Pilots asleep in the cockpit, IBM's AI shift, Boeing problems, and store closures: Business news roundup

Two pilots for an Indonesian airline made a strong case for paid paternity leave after falling asleep in the cockpit for almost half an hour. The first officer allowed the captain to take a nap and then dosed off himself, later attributing his sleepiness to helping take care of his one-month-old twins at home. Batik Air Flight 6723, carrying 153 passengers, eventually landed safely at Soekarno–Hatta International Airport in Jakarta after both pilots woke up and realized the plane flew off-course. Both pilots have been grounded and the country’s transport ministry is now investigating the flight.

IBM told employees on Tuesday that it is slashing jobs in its marketing and communications division. IBM is the latest in a wave of tech companies to announce layoffs early this year.

Boeing is having a rough time of it right now, with parts falling off its planes left, right and center. Just last week, a wheel came loose and smashed through a car, and earlier this year the door from a 737 Max aircraft broke off mid-flight. That mid-air disaster sparked an audit from the Federal Aviation Administration, which has gone far from well.

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Shoppers may have to try a little harder to find bargains at Dollar Tree — because there will be fewer Dollar Tree stores to find. The discount retailer said Wednesday that it plans to close almost 1,000 of its locations, after it lost $1.7 billion in its fourth quarter.

A pallet of used batteries from the International Space Station (ISS) re-entered Earth’s atmosphere over the Gulf of Mexico following an unpredictable journey through orbit.

The world got an uncomfortable reminder about the need to scrutinize air travel last January when a door plug blew off an Alaska Airlines flight 16,000 feet over Portland, Oregon. The culprit was a Boeing 737, and in the days that followed, it was soon clear that catastrophic failure wasn’t a freak accident but the result of systemic problems. Worse, that ill-fated flight was just the beginning of a disturbing news cycle for the airline manufacturer.

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So far, 2024 really hasn’t been the year for air travel. In January alone there was the Japan Airlines fire, the Boeing 737 Max 9 that lost its door plug mid-flight, the discovery of more loose door plugs on other 737 Max 9s, a cockpit windshield that cracked mid-flight, a 747 shooting sparks through the air when one of its engines failed, a tailstrike in Toronto and a Virgin Atlantic flight that was canceled after a passenger noticed bolts missing on the wing. Unfortunately, it doesn’t look like things are improving, as two more incidents took place last week.

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Dollar General is planning to remove self-checkout kiosks for 300 of its stores — and it’s using artificial intelligence to do it. As corporate America struggles to figure out how it feels about self-checkout, the discount retailer said Thursday that it has been working for months with IT services company Everseen to identify stores where people are using self-checkout kiosks to steal products. The company’s platform uses AI to detect theft. Tedd Vasos, Dollar General’s CEO, told investors during the company’s earnings call Thursday that the “decisive action” is “based on month’s of AI activity data.”

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Users with a prescription of Eli Lilly’s weight loss drug, Zepbound, will now be able to get the medication delivered straight to their homes via Amazon.

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