A run of fatal airline crashes upends sterling safety record

• February 19, 2025

By Allyson Versprille, Julie Johnsson and Gabrielle Coppola | Bloomberg

A spate of deadly airline crashes has tarnished the industry’s sterling track record, fraying the nerves of travelers and prompting questions about how the world’s safest form of transportation can respond.

The tragedies began on Christmas Day when an Azerbaijan Airlines plane crashed in Kazakhstan, killing 38 people. Days later, an aircraft operated by Jeju Air Co. skidded down a runway in South Korea and smashed into a concrete wall, causing 179 deaths. The two accidents turned 2024 into the deadliest year in commercial aviation since 2018, after no fatalities at all on large passenger jetliners in 2023.

Disasters continued in 2025, with a midair collision between a US Army helicopter and American Airlines Group Inc. regional jet near Washington last month that killed 67 people. And on Monday, a Delta Air Lines Inc. regional jet crash-landed near Toronto and flipped on its roof, though there were no fatalities.

Besides their eerie and sudden concentration, there’s little that binds the catastrophes together. From a bird-strike and potentially faulty altitude readings to a suspected anti-missile volley and snowy weather — each accident has its own unique set of circumstances. That, in turn, makes it difficult to immediately point to any reforms to address.

And although the recent string of accidents may be statistical anomalies, they’re still startling given how US commercial passenger carriers had enjoyed years without a fatal crash, said Kristy Kiernan, a safety expert and associate professor at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University.

“Those of us working in the industry would be strongly remiss if we didn’t take this as a time to look at our core assumptions and how we operate,” Kiernan said. “We have a very robust safety system and risk mitigation procedures. How did those fail? Where has that either broken down or had gaps that simply hadn’t manifest until now? It’s super-important that we do that.”

Just two years ago, the International Air Transport Association heralded 2023 as the “safest year for flying,” with no hull losses or fatal accidents involving passenger jets.

Hassan Shahidi, chief executive officer of the Flight Safety Foundation, said there’s no evidence that the tragedies point to systemic risks to air travel. The accidents do, however, underscore how regulators, airlines and others must “redouble their efforts” to ensure appropriate safety measures are in place, including the right training, adequate staffing, and modern tools and equipment, he said.

Worried travelers

Jeff Guzzetti, a former accident investigation chief for the US Federal Aviation Administration, cautioned that investigators must first finish their probes to identify whether there are potential connections that may not be clear today. But as accident experts pour over the wreckage of the aircraft, some travelers are worried when boarding a plane.

Sheron Yuen, a retiree who lives in a suburb of Detroit, said she thought safety would improve after a midair collision near Washington brought more attention to the issue.

“But after that incident there’s been so many more that happened,” she said in an interview from the Detroit Metropolitan Wayne County Airport while waiting for a flight. Now, “I’m kind of wondering. I’m a little nervous actually.”

Johnny Jet, founder of travel advice website JohnnyJet.com, said he’s seen reader inquiries about the dangers of air travel jump roughly threefold over the last few months.

Others are less concerned. John Rose, chief risk and security officer of travel-management company Altour, said he’s seen no signs of softening demand for airline trips in response to the accidents. At the same time, more of the firm’s customers are asking about its risk protocols.

“A lot of organizations don’t necessarily put this as an utmost urgency because they haven’t had anything happen in the past,” he said.

And John Cox, a former airline pilot who’s now chief executive officer of consultancy Safety Operating Systems, stressed that aviation remains the safest form of travel, despite the recent crashes.

“I’m getting on an airplane Thursday without a second thought,” he said. “I don’t find any correlation or connection between” the crashes.

Trump firings

Recent moves by the Trump administration to cut federal workers have raised concerns among Democratic lawmakers and labor unions that those steps may in fact create further risks rather than address them.

Last week, the Trump administration fired workers across the federal government who were in their one-year probationary period, including hundreds of employees of the US Federal Aviation Administration.

US Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said in a post on social media platform X that the layoffs affect less than 400 people out the agency’s tens of thousands, and that none who were fired were air-traffic controllers or “critical safety personnel.”

While experts said there’s no direct link between the staffing cuts and the latest accidents, they cautioned safety could erode over time.

Guzzetti, the former FAA official, said that all of the agency’s positions could be considered safety critical, especially given how difficult it is to recruit and retain people for those jobs. Eliminating workers also means that employees who are left have to pick up the slack, he said.

“Someone else is going to have to do the job of other people and be overburdened with too many tasks,” he said. “That could allow other tasks to more readily fall between the cracks and lead to an accident.”

And given the prevalent government narrative labeling many federal workers as expendable, recruitment is also bound to get much harder — if not impossible, said Dave Spero, the national president of the Professional Aviation Safety Specialists union that represents FAA workers.

“There’s nobody out there that’s going to go, ‘Oh, I want to go be a Fed right now,’” he said.

— With assistance from Nibras Suliman and Carrington York.

More stories like this are available on bloomberg.com

©2025 Bloomberg L.P.

​ Orange County Register 

Newsom proposes $125 million mortgage relief program for disaster victims

• February 19, 2025

Gov. Gavin Newsom is forming a $125 million mortgage relief program to benefit victims of recent wildfires and natural disasters, tapping a legal settlement fund created after major lenders were accused of misconduct during the mortgage crisis nearly 20 years ago.

The mortgage relief program is designed for homeowners whose houses were damaged or destroyed by natural disasters and are at risk of foreclosure, Newsom said Wednesday, Feb. 19.

The proposal will be considered at a board of directors meeting Feb. 20 at the California Housing Finance Agency.

California homeowners, the U.S. government and 49 states agreed to the national settlement in 2012. Then U.S. Attorney General Kamala Harris secured $18 billion, penalizing lenders for robo-signing and other servicing and foreclosure misconduct. The mortgage servicers included Ally Financial Inc. (formerly known as General Motors Acceptance Corp. Bank), Bank of America, Citigroup, JPMorgan Chase and Wells Fargo.

CHFA received its last installment of $300 million as part of the settlement in 2019, according to Jay Wierenga, a spokesman for the California Business, Consumer Services and Housing Agency. Since then, CHFA has used the money to support the National Mortgage Settlement Housing Counseling Program, which reimburses counseling sessions for more than 78,000 households in housing agencies throughout the state.

The $125 million proposed for mortgage relief and counseling services is what’s left of the settlement fund, Wierenga said.

In his announcement, Newsom said the mortgage relief program would not affect the upcoming state budget beginning Oct. 1.

See also: FAIR Plan bailout deepens housing strains

The money would be available to homeowners who lost their homes due to natural disasters since 2023, and would be administered by the CHFA.

Newsom estimated $100 million would be for direct mortgage assistance, with an additional $25 million used to extend an existing program that provides mortgage guidance on disaster assistance by the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

Last month, several lenders gave homeowners affected by the L.A. area fires a little relief on their mortgage payments.

Bank of America, Citi, JPMorgan Chase, U.S. Bank, and Wells Fargo and 420 state-chartered banks, credit unions, and mortgage lenders offered wildfire victims a 90-day forbearance of their mortgage payments, without reporting these payments to credit reporting agencies, and the opportunity for additional relief.

While Newsom didn’t share all the eligible disasters since 2023, he did mention several since last summer. They included last month’s fires in the Pacific Palisades and Malibu area and the Eaton fire in Altadena. Those fires — which destroyed over 16,000 structures — killed 29 people and burned a combined 37,000 acres in Los Angeles County.

“The governor’s proposal lays out the broad strokes of a program that is currently under development, so it would be premature to discuss additional eligibility details,” a spokesman for Newsom’s office said Wednesday.

The relief program also would be offered to homeowners whose houses were damaged or destroyed from the Franklin fire that burned more than 4,000 acres in Malibu on Dec. 9, 2024, in Malibu Creek State Park, and the Park fire in Northern California’s Butte and Tehama counties.

The Park fire ignited July 24, 2024, in Chico’s Bidwell Park  — about 90 miles northwest of Sacramento.  The fire, which authorities suspect was arson, became the largest wildfire of California’s wildfire season, and fourth largest in the state’s history.

In a related matter, more relief for fire victims came Tuesday, Feb. 18, when the L.A. County Board of Supervisors approved a six-month rent moratorium for tenants and workers affected by the L.A. fires.

​ Orange County Register 

Will the Declassification and Transparency Task Force bring us the truth?

• February 19, 2025

If you had to think of two words in the English language to represent the concept of inertia, a complete lack of forward progress, it would be these: task force.

If you had to get it down to one word, it could be this: Congress.

So the announcement this week that there is now a congressional Task Force on the Declassification and Transparency of Federal Secrets sounds more interesting than it’s likely to be.

But there’s a first time for everything, so let’s play along. What’s this about?

The House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform has formed a new Declassification and Transparency Task Force to find and release government documents on the assassinations of John F. Kennedy, Robert F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King, Jr., as well as documents on the 9/11 attacks, the origins of the COVID-19 virus, the Jeffrey Epstein client list, and the phenomena generally known as UFOs.

In the past you would have to sit through nine or ten movies to get this kind of information, but now we’ll be able to see all of it on CSPAN. The first hearing of the task force is planned for sometime in March.

House Oversight committee chairman James Comer appointed Florida Representative Anna Paulina Luna to chair the task force. He said she is “committed to shining a light on the truth and ending the era of secrecy.”

Luna said her goal is to restore trust through transparency. “The federal government has been hiding information from Americans for decades,” she said. “We have spent years seeking information on the assassinations of President Kennedy, Senator Kennedy, Reverend King, and other government secrets without success. It is time to give Americans the answers they deserve.”

It will be interesting to see what comes out of this. Will we hear shocking revelations of information so outrageously damaging that people were killed over it? Are the members of this panel going to need bulletproof vests?

So far, the Kevlar Caucus includes Republicans Nancy Mace of South Carolina, Tim Burchett of Tennessee, Lauren Boebert of Colorado, Eric Burlison of Missouri, Eli Crane of Arizona and Brandon Gill of Texas.

Good luck, everybody!

This will be a bipartisan task force, but the Democratic members have not yet been announced. Probably still being fitted for the Kevlar vests.

Comer and Luna have already sent letters to high-ranking government officials asking for briefings about the existence of documents, classified or unclassified, under their control.

Attorney General Pam Bondi was asked what documents she has “regarding the investigation into and prosecution of Jeffrey Epstein.”

CIA Director John Ratcliffe and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth were asked what documents they have “regarding the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks against the United States and Operation Neptune Spear,” the military operation that led to the killing of Osama bin-Laden.

Ratcliffe, Hegseth and Secretary of State Marco Rubio were asked for a briefing on documents under their control regarding “the existence of unidentified anomalous phenomena,” a category that includes unidentified flying objects and submerged objects that have been observed in the oceans.

Ratcliffe and the Director of the National Security Agency, Lt. Gen. Timothy Haugh, were asked about documents on the assassinations of JFK, RFK and MLK.

Rubio, Ratcliffe and Energy Secretary Chris Wright were asked for a briefing on any documents in their departments related to the origins of COVID-19.

“After the briefing,” all eleven letters stated, “the Committee and Task Force shall seek to review these documents and make recommendations on declassification to ensure all applicable orders and laws are being implemented and deliver transparency to the American people.”

This might all be nothing, but it sounds like it could be something.

There is a quality to the second Trump administration that is reminiscent of the opening of the Soviet archives in the early 1990s after the fall of the USSR. The president has unleashed the DOGE team to tear through the electronic records of unimaginable waste and fraud that have gone on for decades. Who knows what information has been protected all these years by entrenched bureaucrats, excessive secrecy and the occasional assassination.

The president has the authority to declassify anything. He could make history.

Write [email protected] and follow her on X @Susan_Shelley

​ Orange County Register 

Theater review: A sunny production of ‘Annie’ warms the stage in Costa Mesa

• February 19, 2025

Optimism in challenging times must be found whenever and wherever you can uncover it.

For a short week at the Segerstrom Center in Costa Mesa the reminder that the sun will come out tomorrow is on handsome display in “Annie,” the musical that perpetually pursues hope and ultimately finds it in family.

Riding along on composer Charles Strouse’s still catchy jazz and vaudevillian period score — eternally propelled by “Tomorrow,” one of musical theater’s most effective earworms — these themes provide the enduring appeal of a girl’s Depression-era journey from hard-scrabble orphanage to Fifth Avenue mansion.

A positive to this production is the cool, calculating eye that director Jenn Thompson brings to the piece. Thompson, who played one of the orphans when the show started in 1977,  has de-smudged sentimentality from her staging (well, apart from opening night’s rapturous “ooooh” from the hall’s farthest upper reaches greeting the first appearance of Sandy, live theater’s most renowned canine (more on him at the end if you want to just skip ahead).

Though an early number declares “it’s the hard knock life for us,”  the pursuit of hopefulness can get gooey and “Annie” stagings are vulnerable to saccharine performances, which potentially lurk during the overplotted second act and Christmastime ending.

In September, Thompson was around the corner directing at South Coast Repertory, bringing similar brisk focus to the campy material of “Little Shop of Horrors.”  Here, she is aided and abetted by her actors in the three lead roles.

Hazel Vogel’s Annie — her red wigs shaded to “flaming” — is a thoughtfully determined and practical waif. The actress often takes a beat before offering sage, no-nonsense counsel to her elders.

She’s also no pushover with her orphan pals, even if she loves them a lot: in the show’s first scene she shuts up bratty behavior with the crack “Do you want to sleep with your teeth inside your mouth or out?”

Her primary foe is Miss Hannigan, the orphanage’s matron of miseries. Stefanie Londino, an accomplished veteran of “Annie” tours, makes for a most thoroughly accomplished Charles Dickens-y villainess. Her Hannigan is an erratic tyrant, with comic booziness and sheer exhaustion pouring from every pore.

When Londino sings “Little Girls” plenty of self-loathing is on display; later, when a glint of the real malevolence emerges from within her, it’s not surprising.

Where Vogel offers matter-of-fact realism and Londino manifests dead-on-her-feet desperation, actor Christopher Swan’s Oliver Warbucks’ progresses from bumptious billionaire to an affectionate mensch, whose motivations to adopt Annie include self-actualization.

Swan is impressive at peeling back inner layers his character doesn’t know he has so that when he eventually sings Warbucks’ overly yearning mini-ballad “Something Was Missing,” it feels earned.

This production has above average generosity in staging and costuming than most touring shows around for a single week in Costa Mesa.

Against a background scrim of the Brooklyn Bridge contours and fronted by a metallic-looking arch around and above the stage, the settings go from appropriately ramshackle in the orphanage to suitably well-appointed in the mansion.

The costumes — a lot of green on display across the Warbucks’ servants — are also a cut above, though Annie gets saddled for a while with a mauve outfit that should never be worn by a redhead.

What else? Ah, yes, Sandy.

Annie’s orphaned pooch is (so charmingly) undertaken by a 7-year-old labradoodle named Kevin.

Kevin arrives at Segerstrom having performed the role during the holidays at Madison Square Garden, so it’s difficult finding fault, particularly since the Costa Mesa audience went bonkers for him all the way through the curtain bows.

But a teeny aside in pursuit of theater realism: the first labradoodle was believed bred in Australia in 1989. Soooo, how can Kevin be found roaming the Manhattan streets in 1933?

Just sayin’.

‘Annie’

Rating: 3 stars (out of a possible four).

When: Through Sunday, Feb. 23: 7:30 p.m. Tuesday-Friday, 2 and 7:30 p.m, Saturday,  1 and 6:30 p.m. Sunday

Where: Segerstrom Center for the Arts, 600 Town Center Drive, Costa Mesa

Tickets: $44.07-157.07

Information: 949-556-2787; scfta.org

​ Orange County Register 

Agriculture Department tries to rehire fired workers tied to bird flu response

• February 19, 2025

By JOSH FUNK, Associated Press

OMAHA, Neb. (AP) — The Agriculture Department is scrambling to rehire several workers who were involved in the government’s response to the ongoing bird flu outbreak that has devastated egg and poultry farms over the past three years.

The workers were among the thousands of federal employees eliminated on the recommendations of billionaire Elon Musk‘s Department of Government Efficiency that is working to carry out Trump’s promise to streamline and reshape the federal government.

Republican Rep. Don Bacon said the administration should be more careful in how it carries out the cuts.

“While President Trump is fulfilling his promise to shed light on waste, fraud, and abuse in government, DOGE needs to measure twice and cut once. Downsizing decisions must be narrowly tailored to preserve critical missions,” said Bacon, who represents a swing district in Nebraska.

The bird flu outbreak has prompted the slaughter of roughly 160 million birds to help control the virus since the outbreak began in 2022. Most of the birds killed were egg-laying chickens, so that has driven egg prices up to a record high of $4.95 per dozen on average. The federal government has spent nearly $2 billion on the response, including nearly $1.2 billion in payments to farmers to compensate them for their lost birds.

A USDA spokesperson said the department “continues to prioritize the response to highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI)” and several key jobs like veterinarians, animal health technicians and other emergency response personnel involved in the effort were protected from the cuts. But some employees of the USDA’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service were eliminated.

“Although several APHIS positions supporting HPAI were notified of their terminations over the weekend, we are working to swiftly rectify the situation and rescind those letters,” the department spokesperson said.

Politico and NBC News reported that the jobs that were eliminated were part of an office that helps over see the national network of labs USDA relies on to confirm cases of bird flu and other animal diseases. It wasn’t immediately clear how many workers the department might be trying to rehire and whether any of them worked at the main USDA lab in Ames, Iowa.

Trump administration officials said this week that the USDA might change its approach to the bird flu outbreak, so that maybe entire flocks wouldn’t have to be slaughtered when the disease is found, but they have yet to offer many details of their plan.

​ Orange County Register 

Trump and Musk say they like working together and will keep it at. Will it last?

• February 19, 2025

By WILL WEISSERT, Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) — It’s been a burning political question for weeks: How long will President Donald Trump — who doesn’t like sharing the spotlight — be able to do just that with Elon Musk, a billionaire also overly fond of attention?

In a joint Fox News Channel interview that aired Tuesday, both insisted they like each other a lot and would stick with their arrangement despite what Trump said were attempts by the media to “drive us apart.”

At times, Trump sat back as Fox News Channel’s Sean Hannity heaped praise on Musk in an attempt to counteract a Democratic narrative that he’s a callous and unelected force out to destroy the government and upend civil society through sweeping cuts being imposed by the Department of Government Efficiency.

There were also moments when Trump and Musk were all but finishing each other’s sentences, as if they were part of a buddy comedy and not the president and his most powerful aide.

Here’s a look at how the friendship formed, what it means for them both and why Trump’s history suggests it may not last:

They weren’t always friends

Trump told Hannity that he wasn’t really acquainted with Musk until recently, saying, “I knew him a little bit through the White House originally” but didn’t know him before that.

Musk was born in Pretoria, South Africa, and became a U.S. citizen in 2002. He’s the world’s richest man, with a net worth exceeding $400 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. His vast business holdings include X, Tesla and SpaceX, as well as the satellite internet service provider Starlink.

Musk said he voted for Democrat Joe Biden in 2020 and Democrat Hillary Clinton in 2016. Musk has recently said that Tesla was being unfairly targeted by regulations in its original home state of California. Musk and the company’s headquarters moved to Austin, Texas in 2021, and he increasingly soured on Biden with the then-president’s embrace of unions that clashed frequently with Tesla.

In the past, Musk butted heads with Trump over climate change. They feuded as recently as July 2022 — with Trump calling Musk a “bulls—- artist.” He also suggested then that Musk came to the White House during his first term seeking federal subsidies for “electric cars that don’t drive long enough, driverless cars that crash, or rocketships to nowhere.”

“I could have said, ‘drop to your knees and beg,’ and he would have done it,” Trump previously said on his social media site.

Musk originally backed Ron DeSantis in last year’s Republican presidential primary, even helping the Florida governor launch his White House bid in a glitch-marred presentation on X. But Musk met with Trump at his Florida residence last March and endorsed the then-canidate in July shortly after the first assassination attempt.

“I was going to do it anyway, but that was a precipitating event,” Musk told Hannity.

Musk appeared at his first Trump rally in early October, and his super PAC spent around $200 million to boost the Republican’s campaign. X also amplified messaging — and often disinformation — promoted by Trump and his “Make America Great Again” movement.

The pair spent election night at the president’s Mar-a-Lago club. Less than a week after securing victory, Trump announced that Musk would lead DOGE, the new push to shrink government, alongside former GOP presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy, who left the commission by Inauguration Day.

Their relationship is mutually beneficial

Trump has empowered Musk to help him keep a campaign promise and “ shatter the deep state ” by firing scores of federal workers, shrinking or shuttering agencies and slashing the size of government.

“There’s a vast federal bureaucracy that is implacably opposed to the the president,” Musk told Hannity. He added: “What we’re seeing here is the sort of the thrashing of the bureaucracy as we try to restore democracy and the will of the people.”

Tesla and SpaceX have benefited from lucrative government contracts from the Defense Department, NASA and other federal entities, as well as plenty of tax breaks and subsidies over the years. The Trump administration could also take a lot of regulatory heat off Musk, including dismissing crash investigations into Tesla’s partially automated vehicles and a Justice Department criminal probe examining whether Musk and Tesla have overstated their cars’ self-driving capabilities.

Musk nonetheless insisted to Hannity, “I haven’t asked the president for anything, ever.” Trump said the billionaire “won’t be involved” in areas where his government efforts and business concerns overlap — though that seems dubious given that Musk’s team has already begun scrutinizing federal contracts in areas that would seem to present conflict-of-interest concerns.

Trump’s friendships often don’t last

Trump and Musk say they won’t turn on each other. But those once closest to Trump often end up as his fiercest critics.

His former vice president, Mike Pence, said Trump endangered his family in the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the Capitol and attempted to bully him into violating the Constitution. His former attorney general, Bill Barr, refuted Trump’s falsehoods about widespread fraud in the 2020 election and has since said he “shouldn’t be anywhere near the Oval Office.”

Michael Cohen, Trump’s longtime lawyer who testified against him in a hush money case, told a House committee in 2019: “People that follow Mr. Trump, as I did blindly, are going to suffer the same consequences that I’m suffering.”

More recently, Trump shrugged off potential security risks while ending Secret Service protection for former top officials in his first administration, including former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and former White House chief of staff John Kelly.

Trump also has shown repeatedly that he doesn’t like being overshadowed, even hinting at such where Musk is concerned. Asked recently about Musk appearing on the cover of Time from behind the Resolute Desk in the Oval Office, Trump quipped, “Is Time Magazine still in business?”

But Trump has also been fiercely loyal to those he perceives as having stood by him.

Former White House adviser Peter Navarro, who served time in prison related to the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol, is back helping dictate Trump trade policy. Trump’s valet, Walt Nauta, is working anew at the White House after once being a codefendant with Trump in the classified documents case. Trump has also said he’d offered “about 10 jobs” to his former national security adviser, Mike Flynn, whom he pardoned after Flynn pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI.

Four weeks in, they seem genuinely fond of each other

Throughout the interview, Hannity was friendly and his questions were mostly fawning. But what came through was how complimentary Trump and Musk were of each other — even amid skepticism about how long that’ll last.

“He’s an amazing person,” Trump said of Musk.

“I love the president, I just want to be clear about that,” Musk offered of Trump.

“I feel like I’m interviewing two brothers here,” Hannity finally said.

​ Orange County Register 

Construction for 50th annual Grand Prix of Long Beach formally begins Thursday

• February 19, 2025

Preparations for the 50th anniversary of Long Beach’s “200-mph beach party” — otherwise known as the Acura Grand Prix of Long Beach — is officially underway.

Crews recently began building grand stands for the event, which will take place from April 11 to 13. Grand Prix and city officials with formally mark the start of construction — which includes setting up the temporary race track, fending and more — on Thursday, Feb. 20.

Every year, the Grand Prix of Long Beach draws upward of 190,000 visitors to the city.

The 2024 iteration of the event, according to a recent study, generated $100 million economic impact for Long Beach and the seven counties that comprise Southern California — and boasted record-breaking attendance of 194,000 people.

This year’s the Grand Prix is expected to be even bigger, since it’s the event’s 50th anniversary.

The event’s organizers — the Grand Prix Association of Long Beach — have already announced some exciting additions to this year’s race.

Racing legends Mario Andretti and Al Unser Jr., for example, have been tapped to be grand marshals for the event — and legendary rock band Foreigner will headline the Grand Prix’s Saturday night concert.

Construction will continue over the next couple of months, leading up to the big weekend.

Tickets for the 50th Grand Prix of Long Beach, meanwhile, have already gone on sale.

General admission tickets for the first day of the Grand Prix start at $44. Race fans can get a three-day ticket with reserved grandstand seating on Saturday and Sunday for $205.

For more information about the Grand Prix and ticketing, visit gplb.com.

​ Orange County Register 

Historic ocean liner departs Philadelphia on voyage to become the world’s largest artificial reef

• February 19, 2025

By BRUCE SHIPKOWSKI, Associated Press

The historic, aging ocean liner that a Florida county plans to turn into the world’s largest artificial reef departed from south Philadelphia’s Delaware River waterfront on Wednesday, marking the opening segment of its final voyage.

The SS United States, a 1,000-foot vessel that shattered the transatlantic speed record on its maiden voyage in 1952, is being towed to Mobile, Alabama, for planned prep work before officials eventually sink it off Florida’s Gulf Coast.

The move comes about four months after the conservancy that oversees the ship and its landlord resolved a years-old rent dispute. Officials initially planned to move the vessel last November, but that was delayed due to concerns from the U.S. Coast Guard that the ship wasn’t stable enough to make the trip.

Officials in Okaloosa County on Florida’s coastal Panhandle hope it will become a barnacle-encrusted standout among the county’s more than 500 artificial reefs and a signature diving attraction that could generate millions of dollars annually in local tourism spending for scuba shops, charter fishing boats and hotels.

Officials have said the deal to buy the ship could eventually cost more than $10 million. The lengthy process of cleaning, transporting and sinking the vessel is expected to take at least one-and-a-half years.

The SS United States was once considered a beacon of American engineering, doubling as a military vessel that could carry thousands of troops. Its maiden voyage broke the transatlantic speed record in both directions when it reached an average speed of 36 knots, or just over 41 mph, The Associated Press reported from aboard the ship. The ship crossed the Atlantic Ocean in three days, 10 hours and 40 minutes, besting the RMS Queen Mary’s time by 10 hours. To this day, the SS United States holds the transatlantic speed record for an ocean liner.

“The ship will forever symbolize our nation’s strength, innovation, and resilience,” said Susan Gibbs, president of the SS United States Conservancy and granddaughter of the naval architect who designed the vessel. “We wish her ‘fair winds and following seas’ on her historic journey to her new home.”

The SS United States became a reserve ship in 1969 and later bounced to various private owners who hoped to redevelop it. But they eventually found their plans too expensive or poorly timed, leaving the vessel looming for years on south Philadelphia’s Delaware River waterfront.

​ Orange County Register