The chairman’s flight

SOMETIMES the skies can be a tad too friendly, as the head of United Airlines recently discovered. Jeff Smisek, the airline’s chairman and chief executive, and two other top executives resigned on September 8th amid a federal corruption investigation. The inquiry focuses on whether the airline traded favours for preferable treatment by the Port Authority, a bi-state agency, which operates airports, bridges and some commuter lines in New York and New Jersey. In particular, the investigators are looking at a twice-weekly flight service between New Jersey’s Newark Liberty Airport, where United is the largest carrier, and Columbia, South Carolina. Columbia just happens to be near the holiday home of the once powerful David Samson, the former head of the Port Authority.