planes

Yesterday, we posted that YouTuber Adam Saleh— who is known, in part, for a recent airport security-related hoax — was allegedly thrown off of his Delta flight for speaking Arabic. Since then, both he and Delta have responded. 

via @omgAdamSaleh

While Saleh maintains his position, Delta has claimed that he was removed because "he sought to disrupt the cabin with provocative behavior."

via @TheOfficialSal

However, as many were quick to point out, whether or not this is a prank, Islamophobia on planes and other places remains a very serious and prevelant issue. 

via @umalkhayryusuf

Call off the search party, we might have found her. 

That's right, scientists believe that they may have found the body of Amelia Earhart, the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic ocean and the woman at the heart of one of aviation's greatest mysteries. Missing for nearly 80 years, Earhart has long been thought to have died in a plane crash in 1937, but new evidence has revealed that she may have landed safetly and died as a castaway on the island of Kiribati. 

via All Movie Gifs

The development in the case came when re-analyzed a partial skeleton found on the Kiribati in 1940. While these bones had been ruled out in the 40s, scientists now say that these bones were “consistent with a female of Earhart’s height and ethnic origin.” More recently, anthropologist Richard Jantz noticed that the skeleton's forearms were larger than average. Of course, without Earhart around to measure, determining the size of the pilot's forearms would be difficult. 

Analysists at TIGHAR (The International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery) used photograpic analysis to determine the size of Earhart's forearms. What'd they discover? The estimated size of Earhart's forearms and the size of the skeleton's were nearly identical. 

Case closed? Well, not exactly. It doesn't definitively prove what happened to Earhart, but it's definitely something. 

Read TIGHAR's full report here. 

In Russia, plane rides you.

A UTair flight froze to the ground at Igarka airport in Siberia on Tuesday, and passengers had to get out and push the 30-ton aircraft to get it moving again.

One of the men in the video is heard saying: "Real men can plant a tree, build a house, and push a plane," according to the Siberian Times.

The temperatures in the region above the Arctic Circle hit below 52C, and the brakes froze because they used the wrong kind of grease.

Researchers have identified "with a high degree of certainty" that this piece of metal found in 1991 was a part of Amelia Earhart's plane, which disappeared July 2, 1937.

According to researchers at The International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery (TIGHAR), which has long been investigating the last, fateful flight taken by Earhart 77 years ago, the aluminum sheet is a patch of metal installed on the Electra during the aviator's eight-day stay in Miami, which was the fourth stop on her attempt to circumnavigate the globe.

If true, based on where the metal was found, it would mean that Amelia Earhart didn't crash and rather "the two became castaways and eventually died on the atoll, which is some 350 miles southeast of Howland Island."