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Colleen Mondor

@chasingray

Aviation journalist, especially on Alaska. Never met a federal database I didn't love. "Probable Cause" newsletter is here: https://colleenmondor.substack.com/

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Latest posts by Colleen Mondor @chasingray

🇦🇪 The UAE airline suspends all flights from Dubai

07.03.2026 08:46 👍 24 🔁 10 💬 0 📌 0

They are going to advise her to a significant loss if they don't change what they are doing.

07.03.2026 08:42 👍 1 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0
U.S. Transportation Secretary Sean P. Duffy announced today the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) is issuing a new mandatory “Operations Specification” (OpSpec) requiring all commercial airlines to formally commit to merit-based hiring for pilots.  

While the FAA has raised performance standards, dismantled DEI offices and contracts, and revised absurd Biden-Buttigieg era directives that wasted time renaming cockpits to flight decks, allegations of airlines hiring based on race and sex remain. Under this new mandate, all U.S. carriers will be required to certify that this practice is terminated. Failure to do so will subject airlines to federal investigation. 

“When families board their aircraft, they should fly with confidence knowing the pilot behind the controls is the best of the best. The American people don’t care what their pilot looks like or their gender—they just care that they are most qualified man or woman for the job,” said U.S. Transportation Secretary Sean P. Duffy. “Safety drives everything we do, and this commonsense measure will increase transparency between passengers and airlines.”  

This action is in accordance with President Donald J. Trump’s Executive Order on Ending Illegal Discrimination and Restoring Merit-Based Opportunity and his Presidential Action on Keeping Americans Safe in Aviation. 

“At the FAA, the safety of passengers is our number one priority,” said FAA Administrator Bryan Bedford. “It is a bare minimum expectation for airlines to hire the most qualified individual when making someone responsible for hundreds of lives at a time. Someone’s race, sex, or creed, has nothing to do with their ability to fly and land aircraft safely.”

U.S. Transportation Secretary Sean P. Duffy announced today the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) is issuing a new mandatory “Operations Specification” (OpSpec) requiring all commercial airlines to formally commit to merit-based hiring for pilots. While the FAA has raised performance standards, dismantled DEI offices and contracts, and revised absurd Biden-Buttigieg era directives that wasted time renaming cockpits to flight decks, allegations of airlines hiring based on race and sex remain. Under this new mandate, all U.S. carriers will be required to certify that this practice is terminated. Failure to do so will subject airlines to federal investigation. “When families board their aircraft, they should fly with confidence knowing the pilot behind the controls is the best of the best. The American people don’t care what their pilot looks like or their gender—they just care that they are most qualified man or woman for the job,” said U.S. Transportation Secretary Sean P. Duffy. “Safety drives everything we do, and this commonsense measure will increase transparency between passengers and airlines.” This action is in accordance with President Donald J. Trump’s Executive Order on Ending Illegal Discrimination and Restoring Merit-Based Opportunity and his Presidential Action on Keeping Americans Safe in Aviation. “At the FAA, the safety of passengers is our number one priority,” said FAA Administrator Bryan Bedford. “It is a bare minimum expectation for airlines to hire the most qualified individual when making someone responsible for hundreds of lives at a time. Someone’s race, sex, or creed, has nothing to do with their ability to fly and land aircraft safely.”

In the midst of everything else that is going on, I missed this Feb 13th press release from the FAA. With the long documented history of commercial operators barring pilots due to sex and race, to read this statement today is infuriating.

www.faa.gov/newsroom/tru...

07.03.2026 08:41 👍 14 🔁 3 💬 2 📌 0
Yellow bird with black face and red eye, all puffed out and slightly damp.

Yellow bird with black face and red eye, all puffed out and slightly damp.

Let me start a belated thread of Aotearoa New Zealand silvan birds.

To lead things off, a New Zealand Bellbird photographed on Kapiti Island.

06.03.2026 06:08 👍 1470 🔁 264 💬 25 📌 23

But that's not the point.

She still has to have a position. If she can not muster a position on a war, then I fail to see how she can be expected to muster a position on anything.

As for threading the needle, Murkowski (love her or hate her) has effectively done that for years. It can be done.

07.03.2026 07:16 👍 6 🔁 1 💬 1 📌 0

My big concern is that if Peltola can not give an opinion on a war then she is an empty vessel candidate - someone who will merely do what she is told (on any issue) by the stronger voices in the room.

Just imagine who those stronger voices could be.

She needs to get serious or drop out. Now.

07.03.2026 05:17 👍 15 🔁 1 💬 3 📌 1
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"We hosted that Iranian ship. They disarmed for our naval exercise. Then America attacked."

India's ex-FM just exposed the setup.

The UK stays silent when our "allies" pull stunts like this.

07.03.2026 04:15 👍 962 🔁 457 💬 42 📌 37

Dear National Dems - you better get some new advisers up to Mary Peltola stat.

07.03.2026 02:58 👍 26 🔁 7 💬 2 📌 0

Terrible.

07.03.2026 03:46 👍 1 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0

Dear National Dems - you better get some new advisers up to Mary Peltola stat.

07.03.2026 02:58 👍 26 🔁 7 💬 2 📌 0

I have many issues with Senator Dan Sullivan but if you are running for US Senate then you must - you absolutely must - have an opinion when the US goes to war.

Taking "No comment" on this topic is appalling.

07.03.2026 02:42 👍 43 🔁 5 💬 2 📌 0

"Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Mary Peltola hasn’t made any public statements about the Iran war, and her campaign social media accounts have been silent on the subject.

When contacted Thursday, her campaign spokesperson said she had no comment."

Thank you, @alaska.bsky.social for asking.

07.03.2026 02:39 👍 37 🔁 14 💬 5 📌 2
Interior Alaska river valley from Alaska Airlines flight 87.

Interior Alaska river valley from Alaska Airlines flight 87.

Enjoyed a gorgeous flight back from Deadhorse earlier this week. Also: Alaska is very very big.

06.03.2026 19:58 👍 30 🔁 3 💬 2 📌 0
List of temporary flight restrictions take from tfr.faa.gov from 12/30/2025 - 3/4/2026 which does not include the El Paso TFR

List of temporary flight restrictions take from tfr.faa.gov from 12/30/2025 - 3/4/2026 which does not include the El Paso TFR

The El Paso Temporary Flight Restriction (tfr) is no longer on the archived list at tfr.faa.gov/tfr3/?page=l...

07.03.2026 01:30 👍 7 🔁 1 💬 1 📌 0

I really did not think you could run for US Senate without being asked about your opinion of the US currently being involved in a war and yet....in Alaska you can.

No one has asked Mary Peltola how she feels about the war with Iran. And, as far as I can see, she hasn't said a word about it either.

07.03.2026 01:13 👍 6 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0
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As someone who routinely mocks permabullish clickbait oil forecasts, I want to be exceptionally clear:

Crude WILL go to $200/bbl, en route higher, unless traffic through the Strait resumes.

Not clickbait, but rather brutal physics and necessary economic incentives.

06.03.2026 16:17 👍 1760 🔁 327 💬 44 📌 80
The Killers - Bright Lights
The Killers - Bright Lights YouTube video by TheKillersVEVO

Writing music.

Working on an angle about the El Paso-area airspace incidents. www.youtube.com/watch?v=gMK5...

07.03.2026 00:57 👍 1 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0

You must not be Alaskan if you are wondering about Peltola’s position in this race or how the state’s RCV system works.

This race is between Peltola and Sullivan.

06.03.2026 23:51 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 1 📌 0

Wow!!!!

06.03.2026 23:47 👍 1 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0
Preview
Remember paperbacks that fit in your pocket? Indigo’s trying to bring them back The retailer sees its program as a chance to put non-fiction, particularly by Canadian authors, in front of new readers

This is interesting: Indigo's experimenting with a niche nonfiction mass-market thing. Is there a world where MMPs become, like, prestige items? Maybe. Am I envious of the authors whose titles got tapped for this? Absolutely.

06.03.2026 22:48 👍 19 🔁 5 💬 1 📌 1

It's truly startling.

06.03.2026 01:21 👍 1 🔁 0 💬 1 📌 0

VERY cool!

06.03.2026 01:20 👍 1 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0

I learned to body surf by catching waves on my father's back when I was 5 years old.

06.03.2026 00:57 👍 12 🔁 0 💬 3 📌 0
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🚨BREAKING: Palantir just got a no-bid government contract that could be worth up to $75 million — to help the Agriculture Department assign desks and monitor office space.

06.03.2026 00:29 👍 91 🔁 65 💬 11 📌 5

The title of this book is "REPRODUCTIVE WRONGS
A SHORT HISTORY OF BAD IDEAS ABOUT WOMEN" and the cover is not the slightest bit scandalous, I promise!

06.03.2026 00:37 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0
To Ruden, a translator and cultural historian, anti-abortion propaganda finds its roots in seven canonical texts. She starts with Roman bad boy Ovid, who impregnates his girlfriend and lambastes her when she gets an abortion. Ruden likens him to a “conservative politician in imperialistic America.” Next, she traces fertility-related misogyny to the New Testament’s Pastoral Epistles, which restricted Christian women’s bathing, making them “[reek] like a goat,” lowering their self-esteem, and usable at will for childbearing. The author’s prose is replete with such vivid writing, making us pinch our noses—not at the women, but at the politically ambitious men who restricted their reproductive health choices. Augustine—who promoted an ideology of celibacy following a difficult relationship with his mother—prompts a similar recoil, as do the witch-hunting Dominican monks of the Middle Ages. Ruden deftly ties these men’s turbulent personal lives to their reproductive health teachings and subsequent rancor toward women. Charles Dickens, in Ruden’s view, wasn’t just a chronicler of Victorian England but a survivor of childhood neglect who propagated Victorian morals that forced women into early marriages and produced the large families needed to fill the first factories with cheap child labor. Curiously, anti-abortion advocate Marie Stopes isn’t judged quite as harshly as her male predecessors. Ruden writes that the collective trauma from World War I that Stopes suffered—she was a “thoughtful, highly educated person,” but also a eugenicist who believed poor people’s fertility should be curtailed—was probably felt more keenly than that of her lower-born contemporaries, who supposedly had “thick skins.” Equally puzzling is the book’s portrayal of a woman who survived her mother’s abortion attempt as a “living script,” stripping her of any views of her own. Those passages aside, Ruden successfully advocates for a world governed by saner reproductive health policies, and, argua…

To Ruden, a translator and cultural historian, anti-abortion propaganda finds its roots in seven canonical texts. She starts with Roman bad boy Ovid, who impregnates his girlfriend and lambastes her when she gets an abortion. Ruden likens him to a “conservative politician in imperialistic America.” Next, she traces fertility-related misogyny to the New Testament’s Pastoral Epistles, which restricted Christian women’s bathing, making them “[reek] like a goat,” lowering their self-esteem, and usable at will for childbearing. The author’s prose is replete with such vivid writing, making us pinch our noses—not at the women, but at the politically ambitious men who restricted their reproductive health choices. Augustine—who promoted an ideology of celibacy following a difficult relationship with his mother—prompts a similar recoil, as do the witch-hunting Dominican monks of the Middle Ages. Ruden deftly ties these men’s turbulent personal lives to their reproductive health teachings and subsequent rancor toward women. Charles Dickens, in Ruden’s view, wasn’t just a chronicler of Victorian England but a survivor of childhood neglect who propagated Victorian morals that forced women into early marriages and produced the large families needed to fill the first factories with cheap child labor. Curiously, anti-abortion advocate Marie Stopes isn’t judged quite as harshly as her male predecessors. Ruden writes that the collective trauma from World War I that Stopes suffered—she was a “thoughtful, highly educated person,” but also a eugenicist who believed poor people’s fertility should be curtailed—was probably felt more keenly than that of her lower-born contemporaries, who supposedly had “thick skins.” Equally puzzling is the book’s portrayal of a woman who survived her mother’s abortion attempt as a “living script,” stripping her of any views of her own. Those passages aside, Ruden successfully advocates for a world governed by saner reproductive health policies, and, argua…

And I didn't dodge the adult content label. Here's the Kirkus review. www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews...

I promise - the cover is not the slightest bit scandalous. SIGH.

06.03.2026 00:34 👍 2 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0
Preview
Reproductive Wrongs: A Short History of Bad Ideas about Women A Short History of Bad Ideas about Women

Posting this again to hopefully dodge the "adult content" label (due to the naked butts on the statue on the cover). From the book's description, this sounds excellent! bookshop.org/p/books/repr...

06.03.2026 00:30 👍 1 🔁 0 💬 1 📌 1
Nashville sunset from a 737-900ER.

Nashville sunset from a 737-900ER.

A sunset in the distance on approach into Nashville this evening. #avgeek

06.03.2026 00:20 👍 139 🔁 8 💬 0 📌 0
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Bernard LaFayette, the advance man who did the risky groundwork for the voter registration campaign in Selma, Alabama, that culminated in the passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, has died. https://cnn.it/4l9weqG

06.03.2026 00:01 👍 240 🔁 100 💬 11 📌 12
Preview
Seattle spent years misleading the public about Skagit River salmon. Now it will pay $1 billion for fish passage For years, Seattle City Light insisted its hydroelectric dams on the Skagit River were not harming salmon.

www.king5.com/article/news...

06.03.2026 00:11 👍 6 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0