When a parent books a flight for themselves and a young child, most assume the family will sit together. For many travellers, that assumption does not survive contact with the booking page. Across several major carriers, seating a parent next to their child can mean an extra charge, a gamble on whatever is left at check-in, or an awkward negotiation with strangers at the gate. A long-running effort in Washington has sought to put an end to that. The question now is not whethe

As the Trump administration rushes to build a 250-foot Triumphal Arch by America’s 250th birthday in July 2026, the project faces FAA safety reviews over its proximity to Reagan National Airport. The proposed 250-foot ‘triumphal arch’ will be built opposite the Lincoln Memorial, at the end of Memorial Bridge. The project poses risk to flights ascending and descending from Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport, one of the busiest in the U.S. The Federal Aviation Administra

Union Pacific filed its formal reply to the Surface Transportation Board on Tuesday, defending its revised application to acquire Norfolk Southern in the largest proposed rail merger in US history and setting up a high-stakes regulatory decision now expected by 30 May. The $85 billion deal, which would create the first transcontinental railroad in the United States, was rejected by the STB in January 2026 as "incomplete". Union Pacific and Norfolk Southern filed a revised app

The Federal Aviation Administration has shut down the legacy US NOTAM System (USNS), completing the first phase of a long-promised overhaul of the pilot alert system that has dogged successive administrations following its dramatic collapse in January 2023. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy announced on Monday that the FAA had migrated thousands of users to the new cloud-based NOTAM Management Service (NMS) in mid-April, retiring the four-decade-old infrastructure that grou

United flight attendants ratified the tentative agreement yesterday with a vote of 82% in favour. The result emerged after eight months of further mediated talks and was announced on March 26 following a four-day session in Washington D.C. The agreed contract will last for five years from May 31, 2026, to May 31, 2031. The United Airlines flight attendants have been on stagnant pay since the pandemic as they watch rival aviation companies Delta and American reward their work

The continued closure of the Strait of Hormuz is reshaping US ocean freight economics, with bunker fuel costs, vessel scheduling and carrier surcharges all under sustained pressure as the standoff with Iran enters a new phase. Brent crude fell 3.8 percent to $97.38 a barrel last week, down from more than $115 earlier in the week, after Pakistan signalled that a US-Iran agreement could be near. The drop follows weeks of acute volatility driven by the closure of the strait, whe

Aurora Innovation has announced an agreement with Berkshire Hathaway subsidiary McLane Company to begin commercial driverless trucking operations between Dallas and Houston, in what analysts say is the most significant commercial deployment yet for autonomous long-haul freight in the United States. The deal, announced on 6 May, will see Aurora's SAE Level 4 self-driving system run two round-trips per day between the two Texas cities, seven days a week, carrying perishable foo

Sharice Davids is the Democratic representative for Kansas’s 3rd District, covering much of the Kansas City metropolitan area. She sits on the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee and has played a leading role in Congress's response to the midair collision of American Eagle Flight 5342 with a US Army Black Hawk helicopter on 29 January 2025, in which 67 people were killed. Davids helped lead the bipartisan ALERT Act, which passed the House last month by 396 votes

Before dawn on Saturday, the country's signature ultra-low-cost carrier ceased operations after a $500 million federal loan package, which would have given the government up to a 90 percent stake in the Florida-based airline, collapsed in the final hours. The shutdown ended a 34-year run that reshaped American air travel and put 17,000 workers, including 14,000 Spirit employees, out of a job overnight. The collapse caps weeks of frantic deal-making between the White House, Sp

In a revised $85 billion merger application submitted last Thursday, the country's largest freight railroad warned the Surface Transportation Board (STB) that it will walk away from its proposed acquisition of Norfolk Southern if approval comes loaded with widespread trackage rights or forced line sales. The hardline gambit sets the stage for the highest-stakes rail deal in a generation. The newly disclosed merger agreement reveals that UP and NS will tolerate regulatory cond

How the FAA's gaming pitch drew a record 12,350 applications in a single hiring window The United States Federal Aviation Administration has spent the better part of a decade wrestling with a chronic shortage of air traffic controllers. This month, it tried something unorthodox: it asked video gamers to step up. The response was overwhelming. On 17 April 2026, the FAA opened its annual hiring window for trainee air traffic controllers with a recruitment campaign built around

The Trump administration escalated its maritime pressure campaign against Tehran this week, with the Treasury Department rolling out fresh sanctions targeting the network behind Iran's "shadow fleet" kingpin Mohammad Hossein Shamkhani, and U.S. Central Command reporting that its blockade of Iranian ports had turned away ten vessels since deployment. The moves came as the global shipping industry continued to absorb the logistical shockwaves of the Iran war, now stretching int

Washington's uneasy truce with the trucking industry frayed further this week, as lawmakers signaled fresh appetite for regulatory overhaul following a "60 Minutes" exposé that pulled back the curtain on the industry's most stubborn safety problem. The CBS segment spotlighted so-called "chameleon carriers," operations that routinely dissolve and re-register under new Department of Transportation numbers to evade enforcement. The 13-minute feature zeroed in on Super Ego, a spr

The U.S. aviation sector is entering a defining period — shaped by a multi-billion dollar infrastructure reckoning, a renewed focus on safety at the highest levels of government, and consolidation moves quietly redrawing the competitive map of American air travel. At the centre of it all is the Federal Aviation Administration's sweeping plan to modernise the country's ageing air traffic control network. The FAA is seeking more than $12 billion in Congressional funding for a f

The U.S. rail industry is navigating one of its most turbulent stretches in recent memory, as a confluence of rising construction costs, federal funding uncertainty, and a renewed political fight over rail safety standards threatens to stall billions of dollars in planned infrastructure investment. A new maintenance-of-way spending report covering 47 freight and passenger railroads found that only 21 of those surveyed plan to spend more on infrastructure this year, while 18 e

A figure set when Jimmy Carter was still in the White House is at the centre of a new Congressional battle that could reshape the economics of American trucking. Reps. Jesús "Chuy" García and Derek Tran reintroduced the Fair Compensation for Truck Crash Victims Act this week, a bill that would increase the minimum insurance requirement for interstate motor carriers from $750,000 to $5 million. The arithmetic is straightforward. Congress established the $750,000 insurance mini

There is a line buried in airline annual reports that tends to get overlooked in good times. Fuel costs are, the reports note, "extremely volatile and unpredictable, and even a small change in market fuel prices can significantly affect profitability." Southwest Airlines wrote that in its 2025 filing. Weeks later, it became the understatement of the year. When the US and Israel struck Iran on 28 February 2026, the airline industry's most intractable cost problem moved from ch

The U.S. shipping and freight industry is navigating one of its most turbulent periods in recent memory, squeezed simultaneously by surging fuel costs, an escalating tariff regime, and the knock-on effects of conflict in the Middle East. Diesel prices have surged past $5.40 per gallon nationally, with California approaching $7.22 per gallon — a level that is distorting transportation economics across the entire western supply chain. The spike is cascading across every mode of

Washington's long-standing resistance to airline consolidation may be softening, and Sean Duffy wants you to know where the administration stands. The Transportation Secretary used a CNBC appearance Tuesday to signal that the White House is open to mergers among U.S. carriers — a marked departure from the aggressive anti-consolidation posture of the Biden years. "President Trump, he loves to see big deals happen," Duffy said. The comment, brief as it was, landed like a flare

The Long Island Rail Road is barreling toward a potential strike this spring after management rejected the findings of a second Presidential Emergency Board, defying a federal arbitration process designed specifically to prevent commuter rail disruptions from crippling the U.S. economy. A second Presidential Emergency Board sided with a coalition of unions in their ongoing contract dispute with the LIRR — but management rejected the recommendation outright, setting the stage