best friend, Johnny Strange, over the top of a Sierra Nevada mountain. Mr. Strange died in 2015 while BASE jumping, an extreme sport in which people parachute from a fixed object or structure, such as a cliff.
In the video, Mr. Jacob unleashes a flurry of expletives when the propeller stops spinning. He opens the plane’s door and jumps out with a parachute, abandoning the plane as he descends toward the forest, a selfie stick in hand to record it all.
“I’m just so happy to be alive,” he says after landing in prickly brush. He documented his hike through the forest, which, he says in the video, lasted at least six hours until a farmer found him at dusk. Earlier, he had found the wrecked, mangled plane in a thicket of dried shrubs.
Almost immediately after he posted the video on Dec. 24, viewers and aviation experts expressed doubts online over his portrayal of the crash. It was orchestrated, they claimed, for views and likes, and several steps Mr. Jacob took, such as wearing a parachute in the first place, were evidence of a preconceived publicity stunt.
Mr. Jacob turned off comments for the video.
The F.A.A. agreed about the parachute in its letter, which it released in response to a request from The New York Times, and pointed out other revealing details that officials had uncovered during an investigation.
“During this flight, you opened the left side pilot door before you claimed the engine had failed,” the F.A.A. wrote.
Before jumping out of the plane, the agency said, Mr. Jacob made no attempt to contact air traffic control on the emergency frequency, did not try to restart the engine by increasing airflow over the propeller and failed to look for a place to safely land, “even though there were multiple areas within gliding range in which you could have made a safe landing.”

After the crash, Mr. Jacob also “recovered and then disposed of the wreckage,” the F.A.A. said.
“You demonstrated a lack of care, judgment and responsibility by choosing to jump out of an aircraft solely so you could record the footage of the crash,” the agency said. “Your egregious and intentional actions on these dates indicate that you presently lack the degree of care, judgment and responsibility required of a certificate holder.”

A man has been sentenced to one year in prison for lying about his job experience before working as a commercial pilot in the U.K. for two years.
Craig Butfoy, 49, entered false details and fabricated his experience in his flight logbook so that he could appear more qualified to work for BA CityFlyer, a British Airways regional airline, and former Irish regional airline Stobart Air.
He pleaded guilty to several charges of fraud on Monday and was handed the prison sentence at Snaresbrook Crown Court, in east London, according to the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA).
Butfoy was employed with each airline for one year, from 2016 to 2018, according to The Times of London. During that time, officials at BA CityFlyer reportedly became suspicious of his experience after an incident occurred in Switzerland when he pressed a button that "no qualified pilot would," a source told the news outlet.

He was later investigated by the CAA, when it was found that he had given false information on his résumé and fabricated the details of his flight experience in order to "obtain and retain employment," the authority said. Among those fabrications included false claims that he had flown 1,610 hours as a captain and received a training course certificate. He also falsely stated that he had held a private pilot's license since 1998, according to the Times.
Butfoy reportedly falsified his flight hours while he was working for a previous employer, Hangar 8 Management, according to the Times. That company also operates the same Embraer 190 jets as BA CityFlyer, the news outlet noted.


However, a spokesperson for British Airways maintained that Butfoy was still fully qualified and certified to operate as a pilot, and that the case was related to false information he provided in references during the application process. The airline said passengers were never put in harm.
"The safety of our customers and crew is always our priority, and the fully qualified pilot was suspended and an investigation launched as soon as BA CityFlyer became aware of discrepancies in his employment record," an airline representative told Newsweek in a statement Saturday morning. "At no point was there any risk to customers or colleagues."
​

Jonathan Spence, general counsel at the CAA, said earlier this week that Butfoy's prosecution and sentence shows that "offenses of this kind are taken very seriously by the Civil Aviation Authority and the courts," adding that "pilot integrity is at the heart of aviation safety and we will take all steps necessary to maintain that position."
BA CityFlyer is a regional operator that flies aircraft from London City Airport to domestic and European destinations. Stobart Air no longer operates, but was previously owned by Aer Lingus.