NEWS
September 17, 2009
For those with cherished memories of the golden days of air travel, there's a new indignity to stomach - no more airport-wide paging at Baltimore-Washington International Thurgood Marshall Airport. At the end of the month, the state is eliminating the eight-person communications center that steered travelers to the appropriate "courtesy phone" and connected passengers with their parties. There are worse services to lose, of course. In this age of cell phones and text messages, it's slightly shocking this didn't fall under the budget ax earlier.
NEWS
By Arthur Hirsch | August 26, 2009
The Coast Guard's final report on the 2004 Baltimore Harbor water taxi accident that left five dead and one child with brain damage urges pontoon boat inspections and new stability standards based on heavier passengers. The 63-page report and recommendations, which a Baltimore Coast Guard official acknowledged took "longer than we would like" to complete, says the Lady D capsized March 6, 2004, with a full load of 23 passengers and two crew because of a combination of bad weather, overloading, movement and direction of the 36-foot boat.
NEWS
By Scott Calvert | June 24, 2009
When the Metro train pulled into the Silver Spring station late Monday afternoon, Michael Corcoran made a split-second decision that might have saved his life. Rather than hoof to the end car, which would conveniently deposit him beside an escalator at his destination, Union Station, he stepped into the third car and took a seat. Corcoran, 39, just felt happy to be escaping his job as a federal contractor before 5 p.m. for a change. Even with the punishing two-hour-plus commute to Jarrettsville, he figured he'd get home early enough to play with his four kids, maybe even mow the grass.
NEWS
By MICHELLE DEAL-ZIMMERMAN | May 10, 2009
When swine flu broke out a couple weeks ago, several airlines offered travel waivers. US Airways was first out of the gate with an offer to jettison change fees for passengers who wanted to avoid Mexico. The airline seemed to recognize, hours before media hopped on the flu hoopla, that this was going to be an issue for travelers. But in its hurry, US Airways overlooked the details of its response. While the airline offered waiving the change fee and advance ticketing requirements, it mandated that travelers take the rescheduled trip within 14 days of the original flight.
NEWS
By Justin Fenton | April 21, 2009
City homicide detectives are investigating possible links between the recent deaths of two men believed to be unlicensed taxi cab drivers, sources said. The shootings took place over the course of four days last week and within about a half-mile in East Baltimore. Police believe the victims - ages 63 and 78 - were "hacks," or unlicensed cab drivers, though it is unclear whether they were transporting or seeking passengers at the time they were killed, according to sources with knowledge of the investigation who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss it. The latest occurred Saturday, when Calvin Hayes, 78, was found about 6:50 a.m. sitting inside a blue Cadillac suffering from gunshot wounds to the upper torso.
NEWS
By Liz F. Kay | February 2, 2009
The image of one woman buffing another woman's nails in a railroad dining car struck Keith Gabel. Their hairstyles are clearly from another era. But the black woman is dressed as a servant in the black-and-white photo from the early 1900s, an image that Gabel said highlighted their different roles during that period. "It's kind of glaring, when you saw that," said the Bel Air resident, visiting the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad Museum's Black History Month exhibit yesterday. Various displays highlight the experiences of African-Americans as both railroad passengers and employees from the start of Jim Crow laws after the Civil War through desegregation.
NEWS
By Cynthia Dizikes | January 3, 2009
WASHINGTON - After helping to deliver the District of Columbia's first baby of the year, Dr. Kashif Irfan boarded a flight to Orlando, Fla., with his wife, his three small children and other relatives. But instead of taking off as scheduled, Irfan and his family were ordered off the plane and detained in the airport, surrounded by armed guards. "I was thinking, 'What could we have possibly done to arouse a degree of suspicion this high?' " said Irfan, a U.S. citizen born in Detroit. The airline's handling of the Irfan family, after comments one of them made about airline safety aroused suspicions of two teenage pasengers, caused an uproar among Muslim Americans yesterday and prompted AirTran Airways to formally apologize to the family and to make amends that the airline had refused a day earlier.
NEWS
By C. Fraser Smith | July 6, 2008
SHANKSVILLE, Pa. - I made my long-delayed Flight 93 pilgrimage a week before July 4 this year. This is where the United Airlines plane crashed on 9/11. It's the final resting place of 40 passengers and crew, some of whom apparently overwhelmed a group of terrorists - in all likelihood saving lives and national treasure in Washington, D.C., the terrorists' target destination. I've always marveled at the story: the image of ordinary people accepting what surely they feared would be a fatal challenge.
NEWS
By Laura McCandlish | April 17, 2008
Airline passengers involuntarily bumped from oversold flights will receive as much as $800 in compensation - double the current limit - under new federal rules announced yesterday in a move the government hopes will increase protections for passengers bedeviled by increasing congestion and delays. Such passengers rescheduled to arrive more than two hours late at their domestic destination will be entitled to twice the cost of their ticket, up to $800. Those delayed between one and two hours will receive the value of their ticket, up to $400.
NEWS
By Nicole Fuller | March 20, 2008
Anne Arundel County prosecutors have dropped handgun charges against the son of the civil rights director for the Maryland attorney general's office, authorities said yesterday. Kojo Lummuba Malik Snowden, 22, who lives with his father, Carl O. Snowden, on Garden Gate Lane in Annapolis, was arrested on gun possession charges Feb. 14 when police found a loaded .45-caliber handgun in the vehicle he was driving in Crownsville. Two passengers in the car also were charged. Initially, none of the men claimed the weapon, which was in a jacket in the back seat.