This story sounded like one right out of the movies.

Pilot blinded by stroke is guided safely to ground

LONDON (AP) — A British pilot who was suddenly blinded by a stroke during a solo flight was talked safely down by a military pilot, the Royal Air Force said Friday.

You’ve just hijacked a bus, what are you going to do next?

Bus driver taken hostage at gunpoint; forced to drive to Downtown Disney

A man took a tour bus driver hostage briefly and forced her to drive to the Downtown Disney entertainment and shopping complex, authorities said Saturday.

What has a light side, a dark side and holds the universe together. Hint: it’s not the force.

FBI: Airline passenger restrained with duct tape

An airline crew used duct tape to keep a passenger in her seat because they say she became unruly, fighting flight attendants and grabbing other passengers, forcing the flight to land in North Carolina.

I appreciated that they managed not to say that air travel was falling. I like to not use those phrases together.

Air travel declines at alarming pace

The global aviation industry is facing its largest drop in passengers since the outbreak of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) in 2003, the International Air Transport Association (IATA) has said.

The Montreal-based airline group said global international traffic results for September show passenger traffic declined 2.9 percent while cargo traffic dropped 7.7 percent compared to the same month in 2007.

Bag labelled ‘bomb’ got past security checks

A LARGE bag with “BOMB” written across it passed through Qantas check-in and security screening for oversized luggage at Brisbane domestic airport yesterday, the Transport Workers Union said.

Baggage handlers preparing to transfer the bag raised the alarm and stopped work for about 40 minutes as security staff and managers attempted to remove it.

With a weak dollar, America is a great buy for foreigners, yet visits are falling

A recent headline in The Guardian of London � “America � more hassle than it’s worth?” � underscores a stubborn global view that the United States is not an easy or a desirable place to visit.

Unesco Adds to Its World Heritage List

Unesco this month added 27 sites to its World Heritage list, which now has 878 sites in 145 countries. Nineteen new sites fall into the cultural category. They include the Historic Center of Camag�ey, an inland village in Cuba founded by the Spaniards in 1528; the Armenian Monastic Ensembles, three structures in northwest Iran that are dedicated to the Armenian Christian faith (the oldest dates from the seventh century); and the Wooden Churches of the Slovak part of the Carpathian Mountain area (Slovakia), which consists of eight structures built between the 16th and the 18th centuries for the Roman Catholic, the Protestant and the Greek Orthodox faiths. New natural sites include Surtsey, a volcanic island in Iceland formed between 1963 and 1967; the Monarch Butterfly Biosphere Reserve in Mexico; and the Socotra Archipelago in Yemen in the northwest Indian Ocean near the Gulf of Aden.

Delta: Body of woman, 61, found in plane bathroom

Flight attendants discovered the body of a 61-year-old woman in the restroom of a plane shortly before the flight landed in Atlanta Wednesday morning, a spokeswoman for the airline said.

JetBlue CEO to take pay cut in ’show of solidarity’ with workers

JetBlue CEO Dave Barger will take a 50% pay cut for the second half of 2008, something Reuters calls “a show of solidarity with employees as the low-cost carrier struggles with soaring fuel prices and a slowing U.S. economy.”

Rape Alley

IT was once a peaceful fishing village, then an upmarket family resort � but today it is ruled by drunken young Brits.

Shameless pairs have sex in public, hooligans brawl over a wrong look, girls parade in underwear, youngsters down cheap booze until they vomit and drunken teens menace the narrow streets on quad bikes.

Welcome to Laganas on the Greek island of Zante, the latest holiday destination to fall foul of Brits abroad in the wake of now-notorious troublespots Ayia Napa and Faliraki.

Here are some travel news stories that have caught my eye over the last couple of weeks:

Cruise ship with 51 people on board grounds in Alaska

Cruise West’s (Cruise West was mentioned in Amateur Traveler Episode 21 - Cruising - Alaska by Small Boat) Spirit of Glacier Bay ran aground July 8th near Glacier Bay in Alaska. All passengers were safely evacuated.

Family: ‘Southwest Airlines kicked us off flight in Phoenix’

PHOENIX, Arizona — A Seattle family said they were left stranded at Sky Harbor Airport over the holiday weekend when Southwest Airlines refused to allow them to board a connecting flight because their children were disruptive.

First-class flier uses emergency exit to avoid coach-class riff-raff

A first-class passenger on a Delta flight apparently became so angry that coach-class passengers were able to exit his jet before he could that “he yanked open an emergency hatch and slid down the chute,” The Associated Press reports. The incident happened in the South American country of Guyana, where local police said the man �- identified as a Guyanese citizen �- appeared to be intoxicated after arriving on Delta’s flight from New York.

American Airlines Cancels Flight Due to Hostile Passengers

A flight from Florida to New York Sunday night never got off the ground. That’s because after the flight crew arrived late, angry and impatient passengers got verbally agitated and hostile. Apparently it was so bad, the crew wasn’t comfortable working the flight so they refused to take off.

Alaska Airlines goes cashless

Starting Aug. 5, Alaska Airlines flight attendants will accept only major credit cards for onboard goodies. The flight attendants, who will be packing hand-held charging devices from Toronto-based GuestLogix Inc., will accept no cash.

Top 10 unusual places to stay

Why stay in a normal hotel when you could stay in a set from Star Wars, a former prison, a monastery etc.

U.S. Airports are Hotbeds for Laptop Loss

Flustered flyers leave behind an astounding 12,000 laptops in U.S. airports each week, according to a recent study (pdf) sponsored by Dell. But here�s the really scary part: The Economist�s Gulliver blog reports that less than 35 percent of those lost laptops are returned to their owners.

The most recent episode of the wonderful “Fly with Me” podcast dealt with people behaving badly on flights. The host of the show Joe Dion, a commercial airline pilot, remarked that when you think about how unnatural a commercial flight is with so many people crammed so close together in a pressurized metal tube 6 miles up it is amazing how usually things go so smoothly, but sometimes they don’t as Joe’s latest podcast describes. I thought of that podcast when I saw this story in the USA Today:

Man gets jail time, ordered to pay JetBlue $2,867 for disrupted flight

A JetBlue passenger was sentenced to 10 months in prison for threatening the airline’s flight attendants after they stopped serving him alcohol, The Buffalo News reports. The 27-year-old man apparently became “belligerent” with the attendants after they cut him off. He then “made several statements about shooting and killing the crew” once the plane landed, according to The Associated Press. The threats and poor behavior led JetBlue to divert its Houston-to-New York JFK flight to Buffalo, where the man was removed from the plane by the FBI. JetBlue’s crewmembers told authorities they stopped serving the man because he was obviously intoxicated.

Just in case we are unclear about the proper standards of behavior when flying commercially, let’s just say that threatening the crew is not something I am going to recommend.

I remember a day when people who get dressed up to fly. When I was a kid you would put on your suit before you boarded a plane. Of course, I also remember sweltering in Wisconsin for 2 days in my fancy clothes when they had lost my family’s luggage. Dress codes for flying have relaxed since those days but not for a customer service supervisor named Keith who works for Southwest airline in San Diego according to a story originally reported in the San Diego Union Tribune and later picked up by the USA Today.

USA Today:

Southwest is in the news in San Diego after a customer service supervisor apparently objected to the outfit worn by college student and Hooters waitress Kyla Ebbert. At least that’s the word from San Diego Union-Tribune columnist Gerry Braun, who writes that Ebbert was “escorted off a Southwest Airlines flight two months ago” for wearing “a white denim miniskirt, high-heel sandals, and a turquoise summer sweater over a tank top over a bra.” (Check out the Union-Tribune’s photo of the outfit Ebbert says she was wearing for the flight.) Ebbert says that after she had taken her seat, the supervisor asked her to come out into the jetway and asked her to change.

“I asked him what part of my outfit was offensive,” Ebbert says to Braun. “The shirt? The skirt? And he said, ‘The whole thing.’ ” Ebbert adds she was lightly dressed because she was taking a same-day trip to Tucson and back for a doctor’s appointment. The temperature in Tucson that day was forecast to be between 100 and 110. Ebbert says she was asked to go home and change and return for a later flight with a less-revealing outfit. She refused, and the airline eventually relented.

Was her outfit too revealing? You judge for your self. This picture shows the outfit she says she was wearing at the time. Some savy airline history buffs at airliners.net compared this picture to a vintage picture he found of Southwest Airlines flight attendants.