Plane

When the White House sent a last-minute invitation for Asif Ali Zardari to attend the two-day NATO summit, they were taking a highly public gamble. Would sharing the spotlight with President Obama and other global leaders induce the Pakistani president to allow vital supplies to reach alliance troops fighting in Afghanistan? But long before the summit ended Monday, the answer was clear: No deal. Zardari's refusal to reopen the supply routes left a diplomatic blot on a summit that NATO sought to cast as the beginning of the end of the conflict in Afghanistan.

Ian and I watched the planes come in and shared a wedge salad at Encounter, the Space Age-themed restaurant overlooking Los Angeles International Airport. I asked how it made him feel. "Fine," he shrugged. "It's not eating at airports that I'm afraid of. " We weren't there to catch a flight. We were completing homework from Ian's therapist, who was trying to desensitize him to the airport environment. The next month, I was returning to my home state of Michigan for a good friend's wedding.

BEIJING - "Beijing power struggle heralds end of China Communist Party," screams one headline. More sensational headlines purport to reveal how the wife of recently sacked Politburo member Bo Xilai poisoned an Englishman, who may have been her lover. And if that weren't enough, other stories claim that "Bo planned airline crash" and "slept with more than 100 women. " It's payback time for Chinese exiles, especially those with a printing press, television station or just a computer at their disposal.

Two Southwest Airlines flights with ties to Orange County and Phoenix were stopped Tuesday night after threats were made to the planes. The first incident began about 7:30 p.m. after Flight 1184 arrived at Sky Harbor International Airport in Phoenix from John Wayne Airport, an FBI spokesman told The Times. The plane was taken to an isolated area of the airport after authorities received an unspecified threat, said Special Agent Manuel Johnson of the FBI's Phoenix division.

Bob Kahl slips in through a side door of the vast, abandoned hangar and looks at what's left of the assembly plant where he worked for nearly 40 years. He remembers the hum of power tools, the biting aroma of cutting oil, swarms of workers plugging away on a labyrinth of yellow scaffolding. All that's left is a few piles of broken concrete and a sea of colorless dust that coats a Palmdale factory floor the size of two football fields. "Welcome to the birthplace of America's space shuttle fleet," said Kahl, 60, smiling.

In ABC's new thriller "Missing," a former CIA agent whose child has been kidnapped springs out of retirement with guns, martial-arts skills and primal parental passion blazing. If that sounds familiar, well, it was also the plot of the 2008 film "Taken," which had Liam Neeson tearing through Paris to extricate his daughter from the clutches of a sex-trafficking ring. In "Missing," the gender roles are reversed. When Michael (Nick Eversman), a student studying abroad in Rome, goes missing, his mother, Becca Winstone (Ashley Judd)

Two Americans were among 19 people killed Sunday in Nepal when a small plane carrying tourists to view Mt. Everest crashed as it tried to land in rain and dense fog, police said. The crash of the Beechcraft 1900D aircraft operated by Buddha Air went down in Kotdanda, about 10 miles from the capital, Katmandu, killing everyone aboard just minutes before its scheduled return to Tribhuvan International Airport. The $140 Buddha Air "Everest Experience" package flies tourists from Katmandu around the world's tallest mountain and back.

Capt. Jeff Haney was headed back to base in his F-22 Raptor fighter jet, ripping through the frigid Alaskan night beyond the speed of sound at more than 1,000 mph, when things started going terribly wrong. Packed tight in cold-weather gear to protect him from the bitter temperatures, the Air Force pilot pulled back on the control stick at about 38,400 feet to gain altitude. Then Haney saw his plane was beginning to fail him. A caution light glowed green through his night vision goggles, alerting him that a section of the aircraft was overheating.

Gov. Jerry Brown sat down in the captain's chair inside the cockpit of a Boeing C-17 Globemaster III cargo jet and gazed at an array of gauges and dials spread out before him. At one point he turned to Bob Ciesla, Boeing's C-17 program manager, and asked: "Is this where it's built?" Ciesla confirmed that Long Beach was the manufacturing site - and that the company has struggled in recent years to keep the plant operating. He didn't seem to mind that the governor did not know that the military's workhorse cargo jet has been built here since the early 1990s.

Anything that makes flying with children easier is worth a look, although this one is pricey. The QuickSmart Backpack Stroller features a streamlined design, with a lightweight but sturdy aluminum frame, five-point safety harness and retractable hood but few other bells or whistles. It folds down to about 23-by-12-by-13 inches. Stashed in the included backpack, the 11-pound stroller meets most airlines' carry-on dimension limits, fitting in the overhead bin, although smaller commuter planes may be an exception.

MOSCOW - A new Russian passenger plane with 50 people aboard went missing Wednesday during a demonstration flight over Indonesia, officials said. The Sukhoi Superjet 100, on a South Asian promotional tour, disappeared from radar screens 20 minutes into its second flight from Jakarta. The crew last spoke to ground control while over Mt. Halimun Salak National Park in West Java province, the Rossiya 24 television network reported. "Before communication was lost with the plane, there was no information about the malfunction of the systems," said Vladimir Prisyazhnyuk, president of Moscow-based Sukhoi Civil Aircraft Co. "The plane has conducted about 500 flights with the overall flight time over 800 hours [and]

British tycoon Sir Richard Branson has made a career out of bucking conventions — opening a recording studio in a country estate, building an affordable, premium airline service with soft violet mood lighting and seat-back entertainment screens, and even launching a space tourism company. Now Branson's Virgin Group is breaking the mold in the movie business. Virgin's America, Atlantic and Australian airlines have teamed up with the company's new film and TV company to shoot a half-hour movie filmed and edited entirely aboard regularly scheduled commercial flights — believed to be a first.

Boeing Co.'s profit soared 58% in its first quarter as it built more efficient planes for airlines struggling with high fuel costs. The Chicago company earned $923 million, or $1.22 a share, compared with $586 million, or 78 cents, during the same period a year earlier. Its revenue boomed 30% to $19.4 billion. Boeing said it delivered 137 commercial planes during the quarter, and it has orders to build more than 4,000 others valued at a record $308 billion. The aircraft maker said it has more than 300 orders for its new fuel-efficient 737 Max jetliner.

The ladies are everywhere at the Atria Woodbridge senior living community in Irvine: It is the ladies who fill the dining hall, the ladies who while away the afternoon chatting and doing crossword puzzles in the sitting room, and the ladies whose photos are on display next to the needlepoint and paintings in the resident art gallery. Such is life in a place where women outnumber men at least three to one. But in a room on the second floor - where model airplanes dangle from the ceiling, work tables line the walls and a sign reading "Boys Will Be Boys" hangs outside the door - Al Ladine has created one spot where the guys run the show.

U.S. Coast Guard  and Navy forces have been dispatched to the scene of a plane crash off the coast of Florida. So far there is no word about the fate of the pilot believed to have become incapacitated at the controls. The small aircraft circled aimlessly in the skies for hours over the Gulf of Mexico as anxious air traffic controllers watched helplessly. Air traffic controllers apparently tried for hours to make contact with the pilot, but all attempts failed, pointing to the likelihood that the pilot had perhaps fallen unconscious at the controls, or perhaps suffered a heart attack.  FlightAware.com released the above image of the path of the plane, including the erratic and repetitive circular patterns it made over the Gulf of Mexico.

A small aircraft has crashed off Florida after it was seen aimlessly circling the Gulf of Mexico and repeated attempts by authorities to make contact with the pilot failed. At one point, military aircraft were called in for a possible attempt to intercept the troubled plane to protect public safety. The fate of the pilot -- the only person on board -- remains unclear. But there were some suggestions that the plane hit the water "gracefully," according to CNN commentators who were watching the dramatic situation unfold live.

Firebird spy plane Operates with or without onboard pilot Wingspan: 65 feet Length: 34 feet Height: 9.7 feet Top speed: About 230 mph Altitude: 30,000 feet Maximum endurance: 40 hours Payload capacity: 1,240 pounds Source: Northrop Grumman

THE BEST WAY TO VANUATU From LAX, Qantas, Air New Zealand and Virgin Australia offer connecting service (change of plane) to Air Vanuatu and Port-Vila. The best time to visit is May to September; the rainy season is November through April. WHERE TO STAY White Grass Ocean Resort, Tanna; http://www.whitegrassvanuatu.com.vu. Doubles from $284, includes breakfast. They will also arrange your trip to the volcano. Ratua Private Island, http://www.ratua.com . $430 per person, per night (two-night minimum stay)

Paging Samuel L. Jackson! No snakes this time, but authorities are grappling with the best way to handle bats on a plane. OK, just one bat. But still, it's not the type of thing one expects to read about in the Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, a bulletin produced by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. It may sound more like a movie than a true public health issue, but this report is indeed based on actual events. At 6:45 a.m. on Aug. 5, a flight took off from Madison, Wis., with 50 passengers, two pilots and one flight attendant on board.

The midair meltdown of a JetBlue pilot last month confirms what I try to deny while flying: Hurtling 30,000 feet above the Earth in an aluminum tube is indubitably nutty. JetBlue passengers tackled the pilot on the New York-Las Vegas flight, the airline said, when he stormed the cabin, rambling, due to a "medical situation. " While I sympathize with the captain's medical situation, I wonder if he was acting out what the rest of us are thinking when we're on a plane: I want off. I tried recently to become a fearless flier.