Flight Attendants

NEW YORK -- Northwest Airlines Corp. and its flight attendants agreed yesterday on how to reduce wages and benefits by $195 million a year, averting a showdown in which the bankrupt carrier would have imposed its own cuts and risked a strike. Specifics of the proposed contract weren't immediately released. The tentative pact must be approved by union leaders, the airline's 9,300 attendants and U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Allan Gropper. Northwest expects attendants to finish voting on July 31, the carrier said.

You can have your women in combat. You can have your women who lean in. You can even have your woman secretary of state who visits 112 countries. But my new heroes are women on planes with babies. Flying back and forth across the country over the holiday weekend, I met a lot of these road warriors. It seemed their children were never in a good mood, and neither, I'm guessing, were the childless passengers who suddenly found the plane had become an airborne day care center. Just imagine if every time you boarded a plane, you knew nobody in the cabin wanted to sit near you. That they'd rather sit next to the snoring fat guy who takes up a seat and a half than you and your babies.

The union representing USAir's 10,000 flight attendants has suspended negotiations over concessions, saying further meetings are fruitless as long as management and USAir's pilots aren't talking.The recess will last at least through Nov. 15, Carol Austin, USAir chapter chair of the Association of Flight Attendants, said yesterday. In the interim, union leaders will meet with flight attendants around the country to update them on the negotiations.Ms. Austin said the flight attendants cannot accomplish much more until it becomes clear how much the company's pilots will give up.The pilots have offered 20 percent pay cuts and said other employee groups also should give up 20 percent in some combination of pay, benefits, work rules and job reductions.

Emergency response teams and hazardous materials crews responded to Baltimore-Washington International Thurgood Marshall Airporton Thursday afternoon after a flight attendant on an inbound Southwest Airlines flight fell ill, airport officials said. About 4:25 p.m., Southwest Flight 709 from Norfolk, Va., arrived at the airport with a flight attendant in need of medical attention, officials said. The flight had originated in Denver and was bound for Chicago and later Dallas, but its stop in Baltimore was scheduled, officials said.

FORT WORTH, Texas -- The American Airlines flight attendants' strike that stalled travel plans for thousands of passengers has also left 29 flight attendants stranded a continent away.The crews worked flights from Miami and New York City to Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, early last week but chose to go on strike Thursday morning rather than work on the return flights.But because they did not arrive as visa-carrying tourists and American no longer will claim them as active flight crew members, the strikers are stranded in a legal limbo.

NEW YORK - By inviting the flight attendants who foiled Richard Reid's attempt to blow up an American Airlines jet in December to his State of the Union address, President Bush acknowledged the contribution flight attendants can make to air security and safety. But in the rush to federalize airport screeners and arm pilots with stun guns, it's time to make sure hiring standards and training for flight attendants reflect their significant role. In the early days of commercial aviation, stewardesses were registered nurses.

The union of flight attendants at US Airways rejected an offer for binding arbitration in its 3-year-old labor dispute yesterday, triggering a 30-day "cooling-off" period after which the employees are free to strike or take other action against the airline. The Association of Flight Attendants rejected the National Mediation Board's offer to resolve its stalled contract negotiations with US Airways Group Inc. Under federal law, the union must wait for the cooling-off period to expire before calling a strike, but it can continue to negotiate.

Flight attendants for US Airways threatened to walk out yesterday on as many as 53 daily flights from Baltimore-Washington International Airport unless they reach agreement on a new employment contract with the airline by March 25. But the Arlington, Va.-based carrier countered by repeating its promise to shut the entire airline down rather than subject its customers to a strike. The Association of Flight Attendants released a long list of flights it plans to target with its "chaos" campaign of unannounced walkouts, all of them clustered around cities, like Baltimore, in which US Airways has a large presence.

US Airways and the union representing its 9,000 flight attendants have asked a federal mediator to intervene in negotiations for a new employment contract, amid demands from the union that the airline share its newfound profitability with employees.The Association of Flight Attendants has been negotiating a new contract with the Arlington, Va.-based airline for more than two years, but has had "very, very little progress," according to Lynn Lenosky, president of the union's division of US Airways employees.

United Airlines flight attendants say they could begin random walkouts tomorrow, just ahead of the busy Independence Day weekend, if the airline goes ahead with its decision to turn over their pension plan to the federal government. "We're continuing our fight to save our plan," Sarah Nelson Dela Cruz, a spokeswoman for the Association of Flight Attendants, said yesterday. She said a strike campaign could be one of the tactics used to achieve that. If the union follows through with threats not to board aircraft, it could cripple United's system, because federal regulations stipulate that planes must have flight attendants.

In the latest Amazing Race, teams get the heck out of Taiwan so they can get down in Indonesia. With two eliminations coming up, who will survive? And who will think of the children? Since the Taiwan-to-Indonesia air route isn't too popular, all the teams bunch up on the same flight. Then they take the same overnight train, and finally splinter off during the Great Taxi Race to a remote cave. The spread during the taxi race seems to follow the teams throughout the episode, which is how Grandma and Grandpa pull themselves out of last place, even with a rope-untangling speed bump.

Good day, ladies and gentlemen, this is your Captain (and State Delegate) Herb McMillan. We've leveled off at our cruising altitude, but you need to keep your seat belts fastened. We're in for a rough ride. Here's why. Our route of flight isn't what I voted for, but the liberal flight planners in our General Assembly think the economic weather is improving. Looking to the left, you see they increased state spending by another billion dollars, and that we project $1.4 billion deficits for years to come.

Flight attendants for AirTran Airways plan to picket at Baltimore-Washington International Thurgood Marshall Airport and other locations over the next six weeks to protest what the workers view as stalled contract negotiations with the airline. The workers, represented by the Association of Flight Attendants-CWA, say they are frustrated by a lack of progress in contract negotiations and will begin picketing on Monday at Atlanta Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport. They plan the last of the protests on Friday, April 1, at BWI. If a tentative agreement is not reached by April 1, picketing will continue in six more cities, the union said in a statement.

We don't agree with the way JetBlue flight attendant Steven Slater expressed his aggravation with airline travel and his job — haranguing a misbehaving passenger via the plane's PA system, grabbing a beer from the beverage cart, then sliding down the plane's emergency exit chute — but the incident does serve as an example (albeit an over-the-top one) of the angry skies of summer travel. Getting on a plane these days is an occasion brimming with opportunities for irritation.

I might have to consider staying longer on the continent, especially after the discovery that they serve beer at McDonald's restaurants in some foreign countries. In particular, this revelation has given me a new appreciation for the French culture. If that isn't enough, I boarded an AirBerlin flight on Thursday and the flight attendants were handing out free copies of Playboy, which caused me to spontaneously blurt out, "What a country!" Unfortunately, it was the German language version of Playboy, so it was useless to me. ( For more, go to baltimoresun.

Last fall, three friends and I flew from Lisbon, Portugal, to Los Angeles by way of Philadelphia. On the flight from Philadelphia to Los Angeles, I was showing them my new camera and took a few pictures of our surroundings. A flight attendant came to me and told me to show her the pictures, which I did. On our arrival, armed officers escorted us off the plane, separated us and made us wait for the authorities. They asked ridiculous questions ("What's your eye color?") and, in the end, they let us go with no apologies.

With an unexpected number of flight attendants showing up on the first day of a three-day strike, British Airways said yesterday that it will restore some regularly scheduled flights today plus add charter service in some cities, including Baltimore.The cabin crew strike began early yesterday morning, forcing the airline to cancel nearly half of the 1,000 daily flights it operates worldwide, including a round-trip flight from Baltimore-Washington International Airport to London's Gatwick Airport.

Passengers will jockey for storage space in cramped overhead bins. Flight attendants will have to step in to referee and demand that those stuffed suitcases be checked. Ground crews will scramble to load excess oversized carry-ons into cargo holds as the plane idles. Security backups will grow still longer as passengers throw more bags at screeners to be looked at or opened - some no doubt carrying banned liquids or gels. Those are the scenes that airline analysts and workers envision if American Airlines' decision this week to charge for all checked luggage prompts other carriers to follow suit - and if travelers rebel by trying to bring as much carry-on baggage as they can get away with.

You'll never look at, or reach into, an airline seat-back pocket the same after reading this. Besides being a repository for magazines, newspapers, books, iPods and air-sickness bags, seat-back pockets get stuffed with all kinds of disgusting trash, from toenail clippings to mushy meals. People do things on airplanes that they would never do in other public settings. They pluck eyebrows, polish nails and pick noses. They stick chewed gum in places only other passengers will discover. They blow noses into blankets that get folded up for the next weary traveler.