Passengers

If all goes as planned, sometime this morning a spacecraft will blast off from its launchpad in Cape Canaveral, Fla., and ride a fiery plume of contrails upward through the pre-dawn darkness to begin a two-week journey to the International Space Station and back. But the flight won't be just another NASA resupply mission. Instead, the Falcon 9 rocket and its unmanned Dragon cargo capsule built by Space Exploration Technologies Corporation - SpaceX for short - will be the first commercially owned and operated vehicle ever to rendezvous with the station's orbiting astronauts.

A motorcyclist was killed in a single-vehicle crash Sunday evening on Route 99, Howard County police reported. Gary Alan Lynch, 45, of the 1200 block of Adgate Court in Woodbine was driving a 2002 Honda CBR 900 motorcycle west near Alpha Ridge Park. It went off the road and struck a post about 6:16 p.m., according to a police news release. Lynch and a passenger were taken to Howard County General Hospital, where he was pronounced dead. Speed and failure to stay within the lane may have been factors in the crash, according to a preliminary investigation, police said.

Trouble continued to dog the MARC commuter system Monday as trains were delayed for problems ranging from brake failure to malfunctioning traffic signals to downed trees. In the morning, a southbound MARC train experienced mechanical trouble, delaying Washington-bound commuters on the Penn Line, according to the Maryland Transit Administration. In the afternoon, at least one Washington-bound Camden Line train was running more than an hour late, while a northbound train on the same line was reported 37 minutes late as it approached Dorsey station after being delayed by signal problems and a downed tree.

Two men in their 20s are dead after a single-vehicle accident in upper Reisterstown at 10 p.m. Saturday, officials said Sunday. Justin Stambaugh, 22, of the 3800 block of Rockdale Road, was driving a 1994 Honda Civic southbound on Falls Road at a high rate of speed when he lost control and the car left the roadway and rolled over, Baltimore County Police said. Stambaugh and his passenger, Willie Green Jr., 21, of the 19600 block of Old York Road, were both ejected and died from their injuries, police said.

With great interest I read Frederick N. Rasnmussen's piece on "Chills at sight of United States' return" (March 12) I'd like to add a personal comment. Not only were I and my young wife privileged to be on that maiden voyage from New York to LeHavre, France -- it was our honeymoon trip -- but a substantial number of young German students shared that privilege. Just a few years after the conclusion of World War II, the U.S. Congress passed a law according to which young Germans and Japanese, members of the major defeated nations in World War II, were invited to spend a year at U.S. colleges and universities, essentially to learn about the American way of life, about American democracy, all of this at the expense of the American tax payer.

BWI Marshall Airport reported this week that passenger traffic grew six straight months last year to post a 13 percent gain in November over the same month a year earlier. According to BWI officials, the airport served 1.7 million commercial passengers in November alone. Southwest Airlines led the airlines serving BWI with more than 896,000 passengers in November - a 17 percent increase over the previous year. AirTran Airways brought 270,000 passengers through BWI that month to post a 20.1 percent increase.

Baltimore's newest train doesn't actually take anyone anywhere and doesn't have any schedule to keep. Adults may find the going a little slow (even though, at a top speed of about 6 mph, it goes faster than some MARC trains nowadays) and the quarters a little cramped. None of that matters. Kids should love the Maryland Zoo at Baltimore's Jones Falls Zephyr, a miniature train built just to their size and speed. And if that isn't enough, where else around here are they going to ride a train that goes past swinging chimpanzees, one where that bird watching closely as you chug by isn't a common everyday pigeon, but an African hornbill?

A man was killed and his passengers injured when his vehicle slammed into a telephone pole early Sunday in eastern Baltimore County, police said. Baltimore County police said the single-vehicle crash happened around 1:30 a.m. at Earls and Ebenezer roads, in Middle River. The two passengers, also male, were taken to local hospitals with what police believe are non-life-threatening injuries. Police are withholding names until family members are notified. jhopkins@baltsun.com twitter.com/realestatewonk Text BUSINESS to 70701 to get Baltimore Sun Business text alerts

A Southwest flight carrying 115 passengers from Albuquerque, New Mexico, to BWI Airport was diverted to Nashville International Airport due to a passenger's "suspicious behavior," an airline spokesman said. Flight 1307 was scheduled to leave the Albuquerque airport at 8:55 a.m. Saturday to BWI but was diverted due to a passenger's actions, said Chris Mainz, a Southwest spokesman. He said the passenger "caused some concern" and the plane was diverted as "an abundance of caution.

Airline passengers have been willing to put up with an awful lot in recent years. Squished-in seating, roulette wheel pricing, delayed or lost baggage, protracted security screening based on the latest terrorists' crackpot scheme - all were tolerated because to get someplace far away fast, there is no alternative to flying. But holding passengers hostage aboard planes stranded on tarmacs for as long as 10 hours - as though they were just so much cargo - exposed a level of insensitivity to human needs that cannot be excused.

Among the knives, real and toy pistols, and other dangerous weapons seized at BWI Marshall Airport, this one stood out: A curving 7-inch arc of jagged teeth with a brass knuckle-style grip. A blogger for the Transportation Security Administration coined the nickname "debrainer" as he enshrined the nasty-looking utensil in the TSA's informal hall of fame. That's the weirdest thing officers said they have confiscated in recent months from carry-on baggage at Baltimore-Washington International Thurgood Marshall Airport, used by more than 22.2 million passengers last year.

A single car crash in Gambrills Monday has claimed the life of an elderly female passenger and critically injured the driver. The car was traveling down the driveway to an underground parking garage at about 4:50 p.m., when it struck a wall of the building in the 2600 block of Chapel Lake Drive, police said. Both victims, who, police said, are related, were taken to University of Maryland Shock Trauma Center, where the woman died. The elderly driver remains in critical condition.

Longer and more comfortable, and able to make flights to the Caribbean, Mexico and Hawaii, the first of Southwest Airlines' new Boeing 737-800 jets is set to arrive in Baltimore next week. The new cabins are the company's first redesign in a decade, with seating tested by people with 20 different body types — from the very short to the very tall. Robert Jordan, the airline's chief commercial officer, said the jets herald "the Southwest of the future. " Southwest will take delivery of 33 of the 800-series planes, which cost about $84.4 million each, this year and 41 next year.

Last summer, when the paving trucks showed up, fans of the Maryland & Pennsylvania Railroad deservedly got a little nervous. The object of their veneration is a sliver of railroad track that bisects North Charles Street in the Woodbrook neighborhood of Baltimore County. Thousands of drivers who pass over the track every day probably have no idea what it was and where it went. It is left over from the days when the Ma & Pa zigzagged for 77.2 miles across the Maryland countryside from Baltimore to York, Pa. That track, which was left unpaved, is where a head-on collision shattered the tranquillity of a late-spring Saturday afternoon.

Several columns ago, I wrote about the 160th anniversary of the foundering of the HMS Birkenhead off the West African coast that established the maritime tradition of "women and children first" when it comes time to evacuate a stricken vessel. My good friend, Helen Delich Bentley, the former congresswoman and former federal maritime commissioner, wrote in a letter to the editor of The Baltimore Sun that I had overlooked one of the most dramatic Atlantic sea rescues of all time, when the Missouri, out of Baltimore, rescued all passengers and crew from the steamer Danmark in 1889.

The Italian liner Costa Concordia, with 4,200 passengers aboard, piled up in January on the rocky shoreline of Tuscany, tearing out its bottom and capsizing. The death toll has risen to 25, with the recovery of eight more bodies last week. Seven people remain missing. Capt. Francesco Schettino, the Costa Concordia's master, violated one of the noblest and most sacred traditions of the sea when he did not direct the evacuation of passengers and crew. There can be nothing more terrifying for passengers than to see crew members going over the side, as has been alleged by disaster survivors, who described a scene of panic and confusion.

Police stopped a truck near a reputed open-air drug market Saturday night and arrested one of the passengers on drug charges, authorities said.Police said a green 1994 Ford truck with two men and a woman inside stopped at the corner of Pioneer Drive and Pioneer Court about 8:30 p.m. One of four men standing on the corner approached the truck, police said.After a short time, the truck pulled away, police said. Officer Frederick Plitt followed the truck to Pioneer Drive and Jacobs Road. There, he checked the passengers and searched the truck.

At least 18 passengers became sickened on a charter bus that stopped near White Marsh Mall last night. They were treated at four area hospitals for symptoms of carbon monoxide exposure, a Baltimore County Fire Department spokesman said. About 9 p.m., three teenage passengers complained of nausea after getting off the bus when it stopped at an Exxon station on Honeygo Boulevard, said Lt. Pierre Thode, the department spokesman. Within minutes, an additional 15 passengers began complaining of nausea, and someone called the Fire Department.

Before year's end, Baltimore-Washington International Thurgood Marshall Airport will be part of a passenger prescreening program that allows low-risk travelers to keep their belts and shoes on and their laptops in their bags as they go through security checkpoints. But the airport's largest carrier — Southwest — will not participate, as it concentrates instead on its $1 billion merger with AirTran and the consolidation of their ticketing systems. Southwest and AirTran account for roughly 70 percent of BWI's traffic.

The Maryland Transit Administration has told the General Assembly that it would have to raise Baltimore-area transit fares by 65 cents next fiscal year — a 40 percent jump — in order to meet state revenue goals without cutting service. Such an increase would have to be followed by another 25-cent increase two years later to meet "farebox recovery" targets. Maryland law requires that transit systems cover 35 percent of their costs through passenger payments, though that goal is missed more often than it is met. The report doesn't necessarily mean fares will go up by that amount, but it sets a baseline for discussions of an increase — which critics argue would disproportionately affect many of the Baltimore area's poorest residents.