Natasha Frost

No one enjoys boarding an airplane. It’s slow, it’s inefficient, and often undignified. And that’s without even getting into the ethical quandary of so-called gate lice, the anxious passengers who cluster at the gate before their group is called. But at least one part of the process doesn’t need to be disrupted. When it comes to shunting slow-moving passengers to the front of the queue, such as those requiring assistance or with small children, the airlines have it exactly right.

Industries must decarbonize. For aviation, where only jet fuel can power such hulking machinery through the air, this is a harder challenge than for most. Though adopting more efficient planes and better routes has led to some carbon savings, airlines appear decades away from being able to make wholesale changes. Unlike shipping, which has slashed its carbon output by opting for cleaner fuels and more efficient technology, aviation is stuck. Renewable fuel is mostly too expensive or inefficient to be a realistic solution, while battery-powered planes that can carry more than about six people are still a long way off. 

Today is the first day of the biggest job David Calhoun may ever have. As the new CEO of Boeing, Calhoun must take the ailing airplane manufacturer, repair its damaged relationships, and help it emerge intact from the all-consuming 737 Max crisis. To call it a tremendous challenge is putting it lightly. But is Calhoun the right man for the position?

Think about the last glass of wine you ordered in a restaurant—a complex Burgundy, for instance, or a glass of celebratory Prosecco. Now, consider the people who got it to you.

At first glance, the outfits issued to Delta staff in May 2018 resembled superhero costumes. They were ultra-stretchy, brightly colored, designed for flying, and dizzyingly high-tech. And they resisted almost everything—wrinkles, water, stains, and static alike. They even self-deodorized. But these magic uniforms, worn today by roughly 64,000 Delta employees, including flight attendants, Sky Club staff, gate agents, and so on, have additional, much more concerning properties.

Late in the summer of 1997, two of the most critical players in global aviation became a single tremendous titan. Boeing, one of the US’s largest and most important companies, acquired its longtime plane manufacturer rival, McDonnell Douglas, in what was then the country’s tenth-largest merger. The resulting giant took Boeing’s name. More unexpectedly, it took its culture and strategy from McDonnell Douglas—even its commercial aviation department was struggling to retain customers. 

Boeing executives likely turned the final calendar page on 2019 with a sigh of relief. This was an annus horribilis for the company, during which it was responsible for the loss of hundreds of lives, hemorrhaged billions of dollars, and ended the year by firing its CEO, Dennis Muilenburg. It is no longer the world’s largest airplane manufacturer. Boeing’s flagship plane, the 737 Max, is still grounded, despite its many assurances it would be certified sky-worthy by the end of the year.

For more than 5,000 high schoolers applying to college each year, Brigham Young University, in Provo, Utah, checks two critical boxes: It’s an extremely good university, and its tuition fees are just $5,790 a year. 

Like many people I know, I would like to fly less, but also want to travel as much as I ever did—two essentially incompatible positions.

By most metrics, Greta Gerwig’s adaptation of Little Women is a hit. Released on Christmas Day, the movie is already raking in millions, earning plaudit after plaudit, and ranking in each day’s top five movies by box-office takings. But by one metric at least, Gerwig’s film has a ways to go if it hopes to outpace Gillian Armstrong’s Little Women movie, released on Christmas Day 1994.

Like so many dubious ideas, it started with a tweet. In December 2016, as the entrepreneur and engineer Elon Musk sat in standstill Los Angeles traffic, he took to social media to posit a solution:

In 2009, US train enthusiasts received some of the best news since 1886, the year the country finally agreed to use the same rail gauge nationwide. US president Barack Obama had a plan to revitalize the floundering US economy—and rail was a big part of it.

Climate emergency–related criticism of the titanic fund manager BlackRock seems to be coming from all sides, lately. Last month, Extinction Rebellion activists in London protested outside its offices, including by dumping ashes outside the building “to represent the destruction of the Amazon fires.” This week, former vice president Al Gore entered the debate, accusing the asset manager of financing the “destruction of human civilization.” Now, a group of Catholic nuns have joined the chorus.

Every December, Americans brace themselves for one of the least pleasant elements of the holidays: travel. Cars get stuck in traffic jams, public transport goes on the blink, flights are mysteriously delayed (and sometimes even canceled altogether). But we do it anyway: In December 2018, roughly one in four Americans, or some 73 million people, braved the hordes and got onto a plane.

In this week’s general election in the UK, Boris Johnson’s Conservative party won a tremendous majority, paving the way for him to pass his Brexit deal. Short of something very, very unexpected happening, the UK will officially leave the EU at the end of January 2020.

Nearly six months of continued unrest in Hong Kong, where violent anti-government protests continue to rage, is taking its toll on the city’s tourism industry. Between August and November, some 3.3 million fewer passengers came through the doors of its airport, compared to the same period a year earlier. In November, passenger traffic fell by around 969,000 people, or a year-on-year decrease of about 16%—the worst drop in more than a decade.

In the UK’s general election on Thursday, the Conservative party romped to victory. It now holds a majority of the country’s parliament by about 80 seats. Prime minister Boris Johnson has already called the victory a mandate for a swift Brexit.

Britain’s first-past-the-post system, in which voters elect a local representative, can sometimes produce unexpected results: Small parties can sometimes fall by the wayside while larger parties receive a majority with only a plurality of the vote.

The UK’s Labour party has suffered its worst election result in nearly a century, and is forecast to have 203 seats of a total 650. The result—down from 244 in 2017—is the party’s worst result since 1935, its share of the vote falling in almost every seat barring a few exceptions.

In what many have described as the most pivotal vote since the Second World War, millions of Brits today cast their ballots in the country’s general election. Exit polls suggest a large majority for Boris Johnson’s Conservative Party, with an estimated 368 seats, up from 317 in 2017.

If exit polls are to believed, Boris Johnson’s Conservative Party has triumphed in the UK’s general election, giving it a clear route to passing its deal and ushering in a hard Brexit. But there are other questions to be answered over the evening’s results. Here are a few to look out for.

For hundreds of thousands of visitors to New Zealand, a vacation in the Land of the Long White Cloud means a controlled brush with mild peril. You might hurl yourself off a bridge, with only a thick bungee cord of rubber saving you from certain doom, or careen through rapids on a hurtling jet boat. There’s skydiving, of course, and caving; zip-lining and canyoning; heli-skiing and Zorbing (look it up). New Zealand is the place where many of these capers were first commercially available and the self-described home of adventure tourism.

The graph of Norwegian Air’s share price resembles the kind of landing most of its flyers would like to avoid.

For wealthy boomers with cash to splash, luxury doesn’t necessarily look like poolside mojitos or glistening golden sands. Instead, it might involve a boat hardened against the ice, traversing the fragile wilds of the Arctic, with the chance to encounter the cliff-face of climate change from the comfort of a five-star suite.