A Pegasus Airlines plane flying into Istanbul’s Sabiha Gökçen International Airport from İzmir, western Turkey, with 185 people skidded off the runway and split apart while landing on Feb. 5, killing three and injuring 180. The crash was blamed on weather conditions at the time — heavy wind and rain.
The incident was the second within a month to involve a Pegasus flight skidding off a runway at that airport; a Jan. 7 flight overran a runway but caused no injuries.
Dear Globetrotter:
A Ukraine International Airlines flight from Tehran, Iran, to Kiev, Ukraine, was shot down shortly after takeoff on Jan. 8 when the Iranian military mistook it for a US military plane. Shortly before the incident, Iran had fired ballistic missiles at two US military bases in Iraq in retaliation for a US airstrike on Jan. 3 that killed one of its top generals and caused at least 50 injuries.
American Airlines’ smartphone app now can scan the passports of international travelers when it is used for check-in, meaning travelers no longer have to show their passports to the airline’s customer service agent at the airport. This will be advantageous to those who are not checking any luggage and those who are catching a connecting international flight after a domestic flight.
I had the opportunity to make a brief visit to Reykjavík, Iceland, in July 2019.
A new budget Icelandic airline, PLAY (flyplay.com), is being launched in 2020 by executives of the former airline WOW Air, which ceased operation in March 2019. At press time, the company had leased two passenger planes that would serve an initial six European destinations (which had yet to be announced). The company expected to expand to four US airports by spring 2020.
Dear Globetrotter:
