Day: July 31, 2024

United Airlines and Delta Air Lines both suspended flights to Israel on Wednesday, halting planned flights to Tel Aviv amid rising tensions in the Middle East.

“Beginning with this evening’s flight from Newark Liberty to Tel Aviv, we are suspending for security reasons our daily Tel Aviv service as we evaluate our next steps,” United told FOX Business in a statement. “We continue to closely monitor the situation and will make decisions on resuming service with a focus on the safety of our customers and crews.”

Delta posted a notice on its website that its flights between New York-JFK and Tel Aviv will be paused through Friday, saying the company “is continuously monitoring the evolving security environment and assessing our operations based on security guidance and intelligence reports and will communicate any updates as needed.”

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Israel has been at war with Iranian-backed terrorist group Hamas ever since Hamas attacked Israel on Oct. 7, but the conflict in the region has escalated in recent days and stoked fears that Israel could face further targeting after the deaths of two leaders of Iran’s terrorist proxy organizations.

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On Tuesday, an Israeli airstrike in Beirut targeted and killed Fuad Shukr, a key commander of the terrorist group Hezbollah. Shukr was the Hezbollah commander who was behind a drone strike that killed 12 children and teens on a soccer field in Israel over the weekend.

Then Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh was assassinated in Tehran on Wednesday, prompting Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khameneithat to declare it is Iran’s duty to “take revenge” for the attack.

Nobody immediately took responsibility for the assassination, but Israel was quickly blamed after pledging to kill Haniyeh and other Hamas leaders over the terrorist group’s Oct. 7 attack on the Jewish State, which killed 1,200 people and roughly 250 others were abducted.

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While Israel did not immediately comment, it usually does not make public statements on assassinations carried out by its Mossad intelligence agency.

FOX News’ Andrea Vacchiano and Landon Mion contributed to this report.

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Senate Commerce Committee Chair Maria Cantwell, D-Wash., said Wednesday that she plans to introduce new legislation requiring the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) to abide by new safety requirements after a series of issues with Boeing aircraft.

“We really think the FAA needs to have its own process,” Cantwell said of safety management systems (SMS), which are sets of policies and procedures used to proactively identify and address potential operational hazards.

She plans to introduce legislation on Thursday that would require the FAA to have an SMS it uses as it conducts oversight over the aviation industry. The move comes amid scrutiny of the regulator’s oversight of Boeing, which has been under pressure since a January incident in which a door plug panel blew off a new Boeing 737 Max 9 and caused a midair emergency.

Cantwell said the FAA disclosed in April that it conducted a combined total of 298 audits of Boeing and supplier Spirit AeroSystems over the past two years that “did not result in any enforcement actions.”

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“Clearly, they were doing an audit that meant nothing, because it didn’t detect any problems, and they said everything was fine,” she said. “Now we have to turn our attention to the FAA’s processes and understand what problems existed in their oversight.”

The FAA’s potential adoption of SMS oversight standards would follow in the wake of U.S.-based airlines, which have been required to have SMS since 2018, while some aerospace companies like Boeing already have SMS programs in place voluntarily.

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FAA Administrator Mike Whitaker said last month that the agency was “too hands-off” in its oversight of Boeing before the door plug incident in January and faulted the regulator’s prior audits.

Cantwell has also asked the FAA to conduct a thorough review of its oversight of Boeing and expressed concern about whether Boeing’s newly appointed CEO, Kelly Ortberg, would be based in Washington state.

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The senator, who represents the Evergreen State, said Ortberg should be based in Seattle, where much of the aerospace giant’s manufacturing base is located: “I think the notion that somebody thinks they can run the company from anywhere other than Seattle is a big mistake.”

Boeing moved its headquarters to Chicago in 2001 after it merged with McDonnell Douglas and then relocated its HQ again to Arlington, Virginia, in 2023.

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Reuters reported that one of its sources confirmed that Ortberg plans to be based in Seattle.

Reuters contributed to this report.

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Holland America is looking to draw more umbraphiles with a trio of cruises that will sail in optimal viewing spots for the Aug. 12, 2026, total solar eclipse.

The sailings, unveiled this week, will each provide guests onboard the three ships the opportunity to watch the solar eclipse along its path of totality, where they will be able to catch the rare sight of the Moon completely hiding the sun.

For the Aug. 12, 2026, total solar eclipse, the totality is expected to be visible from parts of Greenland, Iceland, Portugal and northern Spain, the National Solar Observatory said. 

The three solar eclipse cruises that Holland America has planned will vary in length and have different views along the path of totality. They will have programming related to the solar eclipse and the special glasses required to safely look at it available to guests, the cruise line said.

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A 13-day cruise on the Oosterdam that starts Aug. 9, 2026, will be “off the coast of Spain between Alicante and Barcelona” during the total solar eclipse, per Holland America.

Meanwhile, a “Voyage of the Vikings” on the Zuiderdam will place itself “off the western coast of Iceland” in the path of totality, the cruise line said. Of the three, that cruise, the only one to depart from a U.S. city, runs the longest, at 35 days.

The other Holland America solar eclipse cruise will be 28 days long and give a view of the totality “off the northwest coast of Iceland,” using the Nieuw Statendam vessel.

Each of those cruises makes stops in multiple countries over the course of their sailings.

ECLIPSE TOURISM EXPECTED TO BRING BIG BUCKS TO AREAS IN PATH OF TOTALITY

Holland America linked the decision to offer the new 2026 solar eclipse cruises to how well it said it did with the ones it operated earlier this year. The cruise line is capitalizing on people’s desire to see other phenomena too, scheduling cruises in 2026 to facilitate participating in the summer solstice above the Arctic Circle and seeing the Northern Lights.

“After the excitement and success around our 2024 eclipse cruises, we knew our guests were looking for additional opportunities to get a front-row seat for some of the world’s most special natural spectacles,” Holland America Chief Commercial Officer Beth Bodensteiner said.

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The most recent total solar eclipse, which could be seen in places in Mexico, America and Canada, took place in early April, drumming up quite a bit of tourism. In addition to Holland America, Delta Air Lines also got in on the excitement for that one, flying two flights in the path of totality.

People won’t be able to view a total solar eclipse from America until August 2044, according to NASA.

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