Airlines: Flying Low

Holiday bookings are down, and carriers' losses are up. Just how safe and solvent is the industry?

Just when Americans were starting to calm down about air travel, Subash Gurung decided to fly from Chicago to Omaha, Neb. The jobless Nepalese man, here on an expired visa, got through security at O'Hare airport last week with five knives, a stun gun and a container marked TEAR GAS/PEPPER SPRAY. After a search at the gate uncovered the weapons, Gurung was arrested but soon released on bond. He was taken into custody only when he returned to O'Hare to pick up another bag, filled with more knives. And in the story's grim punch line, two of the seized knives were...

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