Snow In July, Hurricane Outages And The CrowdStrike Outage In This Week's Beyond Cars Roundup

The National Weather Service recorded an interesting weather pattern over the weekend at Philadelphia International Airport; trace amounts of snow, in the middle of a heatwave in July. - Erin Marquis Read More

With airlines expecting this to be the busiest summer travel season ever, millions of passengers will likely experience the Transportation Security Administration’s facial recognition technology for the first time. Flyers could also be unaware that they can opt out of having their photo taken by a security officer. The TSA is aiming to roll out cameras in over 430 airports for identity verification purposes at checkpoints. - Ryan Erik King Read More

Hurricane Beryl caused some significant power outages in Houston, and with temperatures in the 90s, it’s a dangerous, miserable situation all around. It’s bad enough that many utility workers came in from out of state to assist with the attempts to restore power across the city. Instead of being greeted by grateful residents expressing their appreciation, though, some utility workers have been threatened, assaulted and even shot at. Things got so bad that Texas Governor Greg Abbott was forced to address it, Click2Houston reports. - Collin Woodard Read More

Air travel in the U.S. is a busy business, one that sees 45,000 flights serving 2.9 million each day, according to the Federal Aviation Administration. Our frenzied skies got a little calmer early Friday morning however, as the CrowdStrike software outage impacted United, Delta and American Airlines—the three largest airlines in the U.S. - Erin Marquis Read More

Aerial firefighter has to be one of the coolest jobs out there, right? You swoop over the countryside dumping huge volumes of water on pristine landscapes to try and save them from encroaching flames. Now, one of North America’s most iconic aerial firefighters is preparing to fly once again as the enormous WWII flying boat will soon take its final flight. - Owen Bellwood Read More

Travelers and flight attendants are already steeling themselves for increased turbulence and weather delays thanks to climate change now face a new problem while on the runway—extreme heat. - Erin Marquis Read More

The Heritage Foundation’s Mandate for Leadership, better known as Project 2025, isn’t exactly new, but it’s been getting a lot more attention ever since “Last Week Tonight with John Oliver” released an excellent episode highlighting how cartoonishly awful this blueprint for a theoretical Trump second term actually is. While the main goal may be to turn the U.S. into a Christofascist ethnostate, if you thought Project 2025 would ignore transportation policy, you would also be sorely mistaken. - Collin Woodard Read More

It’s no secret that most cities rely on traffic tickets to generate revenue and cover gaps in the municipal budget. Fines account for 10 percent of the budget in 730 municipalities, according to the New York Times. However, some cities are worse than other. - Ryan Erik King Read More

Two former space agency leaders called for the International Space Station to be preserved for future generations in an open letter published earlier this month. SpaceX is currently slated to scrap the station by 2030 in a controlled deorbiting, a technical way of saying it will just crash the ISS into the ocean. NASA is paying $843 million to Elon Musk’s private space venture to do the honors. - Ryan Erik King Read More

Cruise ships are vacations from hell to the point where, if you’re trapped on one, you might need a vacation from your vacation. What better way to get away while getting away than to get away by train. - Erin Marquis Read More