#ice-air — Public Fediverse posts
Live and recent posts from across the Fediverse tagged #ice-air, aggregated by home.social.
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I've been concerned hearing people call #USpol ICE deportation flights "ICE Air". It's probably unavoidable people will call it by that nickname. However, the international callsign "IceAir" is and has been IcelandAir, for decades. So if you hear an #IceAir callsign on the radio, scanner or LiveATC, it's IcelandAir doing a normal scheduled passenger flight to or from Reykjavik. Sooner or later someone will need help dealing with a misinterpretation of that. #aviation #business #travel #avgeek
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Why Avelo Airlines isn’t in my flight plans and won’t be anytime soon
LAS VEGAS
The last two years, Avelo Airlines has provided a cheap, conveniently-scheduled option for short-haul flights from here to smaller California airports at the end of Black Hat–Santa Rosa in 2023, then Burbank last year. But this time, that startup carrier put itself out of consideration because of a new set of routes it flies that nobody should want to board.
In May, the Houston-based carrier began operating deportation flights for the Trump administration under a contract it signed with Immigration and Customs Enforcement in April. This is a deliberately cruel from of transportation, as ProPublica documented in an April report: Flight attendants for the charter airline Global Crossing Airlines reported that they were told not to provide more than the most basic medical care for detainees who were flown with their hands and feet in shackles, making any evacuation in an emergency difficult to impossible.
The union representing Avelo’s flight attendants raised the same concern in early April after Avelo inked its deal with ICE. “Having an entire flight of people handcuffed and shackled would hinder any evacuation and risk injury or death,” the Association of Flight Attendants-CWA’s statement read. “It also impedes our ability to respond to a medical emergency, fire on board, decompression, etc. We cannot do our jobs in these conditions.”
Whatever you feel about people who came to this country illegally, you should be able to recognize this treatment of them as an abuse of basic human rights. You should also know that the Trump administration’s obsession with mass deportation has led ICE to detain people with no criminal record whatsoever–including U.S. citizens.
Seth Miller, an aviation journalist who has occasionally loaned his expertise to my stories (also a poll worker like me, a woodworker like my brother, and since January, a Democratic representative in New Hampshire’s state house), decided to do something about that. He set up a site, AvelNo, and paid for two billboards near Avelo’s hub in New Haven, Conn., that ask travelers to stop flying Avelo until Avelo stops flying for ICE.
The airline responded by sending a cease-and-desist letter making the laughable allegation that the campaign, featuring a tweaked version of Avelo’s logo, infringed on Avelo’s trademarks and confused people. After Avelo persuaded the billboard operator to take down those signs, Miller filed a countersuit seeking a declaratory judgment upholding his First Amendment rights to criticize Avelo in those ways.
The airline has also offered insultingly shallow responses to inquiries by Connecticut Attorney General William Tong (D.) as it’s continued operating these deportation flights in planes painted in all white instead of its usual livery. I spotted one during a connection in Denver at the end of May and had to wonder about the condition of the human cargo inside that 737.
Last month, Avelo announced that it was exiting the West Coast entirely to focus on the East Coast–including a new route from Dulles to Tweed New Haven. But it doesn’t matter how many routes Avelo adds or how cheap its fares are, before fees to pick a seat and carry on or check a larger bag: That airline is dead to me until it stops treating the Trump administration’s human-rights abuses as a profit opportunity while trying to silence a fellow journalist for calling them out on it.
#AvelNo #Avelo #BlackHat #deportationFlights #humanRights #ice #ICEAir #immigration #las #LasVegas #massDeportation #SethMiller #TrumpAdministration
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low cost airline #AveloAirlines begins #ICE deportation charter flights out of #Phoenix Mesa Gateway airport in #Arizona sparking #boycott campaign by flight attendants union.
The #FlightAttendants union is particularly opposed to working an "entire flight of people handcuffed and shackled" which compromises ability to evacuate safely.
#CEO Andrew Levy , who started the emergent company after stints at United and Allegiant, calls becoming the newest #contractor for #ICEAir, as the #Immigration and #Customs and Enforcement's air flights are now known, a "sensitive and complicated topic" .
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They worried about what would happen in an emergency. Could they really get over a hundred chained passengers off the plane in time?
“They never taught us anything regarding the immigration flights,” one said. “They didn’t tell us these people were going to be shackled, wrists to fucking ankles.”
“We have never gotten a clear answer on what we do in an ICE Air evacuation,” another said. “They will not give us an answer.”
“It’s only a matter of time,” a third said, before a deportation flight ends in disaster.
#ICE #ICEAir #Deportation #Aviation #AviationSafety #CharterFlights
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CW: The new face of the US: "ICEAir"
“‘If a fire occurs in the cabin, if we land on water, don’t check on the immigrants. Just make sure that you and the guards and the people that work for the government get off.’”
The people to be ignored are chained and shackled, helpless. As the flight attendants point out, this conflicted directive is against all of their training.
Remember: we only know this because #ProPublica reported it. Find the donate button, use it.
https://www.propublica.org/article/inside-ice-air-deportation-flights
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Did something.
"But after logging nearly 35,000 ICE flights, Cartwright told me that he’s worn out. He’s ready for his retirement to become a real one... What’s important to him, he said, is to make sure someone will keep watching."
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Volunteers document #ICEair #deportation flights in this piece by #ProPublica
I often see two of the charter carriers flying late nights out of Chicago ORD on FlightAware and wonder. Now I wonder if observers are watching here, too.
https://www.propublica.org/article/seattle-boeing-field-ice-deportation-flights