Airline News: Top Air Travel Stories From March

There's an old weather-related saying that March comes in like a lion and goes out like a lamb. It could also be applied to just about anything else and, in the case of the aviation industry, one can only hope that's the way the month ends.

Less than a week after Russia invaded Ukraine, U.S. President Joe Biden began the month of March by opening his State of the Union address with a dramatic announcement - the United States was joining 36 other allies in closing its airspace to Russian commercial and cargo planes.

It certainly had a ripple effect across the world.

Russia, of course, reciprocated. The world's biggest country by landmass banned planes from using its airspace, and that forced airlines who normally flew over Russia to Asia to get creative with flight routes - or drop them altogether.

Here's a look at airline headlines from the month of March 2022.

An eagle-eyed airport worker alerted his superiors that something seemed off with a JetBlue Airways pilot going through security on March 2. He was right. Airport officials confronted the pilot in the cockpit of the plane, realized he was drunk and removed him from the flight.

United Airlines on March 8 announced it would have to suspend a pair of routes from the U.S. to India since the bulk of both of them flew over Russian airspace. It was just the first example of airlines adapting to the new rules of the skies.

In a head-scratching decision, the Transportation Security Administration decided to extend the federal transportation mask mandate for another month. Set to expire on March 18, the TSA said on March 10 that the new expiration date would now be April 18.

The day before St. Patrick's Day, 10 pilots from various airlines filed suit in federal court asking a judge to ban the federal mask mandate. The pilots cited health and safety reasons.

On March 19, for the first time in more than two years, employees at Delta Air Lines received a regularly scheduled pay increase. Virtually all workers got a nice pay bump of four percent as CEO Ed Bastian said he believes the worst of the pandemic is over.

Mark it down - March 20, 2022. The airlines recorded the single biggest day of passenger traffic since the pandemic began when the TSA recorded more than 2.36 million people going through security. The industry is hoping the spring break travel is a good harbinger of what's to come this summer.

Ten days after their pilot counterparts filed a lawsuit over the federal mask mandate, nine flight attendants did so as well. In addition to citing health concerns, the flight attendants also made note that they are the first line of defense to face physical confrontation from unruly passengers who decline to wear a mask.

As of March 31, the FAA will extend pandemic relief to allow major airlines to cut international flights without having to lose their coveted slots, or gates, at major airports. It would be the fifth time the FAA has ruled to help airlines since the pandemic began in March of 2020. Previously, if an airline failed to meet the required number of flights taking off from or landing at respective gate it was assigned, it risked losing that slot to a competitor.