Seven people are in custody in connection with the shooting deaths of a Gulf Coast couple known for adopting special-needs children, and one more person is sought, the sheriff of Escambia County, Florida, said Tuesday. All seven people will face murder charges in last week's deaths of Byrd and Melanie Billings, authorities said. The suspects include a 16-year-old. "We've got the primary individuals and suspects in custody today," Sheriff David Morgan said. The eighth person is believed to have aided ...

Passengers from a Southwest Airlines jet that made an emergency landing because of a hole in the fuselage made it to their original destination early Tuesday. Southwest Flight 2294 made an emergency stop in Charleston, West Virginia, on Monday after a football-sized hole in its fuselage caused the cabin to depressurize, an airline spokeswoman said. There were no injuries aboard the Boeing 737, which was traveling at about 34,000 feet when the problem occurred, Southwest spokeswoman Marilee McInnis told ...

A Southwest Airlines jet made an emergency landing in Charleston, West Virginia, on Monday after a football-sized hole in its fuselage caused the cabin to depressurize, an airline spokeswoman said. There were no injuries aboard the Boeing 737, which was traveling at about 30,000 feet when the problem occurred, Southwest spokeswoman Marilee McInnis told CNN. The sudden drop in cabin pressure caused the jet's oxygen masks to deploy. Southwest Flight 2294 was en route from Nashville, Tennessee, ...

Russia will allow the United States to ship weapons across its territory to Afghanistan, Kremlin spokesman Alex Pavlov said Friday. Most of what we heard from Thursday's briefing by the investigating team only serves to deepen the mystery behind the loss of the Airbus A330. Lead investigator Alain Bouillard sums matters up when he says: "As of today we are far from having any real idea of the causes of this accident."" Consider what we now know. The aircraft was ...

If there was ever any question over the importance of finding the black boxes from Air France flight 447 then there is certainly none now. Most of what we heard from Thursday's briefing by the investigating team only serves to deepen the mystery behind the loss of the Airbus A330. Lead investigator Alain Bouillard sums matters up when he says: "As of today we are far from having any real idea of the causes of this accident."" Consider what we ...

Eleven of the 50 bodies recovered from the crash of Air France Flight 447 this month over the Atlantic Ocean have been identified, Brazilian authorities said. They were five Brazilian men, five Brazilian women and a foreigner, according to a statement Sunday from the federal police and secretary of defense of Pernambuco. They did not release the foreigner's nationality. The June 1 crash killed 228 people. At the request of family members, none of the names of the bodies recovered ...

The era when travelers will be able to catch a flight from New Mexico to outer space moved a step closer this week with the official start of construction of Spaceport America. So far, Air France has been in touch with about 1,800 relatives of the people who died when the Airbus A330 crashed into the Atlantic Ocean on June 1, chief executive Paul-Henri Gourgeon told France's RTL radio Friday. The company is also providing families with counseling, he said. ...

At least some of the bodies recovered from the Air France crash this month had broken bones, Brazilian authorities have told French investigators, evidence that suggests the flight broke apart before hitting the ocean. Paul-Louis Arslanian, director of the Bureau d'Enquetes et d'Analyses, the French accident investigation board, said Thursday that Brazilian medical examiners had given that information to his agency. Asked whether the information included reports that the recovered bodies from Flight 447 had fractures to arms, legs and ...

Leticia Montemayer sits in a large warehouse in Fort Worth, Texas. Working at a folding desk, there are a handful of small items in front of her: A shattered pair of aviator sunglasses, captain's wings, a tiny purse, and the metal frame of what appears to be an iPhone. These are all items recovered from a recent plane crash in the United States. We can't tell you which one because victims and their family members haven't seen or identified their ...

In one way we know a huge amount about the loss of Air France flight 447 -- much more than is usual so soon after an accident. But in another, we know nothing at all. The simple fact is that the blizzard of airworthiness directives, company memos, weather reports, technical specifications and diverse other documents that have surfaced since last week constitute entirely circumstantial evidence. Aviation history is replete with accidents with causes utterly unrelated to what first seemed ...