The Egyptian charter company whose 737-300 crashed into the Red Sea Saturday had been banned from Switzerland because it was, in the words of Swiss officials, "a danger to aviation security.""If a company is forbidden (to use a country's airspace)... that means the problems are serious," said Celestine Perissinotto, a spokeswoman for the Swiss Federal Office for Civil Aviation. She said the ban was instituted after civil aviation officials found a big difference between maintenance records and a physical inspection of a Flash aircraft. It's not clear at this point if it was the same 737 that went down off the Egyptian coast Saturday, killing all 148 people on board.

"Smuggling a bomb on to a plane by this method is one of our worst nightmares. If you do not have specific information about the suspect, it would be impossible to carry out an intimate body search of every female passenger." That's the word from a senior official at Scotland Yard. The British Daily Mirror quotes that official as saying the al Qaeda wanted to put a female suicide bomber on British Airways Flight BA223. The source told the Mirror that the woman planned to evade close inspection by hiding eight to 12 ounces of plastic explosive in her vagina.

While 2003 wasn't the year everybody made money in aviation, it was certainly the safest on record -- at least, as far as commercial aviation is concerned. Twenty-five commercial aircraft were involved in fatal accidents last year -- 26-percent lower than the previous record, set in 2001. "It's amazing," said Harro Ranter, president of the Dutch organization Aviation Safety Network, in an interview with Knight Ridder Newspapers. "It was most definitely the safest year for airline passengers in the world."

On January 8, 2003, about 0848 eastern standard time, Air Midwest flight 5481, a Raytheon (Beechcraft) 1900D, N233YV, crashed shortly after takeoff from Charlotte-Douglas International Airport, Charlotte, North Carolina. The 2 flight crew members and 19 passengers on board were killed and 1 person on the ground sustained minor injuries. The impact and postcrash fire destroyed the airplane. At the accident site, the first officer’s body was found still restrained in his seat, but the captain’s body had been ejected and was found 4 feet in front of the cockpit, and her rotary seatbelt buckle was found unbuckled. During the investigation of this accident, an Air Midwest Beech 1900 pilot informed National Transportation Safety Board investigators that he had previously exp

Reality television takes to the sky ways Monday night with the premier of the A&E Network's Airline. Network honchos think that travelers will readily identify with a series about flying commercial -- from the crew's point of view. "When you go to cocktail parties, there is always somebody talking about the long delay on their last flight. Everyone in the room wants to share their travel stories — the love-hate relationship we have with air travel," said Nancy Dubuc, vice president of documentary programming at A&E. "It's that common connection."