"The co-pilot who tried to hijack a flight bound for Israel... used a crash ax to attack the captain in the cockpit, UAE officials said."

"The co-pilot attempted to 'take control of the aircraft' and carry out a 'terrorist act,' UAE Attorney General Hamad Saif Al Shamsi said.... The UAE statement answers one of the questions over potential security lapses that emerged following the incident — how the co-pilot was able to access a weapon on board. A crash ax is normally used for emergency evacuations, Marco Chan, a former pilot, said in an interview. 'If none of the exit doors are available, the pilot can … use the ax to crack' designated parts of the plane’s structure which are designed to open more easily to create an exit route. In current Boeing 737 planes, the crash ax 'is usually located just behind the first officer or co-pilot' in the cockpit, said Chan...."

WaPo reports.

Great. There's an ax.

"Books that get called weird girl lit tend to deal in uncanny or dreamlike circumstances."

"In Ottessa Moshfegh’s 'My Year of Rest and Relaxation,' a woman uses drugs to hibernate her way through a deep depression. In Mona Awad’s 'Bunny,' a cult of women M.F.A. students make rabbits explode with the power of their creative minds. In Kate Folk’s 'Sky Daddy,' a woman is erotically fixated on airplanes. In an interview, Moshfegh said she finds the weird girl label 'patronizing,' 'conservative' and 'misogynistic.' She maintained that the word 'weird' in this context perpetuates oppressive expectations about what a woman should be. 'There’s nothing weird about interesting stories about people,' she said. 'That’s what novels are. And I would challenge anyone who’s using that term to tell me what a normal girl is supposed to read or write.'"

From "What Is ‘Weird Girl Lit,’ Anyway? Romantic delusion. Social alienation. Body horror. Just a few of the elements celebrated online — if not always by the writers who earn the label" (NYT).

Yeah, what is a normal girl supposed to read or write?

From the comments over there: "A lot of fiction is about weird people. Many have been male. Holden Caulfield, most of Philip Roth, most of Thomas Pynchon, Ignatius in 'A Confederacy of Dunces,' Sherlock Holmes, the whole Karamazov family. You could argue that Elizabeth Bennett is a weird girl, considering Regency norms. Oh, Lady MacBeth, Medea, definitely weird. It's an advantage to an author to have a weird character or two. It's like Tolstoy said, 'All happy families are the same.'"

"I was so badly hurt that I had fallen to the ground. But I knew I had to act. I could feel the aircraft was going down."

Said Capt. Smit Machchhar, from a hospital bed, quoted in "'I Couldn’t Let All of Them Die': Pilot on FlyDubai Flight Recalls Sudden Attack/Capt. Smit Machchhar, who was stabbed by his co-pilot midair between Dubai and Tel Aviv, said he 'had to act' to prevent a crash despite serious injuries" (NYT).

ADDED: More, from the translated transcript:

"Asked how the passengers had stopped the attacker, Ms. Ohayon said, 'I believe with their bare hands inside the cockpit.'"

From "Passenger Describes Chaos Aboard FlyDubai Flight/The passenger, Miriam Ohayon, said people on board felt the jet lose control and heard screams. 'When they opened the cockpit, there was a lot of blood,' she told Israeli television" (NYT).

"After landing, we called 911. As the plane began to submerge, we exited the aircraft and swam to a shallow area, where we waited until emergency responders reached us by boat."

Said Tom Tiffany, the GOP candidate for Governor here in Wisconsin, quoted in "Tom Tiffany's plane forced to make emergency water landing after campaign event/The Republican candidate for governor 'exited the aircraft and swam to a shallow area' according to a campaign statement" (WISN).

"[W]hen a man suddenly began to shout vulgarities and became violent... two other passengers, relying on zip ties, duct tape and sheer will, restrained the disruptive man until the authorities could board the plane and take him into custody."

I'm reading "Unruly Passenger Is Restrained With Duct Tape During a Flight/The passenger on an American Airlines flight began to shout vulgarities and then became violent on Thursday, the authorities said. That’s when two passengers stepped in" (NYT gift link).

Richard O’Lenick, 53, one of the passengers who restrained Mr. Lundeen, said in a phone interview on Saturday that Mr. Lundeen began to shout racial slurs at one of the flight attendants.... Mr. Lundeen struck the laptop of the man next to him, and then grabbed the man’s throat, Mr. O’Lenick said. When a woman in a seat ahead of the scuffle tried to intervene, Mr. Lundeen started to attack her as well.

That’s when Mr. O’Lenick and Juan Mejia...  jumped into action from their seats two rows ahead....

"If you can merge gaming with aviation, why not?"

🚨 2,000+ Gamers Hired for AIR TRAFFIC CONTROL@SecDuffy: “They multitask. They have to think on their feet. They work with their hands and their eyes, and they’re making great controllers… We had 14,000 applicants, 8,000 qualified. We were getting the best and the brightest.” pic.twitter.com/C0U6eRj0IC

— Laura Ingraham (@IngrahamAngle) August 14, 2026

"It’s the noise before the chaos, the noise that is always there when I close my eyes to sleep."

Said Ljubisa Karovic, who "was sleeping on an early morning flight from Greece to Germany when the window next to him exploded, causing him to be partially sucked through at 20,000ft."

Quoted in "Man sucked out of Ryanair plane ‘haunted’ by noise of exploding window" (London Times).

"President Trump abruptly announced Wednesday that he would not fly out of Turkey aboard his luxurious new Air Force One..."

"...  stoking speculation that the Qatar-donated jet may be vulnerable to Iranian fire as the war resumes. Trump instead departed the annual NATO summit using the older model of Air Force One, which he had stopped using last week in favor of the $400 million 'palace on wings' that he has proudly boasted about acquiring.... 'I’m number one on the kill list for Iran. They’re lovely people,' Trump told a Post reporter who asked if security concerns motivated the switch. Earlier in the day, Trump had said, 'They want to take out the US leader, me … And so far, I guess I’ve been a little bit lucky. But that maybe doesn’t last very long.'"

From "Trump ditches new Air Force One in Turkey, stoking Iran threat intrigue: 'I’m number one on the kill list'" (NY Post).

"A pilot jumped out of the door of a moving plane to his death, leaving the student he was teaching to fly to land the aircraft by herself. "

"Flight instructor Leandro Andrés Bertazzo, 42, was found dead following the incident, which took place in Toledo, central Argentina, on Saturday.... The student said Bertazzo told her, 'You know what you have to do, carry on,' before taking off his headset and seatbelt, opening the door and jumping out of the plane...."

From "Flight school pilot jumps to his death midair, leaving student to land plane" (CNN).

"There is an active Bluetooth network labeled 'BOMB'..."

"... one self-identified passenger wrote on TikTok.... Another Reddit post of someone who claimed to be the spouse of a passenger similarly reported that the word in question was 'bomb' and that the device was a teenager's speaker. The flight eventually reboarded and landed in Palma de Mallorca at 3:47 p.m. local time on Sunday, about 9 and a half hours late."

NPR reports on a United flight that had to turn around. 

"[T]he 44-year-old Austrian had started from Schmittenhöhe in the direction of Piesendorf. Above the Pinzgauer Hütte, she collided... with the Cessna piloted by a 28-year-old."

🚨 WATCH: A paraglider gets hit by a Cessna 172 near the Austrian town of Zell am See.

The paraglider was able to pull her rescue parachute and land safely shortly after the incident on Saturday.

According to police, the 44-year-old Austrian had started from Schmittenhöhe in… pic.twitter.com/HYQ7euRu57

— Breaking Aviation News & Videos (@aviationbrk) May 24, 2026

From the reactions at X:

1. "I assume the paraglider was not respecting the max altitude? or was it the cessna?"

2. "That pilot is a fucking moron. How could he not see a neon pink chute against that blue sky??? My take is he did it on purpose, wanted to get as close as possible to make it a 'stunt' but miscalculated. No other explanation."

3. "So shocking too me that nobody thanks Jesus or God in general when the survive something like this. My immediate reaction when landing would be to thank the good lord every breath and kiss the earth and just give him all the praise."

4. "@grok, can you translate what all she says in this video into English, please?" Answer:

Is the Biden administration responsible for the loss of Spirit?

Here’s Mayor Pete announcing the Biden administration’s decision to fight the Jet Blue and Spirit merger so they could protect consumers and ensure low fares. Now the airline doesn’t exist and passengers are stranded across the country. pic.twitter.com/u7TXdwG9vj

— Clay Travis (@ClayTravis) May 2, 2026

"Being human-shaped allows their introduction without significant modifications to existing airport facilities or aircraft structures."

"By combining cutting-edge AI technology with the unique flexibility of humanoid forms, the project aims to realise a sustainable operational structure through labour savings and workload reduction."

Said Japan Airlines, quoted in "This could really take off: robots join staff at Tokyo airport/Japan Airlines, the national carrier, is testing humanoid workers to ease staffing pressures at Haneda, keeping luggage moving as passenger numbers rise" (London Times).

Would you prefer the infusion of robots to come in humanoid form? The human-shaped robots fit into the places that have been designed for human beings, so perhaps that makes the robotic takeover easier and don't you want futuristic things to subtly mix friendliness and creepiness?

Do you like those self-driving Waymos with an empty drivers seat or would you rather have a robot cab driver sitting there and talking to you, the way it was in those old movies about the future:

"Stop. Stop. Stop. Stop. Stop truck 1. Stop."

How does this happen?

"Do flight attendants typically wear tank tops and jeans?"

Bill Clinton says he thought the victims on Jeffrey Epstein’s plane were flight attendants.

Q: “Do flight attendants typically wear tank tops and jeans?”

*Long pause*

CLINTON: “They don’t all wear uniforms on private planes.” pic.twitter.com/w1vgHOAfF8

— RNC Research (@RNCResearch) March 3, 2026

Full context:

"The once ubiquitous bird has suffered a catastrophic decline.... As many as 98 per cent disappeared from some states."

"Rats and feral dogs flourished in their place, spreading diseases, including rabies. As a result, the human death toll rose significantly. And further to that, Schama adds, an ancient cultural ritual risks being lost. Zoroastrians, no longer able to perform their traditional 'sky burials' — in which corpses are carried to a 'tower of silence' to be picked clean by vultures — are forced to consider cremation instead. 

This chain of collapse between human culture and the lives of birds set me thinking,' Schama says...."

From  "Simon Schama: 'Our fascination with birds is rooted in envy'/The historian has curated an exhibition that explores the relationship between birds and humans" (London Times).

"'What are they, these creatures, two-limbed like us and yet nothing like us at all?' he wonders. 'Human culture is arranged around the perfection of the human,' he says. 'We are seen as God’s greatest works. But one thing we have not been able to do is fly.' Our fascination with birds, he suggests, 'is based around a sort of envy.' Because what we call flying is not really that, it’s just 'sitting in a metal tube with the blinds shut looking at old movies.' It is not about the glorious freedom that we dream of, about the transcendence we desire, the celestial state that we yearn for. That freedom of spirit will always elude us.'"

"When did we all decide that sweats and pajama pants were the appropriate attire for air travel?"

"What incentive do we have in such a demoralizing environment?"

We were just talking about the "microvacation."

Remember that guy who "flew to Athens for 8 hours, where he toured the Parthenon... then hopped on a flight to Egypt, saw the pyramids, rode a camel and visited the Grand Egyptian Museum, all before returning to San Francisco in time for Sunday dinner."

I thought there needed to be some decent proportion between the time on planes and the time used to good effect at the destination. But check out this guy, flying all the way from NYC to Tokyo and back with just a single day in Tokyo. No hotel, no packing, just dropping in, hitting a few sights and eateries, and getting the hell back out. He landed in Tokyo in the morning and flew back out that same night:

"Weight-Loss Drugs Could Save U.S. Airlines $580 Million Per Year... lower fuel costs as slimmer passengers lighten their aircraft’s loads."

The NYT reports.