Flight Attendants

Heather Poole is the fly-and-tell queen of the skies. She wrote about her 15 years and counting as a flight attendant in her book "Cruising Attitude," but I follow her on Twitter (she's a prolific tweeter) and always find the tidbits she shares about life in the sky enlightening. An example: "Of all the drinks we serve, Diet Coke takes the most time to pour - the fizz takes forever to settle at 35,000 feet. In the time it takes me to pour a single cup of Diet Coke, I can serve three passengers a different beverage.

What's up with families not being able to sit together on an airplane ["How to Sit Tight," by Catharine Hamm, June 10]? I am a 58-year-old man who travels regularly for business and leisure. I usually buy my tickets months in advance mostly because I want to pick the best seat for myself. I have stopped counting how many times I have been approached by flight attendants or passengers asking if I could switch my seat to accommodate a family, in most cases for a less desirable seat.

A JetBlue Airways pilot who left the cockpit in the middle of a flight and sprinted down the aisle screaming about terrorists and Jesus is mentally fit to stand trial, a U.S. District judge ruled Friday.   Clayton F. Osbon, 49, had recently undergone a court-ordered psychiatric exam ; court documents indicate his lawyer had planned an insanity defense to defend his client against federal charges of interfering with a flight crew. Three hours into a March 27 flight from New York to Las Vegas, Osbon began muttering incoherently in the cockpit about religion, according to a court affidavit.

What's the first thing passengers do when they land? Turn on their cellphones and make a call. Soon, passengers on some Virgin Atlantic flights won't have to wait for the plane to land. The British airline announced plans this week plans to allow passengers by the end of the year to make calls, send and receive text messages and emails, and get Web access on their cellphones on certain flights. Virgin Atlantic is not the first airline to offer cellphone service. Emirate Airlines and Malaysia Airlines, among other foreign carriers, have been offering the service for years.

NEW YORK - Minutes after a JetBlue flight took off from New York for Las Vegas, the pilot began muttering things that didn't make sense to his co-pilot. He started talking about the need to "focus," lamented that "things just don't matter," and yelled at air traffic controllers to keep quiet. At some point, Capt. Clayton Osbon purportedly told his first officer that "we're not going to Las Vegas" and launched into a sermon. That set off a chain of events that culminated in a federal charge of interfering with a flight crew being filed against Osbon on Wednesday, a day after he was tackled by passengers at 35,000 feet and later carried off to a hospital.

A Jet Blue pilot who began ranting and acting erratically as his flight headed from New York to Las Vegas -- forcing the co-pilot to lock him out of the cockpit and make an emergency landing -- has been described as a seemingly content family man who once hoped to be an astronaut. Jet Blue identified the pilot as Clayton Osbon, who lives in Georgia but who maintains an apartment in the New York City borough of Queens because his flying base is New York. In a statement Tuesday night , it said that the captain of Flight 191 was receiving medical treatment.

Question: The question in On the Spot about Greece's ability to weather its financial crisis ["Greece's Reality," Feb. 5] prompts this question about the consequences of American Airlines' bankruptcy: Two months ago, I bought a round-trip ticket from L.A. to New York City on American for next month. Now I hear that American will slash thousands of jobs and restructure, so is it likely that hundreds of flights will be canceled and I will be forced to wait at airports for hours?

From a magazine cover, a near-naked Molly Sims confesses, "I wasn't born with this body," which right away makes me curious: Whose body was she born with? Carl Reiner's? No, the shoulders look different. Boomer Esiason's? Not with that tan, she wasn't. Let the record show that, whichever body Sims was born with, she has certainly transitioned well to the person she is today, not a chest hair or surgical scar in sight. I was lucky enough to be born with my own body, and I don't even look that good.

American Airlines, whose parent company filed for bankruptcy protection in November, is closing its operations at Bob Hope Airport in Burbank and ending flights from Chicago to New Delhi. In addition to closing operations at those two airports, the airline said it plans to cut 150 positions. "Our objective is to make our company competitive and more efficient in an increasingly challenging industry," the airline said in a statement Monday. The flights from Bob Hope Airport will end Feb.

If you suffer from a fear of flying, here's something that might calm your nerves: The first 11 months of 2011 were the safest period for commercial air travel on record. The global accident rate for January through November was 22% better than the same time last year and marked the safest period since a United Nations aviation agency began collecting data in 1945, according to the International Air Transport Assn., an airline trade group that issued a report based on the U.N. data.