It zeroes in on a key revenue source that passengers don’t think much about: how U.S. airlines, chief among them American, United, and Delta, have collected more than $1 billion per quarter in checked and carryon baggage fees–during all 10 of the past 10 quarters. And $1.3 billion in the third quarter of 2018.

Northwestern Memorial Hospital surpassed Illinois’ 23-year-old record for the most heart transplants in one year.

At an event today, the hospital said that it has performed 54 heart transplants in 2018. The state’s previous record was set by Rush University Medical Center, with 45 in 1995.

The event was a celebration of both the hospital’s success and patients’ survival, as those who have received heart transplants and their families hugged the Northwestern doctors and staff who helped save their lives. It also paid homage to the people who have donated their organs.

“Today, we recognize first the incredible generosity that arises from tragedy and acknowledge organ donors and their families who make the gift of life through transplantation possible,” said Dr. Allen Anderson, medical director of the Center for Heart Failure at Northwestern’s Bluhm Cardiovascular Institute.

Heart disease is the leading cause of death for men and women in the U.S., with about 610,000 deaths per year, according to the Centers for Disease Control Prevention.

Less than 3,000 heart transplants are performed in the U.S. each year, Anderson said.

“A heart transplant has an immense impact upon the lives of these individuals,” he said. “So many of our patients suddenly find themselves facing unfinished lives that can be more fully completed thanks to a lifesaving transplant. Heart transplantation works. Patients realize their dreams and ambitions: growing up, starting families, watching children grow to adulthood and marry, playing with grandchildren, developing careers and even on occasion running a Fortune 100 company. Our patients grow old, and we call this success.”

United Airlines CEO Oscar Munoz had a heart attack in October 2015 and received a heart transplant at Northwestern in January 2016. He spoke at the event about the “emotional impact” of heart transplantation. He said he travels around the world telling his story and trying to educate people about the importance of calling an ambulance if they feel like something is wrong.

“I don’t think I’ll ever, ever get tired of telling this story, and more importantly I’ll never get tired of thanking folks,” Munoz said.

U.S. News World Report has named Northwestern’s cardiology and cardiac surgery program No. 1 in Illinois for the past 11 years and has ranked it in the top 10 in the U.S. for the past four years, according to Northwestern Memorial Hospital President Julie Creamer.

Flights in the 1950’s were glamorous and luxurious in many ways – and was a far cry from the budget airline travel of the 21st century.

However, they were much worse in one particular way, 93-year-old Ethel Pattison explained.

Planes in those days were much more susceptible to the weather, making turbulence worse.

“It was more turbulent in those days, the weather was much more of a factor,” Ethel told Express.co.uk.

In fact, if weather was bad, many commercial planes wouldn’t fly at all as they had a maximum cruising altitude of 10,000 to 12,000 feet,

The propeller-driven aircraft weren’t pressurised – as they are today – and feeling sick on board was common.

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For now, United is dispensing with the idea of a drinks cart rolling down the aisle and replacing it with pre-made drinks on a little pan, carried by the Flight Attendant, so that passengers can help themselves.

A new plant in Gary plans to turn hundreds of thousands of tons of trash into fuel, some of which could end up powering United Airlines’ planes.

California-based Fulcrum BioEnergy on Thursday announced plans for the $600 million alternative fuel plant in Gary. Construction is not expected to start until 2020. But once operations begin, likely 18 months to two years later, Fulcrum said the plant could create about 33 million gallons of fuel from 700,000 tons of waste each year.

Chicago-based United, which invested $30 million in Fulcrum in 2015, will have the chance to purchase 15 million of those gallons and is “fully planning to exercise those rights,” said Aaron Robinson, the airline’s senior manager of environmental strategy and sustainability.

It’s not yet clear which airports could end up getting the biofuel, since that will depend in part on where it makes the most financial sense for Fulcrum to ship the fuel, Robinson said. Some states offer incentives to companies delivering biofuels, and Illinois isn’t currently among them, he said.

During the holiday season, United Airlines gives its flight attendants some leeway on how to accessorise their uniforms.

But the US airline based in Chicago apparently doesn’t want its flight crews to go overboard with extras that detract from the flight attendants’ professional image.

That was the key takeaway from a United Airlines memo sent to flight attendants released last week under the headline ‘Holiday Adornment’.

“Accessories must be in good taste,” the memo read.

“In the spirit of the holiday, and not detract from your professional image.”

The memo outlines what “adornments” flight attendants are permitted to add to their uniforms, such as a “conservative holiday scarf” and “conservative earrings” for women and “conservative holiday tie” and “one-holiday pin” for men.

But the memo also makes clear what is prohibited: “Head adornments (i.e., antlers, Santa hats, haloes, etc.; Holiday vests or sweaters; Holiday aprons: Holiday hosiery.”

A United Airlines spokeswoman said the memo is issued every year at this time to remind employees of the carrier’s standards but she said she didn’t know how many years it has been sent out and what prompted the original memo.

United Continental (NASDAQ: UAL) tried to capture some media buzz last week by teasing “an historic package of new and expanded international routes” to be unveiled on Wednesday.

The reality was a little more ordinary. United plans to significantly expand its international service from its San Francisco hub during 2019. However, many of the additional flights had been announced previously, and only one of the truly “new” routes was especially noteworthy.

United has been spreading its wings in San Francisco

During 2018, United Airlines has accelerated its capacity growth. Its main goal has been to add more capacity in the domestic market (including more flights to smaller cities) in order to regain market share and strengthen its hubs. However, United is also on track to expand its fleet of international widebodies by 14 aircraft.

A lot of United’s international growth has come in San Francisco. Not only is San Francisco United Airlines’ gateway to the fast-growing Asia-Pacific region, it’s also a booming regional economy in its own right. In late October, United Airlines began a second daily flight between San Francisco and Singapore. Shortly thereafter, it started flying three times a week between San Francisco and Tahiti.

United is expanding its international route network from San Francisco. Image source: United Airlines.

United has also previously announced several service additions in San Francisco that will go into effect in 2019. In March, it will begin daily service between San Francisco and Amsterdam. United’s seasonal route to Auckland will return to year-round service around the same time. Most recently, on the day that it launched the new Tahiti flights, the carrier announced that they would operate year-round rather than seasonally (as originally planned).

More new routes coming

On Wednesday, United Airlines revealed that it will launch several other new international flights from San Francisco next year.

United Airlines will begin twice-daily service to Toronto on March 31. It plans to begin offering a second flight between San Francisco and Seoul four days a week as of April 1, complementing its existing daily service on that route. United’s international expansion will resume in the fall. It will begin flying between San Francisco and Melbourne three days a week on Oct. 29, while daily seasonal service to New Delhi will begin on Dec. 5.

In total, United’s new and expanded international service from San Francisco will touch seven destinations and add up to 41 additional flights per week.

Good moves, but nothing earth-shattering

United Airlines’ teaser about an historic announcement had some pundits speculating that the carrier was planning to return to Africa in a big way. By contrast, while the changes announced this week will further solidify San Francisco’s position as the best West Coast airline hub, they don’t really qualify as historic.

For one thing, the new route to Amsterdam and the decisions to switch to year-round service on the Auckland and Tahiti routes had all been announced earlier this year.

Meanwhile, extra flights to Seoul are just par for the course, considering that the Bay Area and Seoul are both massive metropolitan areas with huge technology industries. The only surprising thing about the new twice-daily route to Toronto is that it didn’t already exist, given that Toronto is one of the 10 largest metro areas in North America. And the flights to Melbourne are just a case of (almost) keeping up with the Joneses. Qantas began serving that route four days a week back in September.

US carrier United Airlines plans to introduce a new daily non-stop seasonal flight between Delhi and San Francisco from December 7 next year.

Currently, Air India’s non-stop service between Delhi and San Francisco runs through the year.

Like the Air India flight, the United Airlines flight will also circumnavigate the globe. A senior airline United Airlines official said its flight will fly from Delhi towards Tokyo and then onwards to the US, while on the return, the aircraft will fly over Europe before reaching India.

While Air India uses a Boeing 777-200 ER, United Airlines plans to use a Boeing 787-9 aircraft on this non-stop service.

A Denver doctor said she was repeatedly questioned about her credentials when she jumped in to help a passenger who was having a medical emergency on her flight.

Dr. Comilla Sasson said she was asked for proof that she was a doctor, even as she started treating the patient. Sasson, who is a practicing emergency medicine physician, also serves as the medical expert here at 9NEWS.

United Airlines said in an emailed statement that crew members “are trained to ask for identification if there is a volunteer.” 

On Thursday, Sasson was a passenger on an early morning United Airlines flight to Houston. The plane had already left the gate but was not yet in the air when she heard something strange. 

“All of a sudden I heard a thump and a groan,” she said.  

Just up the aisle, she found a person in the middle of a medical emergency.

“I said right away, hey, ‘I’m an ER doctor, how can I help?,’” Sasson said. “And the flight attendant asked me three different times, ‘Are you a doctor? What kind of a doctor are you? Are you a doctor?’ And kept asking me, and I kept saying, ‘I’m a doctor and I need to help this patient because this person is critically ill. Something is obviously wrong with this person.”

Sasson said she was also repeatedly asked for her credentials, which she doesn’t carry with her all the time, especially when she’s not at work. 

“I said, ‘Look, they’re online. I don’t carry credentials. No doctor carries credentials around, I don’t have time for this right now. I need to take care of this person who’s ill,’” she said. “In my mind, spending five minutes, literally, would have been the difference between life and death for this person, potentially.” 

Sasson said she began to treat the patient anyway, despite the ongoing questions. She said there have been other doctors in similar situations before.

“I remember a month or two ago, a kind of a similar case, an African American woman physician who was on a Delta flight. She actually produced her credentials and said, ‘Hey, I’m a doctor.’ And yet nobody would believe her,” she said.

Sasson said this isn’t the first time someone questioned her credentials, either. 

“Women, often times, are thought of as nurses. They’re not referred to as doctors. That’s not even implicit biased, that’s something that happens every single day. It happens to me every single day in the ER when I walk into a patient room. somebody says, ‘Hey, when is the doctor coming to see me?’” she said. “So I think there’s a gender bias to it, and I do wonder if there’s something to the fact that I’m an Asian American, woman doctor who came up and said, ‘Hey, look, I want to help. I want to do something.’ And it was this sort of instant, well prove to me that you’re really a doctor.” 

Sasson said she was also frustrated by delays when asking for medical supplies on the plane. About twenty minutes later, she said the plane returned to the gate and she handed off the patient to paramedics. She said once the patient was treated, she did provide her credentials to airline staff.

United Airlines issued the following statement about the incident by email:

“Prior to takeoff, United Flight 1192 from Denver to Houston returned to the gate due to a medical emergency. One customer was treated by paramedics at the gate and rebooked on the next flight to Houston after the customer was deemed safe to fly by paramedics.

We are thankful to Sasson who assisted in treating the customer. The safety of our customers is our top priority. In medical emergencies, time permitting, our crew are trained to ask for identification if there is a volunteer. We are reaching out to Sasson and the crew to understand what occurred.”

Sasson said, after the event, the flight attendants thanked her, too. She hopes other people with medical training won’t hesitate to help in an emergency, just because someone might question them or their credentials.

“Maybe I don’t look like a doctor, maybe I do. It shouldn’t really matter. If I want to go help somebody and somebody’s having a life-threatening event, then I should be allowed to do that,” she said.