Wealthy CEOs and athletes have found a loophole that allows them to minimize their tax bills while traveling in style – all at the expense of the everyday traveler who flies commercial and must bear an outsize percentage of aviation taxes in the US.
Authored by James Durso via RealClearDefense.com,
Iran’s aviation sector will spend much more time taxiing before takeoff if the Countering Iran’s Destabilizing Activities Act Of 2017 becomes law. The bill enjoys bipartisan support in the U.S. Senate, and the House of Representatives is considering a companion bill, the Iran Ballistic Missiles and International Sanctions Enforcement Act, which also enjoys bipartisan support.
As attention shifts from the fate of EgyptAir's vanished flight MS804, which disappeared shortly before landing at 2:30am local time and which both Greek air traffic controllers and French president Hollande declared earlier ago has crashed, the focus turns to what happened during the doomed flight's final moments.
First, via the Guardian, here is a recap of what is known so far:
Six months after an Airbis A321 operated by Russia's Metrojet exploded shortly after takeoff from Egypt's Sinai peninsula en route to St. Petersburg, killing all 224 people on board in what was an ISIS-inspired terrorist attack, overnight there has been another aircraft-related tragedy when an EgyptAir flight carrying 66 passengers and crew on a flight from Paris to Cairo disappeared from radar over the Mediterranean shortly before landing, at 2:30am local time. Officials said they believed the jet has come down in the Mediterranean sea.
Germanwings co-pilot Andreas Lubitz sent a distressing email to his doctor before he crashed the A320 jet into the French Alps last year killing 150 people. The paranoid suicide pilot was suffering depression and sent an email to his doctor just weeks before the atrocity revealing his fear of going blind. “I am afraid to go blind… I can’t get this possibility out of my head,” Lubitz wrote. Mail Online reports: Lubitz, then 27, slammed the A320 jet into the French Alps on March 24, killing all 149 passengers and crew on board.