title: Strategic bombing during World War II

text: The impact of bombing on German morale was significant according to Professor John Buckley. Around a third of the urban population under threat of bombing had no protection at all. Some of the major cities saw 55–60 percent of dwellings destroyed. Mass evacuations were a partial answer for six million civilians, but this had a severe effect on morale as German families were split up to live in difficult conditions. By 1944, absenteeism rates of 20–25 percent were not unusual and in post-war analysis 91 percent of civilians stated bombing was the most difficult hardship to endure and was the key factor in the collapse of their own morale. The United States Strategic Bombing Survey concluded that the bombing was not stiffening morale but seriously depressing it; fatalism, apathy, defeatism were apparent in bombed areas. The "Luftwaffe" was blamed for not warding off the attacks and confidence in the Nazi regime fell by 14 percent. By the spring of 1944, some 75 percent of Germans believed the war was lost, owing to the intensity of the bombing.


title: Strategic bombing during World War II

text: Buckley argues the German war economy did indeed expand significantly following Albert Speer's appointment as Reichsminister of Armaments, "but it is spurious to argue that because production increased then bombing had no real impact". The bombing offensive did do serious damage to German production levels. German tank and aircraft production, though reached new records in production levels in 1944, was in particular one-third lower than planned. In fact, German aircraft production for 1945 was planned at 80,000, showing Erhard Milch and other leading German planners were pushing for even higher outputs; "unhindered by Allied bombing German production would have risen far higher".


title: Strategic bombing during World War II

text: Journalist Max Hastings and the authors of the official history of the bomber offensive, Noble Frankland among them, has argued bombing had a limited effect on morale. In the words of the British Bombing Survey Unit (BBSU), "The essential premise behind the policy of treating towns as unit targets for area attack, namely that the German economic system was fully extended, was false." This, the BBSU noted, was because official estimates of German war production were "more than 100 percent in excess of the true figures". The BBSU concluded, "Far from there being any evidence of a cumulative effect on (German) war production, it is evident that, as the (bombing) offensive progressed ... the effect on war production became progressively smaller (and) did not reach significant dimensions."


title: Strategic bombing during World War II

text: According to the United States Strategic Bombing Survey, Allied bombers between 1939 and 1945 dropped 1,415,745 tons of bombs over Germany (51.1% of the total bomb tonnage dropped by Allied bombers in the European campaign), 570,730 tons over France (20.6%), 379,565 tons over Italy (13.7%), 185,625 tons over Austria, Hungary and the Balkans (6.7%), and 218,873 tons over other countries (7.9%).


title: Strategic bombing during World War II

text: After the war, the U.S. Strategic Bombing Survey reviewed the available casualty records in Germany and concluded that official German statistics of casualties from air attack had been too low. The survey estimated that at a minimum 305,000 were killed in German cities due to bombing and estimated a minimum of 780,000 wounded. Roughly 7,500,000 German civilians were also rendered homeless (see dehousing). Overy estimated in 2014 that in all about 353,000 civilians were killed by British and American bombing of German cities.


title: Strategic bombing during World War II

text: In addition to the minimum figure given in the Strategic bombing survey, the number of people killed by Allied bombing in Germany has been estimated at between 400,000 and 600,000. In the UK, 60,595 British were killed by German bombing, and in France, 67,078 French were killed by US-UK bombing.


title: Strategic bombing during World War II

text: Belgrade was heavily bombed by the Luftwaffe on 6 April 1941, when more than 17,000 people were killed. According to "The Oxford companion to World War II", "After Italy's surrender the Allies kept up the bombing of the northern part occupied by the Germans and more than 50,000 Italians were killed in these raids." An Istat study of 1957 stated that 64,354 Italians were killed by aerial bombing, 59,796 of whom were civilians. Historians Marco Gioannini and Giulio Massobrio argued in 2007 that this figure is inaccurate due to loss of documents, confusion and gaps, and estimated the total number of civilian casualties in Italy due to aerial bombing as comprised between 80,000 and 100,000.


title: Strategic bombing during World War II

text: Within Asia, the majority of strategic bombing was carried out by the Japanese and the US. The British Commonwealth planned that once the war in Europe was complete, a strategic bombing force of up to 1,000 heavy bombers ("Tiger Force") would be sent to the Far East. This was never realised before the end of the Pacific War.


title: Strategic bombing during World War II

text: Japanese strategic bombing was independently conducted by the Imperial Japanese Navy Air Service and the Imperial Japanese Army Air Service. The first large-scale bombing raid, carried out over Shanghai on 28 January 1932, has been called "the first terror bombing of a civilian population of an era that was to become familiar with it". Bombing efforts mostly targeted large Chinese cities such as Shanghai, Wuhan, and Chongqing, with around 5,000 raids from February 1938 to August 1943 in the latter case.


title: Strategic bombing during World War II

text: The bombing of Nanjing and Canton, which began on 22 and 23 September 1937, called forth widespread protests culminating in a resolution by the Far Eastern Advisory Committee of the League of Nations. Lord Cranborne, the British Under-Secretary of State For Foreign Affairs, expressed his indignation in his own declaration.


title: Strategic bombing during World War II

text: The Imperial Japanese Navy also carried out a carrier-based airstrike on the neutral United States at Pearl Harbor and Oahu on 7 December 1941, resulting in almost 2,500 fatalities and plunging America into World War II the next day. There were also air raids on the Philippines, Burma, Singapore, Ceylon, and northern Australia (Bombing of Darwin, 19 February 1942).


title: Strategic bombing during World War II

text: In 1940 and 1941, the "Regia Aeronautica", seeking to disrupt Allied oil supplies, struck British targets in the Middle East, mainly using the CANT Z.1007 and Savoia-Marchetti SM.82 bombers. For a year starting in June 1940, Italian bombers attacked Mandatory Palestine, mainly targeting Haifa and Tel Aviv for their large refineries and port facilities. The deadliest single attack came on 9 September 1940, when an Italian raid over Tel Aviv killed 137 people. While Italian efforts mainly focused on the Mandate of Palestine, one notable mission on 19 October 1940 struck instead at refinery facilities in Bahrain.


title: Strategic bombing during World War II

text: After the Japanese invasion of Thailand (8 December 1941), the southeast Asian kingdom signed a treaty of alliance with Japan and declared war on the United States and the United Kingdom. The Allies dropped 18,583 bombs on Thailand during the war, resulting in the death of 8,711 people and the destruction of 9,616 buildings. The primary target of the campaign was Bangkok, the Thai capital. Rural areas were almost entirely unaffected.


title: Strategic bombing during World War II

text: In August 1942, the United States Fourteenth Air Force based in southern China undertook the first air raids in French Indochina. The American bombing campaign gained intensity after the surrender of Germany in May 1945, and by July Japanese defences were incapable of impeding their movement. The Americans had attained complete air supremacy. After the victory over Japan, on 19 August the denizens of Hanoi broke into the streets and removed the black coverings off the street lamps.


title: Strategic bombing during World War II

text: In 1944–45, the Eastern Fleet of the Royal Navy undertook several raids on the occupied Netherlands East Indies. They also bombed the Japanese-occupied Indian territory of the Andaman and Nicobar Islands.


title: Strategic bombing during World War II

text: The United States began effective strategic bombing of Japan in late 1944, when B-29s began operating from Guam and Tinian in the Marianas Islands. Before that, U.S. forces had mounted a single raid from an aircraft carrier in 1942, and ineffective long-range raids from China from June to December 1944. In the last seven months of the campaign, a change to firebombing resulted in great destruction of 67 Japanese cities, as many as 500,000 Japanese deaths and some 5 million more made homeless. Emperor Hirohito's viewing of the destroyed areas of Tokyo in March 1945 is said to have been the beginning of his personal involvement in the peace process, culminating in Japan's surrender five months later.


title: Strategic bombing during World War II

text: The first U.S. raid on the Japanese main island was the Doolittle Raid of 18 April 1942, when sixteen B-25 Mitchells were launched from the to attack targets including Yokohama and Tokyo and then fly on to airfields in China. The raid was a military pinprick but a significant propaganda victory. Because they were launched prematurely, none of the aircraft had enough fuel to reach their designated landing sites, and so either crashed or ditched (except for one aircraft, which landed in the Soviet Union, where the crew was interned). Two crews were captured by the Japanese.


title: Strategic bombing during World War II

text: The key development for the bombing of Japan was the B-29 Superfortress, which had an operational range of 1,500 miles (2,400 km); almost 90% of the bombs (147,000 tons) dropped on the home islands of Japan were delivered by this bomber. The first raid by B-29s on Japan was on 15 June 1944, from China. The B-29s took off from Chengdu, over 1,500 miles away. This raid was also not particularly effective: only forty-seven of the sixty-eight bombers hit the target area.


title: Strategic bombing during World War II

text: Raids of Japan from mainland China, called Operation Matterhorn, were carried out by the Twentieth Air Force under XX Bomber Command. Initially the commanding officer of the Twentieth Air Force was Hap Arnold, and later Curtis LeMay. Bombing Japan from China was never a satisfactory arrangement because not only were the Chinese airbases difficult to supply—materiel being sent by air from India over "the Hump"—but the B-29s operating from them could only reach Japan if they traded some of their bomb load for extra fuel in tanks in the bomb-bays. When Admiral Chester Nimitz's island-hopping campaign captured Pacific islands close enough to Japan to be within the B-29's range, the Twentieth Air Force was assigned to XXI Bomber Command, which organized a much more effective bombing campaign of the Japanese home islands. Based in the Marianas (Guam and Tinian in particular), the B-29s were able to carry their full bomb loads and were supplied by cargo ships and tankers. The first raid from the Mariana was on 24 November 1944, when 88 aircraft bombed Tokyo. The bombs were dropped from around 30,000 feet (10,000 m) and it is estimated that only around 10% hit their targets.


title: Strategic bombing during World War II

text: Unlike all other forces in theater, the USAAF Bomber Commands did not report to the commanders of the theaters but directly to the Joint Chiefs of Staff. In July 1945, they were placed under the U.S. Strategic Air Forces in the Pacific, which was commanded by General Carl Spaatz.


title: Strategic bombing during World War II

text: As in Europe, the United States Army Air Forces (USAAF) tried daylight precision bombing. However, it proved to be impossible due to the weather around Japan, "during the best month for bombing in Japan, visual bombing was possible for [just] seven days. The worst had only one good day." Further, bombs dropped from a great height were tossed about by high winds.


title: Strategic bombing during World War II

text: General LeMay, commander of XXI Bomber Command, instead switched to mass firebombing night attacks from altitudes of around 7,000 feet (2,100 m) on the major conurbations. "He looked up the size of the large Japanese cities in the "World Almanac" and picked his targets accordingly." Priority targets were Tokyo, Nagoya, Osaka, and Kobe. Despite limited early success, particularly against Nagoya, LeMay was determined to use such bombing tactics against the vulnerable Japanese cities. Attacks on strategic targets also continued in lower-level daylight raids.


title: Strategic bombing during World War II

text: The first successful firebombing raid was on Kobe on 3 February 1945, and following its relative success the USAAF continued the tactic. Nearly half of the principal factories of the city were damaged, and production was reduced by more than half at one of the port's two shipyards.


title: Strategic bombing during World War II

text: The first raid of this type on Tokyo was on the night of 23–24 February when 174 B-29s destroyed around one square mile (3 km) of the city. Following on that success, as Operation Meetinghouse, 334 B-29s raided on the night of 9–10 March, of which 282 Superforts reached their targets, dropping around 1,700 tons of bombs. Around 16 square miles (41 km) of the city was destroyed and over 100,000 people are estimated to have died in the fire storm. It was the most destructive conventional raid, and the deadliest single bombing raid of any kind in terms of lives lost, in all of military aviation history, even when the missions on Hiroshima and Nagasaki are taken as single events. The city was made primarily of wood and paper, and the fires burned out of control. The effects of the Tokyo firebombing proved the fears expressed by Admiral Yamamoto in 1939: "Japanese cities, being made of wood and paper, would burn very easily. The Army talks big, but if war came and there were large-scale air raids, there's no telling what would happen."


title: Strategic bombing during World War II

text: In the following two weeks, there were almost 1,600 further sorties against the four cities, destroying 31 square miles (80 km) in total at a cost of 22 aircraft. By June, over forty percent of the urban area of Japan's largest six cities (Tokyo, Nagoya, Kobe, Osaka, Yokohama, and Kawasaki) was devastated. LeMay's fleet of nearly 600 bombers destroyed tens of smaller cities and manufacturing centres in the following weeks and months.


title: Strategic bombing during World War II

text: Leaflets were dropped over cities before they were bombed, warning the inhabitants and urging them to escape the city. Though many, even within the Air Force, viewed this as a form of psychological warfare, a significant element in the decision to produce and drop them was the desire to assuage American anxieties about the extent of the destruction created by this new war tactic. Warning leaflets were also dropped on cities not in fact targeted, to create uncertainty and absenteeism.


title: Strategic bombing during World War II

text: A year after the war, the U.S. Strategic Bombing Survey reported that American military officials had underestimated the power of strategic bombing combined with naval blockade and previous military defeats to bring Japan to unconditional surrender without invasion. By July 1945, only a fraction of the planned strategic bombing force had been deployed yet there were few targets left worth the effort. In hindsight, it would have been more effective to use land-based and carrier-based air power to strike merchant shipping and begin aerial mining at a much earlier date so as to link up with effective submarine anti-shipping campaign and completely isolate the island nation. This would have accelerated the strangulation of Japan and perhaps ended the war sooner. A postwar Naval Ordnance Laboratory survey agreed, finding naval mines dropped by B-29s had accounted for 60% of all Japanese shipping losses in the last six months of the war. In October 1945, Prince Fumimaro Konoe said the sinking of Japanese vessels by U.S. aircraft combined with the B-29 aerial mining campaign were just as effective as B-29 attacks on industry alone, though he admitted, "the thing that brought about the determination to make peace was the prolonged bombing by the B-29s." Prime Minister Baron Kantarō Suzuki reported to U.S. military authorities it "seemed to me unavoidable that in the long run Japan would be almost destroyed by air attack so that merely on the basis of the B-29s alone I was convinced that Japan should sue for peace."


title: Strategic bombing during World War II

text: While the bombing campaign against Japan continued, the U.S. and its allies were preparing to invade the Japanese home islands, which they anticipated to be heavily costly in terms of life and property. On 1 April 1945, U.S. troops invaded the island of Okinawa and fought there fiercely against not only enemy soldiers, but also enemy civilians. After two and a half months, 12,000 U.S. servicemen, 107,000 Japanese soldiers, and over 150,000 Okinawan civilians (included those forced to fight) were killed. Given the casualty rate in Okinawa, American commanders realized a grisly picture of the intended invasion of mainland Japan. When President Harry S. Truman was briefed on what would happen during an invasion of Japan, he could not afford such a horrendous casualty rate, added to over 400,000 U.S. servicemen who had already died fighting in both the European and Pacific theaters of the war.


title: Strategic bombing during World War II

text: Hoping to forestall the invasion, the United States, the United Kingdom, and China issued a Potsdam Declaration on 26 July 1945, demanding that the Japanese government accept an unconditional surrender. The declaration also stated that if Japan did not surrender, it would be faced with "prompt and utter destruction", a process which was already underway with the incendiary bombing raids destroying 40% of targeted cities, and by naval warfare isolating and starving Japan of imported food. The Japanese government ignored ("mokusatsu") this ultimatum, thus signalling that they were not going to surrender.


title: Strategic bombing during World War II

text: In the wake of this rejection, Stimson and George Marshall (the Army chief of staff) and Hap Arnold (head of the Army Air Forces) set the atomic bombing in motion.


title: Strategic bombing during World War II

text: On 6 August 1945, the B-29 bomber Enola Gay flew over the Japanese city of Hiroshima in southwest Honshū and dropped a gun-type uranium-235 atomic bomb (code-named Little Boy by the U.S.) on it. Two other B-29 aircraft were airborne nearby for the purposes of instrumentation and photography. When the planes first approached Hiroshima, Japanese anti-aircraft units in the city initially thought they were reconnaissance aircraft, since they were ordered not to shoot at one or few aircraft that did not pose a threat, in order to conserve their ammunition for large-scale air raids. The bomb killed roughly 90,000–166,000 people; half of these died quickly while the other half suffered lingering deaths. The death toll included an estimated 20,000 Korean slave laborers and 20,000 Japanese soldiers and destroyed 48,000 buildings (including the headquarters of the Second General Army and Fifth Division). On 9 August, three days later, the B-29 Bockscar flew over the Japanese city of Nagasaki in northwest Kyushu and dropped an implosion-type, plutonium-239 atomic bomb (code-named Fat Man by the U.S.) on it, again accompanied by two other B-29 aircraft for instrumentation and photography. This bomb's effects killed roughly 39,000–80,000 people, including roughly 23,000–28,000 Japanese war industry employees, an estimated 2,000 Korean forced workers, and at least 150 Japanese soldiers. The bomb destroyed 60% of the city. The industrial damage in Nagasaki was high, partly owing to the inadvertent targeting of the industrial zone, leaving 68–80% of the non-dock industrial production destroyed.


title: Strategic bombing during World War II

text: Six days after the detonation over Nagasaki, Hirohito announced Japan's surrender to the Allies on 15 August 1945, signing the Instrument of Surrender on 2 September 1945, officially ending the Pacific War and World War II. The two atomic bombings generated strong sentiments in Japan against all nuclear weapons. Japan adopted the Three Non-Nuclear Principles, which forbade the nation from developing nuclear armaments. Across the world anti-nuclear activists have made Hiroshima the central symbol of what they are opposing.


title: Host (film)

text: Host is a 2020 British computer screen supernatural horror film directed by Rob Savage. "Host" takes place on a screencast of a video call on Zoom, and is presented as a computer screen film. Starring Haley Bishop, Jemma Moore, Emma Louise Webb, Radina Drandova and Caroline Ward, it features a group of friends who attempt to escape a deadly supernatural force inadvertently spawned during a séance.


title: Host (film)

text: After a short prank skit by Savage which featured a handful of the "Host" cast went viral across social media, he developed the concept into a feature-length film, which was shot over 12 weeks directly on the Zoom software during the COVID-19 pandemic. The cast and crew set up their own cameras, lighting, and stunts.


title: Host (film)

text: An independent film, "Host" was released exclusively through Shudder on July 30, 2020. It received largely positive reviews from critics, who praised its themes of social anxiety, its jump scares, and the chemistry of its acting ensemble. It has a notable rating on review aggregator site Rotten Tomatoes, and was included on "Time" magazine's list of the "17 Great Movies You May Have Missed This Summer."


title: Host (film)

text: On July 30, 2020, while the United States is under COVID-19 pandemic lockdown, a group of friends (Haley, Jemma, Emma, Caroline, Radina & Teddy) have decided to hold weekly Zoom calls to stay in touch. For this week's call Haley has hired a medium, Seylan, to lead them in a virtual séance. Teddy is forced to leave the chat by his girlfriend, Jinny, who unintentionally disconnects him. During the séance, one of the members, Jemma, claims to feel intense tension around her neck. Overcome with fear, she says that somebody called "Jack" is with her, a friend who committed suicide in her school by hanging himself. Seylan's internet cuts out, disconnecting her from the chat. During this time, Jemma informs the group that she made "Jack" up because the silence was getting awkward, which angers Haley. The remaining members of the group begin to experience strange, terrifying phenomena: Haley's chair is pulled by an unseen force, Caroline sees a hanging corpse in her attic, and Emma's glass spontaneously breaks. Haley uses her Polaroid camera to snap a photo of her living room, where a ghostly hanging figure appears on the print.


title: Host (film)

text: As the girls panic, Haley manages to get back in touch with Seylan and informs her of everything that has happened; a spirit is indeed with them, but it isn't friendly. Seylan believes and explains that Jemma's prank may have allowed the spirit or demon access to our world, entering the circle during the séance. Seylan also informs the girls that the demonic spirit could be a tulpa which has taken on the guise of "Jack" in Jemma's made-up story, and begins to give them instructions on how to close the séance. The spirit interrupts this by causing more phenomena and Seylan's disconnects again before the girls attempt to close the circle using her advice. Believing the ordeal to be over, the members of the group begin to leave the Zoom call; Radina gets up and leaves the room unaware of her boyfriend Alan’s body hanging behind her. Caroline's artificial background is interrupted as her face is smashed into the camera, causing her laptop to fall. Emma's camera shows one of her filters on an invisible figure in the living room, which turns to face her. She then scatters flour on the floor, showing the footprints of the spirit coming towards her and causing her kitchen cupboards to burst open before the spirit attacks her, causing her to hide in her room.


title: Host (film)

text: Radina attempts to flee her home after her boyfriend Alan's body drops in front of her, but she is pulled away from the door and killed by the spirit. Caroline is killed as she pleads for help when the demon repeatedly smashes her face onto the desk. Haley and Jemma argue, blaming each other for what has occurred, when Haley is pulled off-screen and attacked. Shocked, Jemma, who lives around the corner from Haley, immediately leaves her home to try and help her. Teddy then returns to the call, as ten minutes remain until the Zoom meeting ends. Unaware of everything that has occurred, the spirit (in the form of a horrifying figure) attacks him. Chased through his house, a panicked Teddy witnesses Jinny being murdered by an unseen force before he himself is knocked down, set on fire and killed. Emma, now the only person still active in the call, fearfully turns her camera to the doorway of her room after her door suddenly opens. She throws a blanket, which lands on the invisible spirit, showing its outline. Terrified, Emma opens her window to flee but accidentally falls to her death.


title: Host (film)

text: Jemma arrives at Haley's home and finds, via the open Zoom call on Haley's laptop, that both Emma and Teddy are dead. The invisible spirit throws a bottle at her head while the cupboards burst open. She manages to find Haley hiding under her desk, and the pair attempt to escape the house using the flash of Haley's Polaroid camera to light the way. The invisible spirit suddenly appears in the flash of light, and it rushes at them as the Zoom call timer immediately expires.


title: Host (film)

text: The film has its basis in a short video created by Rob Savage in early 2020. The short featured Savage investigating strange sounds in his attic while on a group video chat with others. It was initially intended as a prank, as the others were unaware that a frightening visage would pop up on camera, and Savage placed the video online, where it went viral. Savage found the format easy to watch and chose to apply it to a feature-length film. He has stated that the short's success enabled him to create "Host", after producers contacted him upon seeing the viral video about making a longer film.


title: Host (film)

text: "Host" was filmed while quarantine restrictions were in place due to the COVID-19 pandemic and Savage had to direct the actors remotely while they had to set up their own cameras, lighting, and stunts. According to Savage, "old school" technology was often used for special effects, with fishing wire being sent to the actors' homes "so they could practice pulling things off shelves". Practical effects were also handled by the actors and a virtual workshop was held on how to set up effects such as "moving doors, making things fly off shelves". Savage has stated that the movie took twelve weeks to complete, from conception to its delivery to Shudder.


title: Host (film)

text: According to Jemma Moore, the actors used a film treatment as the basis for their performances, rather than a fully worked-up script, and used improvisation and live feedback from the director during their takes: "It had all the points – they were really fleshed out and detailed – but we improvised around a lot of stuff. And Rob would be typing on Zoom while we’re in the middle of a scene, telling us what to say – it was like live scripting – or he’d private message me". In an attempt to encourage authentic responses by the cast to the film's events, prior to filming the cast participated in a séance over Zoom, and in addition the actors were only given details of their own parts, with the fates of other characters being withheld from them. Savage and Shepherd have mentioned several influences on the film, including "The Blair Witch Project", "Paranormal Activity", "Lake Mungo" and "Ghostwatch", and have noted that "Host" contains references to a number of these.


title: Host (film)

text: On Rotten Tomatoes the film holds an approval rating of based on 97 reviews, with an average rating of . The site's critics' consensus states: "Lean, suspenseful, and scary, "Host" uses its timely premise to deliver a nastily effective treat for horror enthusiasts." On Metacritic, the film has a weighted average score of 73 out of 100, based on seven critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews".


title: Host (film)

text: Common praise for "Host" centered around its themes of social separation and anxiety. Comparisons were made between the film and the 2014 horror film "Unfriended", which also featured supernatural activity occurring during a group video chat, by outlets such as the "New York Times" and "Rue Morgue". Time Magazine named it one of the '17 Great Movies You May Have Missed This Summer,' saying "Host" is "not only one of the best horror movies of the year, but also an intimate look at creativity, film production and a shared global culture in the throes of a rampaging virus."


title: Host (film)

text: Referring to the film's novel portrayal of lockdown-induced paranoia, Elizabeth Horkley of "The Atlantic" wrote: ""Host" is the first great entry in the new genre of "quarantine horror."


title: Island country

text: An island country, island state or an island nation is a country whose primary territory consists of one or more islands or parts of islands. Approximately 25% of all independent countries are island countries. Island countries are historically more stable countries than many continental states but are vulnerable to conquest by naval superpowers.


title: Island country

text: There are great variations between island country economies: they may rely mainly on extractive industries, such as mining, fishing and agriculture, and/or on services such as transit hubs, tourism, and financial services. Many islands have low-lying geographies and their economies and population centers develop along coast plains and ports; such states may be vulnerable to the effects of climate change, especially sea level rise.


title: Island country

text: Remote or significant islands and archipelagos that are not themselves sovereign are often known as dependencies or overseas territories.


title: Island country

text: Historically, island countries have tended to be less prone to political instability than their continental counterparts. The percentage of island countries that are democratic is higher than that of continental countries.


title: Island country

text: While island countries by definition are sovereign nations, there are also several islands and archipelagos around the world that operate semi-autonomously from their official sovereign nations. These are often known as dependencies or overseas territories and can be similar in nature to proper island countries.


title: Island country

text: Island countries have often been the basis of maritime conquest and historical rivalry between other countries.


title: Island country

text: Island countries are more susceptible to attack by large, continental countries due to their size and dependence on sea and air lines of communication.


title: Island country

text: Some are turning to renewable energy—such as wind power, hydropower, geothermal power and biodiesel from copra oil—to defend against potential rises in oil prices.


title: Island country

text: Some island countries are more affected than other countries by climate change, which produces problems such as reduced land use, water scarcity, and sometimes even resettlement issues. Some low-lying island countries are slowly being submerged by the rising water levels of the Pacific Ocean.


title: Island country

text: Climate change also impacts island countries by causing natural disasters such as tropical cyclones, hurricanes, flash floods and droughts.


title: Island country

text: Many island countries rely heavily on imports and are greatly affected by changes in the global economy. Due to the nature of island countries their economies are often characterised by being smaller, relatively isolated from world trade and economy, more vulnerable to shipping costs, and more likely to suffer environmental damage to infrastructure; exceptions include Japan, Taiwan and the United Kingdom.


title: Island country

text: Island countries are typically small with low populations, although some, like Indonesia and Japan, are notable exceptions.


title: Island country

text: Some island countries are centred on one or two major islands, such as the United Kingdom, Trinidad and Tobago, New Zealand, Cuba, Bahrain, Singapore, Sri Lanka, Iceland, Malta, and Taiwan. Others are spread out over hundreds or thousands of smaller islands, such as Indonesia, the Philippines, The Bahamas, Seychelles, and the Maldives. Some island countries share one or more of their islands with other countries, such as the United Kingdom and Ireland; Haiti and the Dominican Republic; and Indonesia, which shares islands with Papua New Guinea, Brunei, East Timor, and Malaysia. Bahrain, Singapore, and the United Kingdom have fixed links such as bridges and tunnels to the continental landmass: Bahrain is linked to Saudi Arabia by the King Fahd Causeway, Singapore to Malaysia by the Johor–Singapore Causeway and Second Link, and the United Kingdom has a railway connection to France through the Channel Tunnel.


title: Island country

text: Geographically, the country of Australia is considered a continental landmass rather than an island, covering the largest landmass of the Australian continent. In the past, however, it was considered an island country for tourism purposes (among others) and is sometimes referred to as such.


title: Mongolian script

text: The classical or traditional Mongolian script, also known as the , was the first writing system created specifically for the Mongolian language, and was the most widespread until the introduction of Cyrillic in 1946. It is traditionally written in vertical lines . Derived from the Old Uyghur alphabet, Mongolian is a true alphabet, with separate letters for consonants and vowels. The Mongolian script has been adapted to write languages such as Oirat and Manchu. Alphabets based on this classical vertical script are used in Mongolia and Inner Mongolia to this day to write Mongolian, Xibe and, experimentally, Evenki.


title: Mongolian script

text: Computer operating systems have been slow to adopt support for the Mongolian script, and almost all have incomplete support or other text rendering difficulties.


title: Mongolian script

text: The Mongolian vertical script developed as an adaptation of the Old Uyghur alphabet for the Mongolian language. From the seventh and eighth to the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, the Mongolian language separated into southern, eastern and western dialects. The principal documents from the period of the Middle Mongol language are: in the eastern dialect, the famous text "The Secret History of the Mongols", monuments in the Square script, materials of the Chinese–Mongolian glossary of the fourteenth century, and materials of the Mongolian language of the middle period in Chinese transcription, etc.; in the western dialect, materials of the Arab–Mongolian and Persian–Mongolian dictionaries, Mongolian texts in Arabic transcription, etc. The main features of the period are that the vowels "ï" and "i" had lost their phonemic significance, creating the "i" phoneme (in the Chakhar dialect, the Standard Mongolian in Inner Mongolia, these vowels are still distinct); inter-vocal consonants "γ"/"g", "b"/"w" had disappeared and the preliminary process of the formation of Mongolian long vowels had begun; the initial "h" was preserved in many words; grammatical categories were partially absent, etc. The development over this period explains why the Mongolian script looks like a vertical Arabic script (in particular the presence of the dot system).


title: Mongolian script

text: Eventually, minor concessions were made to the differences between the Uyghur and Mongol languages: In the 17th and 18th centuries, smoother and more angular versions of the letter "tsadi" became associated with and respectively, and in the 19th century, the Manchu hooked "yodh" was adopted for initial . "Zain" was dropped as it was redundant for . Various schools of orthography, some using diacritics, were developed to avoid ambiguity.


title: Mongolian script

text: Traditional Mongolian is written vertically from top to bottom, flowing in lines from left to right. The Old Uyghur script and its descendants, of which traditional Mongolian is one among Oirat Clear, Manchu, and Buryat are the only known vertical scripts written from left to right. This developed because the Uyghurs rotated their Sogdian-derived script, originally written right to left, 90 degrees counterclockwise to emulate Chinese writing, but without changing the relative orientation of the letters.


title: Mongolian script

text: The reed pen was the writing instrument of choice until the 18th century, when the brush took its place under Chinese influence. Pens were also historically made of wood, reed, bamboo, bone, bronze, or iron. Ink used was black or cinnabar red, and written with on birch bark, paper, cloths made of silk or cotton, and wooden or silver plates.


title: Mongolian script

text: Mongols learned their script as a syllabary, dividing the syllables into twelve different classes, based on the final phonemes of the syllables, all of which ended in vowels.


title: Mongolian script

text: The script remained in continuous use by Mongolian speakers in Inner Mongolia in the People's Republic of China. In the Mongolian People's Republic, it was largely replaced by the Mongolian Cyrillic alphabet, although the vertical script remained in limited use. In March 2020, the Mongolian government announced plans to increase the use of the traditional Mongolian script and to use both Cyrillic and Mongolian script in official documents by 2025. However, due to the particularity of the traditional Mongolian script, a large part of the Sinicized Mongols in China can't identify the script, and in many cases the script is only used symbolically on plaques in many cities.


title: Mongolian script

text: The script is known by a wide variety of names. As it was derived from the Old Uyghur alphabet, the "Mongol script" is known as the "Uighur(-)Mongol script". From 1941 onwards, it became known as the "Old Script", in contrast to the "New Script", referring to Cyrillic. The Mongolian script is also known as the "Hudum" or 'not exact' script, in comparison with the Todo 'clear, exact' script .


title: Mongolian script

text: The traditional or classical Mongolian alphabet, sometimes called "Hudum" 'traditional' in Oirat in contrast to the Clear script ("Todo" 'exact'), is the original form of the Mongolian script used to write the Mongolian language. It does not distinguish several vowels ('/', '/', final '/') and consonants (syllable-initial '/' and '/', sometimes '/') that were not required for Uyghur, which was the source of the Mongol (or Uyghur-Mongol) script. The result is somewhat comparable to the situation of English, which must represent ten or more vowels with only five letters and uses the digraph "th" for two distinct sounds. Ambiguity is sometimes prevented by context, as the requirements of vowel harmony and syllable sequence usually indicate the correct sound. Moreover, as there are few words with an exactly identical spelling, actual ambiguities are rare for a reader who knows the orthography.


title: Mongolian script

text: Letters have different forms depending on their position in a word: initial, medial, or final. In some cases, additional graphic variants are selected for visual harmony with the subsequent character.


title: Mongolian script

text: The rules for writing below apply specifically for the "Mongolian" language, unless stated otherwise.


title: Mongolian script

text: Mongolian vowel harmony separates the vowels of words into three groups – two mutually exclusive and one neutral:


title: Mongolian script

text: Any Mongolian word can contain the neutral vowel "", but only vowels from either of the other two groups. The vowel qualities of visually separated vowels and suffixes must likewise harmonize with those of the preceding word stem. Such suffixes are written with "front" or neutral vowels when preceded by a word stem containing only neutral vowels. Any of these rules might not apply for foreign words however.


title: Mongolian script

text: A separated final form of vowels ' or ' is common, and can appear at the end of a word stem, or suffix. This form requires a final-shaped preceding letter, and an inter-word gap in between. This gap can be transliterated with a hyphen.


title: Mongolian script

text: The presence or lack of a separated ' or ' can also indicate differences in meaning between different words (compare ' 'black' with ' 'to look').


title: Mongolian script

text: Its form could be confused with that of the identically shaped "traditional" dative-locative suffix '/' exemplified further down. That form however, is more commonly found in older texts, and more commonly takes the forms of '/' or '/' instead.


title: Mongolian script

text: All case suffixes, as well as any plural suffixes consisting of one or two syllables, are likewise separated by a preceding and hyphen-transliterated gap. A maximum of two case suffixes can be added to a stem.


title: Mongolian script

text: Such single-letter vowel suffixes appear with the final-shaped forms of '/', ', or '/', as in ' 'to the country' and ' 'on the day', or ' 'the state' etc. Multi-letter suffixes most often start with an initial- (consonants), medial- (vowels), or variant-shaped form. Medial-shaped ' in the two-letter suffix '/"" is exemplified in the adjacent newspaper logo.


title: Mongolian script

text: Two medial consonants are the most that can come together in original Mongolian words. There are however, a few loanwords that can begin or end with two or more.


title: Mongolian script

text: In the modern language, proper names (but not words) usually forms graphic compounds (such as those of ' 'Jasper-jewel' or ' – the city of Hohhot). These also allow components of different harmonic classes to be joined together, and where the vowels of an added suffix will harmonize with those of the latter part of the compound. Orthographic peculiarities are most often retained, as with the short and long "teeth" of an initial-shaped ' in ' 'Bad Girl' (protective name). Medial ' and ', in contrast, are not affected in this way.


title: Mongolian script

text: Isolate citation forms for syllables containing ', ', ', and ' may in dictionaries appear without a final tail as in '/' or '/', and with a vertical tail as in '/' or '/' (as well as in transcriptions of Chinese syllables).


title: Mongolian script

text: In 1587, the translator and scholar Ayuush Güüsh () created the Galik alphabet ( ), inspired by the third Dalai Lama, Sonam Gyatso. It primarily added extra characters for transcribing Tibetan and Sanskrit terms when translating religious texts, and later also from Chinese. Some of those characters are still in use today for writing foreign names (as listed below).


title: Mongolian script

text: When written between words, punctuation marks use space on both sides of them. They can also appear at the very end of a line, regardless of where the preceding word ends. Red (cinnabar) ink is used in many manuscripts, to either symbolize emphasis or respect. Modern punctuation incorporates Western marks: parentheses; quotation, question, and exclamation marks; including precomposed and .


title: Mongolian script

text: Listed in the table below are letter components (graphemes) commonly used across the script. Some of these are used with several letters, and others to contrast between them. As their forms and usage may differ between writing styles, however, examples of these can be found under this section below.


title: Mongolian script

text: As exemplified in this section, the shapes of glyphs may vary widely between different styles of writing and choice of medium with which to produce them. The development of written Mongolian can be divided into the three periods of "pre-classical" (beginning – 17th century), "classical" (16/17th century – 20th century), and "modern" (20th century onward):


title: Mongolian script

text: The Mongolian script was added to the Unicode standard in September 1999 with the release of version 3.0. However, several design issues have been pointed out.


title: Mongolian script

text: The Unicode block for Mongolian is U+1800–U+18AF. It includes letters, digits and various punctuation marks for Hudum Mongolian, Todo Mongolian, Xibe (Manchu), Manchu proper, and Ali Gali, as well as extensions for transcribing Sanskrit and Tibetan.


title: Mongolian script

text: The Mongolian Supplement block (U+11660–U+1167F) was added to the Unicode Standard in June 2016 with the release of version 9.0:


title: US Airways

text: US Airways (formerly USAir) was a major United States airline that operated from 1937 until its merger with American Airlines in 2015. It was originally founded in Pittsburgh as a mail delivery airline called All American Aviation, which soon became a commercial passenger airline. In 1953, it was renamed Allegheny Airlines and operated under that name for a quarter-century. In October 1979, after the passage of the Airline Deregulation Act, Allegheny Airlines changed its name to USAir. A decade later it had acquired Piedmont Airlines and Pacific Southwest Airlines (PSA), and was one of the U.S.'s seven transcontinental legacy carriers. In 1997, it rebranded as US Airways.


title: US Airways

text: The airline had an extensive international and domestic network, with 193 destinations in 24 countries in North America, South America, Europe, and the Middle East. The airline was a member of the Star Alliance, before becoming an affiliate member of Oneworld in March 2014. US Airways had 343 mainline jets, as well as 278 regional jet and turboprops flown by contract and subsidiary airlines under the name US Airways Express via code sharing agreements.


title: US Airways

text: The airline had severe financial difficulties in the early 2000s, filing for chapter 11 bankruptcy twice in two years. In 2005, America West Airlines carried out a reverse merger, acquiring the assets and branding of the larger US Airways while putting the America West leadership team largely in charge of the merged airline.


title: US Airways

text: In 2013, American Airlines and US Airways announced plans to merge, creating the largest airline in the world. The holding companies of American and US Airways merged effective December 9, 2013. The combined airline carried the American Airlines name and branding and maintained the existing US Airways hubs for a period of at least five years under the terms of a settlement with the Department of Justice and several state attorneys general. US Airways management runs the combined airline from the American headquarters in Fort Worth, Texas. On April 8, 2015, the FAA officially granted a single operating certificate for both carriers, marking the end of US Airways as an independent carrier. The brand continued to exist until October 2015.


title: US Airways

text: Its first hub was in Pittsburgh, and it operated fortress hubs in Charlotte, Las Vegas, Philadelphia, Phoenix–Sky Harbor, and Washington-Reagan.


title: US Airways

text: The final US Airways flight was San Francisco to Philadelphia via Phoenix and Charlotte, operating as Flight 1939 with 1939 commemorating the birth of All American Aviation, which eventually became US Airways. Repainting of US Airways' planes into the American Airlines scheme was expected to take until "late 2016", with new flight attendant uniforms also being introduced in 2016, when US Airways' brand was no longer on its planes, employees or assets; however, its livery with the American Airlines name still remains on several aircraft as a nod to the airline.


title: US Airways

text: US Airways traces its history to All American Aviation Inc., a company founded in 1939 by du Pont family brothers Richard C. du Pont and Alexis Felix du Pont, Jr. Headquartered in Pittsburgh, the airline served the Ohio River valley in 1939. In 1949 the company was renamed All American Airways as it switched from airmail to passenger service; it changed its name again to Allegheny Airlines on January 1, 1953.


title: US Airways

text: Allegheny's first jet was the Douglas DC-9 in 1966; it absorbed Lake Central Airlines in 1968 and Mohawk Airlines in 1972 to become one of the largest carriers in the northeastern United States. In 1973 it was the ninth-largest airline in the free world by passengers carried (and 24th largest by passenger-miles). With expansion came growing pains: in the 1970s Allegheny had the nickname "Agony Air".


title: US Airways

text: Allegheny's agreement with Henson Airlines, the forerunner to today's US Airways Express carrier Piedmont Airlines, to operate "Allegheny Commuter" flights was the industry's first code-share agreement, a type of service now offered throughout the industry.


title: US Airways

text: Allegheny changed its name to USAir in 1979 after the passage of the Airline Deregulation Act the previous year, which enabled the airline to expand its route network to the southeastern United States.


title: US Airways

text: USAir was a launch customer for the Boeing 737-300, as the airline needed an aircraft with greater capacity to serve its growing Florida markets. USAir was the world's largest operator of DC-9 aircraft at the time and approached McDonnell Douglas to negotiate a new design. However, in the late 1970s, the McDonnell Douglas' proposed successor to the DC-9-50 did not suit USAir. After the negotiations with McDonnell Douglas broke down, Boeing came forward with a proposed variant of the 737. USAir selected the new 737 and the company worked closely with Boeing during its development, taking delivery of the first plane on November 28, 1984.


title: US Airways

text: In 1979 USAir's network was east of the Mississippi, plus spokes to Houston and Phoenix; it added Dallas-Ft Worth and Kansas City in 1981, Denver in 1982 and Los Angeles, San Francisco and San Diego in 1983. It acquired two commuter airlines, Pennsylvania Airlines and Suburban Airlines, in 1985. It bought San Diego–based Pacific Southwest Airlines (PSA) in 1986 and Winston-Salem, North Carolina–based Piedmont Airlines in 1987. The PSA acquisition was completed on April 9, 1988, and the Piedmont acquisition on August 5, 1989.


title: US Airways

text: The PSA acquisition gave USAir a network on the West Coast, while the Piedmont acquisition gave USAir a strong East Coast presence and hubs in Baltimore and Charlotte, which remained hubs for USAir. The Piedmont acquisition in 1989 was the largest airline merger until then and USAir became one of the world's largest airlines, with more than 5,000 flights daily to 134 airports (plus 48 more airports on USAir Express). In the next few years USAir closed down PSA's hubs in California and Piedmont's hubs in Dayton and Syracuse, though both remained focus cities.


title: US Airways

text: By 1990 the airline had consolidated its headquarters, moving from Washington National Airport to a new building at Crystal City in Arlington County, Virginia, near the airport. Maintenance and operations headquarters remained at Pittsburgh International Airport.


title: US Airways

text: In the early 1990s, USAir expanded to Europe with flights to London, Paris, and Frankfurt from its four main hubs. The company formed partnerships, marketing the Trump Shuttle as the "USAir Shuttle" and accepting a large investment from British Airways that started one of the first transatlantic alliances, resulting in several Boeing 767-200ERs being painted in the British Airways livery, but operated by USAir. In 1992, it also invested in a new terminal at its hub in Pittsburgh.


title: US Airways

text: In 1996 the alliance between USAir and British Airways ended in a court battle when British Airways announced its intentions to partner with American Airlines.


title: US Airways

text: In early 1997 USAir changed its name to US Airways and introduced a new corporate identity. A stylized version of the United States flag was adopted as a new logo. The new branding was applied to terminals and ticket jackets. The airline painted aircraft in deep blue and medium gray with red and white accent lines.


title: US Airways

text: That same year, the airline also introduced a single-class subsidiary known as MetroJet, which competed with low-cost carriers like Southwest Airlines expanding to the East. MetroJet operated Boeing 737-200s, the oldest aircraft in the fleet, allowing it to achieve the best utilization possible before being retired.


title: US Airways

text: On November 6, 1996, immediately prior to the re-branding to US Airways, the airline placed an order for up to 400 Airbus A320-series narrow-body aircraft, with 120 firm orders at the time of signing. The order was regarded as the largest bulk aircraft request in history. In 1998 the airline followed with an order for up to 30 Airbus A330-series wide-body aircraft, with an initial firm order for seven of the Airbus A330-300s. These orders enabled US Airways to replace its older aircraft with newer, more efficient aircraft.


title: US Airways

text: In 1997 US Airways bought the remains of Trump Shuttle. US Airways expanded its flights to Europe through the end of the decade. Although the airline returned to profitability in the mid-1990s, its route network's concentration in the Northeastern United States and high operating costs prompted calls for the company to merge with another airline.


title: US Airways

text: Beginning in 2000 US Airways started retiring aircraft in an attempt to simplify its fleet and reduce costs, replacing many of its older planes with the new Airbus A320-family aircraft. On March 30, 2000, US Airways received its first Airbus A330-300.


title: US Airways

text: On May 24, 2000, US Airways announced plans to be acquired for $4.3 billion by UAL Corp., the parent company of United Airlines, the world's largest commercial carrier at the time. The complex deal drew immediate objections from labor unions, consumer advocates and antitrust regulators. Negotiations stalled; with both airlines losing money and the deal all but certain to be blocked by the federal government, UAL withdrew its purchase offer on July 27, 2001, paying US Airways a $50 million penalty for withdrawing from the deal.


title: US Airways

text: As the largest carrier at Washington National Airport, US Airways was disproportionately affected by that airport's extended closure following the September 11 terrorist attacks. The resulting financial disaster precipitated the closure of the airline's MetroJet network, which led to the closing of the subsidiary's primary operating base at Baltimore-Washington International Airport and the furloughing of thousands of employees. The airline entered Chapter 11 bankruptcy on August 11, 2002, but received a government-guaranteed loan through the Air Transportation Stabilization Board and was able to exit bankruptcy in 2003 after a relatively short period. The airline made major cost reductions during its bankruptcy, but it still encountered higher-than-average per-seat-mile costs.


title: US Airways

text: In 2003, US Airways began exploring the availability of financing and merger partners, and after no financing was available, it filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy again in 2004 for the second time in two years. The airline merged in 2005 with America West Airlines. Under terms of the merger agreement, the America West board of directors created two new entities. First, a new "US Airways Group" was created to receive the bankrupt US Airways' assets and form the new corporation. Second, "America West Holdings" was merged into "Barbell Acquisition Corporation", a subsidiary of the new "US Airways Group", on September 27, 2005; through this transaction, "America West Holdings" became a wholly owned subsidiary of the new "US Airways Group". The "America West Holdings" stockholders were required to authorize these changes. Upon completion, 37% of the new "US Airways Group" would be owned by "America West Holdings" stockholders, 11% by the old "US Airways Group" debtholders and 52% by new equity investors. The result was the fifth largest US-based airline in terms of revenue. After the merger was completed on November 4, 2007, the new airline retained the US Airways name, since studies indicated that "US Airways" had better brand recognition worldwide than did "America West".


title: US Airways

text: In early 2003, US Airways management liquidated the pensions of its 6,000 pilots by releasing their pensions into the federal pension program Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation. The company was one of the first major airlines to eliminate pilots' pensions in order to cut costs.


title: US Airways

text: Following a trial run of selling in-flight food in 2003, US Airways discontinued free meal service on domestic flights later that year.


title: US Airways

text: In late 2003-early 2004, US Airways lobbied for lower operating fees at Pittsburgh International Airport, citing its economies of scale as the primary carrier and largest tenant at the airport. US Airways attempted to leverage its adverse cash position and "red ink" in the years following 9/11 to negotiate better financial terms with the airport. The Allegheny County Airport Authority rejected US Airways' demands for reduced landing fees and lower lease payments, in part due to antitrust and FAA regulations that required the airport operator to extend the same financial terms to all carriers if it accepted US Airways' demands. US Airways threatened to move traffic to rival hubs in Philadelphia and Charlotte, and the airline made good on its threat in November 2004, reducing its flights at Pittsburgh International Airport from primary-hub to secondary-hub status. This action also resulted in the closing of the commuter terminal, also known as concourse E. The airline, led by former ExpressJet Airlines CEO David N. Siegel, continued to demote Pittsburgh International Airport in subsequent years until it became only a focus city airport for the company. By 2010, Pittsburgh was no longer listed as a US Airways focus city. US Airways now operated an average of only 39 departures a day exclusively to domestic destinations, compared to 2001 when it was a hub with 500+ flights a day with service across the United States and to Europe.


title: US Airways

text: Western Pennsylvania leaders and most notably the designer of the 1992 modernization of Pittsburgh International, Tasso Katselas, pointed out that the reason fees and payments were higher than average is expressly because US Airways requested the most modern and advanced airport in the world in return for basing its hub there. Katselas has also been vocal that the issue of negotiable fees and payments are irrelevant when compared to the three biggest costs of any airline: fuel, time, and labor, all of which his redesign of PIT from 1987 to 1992 helped to reduce. In fact, those changes created the most efficient, least costly, and least financially wasteful airfield in the world. Although conceding that those updates cost more, he argued they were more than offset by Pittsburgh's vast built-in nonnegotiable fuel and time, and to a lesser degree, labor savings. Local officials maintain that Allegheny County "bent over backwards" to accommodate US Airways and saved them millions of dollars, only to be abandoned.


title: US Airways

text: US Airways's abandonment of its Pittsburgh hub nearly bankrupted the Pittsburgh airport itself, since US Airways had signed a 30-year lease and the county had issued $600 million in bonds for construction, which were supposed to be paid by US Air. US Air's move eliminated thousands of jobs and was a financial gut punch for the entire Pittsburgh region; former Allegheny County Executive Rich Fitzgerald said US Air's departure was the "second devastating economic blow after ."


title: US Airways

text: In August 2004, US Airways attempted to build a Latin American gateway at Ft. Lauderdale/Hollywood, announcing service to 10 cities in Latin America and the Caribbean. The attempt was largely unsuccessful and short-lived, in part due to Fort Lauderdale's proximity to American Airlines' hub at Miami International Airport and its extensive Latin American network. US Airways also began a process of de-emphasizing its hub-and-spoke system to capitalize on direct flights between major eastern airports such as Washington National Airport and New York-LaGuardia.


title: US Airways

text: Fuel costs and deadlocked negotiations with organized labor, chiefly the Air Line Pilots Association, traditionally the first group to come to a concessionary agreement, forced US Airways into a second round of Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection proceedings on September 12, 2004. Widespread employee discontent and a high volume of employee sick calls were blamed by the airline for a staff shortage around the 2004 Christmas holiday, a public relations disaster which led to speculation that the airline could be liquidated; the USDOT found that the problems were caused primarily by poor airline management.


title: US Airways

text: Even before the second bankruptcy filing of 2004, one of the alternatives US Airways Group explored was a possible merger with America West, as the two airlines had complementary networks and similar labor costs. The parties held preliminary discussions and conducted due diligence from February through July 2004. Ultimately, these talks ended due to issues related to labor, pension, and benefit costs.


title: US Airways

text: By December 2004, US Airways had cut labor costs significantly. Its investment adviser, the Seabury Group, suggested putting the airline up for sale. The following month, US Airways Group and America West Holdings resumed their discussions. On May 19, 2005, both airlines officially announced the merger deal, structured as a reverse takeover. Financing for the deal was supplied by outside investors including Airbus, an aircraft manufacturing subsidiary of EADS, the European aerospace consortium. Air Wisconsin Airlines Corporation, operator of numerous "US Airways Express" flights, and ACE Aviation Holdings, the parent company of Air Canada, also bought shares in the combined airline. The merged airline retained the US Airways name to emphasize its national scope, as well as to capitalize on US Airways' worldwide recognition, Dividend Miles frequent flyer program, and Star Alliance membership. On September 13, 2005, America West shareholders voted to approve the merger agreement and three days later the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Eastern District of Virginia approved US Airways' emergence from bankruptcy, allowing the merger to close on September 27.


title: US Airways

text: Since the merger, US Airways had been headquartered at the former America West corporate offices in Tempe, Arizona, and America West executives and board members were largely in control of the merged company. The company's aircraft merged FAA operating certificate included America West's airline call sign and identifiers "CACTUS" and "AWE".


title: US Airways

text: During 2006, the airline began consolidating its operations under the US Airways brand. Operations were not fully integrated until October 2008, when government approval was obtained to allow the airlines to operate under a single operating certificate.


title: US Airways

text: In May 2006, the US Airways and America West web sites were merged. The new US Airways web site united the two brands using graphics and styles reflective of the airline's new livery and services.


title: US Airways

text: In December 2006, US Airways became the first American "legacy" carrier to add the Embraer 190 to its mainline fleet. It remains one of only two American carriers to operate the E190 in scheduled service, jetBlue being the other.


title: US Airways

text: At the end of 2006, US Airways made a bid for competitor Delta Air Lines, which it opposed, treating it as a hostile takeover by US Airways. The final bid was valued at $10 billion but was withdrawn on January 31, 2007, since US Airways failed to secure backing from Delta's creditors. The airline stated that it would no longer pursue a possible takeover of Delta.


title: US Airways

text: Aircraft were equipped with Verizon Airfone in every row of seats. Since Verizon ended this service, the airline has deactivated the service and as of 2007, has removed the phones or has covered them in all aircraft.


title: US Airways

text: Overnight on March 4, 2007, the US Airways and America West computer reservation systems merged. US Airways, which previously used the Sabre airline computer system, switched to the new QIK system, an overlay for the SHARES system, that had been used by America West. A few of the features from the Sabre system were incorporated into the new joint system, with the most prominent being the continued utilization of the Sabre ramp partition "DECS" for all computer functions related to weight and balance, aircraft loading and technical flight tracking within the company.


title: US Airways

text: America West Airlines and the US Airways merged FAA certificates on September 25, 2007. Former America West employees (including pilots, fleet service personnel, flight attendants) remained on their original America West union contracts and did not fully combine workforces with their pre-merger US Airways counterparts. Until October 2008, former America West aircraft flew with their respective crews and used the call sign "CACTUS", while the pre-merger US Airways crews primarily flew with their respective aircraft and used the call sign "US AIR". In October 2008, the company began operating under a single operating certificate (that of the former US Airways). This required operation under a single call sign and identifier and that of America West ("CACTUS" and "AWE") were chosen as a sign of the company lineage. In addition, flights operated using former America West aircraft and crews were numbered 1–699, whereas flights operated by pre-merger US Airways aircraft and crews were numbered 700–1999. (Flights numbered 2000–2199 were shuttle services and those 2200 and higher were operated by express subsidiaries.) Aircraft operated by pre-merger US Airways crews or former America West crews flew under two different United States Department of Transportation operating certificates until September 25, 2007. However, until pilot and flight attendant union groups from both sides successfully negotiated a single contract, each group of crewmembers would fly only on its pre-merger airlines' aircraft and the flights would be marked accordingly.


title: US Airways

text: Since the computer systems were merged, former America West-operated flights were marketed as though America West was a wholly owned carrier. This marketing is common practice for airlines that have code-share agreements with other airlines operating aircraft for feeder or regional routes and although the practice is uncommon for major airlines, it greatly simplified the process for passengers connecting between historically US Airways-operated flights and former America West-operated flights.


title: US Airways

text: In the summer of 2007, US Airways began upgrading its in-flight services, from food and entertainment to the training of flight attendants. The airline was planning to test-market a new seatback entertainment system in early 2008, however, the 2008 fuel crisis ended those plans. As a further result of the skyrocketing fuel costs, the airline rolled back the planned summer 2007 service upgrades as well as ending its existing in-flight entertainment on all domestic routes.


title: US Airways

text: A Consumer Reports survey of 23,000 readers in June 2007 ranked US Airways as the worst airline for customer satisfaction. The survey was conducted before the airline's March 2007 service disruptions. A follow-up survey polling a smaller sample size, conducted in April, found that US Airways remained in last place, with its score dropping an additional 10 points. Also in 2007, the Today/Zagat Airline Survey rated US Airways as the worst airline overall in the United States, ranking it 10/30 for comfort, 5/30 for food, 10/30 for service and 15/30 for its online reservations system.


title: US Airways

text: On August 1, 2008, US Airways ceased providing free drinks; passengers could buy bottled water or soda for $2 US or $1 US for coffee and tea. Shuttle flights between LGA, DCA and BOS continued to offer free beverages. US Airways resumed serving complimentary drinks in March 2009.


title: US Airways

text: US Airways ranked last out of 20 domestic airline carriers for on-time performance in March, April, and May 2007, according to DOT figures. According to the Bureau of Transportation Statistics June 2008 report (using data from May 2008), US Airways ranked seventh for percentage of on-time arrivals.


title: US Airways

text: US Airways was the leader in service complaints with 4.4 complaints per 100,000 customers. The US Airways rate of customer complaints was 7.5 times the rate of JetBlue (0.59 complaints per 100,000 customers) and 11 times the rate of Southwest Airlines (0.4 complaints per 100,000 customers). US Airways had a very poor record of addressing customer complaints, answering only 50% of the telephone calls to its customer service department.


title: US Airways

text: By September 2007, US Airways continued to downgrade Pittsburgh International Airport's status from 500 flights a day (with 12,000 employees) in 2001 to just 68 flights a day (with only 1,800 employees). CEO Parker stated his frustration at the economics of Pittsburgh and referred to the possibility of service further decreasing. This represented a further deterioration of a strained relationship with Allegheny County, with which the airline shared significant historical ties. US Airways Group Inc. said October 3, 2007 it would cut mainline flights at Pittsburgh International Airport to 22 a day from 31 and reduce regional flights to 46 a day from 77, beginning January 6, 2008, essentially reducing the airport to a destination spoke in its network. Pittsburgh was no longer a focus city for the airline as of its most recent annual report and January 2008 flight schedule reductions.


title: US Airways

text: US Airways East pilots took steps to relinquish their ALPA membership and form their own in-house union. "East" pilots were dissatisfied with the results of binding arbitration when the arbitrator's ruling placed all active former America West pilots, including their most junior pilot, who had been hired only three months previous to the merger, ahead of furloughed US Airways pilots with up to seventeen years of service. The former US Airways pilots petitioned the National Mediation Board to conduct a vote to determine whether to replace their union. East pilots (3,200) outnumbered west pilots (1,800) and the proposed union's president stated that the union had a sufficient number of requests to call a vote according to National Mediation Board regulations. The new union would be called the US Airline Pilots Association (USAPA). On April 17, 2008, USAPA was voted in as the sole bargaining agent for the pilots of US Airways, East and West.


title: US Airways

text: It took more than a year to correct problems stemming from the merger and by 2008, US Airways was one of the best performers among the legacy carriers. The carrier had the best departure and arrival performances among the other major US carriers. Because of the strong On-Time departure and On-Time arrival performances, it was the number one major carrier. Northwest was the only other carrier that had better performances but became a part of Delta during that year.


title: US Airways

text: On April 25, 2008, it was reported that US Airways was in talks to merge its operations with either American Airlines or United Airlines, partially as a response to the recent Delta Air Lines and Northwest Airlines merger. Then, on April 28, 2008, reports stated that US Airways would announce its intent to merge with United within two weeks. At the end of May 2008, the airline announced that merger talks were formally ended.


title: US Airways

text: On May 20, 2008, according to the annual American Customer Satisfaction Index by the University of Michigan, US Airways ranked last in customer satisfaction among the major airlines. However, it was making steady ground to bridge its gap with other airlines.


title: US Airways

text: On January 15, 2009, an Airbus A320 registered N106US, Flight 1549 under the command of Captain Chesley Sullenberger, flying from New York City's LaGuardia Airport to Charlotte Douglas International Airport, ditched into the Hudson River shortly after takeoff. Multiple bird hits from a flock of Canada geese caused both engines to lose power. All 150 passengers and 5 crew members (2 pilots and 3 flight attendants) survived. New York's Governor David Paterson called it "the miracle on the Hudson".


title: US Airways

text: In mid-2009 it was reported that US Airways, along with American Airlines and United Airlines was placed under credit watch. Experts say several factors, including capital and revenue, played a role in the airline's addition to the list. On October 2, US Airways reported that it had a buyer for 10 of its 25 Embraer 190 Aircraft. The remaining 15 aircraft were scheduled to be redeployed to Boston where they would operate Boston to Philadelphia and the Boston to New York LaGuardia leg of the US Airways Shuttle service. On December 8, 2009, US Airways began service to Rio de Janeiro-Galeão airport operated by a Boeing 767-200, its first route to South America.


title: US Airways

text: The Airline continued to operate scheduled flights and profits were seen to be sustainable. The airline was in good shape. 2010 was a better year for the airline due to no recorded incidents or accidents following the ditching of flight 1549 the previous year. The airline was profitable up to the merging with American Airlines in 2015.


title: US Airways

text: US Airways cut many routes to close its focus cities at Las Vegas, Boston, and New York LaGuardia. The airline was given tentative government approval to trade many of its LaGuardia takeoff and landing slots to Delta Air Lines in exchange for Delta's slots at Washington National. This exchange would strengthen each airline's presence at both airports. The DOT gave approval pending the carriers selling a small percentage of their routes to other carriers. US Airways and Delta disagreed with the decision and said they planned to sue the US DOT.


title: US Airways

text: On April 7, 2010, "The New York Times" reported that US Airways was "deep in merger discussions" with United Airlines. The report stated that a deal would not be reached for several weeks, but indicated that a deal was close. Several weeks later, however, on April 22, 2010, the airline ended discussions with United regarding the merger. Shortly thereafter, United announced that it would merge with Continental Airlines instead.


title: US Airways

text: In April 2011, US Airways earned the top spot in the 2011 Airline Quality Rating (AQR) report among "Big-Five" hub-and-spoke carriers. US Airways President Scott Kirby said that US Airways was the last viable airline in the U.S. to merge and that any potential merger would be with one of three U.S. carriers: United Airlines, American Airlines or Delta Air Lines. Kirby also commented that US Airways' membership in the Star Alliance would make a merger with United Airlines easier, but added that "it's not meaningful enough to really be a factor". Among the 10 largest domestic airlines, consumers scored US Airways last for overall customer satisfaction in a May 2011 "Consumer Reports" survey.


title: US Airways

text: In May 2011, "Business Insider" reported that American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI) ranked US Airways sixth in a list of "The 19 Most Hated Companies in America".


title: US Airways

text: In July 2011, the pilots' union, USAPA, purchased a full-page advertisement in "USA Today", questioning US Airways management's commitment to safety. US Airways transmitted a communication to all of its employees, on the same day as the ad, denying the accusations. In September 2011, US Airways requested and was granted an injunction against the pilots, claiming the pilots union, USAPA, was using their commitment to safety as a negotiating tactic.


title: US Airways

text: In January 2012, US Airways expressed interest in taking over bankrupt carrier American Airlines. Tom Horton, CEO of American parent AMR Corporation, said in March that American was open to a merger. A Bloomberg News report dated March 23, 2012, stated that US Airways had been in talks with AMR's creditors about a takeover bid. On December 7, 2012, US Airways announced a merger proposal with American Airlines. The merger required approval from a bankruptcy judge, which was successful. The combined airline would keep the American Airlines name and would be based in American's hometown of Fort Worth.


title: US Airways

text: On February 14, 2013, US Airways Group and AMR Corporation announced that the two companies would merge to form the largest airline in the world. In the deal, shareholders of AMR would own 72% of the new company and US Airways Group shareholders would own the remaining 28%. The combined airline would carry the American Airlines name and branding, while US Airways' management team, including CEO Doug Parker, would retain most operational management positions. The headquarters for the new airline would also be consolidated at American's current headquarters in Fort Worth, Texas. On August 13, 2013, the United States Department of Justice along with attorneys general from six states and the District of Columbia filed a lawsuit seeking to block the merger, arguing that it would mean less competition and higher prices. Arizona, Florida, Pennsylvania, Texas, and Virginia, states where either American or US Airways maintained a large presence, were among the plaintiffs in the lawsuit, as was Tennessee.


title: US Airways

text: On November 12, 2013, the two companies reached a deal with the Department of Justice. That allowed the companies to complete the merger on December 9, 2013.


title: US Airways

text: On April 8, 2015, American Airlines flights operated by US Airways retired the Cactus callsign used by US Airways since the America West merger. The final flight to use it was Flight 774 from London-Heathrow to Philadelphia.


title: US Airways

text: On July 13, 2015, American announced that it planned to discontinue the US Airways brand name on October 17, 2015. On that date, US Airways made its final flight: Flight 1939 (originally named Flight 434, changed for the year the airline was founded), using an Airbus A321 registered N152UW, and would take off as US Airways Flight 1939 and land as American Airlines Flight 1939. The flight originated from Philadelphia International Airport, at 10:05 AM, October 16, 2015, continuing to Charlotte Douglas International Airport, then to Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport, and then to San Francisco International Airport. (The final flight did not stop in Pittsburgh, which some local officials regarded as the "final insult" by US Air to Pittsburgh.) The aircraft made its final leg on the evening of October 16, as a red-eye flight from San Francisco International Airport back to Philadelphia International Airport. It landed ahead of schedule at 5:52 AM EDT, and at that point, the US Airways brand and all operations under its name were officially terminated.


title: US Airways

text: Prior to the merger with American Airlines, US Airways had its headquarters in Tempe, Arizona in Greater Phoenix. The nine-story, building was originally occupied by America West Airlines. Jahna Berry of the "Arizona Business Gazette" said in 2005 that the building "is one of the dominant buildings in downtown Tempe". It is located in proximity to the southwest intersection of Rio Salado Parkway and Mill Avenue. The City of Tempe gave America West $11 million in incentives and tax breaks so it would occupy what became the US Airways headquarters, which cost $37 million to construct.


title: US Airways

text: Construction began in January 1998, although the official groundbreaking ceremony was held on February 19 of that year. By of 2006 over 700 employees worked in the building. On May 31, 2013, W.P. Carey Inc. gave 75% interest in the US Airways headquarters to Parkway Properties Inc. for $41.8 million or $185 per square foot. As of December 2013, 780 employees worked in the building. After the merger between American Airlines and US Airways concluded, Hayley Ringle of the "Phoenix Business Journal" stated in December 2013 that the facility became "just a large office of American Airlines Group". That month, John McDonald, the American Airlines vice president of corporate communications and public affairs stated that the US Airways headquarters would continue to be used for at least five years and for the time being most of the employees at the US Airways headquarters would remain.


title: US Airways

text: Previously US Airways had its headquarters in Crystal Park Four, a Class A mixed-use development in Crystal City, in Arlington County, Virginia near Washington, D.C. Park Four is between Reagan National Airport, The Pentagon, and the District of Columbia. After the merger with America West Airlines, the company decided to close its Virginia headquarters and moved the employees into the former America West building in three to six months after the merger closed. Russell Grantham at "The Atlanta Journal-Constitution" said that the decision to move the headquarters to Tempe was not that difficult because the Crystal City facility "consisted of like two or three floors of people."


title: US Airways

text: Pittsburgh International Airport won a three-way competition between Phoenix and Charlotte in 2007 for the right to continue as US Airways' Global Flight Operations center. Opening in November 2008, US Airways invested more than $25 million ($ million today) into a facility. It replaced a smaller 11-year-old (pre-merger) operations center closer to downtown Pittsburgh. The state-of-the-art Ops Center opened ahead of schedule and was home to approximately 600 employees. It served as the nerve center for all of US Airways' nearly 1,400 daily mainline flights. As part of its merger with American Airlines, the airline intended to close the flight operations center and would consolidate with the American Airlines Integrated Flight Operations Center near Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport, the headquarters of American Airlines. The move was expected to take within 18 months. It was announced that the operations center would close on August 23, 2015.


title: US Airways

text: The US Airways "Do Crew" program was the airline's employee community-service program. Employee volunteers in the program participated in community-based projects on a monthly basis through local chapters in Boston, Charlotte, Las Vegas, New York City, Philadelphia, Phoenix, Pittsburgh, Washington, D.C., and Winston-Salem, North Carolina.


title: US Airways

text: US Airways had various liveries under the US Airways name. In general, the Express and Shuttle divisions had liveries that closely paralleled the company-wide livery, but later shared the same aircraft with mainline US Airways.


title: US Airways

text: The pre-2005 US Airways had a dark blue livery; after it merged with America West, US Airways, switched to a mostly white livery.


title: US Airways

text: Following US Airways merger with American Airlines, US Airways aircraft were painted into the American Airlines livery. The first jet to re-enter revenue service in the American livery in January 2014 was an Airbus A319, tail number N700UW, which previously sported a Star Alliance scheme.


title: US Airways

text: One aircraft, an Airbus A321 under registration N578UW, has been left unpainted in the US Airways livery, as one of American's heritage aircraft. The actual US Airways logo near the front of the fuselage has been replaced with the American Airlines logo, but the rest of the aircraft remains in US Airways livery.


title: US Airways

text: US Airways operated 3,031 flights a day to 193 destinations in 24 countries from its hubs in Phoenix, Charlotte, and Philadelphia.


title: US Airways

text: US Airways' routes were concentrated along the East Coast of the United States, Southwestern United States, and the Caribbean, with a number of routes serving Europe and primary destinations along the U.S. West Coast. The airline's western U.S. presence had increased following the merger with America West. Codesharing with United Airlines (before leaving the Star Alliance) had helped US Airways by enabling the airline to offer its customers service throughout the Midwest, Great Plains, and Rocky Mountains states. Services to South America, Asia, and Australia also were offered via the American Airlines codeshare. Likewise, American passengers benefitted from increased access via US Airways to the U.S. East Coast, Europe, and the Caribbean. US Airways Express carriers operated a large number of domestic routes, primarily into US Airways' hubs and focus cities, but with some exceptions, particularly small markets where the regional express carriers operated service under the EAS program, as well as some point-to-point commuter routes in the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic regions and south through the Carolinas. Before US Airways completely merged into American Airlines, US Airways was the last and only major US airline that has never flown to Eastern Asia, although it had codeshares with American Airlines and most Asian air carriers partnered in the OneWorld Alliance.


title: US Airways

text: In 2007 the airline applied for flights to Bogotá, Colombia, but the U.S. Department of Transportation denied the application after the agency awarded Delta Air Lines, JetBlue, and Spirit Airlines the routes from Delta's New York-JFK hub, JetBlue from Orlando and Spirit from Fort Lauderdale.


title: US Airways

text: In 2008, US Airways and other airlines struggled with the price of fuel. Despite that, US Airways CEO Doug Parker said "It [Philadelphia] is our international gateway. We'd like to expand that". Service to London Heathrow Airport began in March 2008. The airline also added three international flights during the summer of 2009, including Tel Aviv, from Philadelphia. US Airways also started year-round service between Charlotte and Rio de Janeiro, which was discontinued in early 2015.


title: US Airways

text: In 2009 US Airways and Delta reached an agreement to exchange landing/takeoff slots at LaGuardia Airport and Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport. US Airways also planned to receive additional route authority to São Paulo from Delta as a result of this transaction. Service to São Paulo from its Charlotte hub was discontinued on October 1, 2014.


title: US Airways

text: On November 21, 2012, the airline was awarded a landing slot at London Heathrow Airport for nonstop flights between Charlotte and London Heathrow Airport, complementing the existing route from Philadelphia to London Heathrow. The airline began service from Charlotte to Heathrow on March 30, 2013, replacing its service from Charlotte to Gatwick, which ended the airline's service at Gatwick.


title: US Airways

text: By mid-2014, US Airways maintained a predominantly Airbus fleet, with some Boeing jets and small fleet of Embraer jets. The post-merger US Airways continued to operate the largest fleet of Airbus aircraft in the world.


title: US Airways

text: Subsidiaries Piedmont and PSA exclusively flew Bombardier CRJs (PSA), and de Havilland Canada Dash 8s (Piedmont).


title: US Airways

text: Envoy was US Airways' international business class product. It was offered on all Airbus A330s and Boeing 767-200ERs, as well as select Boeing 757-200s. There were three types of Envoy seating in the US Airways fleet:


title: US Airways

text: Previously, the first row of all Airbus A330-300s were fully flat seats, formerly US Airways' international first class product. With the transition from three- to two-class international service, these seats were, for a time, offered at a fee to Envoy customers.


title: US Airways

text: Every seat had a personal on-demand video screen either attached to the arm rest or as a portable unit passed out by the crew that offered movies, games and syndicated television shows in multiple languages. There was also an EmPower or AC outlet at each seat.


title: US Airways

text: First Class was offered on all domestically configured aircraft. Seat pitch ranged from and a seat width ranging from . Free wine, beer and spirits and a snack basket were offered on all flights, as were blankets. Meals were provided on flights of 2.5 hours or longer.


title: US Airways

text: Main Cabin (Economy Class) was available on all aircraft, with a seat pitch ranging from and a seat width ranging from . Domestic service was a buy-on-board program with full meals available for purchase on flights of 3.5 hours or longer, while shorter flights offered snack boxes. Coffee, tea and soft drinks were complimentary with alcohol available for purchase. Transatlantic and South American flights included standard meals and beverages (including wine) free of charge, with premium meals available for purchase, which included one alcoholic beverage.


title: US Airways

text: US Airways offered GoGo Inflight Internet on Airbus A319/A320/A321 and Embraer E170/E175/E190 aircraft. US Airways had also signed up for GoGo Vision streaming video service which would be available on all GoGo equipped aircraft. Flights to Europe, South America, Hawaii, and domestic flights over 700 miles operated with Boeing aircraft featured movies and TV episodes on overhead screens in Coach. The Airbus A330s featured AVOD at every seat in both Economy and Business Class with a selection of movies, TV episodes, music, and games. Complimentary headsets were available in both Business and Economy on flights to Europe, South America, and the Middle East.


title: US Airways

text: GoGo was usually priced US$5–15 on domestic flights. It was never available on international flights.


title: US Airways

text: Dividend Miles was US Airways Group's frequent-flyer program. Members earned one mile for every mile flown on US Airways on any published fare – paid flights taken in First Class or Envoy received a 50% mileage bonus. Members also earned miles on flights on partner airlines and for partner hotel stays, car rentals, shopping at the Dividend Miles mall and for purchases made with a US Airways credit card. Miles could be redeemed for free flights, upgrades, and more. Dividend Miles was to be absorbed into American Airlines's AAdvantage program in the second quarter of 2015. However, American Airlines announced on March 13, 2015, that Dividend Miles would be merged into American's AAdvantage program "within the next 30 days". On March 24, 2015, it was confirmed that Dividend Miles would be absorbed into American's AAdvantage program on March 28, 2015. On March 28, 2015, Dividend Miles was officially absorbed into American Airlines's AAdvantage program.


title: US Airways

text: In addition to its US Airways Express and Oneworld partnerships, the Dividend Miles program with other partner airlines or programs included:


title: US Airways

text: US Airways' airport lounge was called the US Airways Club. There were 19 lounges in 13 airports across the United States. As part of the merger, all US Airways clubs were gradually rebranded as American's Admirals Clubs in 2014, except for a few that closed.


title: US Airways

text: In addition to those with paid memberships, the following customers also had complimentary access to Admirals Club locations:


title: US Airways

text: Philadelphia International Airport's Terminal A formerly had an Envoy Lounge reserved exclusively for Envoy Class, Star Alliance international premium passengers, and Star Alliance Gold members traveling on long-haul international flights. Due to the lounge's proximity to departing long-haul international flights, this lounge offered a much wider array of food than was typically found at US Airways Clubs. In 2011, the airline converted the Envoy Lounge into a standard US Airways Club, now an Admirals Club.


title: US Airways

text: The incidents and crashes listed below include only those of US Airways and US Air (not predecessor or merger airlines such as Allegheny, Piedmont, PSA or America West; or partnering regional commuter airlines operating US Airways flights under the brand US Airways Express).


title: United States Environmental Protection Agency

text: The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is an independent executive agency of the United States federal government tasked with environmental protection matters. President Richard Nixon proposed the establishment of EPA on July 9, 1970; it began operation on December 2, 1970, after Nixon signed an executive order. The order establishing the EPA was ratified by committee hearings in the House and Senate. The agency is led by its administrator, who is appointed by the president and approved by the Senate. The current administrator is Michael S. Regan. The EPA is not a Cabinet department, but the administrator is normally given cabinet rank.


text: The EPA has its headquarters in Washington, D.C., regional offices for each of the agency's ten regions and 27 laboratories. The agency conducts environmental assessment, research, and education. It has the responsibility of maintaining and enforcing national standards under a variety of environmental laws, in consultation with state, tribal, and local governments. It delegates some permitting, monitoring, and enforcement responsibility to U.S. states and the federally recognized tribes. EPA enforcement powers include fines, sanctions, and other measures. The agency also works with industries and all levels of government in a wide variety of voluntary pollution prevention programs and energy conservation efforts.


text: The agency's budgeted employee level in 2022 is 14,581. More than half of EPA's employees are engineers, scientists, and environmental protection specialists; other employees include legal, public affairs, financial, and information technologists.


text: Many public health and environmental groups advocate for the agency and believe that it is creating a better world. Other critics believe that the agency commits government overreach by adding unnecessary regulations on business and property owners.


text: Beginning in the late 1950s and through the 1960s, Congress reacted to increasing public concern about the impact that human activity could have on the environment. Senator James E. Murray introduced a bill, the Resources and Conservation Act (RCA) of 1959, in the 86th Congress. The bill would have established a Council on Environmental Quality in the Executive Office of the President, declared a national environmental policy, and required the preparation of an annual environmental report.


text: The 1962 publication of "Silent Spring" by Rachel Carson alerted the public about the detrimental effects on the environment of the indiscriminate use of pesticides.


text: In the years following, similar bills were introduced and hearings were held to discuss the state of the environment and Congress's potential responses. In 1968, a joint House–Senate colloquium was convened by the chairmen of the Senate Committee on Interior and Insular Affairs, Senator Henry M. Jackson, and the House Committee on Science and Astronautics, Representative George P. Miller, to discuss the need for and means of implementing a national environmental policy. In the colloquium, some members of Congress expressed a continuing concern over federal agency actions affecting the environment.


text: The National Environmental Policy Act of 1969 (NEPA) was modeled on the 1959 RCA bill. President Nixon signed NEPA into law on January 1, 1970. The law created the Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ) in the Executive Office of the President. NEPA required that a detailed statement of environmental impacts be prepared for all major federal actions significantly affecting the environment. The "detailed statement" would ultimately be referred to as an environmental impact statement (EIS).


text: On July 9, 1970, Nixon proposed an executive reorganization that consolidated many environmental responsibilities of the federal government under one agency, a new Environmental Protection Agency. This proposal included merging pollution control programs from a number of departments, such as the combination of pesticide programs from the United States Department of Agriculture and the United States Department of the Interior. After conducting hearings during that summer, the House and Senate approved the proposal. The EPA was created 90 days before it had to operate, and officially opened its doors on December 2, 1970. The agency's first administrator, William Ruckelshaus, took the oath of office on December 4, 1970.