Logan Airport

Lindsay Birch snapped the scene in South Boston around 5:45, adds:

Looks like I got my run in just in time at Castle Island.

Chris Weigel watched lightning hit the ground at Logan Airport:

Around 9:30 a.m., several people reported a column of smoke rising from Logan Airport, including Screwed Up Rainbow, who posted this photo - along with a note that planes were continuing to take off.

AlertNewEngland, who knows about these things, and who keeps his ear tuned to the fire scanner, says it was probably just the fake plane the Massport Fire Department sets on fire every so often as a training exercise.

Five Logan Airport "cab starters" arrested in February were indicted yesterday by a Suffolk County grand jury for allegedly taking bribes from cabbies to move them up in the queue at the airport.

Owen Williams was among the hundreds of people in a world-class line for non-existent cabs at one Logan terminal around 1 a.m. today.

"Nice welcome for marathoners," adds Catboston, also in the line.

Massport CEO Tom Glynn summed it all up today:

Today we welcome a world class airline to a world class city.

A Utah professor today acknowledged he viewed sexually explicit image of little girls as he flew to Boston for a professional conference in 2011, the Suffolk County District Attorney's office reports.

In East Boston District Court, Judge Roberto Ronquillo, Jr. gave Grant Smith a 2 1/2-year suspended sentence for possession of child pornography and five years' probation, which he will serve in his native Utah, after registering as a sex offender, the DA's office reports.

Alaska Airlines? Sure, why not?

CommonWealth reports not only is volume up on the Silver Line into the city - for which Massport says it will eventually pay so riders don't have to - but it's up on the Silver Line to the airport, for which people still have to pay.

Five Massport workers were arrested today on charges they took bribes from cab drivers seeking to evade the airport's normal queue for passengers, the Suffolk County District Attorney's office, State Police and Massport announced.

Officials say the five "cab starters" let cabbies who slipped them $20 to $40 jump ahead of other drivers - although they add some of the five accepted scratch tickets, cigarettes and other items instead of money:

Citrone photographed the cab line at Terminal C at 10:30 p.m.

Kevin Davis reports he was on Delta flight 2101 around 4:30 p.m., getting ready to taxi to the runway en route to Atlanta, when the plane stopped:

Sitting in a plane on the tarmac at BOS surrounded by fire trucks. I don't think this one is taking off anytime soon. ...

Turns out plane was on fire. Fire is out, deplaning now onto runway at BOS. Fun.

More specifically, the brakes started smoking.

Davis, a photographer by trade, took some photos: The plane | An evacuation bus | The view out the bus | A runway view of downtown

He asks:

Anyone know how many frequent flier miles you get when your airplane catches fire?

Yesterday, it was a fire, today it was leaking fuel, this time on a plane getting ready to taxi to a runway for takeoff, WBZ tweets. Both are 787 Dreamliners.

A Puerto Rican man was arrested at Logan Airport Friday after State Police found more than eight pounds of cocaine in the wheelchair on which he rolled into the terminal, the Suffolk County District Attorney's office reports.

Emannuelli Rojas-Moraza, 33, of Carolina, PR, was detained at Terminal E by state troopers at the request of Homeland Security and US Customs agents. According to prosecutors:

David notices Boston transportation services tend to be built in fives and then the powers that be eliminate one of them: There used to be five Green Line branches, five Silver Line routes and five terminals at Logan.

What's going on here? Do the planners have spooky Mickey Mouse hands? Does Boston overbuild then scale back? Shrinkage?

Jen braved the storm to video planes landing at Logan during the storm yesterday. Around 11 a.m., she captured a Virgin 747 coming in. The Patriots took a Virgin charter back from London. Could that have been them?

The Globe reports the firings of six TSA agents at Logan and discipline against 14 more for not doing their jobs and inspecting things. The moves have nothing to do with a TSA probe into whether agents have a preference for harassing screening people with skin tones darker than alabaster.

The New York Times reports Logan Airport has a bit of a racial-profiling issue - seems TSA agents just love to search them some blacks and Hispanics:

Officers in Boston acknowledged that they had no firm data on how frequently minority members were stopped. But based on their own observations, several officers estimated that they accounted for as many as 80 percent of passengers searched during certain shifts.

The East Boston Times reports on the impending suit over a fuel spill apparently caused by a worker falling asleep while he was "jamming the dead man."

Scott Eisen was at Logan this afternoon to watch the president arrive on Air Force One en route to fundraisers at Symphony Hall and in the South End.

Not everybody was pleased to see Obama in Boston. Mediacrity photographed protesters, who included Occupiers, Palestinian supporters and some Republicans.

Copyright Mediacrity. Posted in the Universal Hub pool on Flickr.

This is "Carla," now stationed at the main security checkpoint at Terminal E. Massport claims she's making the security line "a little easier and more fun," in part because TSA agents will no longer have to bark at people tell people to throw out their Big Gulps, but this is Boston and that's a security line, why is she smiling so much?

But here's an idea: Install Carlabots over fare machines at T stops, grinning madly as she explains how to add value to your CharlieCard. Or even better, install her in all the CSA booths and just grin wildly as she spouts random instructions and alerts. Now that would be something.

Massport and the MBTA are teaming up on a three-month pilot project to provide free Silver Line rides from Logan to South Station.

Daniel Weintraub files this report:

Last night a fallen soldier, escorted by 2 active Marines was returned to Boston on my flight from Atlanta. The casket was received with full honors outside the gate by the Massport FD, Local State Troopers, Local Marines, and of course the family. Heartbreaking scene. A good 1/4 of our flight stood and watched with respect from the terminal as the casket was unloaded.

Would anybody know who he was?

Seems that when a big convention is in town, the MBTA runs special Silver Line service to the airport straight from the convention center, rather than making people carry their bags on that long walk to the nearest Silver Line stop and crowding onto a bus there.

Are you outraged? The Herald is, to the point of displacing its long-running Indian Joke of the Day series from the front page, which today features end-of-world fonts to accuse the T of stealing "all" its buses to service fat-cat conventioneers. Who, the Herald grudgingly admits, pay their fares just like rest of us - but only after the paper's crack investigative unit did some undercover surveillance:

On Friday, a Herald reporter and photographer observed people at the convention center paying regular fares to board the nonstop airport-bound Silver Line buses. The drivers did not take normal Silver Line routes or make any Silver Line stops before dropping passengers at Logan Airport. A driver said the buses provide conventioneers with rides to the airport. A bus tailed by the Herald did not follow the Silver Line’s dedicated bus route, instead driving directly to the Ted Williams Tunnel.

The horror!

Ed. derail question: Why is the convention center stop so far away from the convention center?

Sara photographed the cab line at Logan around 12:45 this morning.

Mark Garfinkel got a cool shot tonight.