Delta Fined Over Treatment Of Bumped Passengers

The Department of Transportation has fined Delta Air Lines $375,000 for the way it has handled involuntary bumps of passengers, although $200,000 of the fine will be forgiven if Delta goes forth and sins no more, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports.

The DOT’s consent decree (Chris Elliott has posted it) says that on some occasions Delta denied boarding to passengers without first asking for volunteers to accept compensation for giving up their seats, that it failed to give written notice to passengers who were  bumped involuntarily and that it didn’t compensate bumped passengers in a timely way.

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Turtles Invade JFK

Seventy-eight turtles crawled out of Jamaica Bay and onto a runway at JFK on Wednesday, delaying flights by as much as an hour and a half, the Associated Press reports. My first thought was Biblical, plagues of amphibians being such a theme in the Old Testament. But the sudden migration was attributed in several media reports to sex — the turtles were said to be on a mating spree.