Glitch has American Airlines seeking pilots for holiday
A scheduling glitch has left American Airlines scrambling to find pilots to operate thousands of flights over the busy Christmas holiday period.
A spokesman for the airline said Wednesday that American expects to avoid canceling flights by paying overtime and using reserve or on-call pilots. American isn’t saying how many flights are affected, but the pilots’ union says that about 15,000 flights were scheduled without a captain, a co-pilot or both.
American, the world’s biggest airline, has about 15,000 active pilots and expects to operate more than 200,000 flights in December.
Pilots bid each month for flying assignments based on seniority. The scheduling glitch let pilots drop scheduled flights – to take a vacation over Christmas, for example – even when there were no other pilots available for that flight. Normally such a request would be denied, especially during busy travel periods.
International visits drop by 4 percent
The number of international visitors arriving in the United States declined nearly 4 percent in the first six months of this year compared with the same period in 2016, according to data released Wednesday from the U.S. Department of Commerce National Travel and Tourism Office in Washington.
Many sectors of the travel industry have been warning that President Donald Trump’s anti-foreigner rhetoric and immigration policies would lead to a drop in tourism here.
Fewer visitors came from nearly every region of the world, with declines in arrivals from Western Europe, Eastern Europe, Asia, the Middle East, Africa, South America, Central America and the Caribbean. The only region that sent more visitors in the first six months of 2017 compared with 2016 was Canada, up 5 percent.
The overall drop was even higher in June alone than for the six-month period, with a 6.7 percent decline in June 2017 compared with June 2016, the NTTO data showed.
Yellen says rates should drop at a gradual pace
Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen said the Fed expects to continue raising interest rates gradually. And she tells lawmakers that the Fed will take care not to choke off any extra growth generated by tax cuts as long as inflation stayed tame.
In likely her last appearance before Congress, Yellen received praise and appreciation from both Republicans and Democrats on the Joint Economic Committee who saluted her four-year tenure.
Court frets over erosion of privacy
The Supreme Court is worried about the erosion of privacy amid technological advances.
The justices signaled Wednesday they could restrain the government’s ability to track Americans’ movements through collection of their cellphone information.
Facebook to match $50 million for relief
Facebook is pledging $50 million a year to match disaster-relief donations.
The pledge isn’t all new money, but represents an effort to formalize matches Facebook has already been making on an ad-hoc basis. The company is also giving relief organizations such as the Red Cross access to data on what users need and where they are.