An airline passenger going through security at JFK airport last night was relieved of $5,000 cash by a quick-fingered TSA officer, authorities say. A TSA spokesperson tells us the employee has been working for the TSA for over four years, and she's been identified as Alexandra Schmid. She was allegedly caught on surveillance camera taking the cash from a passenger's jacket as it moved along the X-Ray conveyor belt at the A checkpoint in Terminal Four. more ›

Happy Friday, here's the story of Ripples the Cat, a freedom-lovin' feline who grounded an Air Canada flight for four hours yesterday after he bolted from his carrier and stormed the cockpit. Ripples's owner, Debbie Harris, tells the Associated Press the trouble started after she went through security and someone didn't properly close the carrier after taking Ripples out for inspection. Once inside the plane's cabin, Ripples made his move: more ›

'Tis the season for holiday air travel nightmares, from overbooked flights that prevent you from seeing Grandma to cupcakes in jars as security threats. So it shouldn't be surprising to hear that when a 9-year-old flying Southwest Airlines from Tennessee to LaGuardia Airport was rerouted, her family had no idea. more ›

The National Transportation Safety Board and Federal Aviation Administration are beginning their investigation of the fatal small plane crash that claimed the lives of five people yesterday. Investment banker Jeffrey Buckalew was flying a single-engine turboprop plane, with his wife Corinne, their young children Jackson and Meriwether and the family dog, plus his business colleague Rakesh Chawla, from Teterboro Airport in NJ to Atlanta when their plane suddenly made an "uncontrolled descent," apparently exploding, and eventually hit part of Interstate 287 in Harding, NJ. A nearby homeowner said to the NY Times, "This plane was very loud because it was so close, and its engines would stop and start. And the pilot was trying to rev it to keep the engines going." more ›

Alec Baldwin may have tried to apologize to his fellow American Airlines passengers delayed by his Tuesday tantrum, but now he's offended a 9/11 widow. Cheryl McGuinness Hutchins, whose husband Tom McGuinness was a pilot aboard AA 11, which hit the World Trade Center, told TMZ that Baldwin's reference to 9/11 was "inappropriate." more ›

Three women, who didn't know each other and were not traveling together, say they were ejected, one by one, from an AirTran flight out of West Palm Beach yesterday afternoon for simply airing grievances. Marilyn Miller, a 55-year-old lawyer from Westchester, was the first to go. She says she was settling into her seat for the flight to White Plains when she observed a flight attendant indelicately shove her carry-on bag into another overhead compartment. "I said, 'Hey, I have breakables in that," she recalls. more ›

Yesterday, 85-year-old Lenore Zimmerman shared her humiliating tale of being strip-searched at JFK Airport, a TSA ordeal that included her leg being wounded and missing her flight to Florida. But now the TSA denies that she was strip-searched, which has infuriated the Long Island grandmother even more. She tells the Daily News, “Why would I make up this story? In my wildest dreams, I couldn’t think of such a thing happening.” more ›

This morning, AMR, the company that owns American Airlines, announced it would file for Chapter 11 reorganization in the U.S. bankruptcy court in New York City, explaining, "We must address our cost structure, including labor costs, to enable us to capitalize on these foundational strengths and secure our future. Our very substantial cost disadvantage compared to our larger competitors, all of which restructured their costs and debt through Chapter 11, has become increasingly untenable given the accelerating impact of global economic uncertainty and resulting revenue instability, volatile and rising fuel prices, and intensifying competitive challenges." more ›

The front page of today's Daily News is devoted to "hero cop" Anibal Mercado, who saved a plane full of Jet Blue passengers from... a rowdy drunk guy on a flight. Mercado, a Bronx cop who was off duty and returning home from a Thanksgiving vacation in the Dominican Republic Saturday night, restrained the sodden passenger after he allegedly punched a male flight attendant. The inebriate in question, 22-year-old Antonio Ynoa, had been demanding club soda to mix with his rum, and Mercado says he flipped out when flight attendants said it was against the rules to drink Duty Free alcohol during the flight. more ›

With crowded flights on the mind of many travelers this week, as well as gluttony, one airline passenger's seven-hour flight on US Airways has struck a chord: Arthur Berkowitz says he had to stand for the flight from Alaska to Philadelphia because a morbidly obese passenger made nearly impossible for him to sit in his own seat. more ›

Yesterday, a Continental flight headed to Newark Liberty Airport had to make an emergency landing after taking off from Panama City's airport because of a bird strike. WCBS 2 reports, "According to airline officials, Flight 1022, a Boeing 737-900 with 176 on board, took off from Tocumen Airport at 10:05 a.m., but quickly ran into a trouble when the bird strike caused the left engine to catch fire." more ›

Last week a man from Michigan was busted by the Transportation Security Administration trying to smuggle 35 pounds of marijuana onto a flight inside a wrapped present. Now we ALL have to suffer... with the enforcement of a rule that's not new. more ›

The full body imaging scanners now in use at many airports around the country have generated a lot of controversy. The U.S. Government Accountability Office said the TSA was deploying the machines without fully testing them, concerns were raised about privacy, and others have questioned the adverse health effect of some of the machines, which function as low-level X-Ray machines. Now ProPublica, the "independent, non-profit newsroom that produces investigative journalism in the public interest," has just published a scathing report accusing the TSA of "marching millions of airline passengers through the scanners, parting ways with European countries that concluded radiation from routine airport use poses a health risk." more ›

A Boeing 767 with 230 passengers on board made an emergency crash landing at a Warsaw airport around 2:40 p.m. local time (9:40 a.m. EST). The LOT Polish Airlines flight, which originated in Newark, was scheduled to land in Warsaw at 1:30 p.m. local time, but there were problems with the landing gear. The plane circled above the airport for an hour, dumping fuel before coming down in a dramatic belly landing. Here's video: more ›

The Department of Transportation's Aviation Consumer Protection division is investigating Jet Blue's handling of Flight 504, which was left for dead on a snowy tarmac in Hartford, Connecticut for seven and a half hours on Saturday. Passengers on the plane included a paraplegic from Staten Island who had to use urological supplies to relieve himself because the bathrooms were clogged, a diabetic, and several unhappy children. Good times! LiveATC.net obtained the cockpit recording, in which you can hear the pilot desperately pleading for help, at point begging: "We just need a tug and a tow bar. If you just give me a welding shop, I'd be happy to weld one myself." more ›

Yesterday's freak snow storm threw air travel along the East Coast for a loop. Flights were stopped for hours at JFK, Laguardia and Newark. And for one Newark-bound Jet Blue flight from Miami, that meant its 200 passengers were stuck on the tarmac at Bradley International in Hartford, Connecticut for eight hours. A Miami Sun-Sentinel sports writer, on his way to today's Giants game versus the Dolphins, Tweeted, "Lady on board just broke down. Like that guy who cried in his cell at the beginning of Shawshank. Can someone sneak me in Rita Hayworth?" more ›

The TSA: When they're not hiding creepy notes in your luggage they're just straight-up stealing stuff. Two former TSA workers at JFK Airport pleaded guilty yesterday to grand larceny after they were caught swiping $40,000 from somebody's luggage. Coumar Persad, 44, of Jackson Heights, Queens, and Davon Webb, 31, of the Bronx will each serve six months in jail for their crime, which was perpetrated in January after Persad X-rayed a piece of baggage headed for an American Airlines flight. more ›

It may have taken the TSA ages to stop doing things like feeling up our nation's youth, but when an agent puts a note next to a passenger's vibrator saying "GET YOUR FREAK ON GIRL?" Oh you better believe their response is swift and firm. Surely we will all rest easy knowing that the Administration really means it when they say that they take "all allegations of inappropriate conduct seriously and is investigating this claim." A day after the story went viral, the TSA says it has found and punished the note-writing baggage screener. more ›

[UPDATE BELOW] A blogger and co-founder of the website Feministe recently flew from Newark to Dublin, and upon arrival found a very special personalized message from the TSA in her suitcase. Jill, who withholds her last name from part of the Internets, tells Forbes that when she unpacked her bag this morning, she discovered a note scrawled on the official form from the TSA informing her that her bag had been inspected. "GET YOUR FREAK ON GIRL," it read. more ›

Sure, the TSA's list of prohibited items for carry-on and checked luggage might say that brass knuckles, stun guns, daggers and swords are allowed in checked bags, but when TSA agents find "four sets of brass knuckles, four stun- gun batons, a dagger and a sword" in your bags at JFK Airport, they are probably going to arrest you. Because items like brass knuckles and stun guns are illegal in New York. more ›

Yesterday, the FBI met a Delta flight that landed at JFK Airport from London. Why? Because of a suspicious passenger An early report said that a passenger or group made threats against President Obama, but MyFoxNY reports that the FBI said, "The FBI met the flight and an individual from that flight was denied entry to the U.S. There was no threat to the president." more ›

It's unclear whether Jose Acosta was working on his memoirs or simply begging to get busted when he boarded a JetBlue flight from St. Lucia to JFK carrying handwritten notes titled "Confessions of the Mule." But the Daily News reports that his handwritten confession quickly became a verbal one after he was questioned by a U.S. Customs and Border Protection inspector when he landed on Monday. "The charade is up: you've got me," Acosta allegedly told the inspector. Worst game of charades EVER? more ›

Southwest Airlines is starting to have a serious celebrity problem. First there was the time that Kevin Smith got kicked off a flight for being too fat, then there was the time Green Day frontman Billie Joe Armstrong was kicked off a flight for wearing his pants too low and now former L Word actress Leisha Hailey is going around the Internet saying she and her girlfriend were kicked off a flight for kissing each other. We probably shouldn't be too surprised though, considering what we learned this summer about Southwest's racist, sexist pilots. more ›

This morning, a Delta flight that took off from Laguardia Airport, headed toward Boston, was forced to land after a bird strike. NYC Aviation reports, "A Delta Air Lines Airbus A319 suffered an engine failure after hitting a bird over New York late Thursday morning. The flight made an emergency landing 20 minutes later without incident." more ›

This morning, a flight from JFK Airport, headed to Phoenix, was diverted to St. Louis' Lambert Airport. According to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, the diversion was "for security reasons after three male passengers acted suspiciously, officials say." However, it wasn't a terrorist issue... it possibly has something to do with seat assignments and backgammon. more ›

[UPDATE BELOW] Sure, it's the tenth anniversary of the September 11th attacks, and you're flying on a day when there's extremely heightened security, but if you don't seize the opportunity to join the Mile High Club now, doesn't that mean Al Qaeda has won? Such apparently was the reasoning (or lack thereof) of an amorous couple on a Frontier Airlines flight from Denver to Detroit yesterday. After they slipped into the W.C. for an intimate encounter, their "suspicious behavior" was reported to the TSA, and F-16 fighter jets were scrambled to chaperone the plane to Detroit. more ›

The ramifications of Hurricane Irene are still being felt by the many people who have been stranded at JFK since Saturday. The storm caused the airport to suspend all flights, and it has been struggling to catch up ever since then. Naturally, people are starting to get a little annoyed at the fiasco. So much so that airport security had to be called on some of the complainers. more ›

Sacre bleu! Is this the start of an unseemly new trend? French actor Gerard Depardieu hopped on the "drunkenly peeing on a plane in public" bandwagon last night, allegedly relieving himself on the carpet of a City Jet flight from Paris to Dublin. more ›

A 65-year-old New Jersey man today was sentenced to a year in federal prison for molesting a sleeping woman on a flight to the States from Hong Kong. Between pissing skiers and groping geezers (not to mention the TSA) our skies really don't seem that friendly these days! more ›