Philaelphia airport's managers, as they have do every year on this day, will have a 15-minute ceremony today to honor the victims of the Sept 11, 2001 attacks, one of many such remembrances around the country. The ceremony will take place at 1 p.m. at the flagpole in front of the police headquarters in Terminal C, departures road.

Also, here is a news story that was continuously updated this morning with news of what happened at Ground Zero.

The U.S. Senate has approved by a healthy margin a bill that would set up a nonprofit corporation to promote the country to foreign visitors, and get the visitors to help pay for the effort. Passage of the legislation has been strongly endorsed by the travel industry, which says the country needs to do more overseas marketing to improve its image with non-citizens who think -- with good reason -- that they've not been welcome here since Sept. 11, 2001. It's fitting that this bill passed on Sept. 9. Read more details of what the bill will do here.

An Aero Mexico jet from Cancun to Mexico City was hijacked today but the incident ended peacefully, with all passengers and crew safe after police took control of the plane. Read details in an AP story here.

PHL and its largest carrier, US Airways, improved their on-time-flight performance in July, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics's monthly report, issued today. US Airways whooped it up on the news: It said it would give each employee a $100 bonus for finishing in the top three among the network airlines (American, Delta, Continental, Northwest and United) in both on-time flights and mishandled baggage for the month.

The Inquirer's story is at this link. Details on how all airlines performed at PHL can be found at this link to the Air Travel Consumer Report. The BTS report on how PHL did vs. other airports can be found here.

The Business Travel Coalition, the Radnor-based group for corporate travel departments, has joined with flyerrights.org, the group formed by a victim of a long tarmac stranding, to support proposed legislation in Congress to set standards for the way airlines treat customers. The travel coalition has been against such legislative action as anathema to business in the past, but has found overwhelming support this summer for Congress adopting some minimum-care standards, given the failure of the airlines to consistently apply them.

More about the effort to pass the legislation will emerge in the coming weeks. For now, here is the detailed statement released by BTC this morning explaining the position. 

Today's Winging It column reports on airport officials' preliminary look at using the abandoned concrete that once was Route 291 to build a new lot for drivers waiting to pick up passengers. As you may have heard (how could you miss it?) police have stepped up ticketing of motorists who park on the I-95 ramps waiting for a cell phone call from family or friends. The effort has increased use of the Bartram Avenue waiting lot but isn't there a better place for the idling zone? Yes there is, and you can learn more here. 

The last couple of days have been hectic and I'm just now catching up with an usually large number of news reports on airline safety issues. Whatever happened to the week before Labor Day being one of the slowet news periods of the year?

First, the Federal Aviation Administration says it's changing the rules for flights over the Hudson River off Manhattan, an effort to prevent a recurrence of the tragic helicopter-light plane collision earlier this month. Read more on that in an AP story. 

In another order, the FAA said airlines must replace airspeed sensors in their Airbus jets that are suspected as a cause of the crash of an Air France widebody over the Atlantic in June. Good news: US Airways, which flies the A330 jets between PHL to Europe, has already replaced the suspect sensors. Read details of the FAA order here. 

Then there are these two: The FAA is reported to be in a dispute with American Airlines over safety inspections. And the Business Travel Coalition is questioning why the FAA is allowing Southwest Airlines to continue flying 737s with unapproved parts until the end of the year.