SF Giants players and executives embarked on a goodwill tour of South Korea led by Giants center fielder Jung Hoo Lee, bolstering the team’s visibility in Asia and showing support for Lee, a fan favorite — who was briefly detained at LAX upon arrival back in the US this week.

As the Chronicle reports, San Francisco Giants center fielder Jung Hoo Lee was held for about four hours at Los Angeles International Airport Wednesday evening due to missing paperwork on his return to the US from South Korea. Per the Chronicle, Lee was released fairly quickly with the help of Giants officials, Lee's agent Scott Boras, and Representative Nancy Pelosi’s office and was present at the Giants' FanFest event in San Ramon Saturday.

“Obviously, a bit hectic the last few days, but I’m glad everything’s worked out,” Lee said, with Giants’ ticketing associate Brian Kang interpreting, per Bay Area News Group. “I’m just glad it got resolved and I’m back with my teammates.”

Per Bay Area News Group, Lee, who’s in his third year on the team, hosted 17 members of the Giants team and management in South Korea earlier this month, including president of baseball operations Buster Posey, general manager Zack Minasian, new manager Tony Vitello, and shortstop Willy Adames.

As the New York Times reports, Lee gave his colleagues the VIP treatment during their visit, which included reservations to the coveted Silent Pig, tours of Namdaemun Market and Bukchon Hanok Village, a bibimbap cooking class with a celebrity chef, meetings with KBO officials and Korean sponsors, appearances at MLB Korea studios, and a baseball clinic at the LG Twins complex.

“He planned everything,” said Rachel Heit, the San Francisco Giants’ chief marketing officer. “He selected the restaurant, which is apparently impossible to get into. Kanye West made it very popular. We got a lot of street cred for getting that reservation.”

Per the Times, the goal of the trip was to rally around Lee while also expanding the Giants’ international presence.

“We are here to accomplish a few things: first and foremost, to show our support for Jung Hoo Lee, who has been an amazing host,” Heit told the Times.

Per the Times, despite missing most of his first year due to a dislocated shoulder, Lee has quickly become one of the team’s most popular players, with the Giants boasting a special “Jung Hoo Crew” section, brimming with earnest fans. Per the Times, about 80 percent of Giants games are televised in South Korea.

“You open your window shades, and there he is on a billboard for Tag Heuer watches,” Heit told the Times. “He’s the star of their campaign.”

Per the Chronicle, Lee is set to play with South Korea’s World Baseball Classic team this year and could face off with some of his Giants teammates on Team USA if South Korea advances to Tokyo.

Per the Times, Heit said Giants officials told Major League Baseball they'd love to be part of a potential world tour program in South Korea.

“It’s pretty evident the support that the Giants have in my home country in South Korea,” Lee said, per Bay Area News Group. “It’s pretty cool to see the fans rallying around the team and getting excited about us over here in San Francisco. It’s really cool to see the Giants investing and putting a bigger focus in my home country, and I’m really excited to keep that momentum going.”

Image: From L to R: Willy Adames, Tony Vitello, Jung Hoo Lee/Major League Baseball

Related: SF Giants Season Preview: It’s the Dodgers’ World, Can Buster Posey Ruin It for Them?

The government shutdown is impacting air travel and may impact it even more in the coming week and beyond, as air traffic controllers miss paychecks and call in sick.

Flights in and out of the Bay Area were delayed Sunday due to a ground stop that was ordered at Los Angeles International Airport (LAX), due to a staffing shortage at the air traffic control tower there. As the LA Times reports, the ground stop, ordered by the FAA, began at 8:42 am, and was lifted at 10:30 am.

The stoppage reportedly impacted much of Southern California, and as KTVU reports, it impacted multiple flights in and out of SFO and Oakland, which were unable to take off for LAX until the stop was lifted.

A total of 22 airports reportedly saw staffing "triggers" occur the day before, on Saturday, which can lead to ground stops. As KABC reports, Newark International Airport, a major hub for United Airlines in New Jersey, there were also disruptions to takeoffs and landings on Sunday, and also at Southwest Florida International Airport in Fort Myers, Florida.

Staffing shortages and technical troubles in air-traffic control towers were already making headlines earlier this year before the federal government shutdown began impacting the controllers' paychecks.

Newark Airport experienced multiple radio system outages between April and May that created chaos in the air traffic there, and reports have been circulating about overworked air traffic controllers due to retirements and towers being short-staffed overall.

Around 13,000 air traffic controllers will be missing another paycheck this week, and while they are required to show up for work during a government shutdown, they can only hope they will receive retroactive pay once Congress gets back in session and approves it. The rise in controllers calling in sick may be due to their own stress and frustration at not being paid, and it may also be practical — they have to go work a second job to put food on the table.

Since the shutdown began on October 1, there have been 246 incidents of staffing problems at air traffic control facilities, as CNN reports.

Lack of staff led to the control tower at Burbank Airport shutting down completely in the first week of of the shutdown, for a six-hour period. During that period, pilots had to rely on radio communication with other pilots and a set of procedures for takeoffs and landings used for unmanned airports that led to multi-hour delays for flights in and out of the airport.

Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy went on Fox News Sunday to discuss the problem, once again trying to cast blame on Democrats for the shutdown. Governor Gavin Newsom's press office responded to news of the ground stop in LA, posting to X "Hell of a job @SecDuffy! Can't wait to see what you do with NASA."

Photo by Wilson Ye

28-year-old Leqiang Wang of San Mateo was arrested at LAX on Thursday after police found an arsenal of automatic rifles, silencers, and other firearms at Wang’s home while investigating Wang as a potential suspect in a stalking case.

According to the Chronicle, San Mateo police, who were investigating 28-year-old Leqiang Wang as a suspect in a prior case, obtained a warrant on Tuesday to search his home where they found an arsenal of automatic rifles, unserialized firearms, silencers, and firearm manufacturing items. KRON4 reports that Wang was a suspect in an incident on March 7 where a woman reported being followed by a man from San Francisco to San Mateo who then took photos of her car and returned to her neighborhood multiple times.

On Thursday, Los Angeles police arrested Wang at Los Angeles International Airport. Wang will be transported to San Mateo County and faces multiple gun charges. The investigation is ongoing.

Image: San Mateo Police Department

Yet another United Airlines plane departing San Francisco International Airport experienced system failure on Friday — the second within the past few days.

This Airbus 320 jet was headed to Mexico City, before an issue with the aircraft's hydraulic system, prompting an emergency landing at LAX, per the Chronicle. The plane reportedly took off from San Francisco around 1:00 p.m., and actually flew into Mexican airspace before doubling back to Los Angeles around 5:00 p.m.

United officials said that there were three hydraulic systems on the plane (some were backups), but an issue arose with one of the systems. After touching down at LAX, United rescheduled the Mexico City-bound passengers on another flight a few hours later, according to ABC7. There were 105 passengers and five crew members on board.

However, this latest incident comes after a United Airlines flight out of SFO lost a tire Thursday morning, and another United flight from Hawaii experienced engine failure before landing at SFO on Monday. The crew declared an emergency over the engine failure about an hour before landing, but it landed safely.

In fact, at least five United Airlines-involved incidents have occurred this week. Besides these three at SFO (which is a United hub), passengers were evacuated from a United flight after the plane rolled off the Houston airport runway Friday, plus the engine of United jet headed to Florida from Houston caught on fire midair, prompting an emergency landing, on Monday.

RELATED: Japan-Bound United Airlines Flight Out of SFO Loses Tire During Takeoff, Gets Diverted to LAX [SFist]

Feature image via Unsplash/Sung Jin Cho.

A mysterious man carrying both Russian and Israeli IDs, believed to be a Russian citizen, landed at LAX last month and seemed to be pretty evasive after he was detained by Customs & Border Patrol agents and subsequently questioned by the FBI.

The man, identified as Sergey Vladimirovich Ochigava, landed in Los Angeles on a Scandinavian Airlines flight from Copenhagen on November 4, with no plane ticket and no passport. Strangely, Ochigava had made it onto the Scandinavian Airlines flight and acted oddly onboard — sitting in a seat that was supposed to be unoccupied and then changing seats several times and ordering more than one meal — without sounding any alarms from flight attendants.

As the New York Times reports, Ochigava was questioned by federal agents on November 5 and gave an array of strange and evasive answers about where he had come from and why he was in Los Angeles.

He claimed to have a Ph.D. in economics and marketing, and said he "might have had" a plane ticket to the U.S., but he wasn't sure. He also claimed he hadn't slept in three days and said he "did not understand what was going on."

He claimed not to remember how he got through security without a ticket at Copenhagen's airport, and refused to explain how or why he ended up in Copenhagen.

According to an affidavit, Ochigava approached a Customs & Border Control agent at LAX on November 4 and claimed he had left his passport on the plane, but Scandinavian Airlines says no passport was found on the aircraft. Ochigava also allegedly asked for two meals during each of two meal services on the plane, and "at one point attempted to eat the chocolate that belonged to members of the cabin crew."

He's been charged in federal court with being a stowaway on an aircraft, a felony that comes with a possible five-year prison sentence, and he is due to start trial on December 26.

The case of course brings to mind the sad case of former Bay Area resident Marilyn Hartman, a woman in her 60s who, perhaps due to some mental health issues, was a serial stowaway on airplanes around the country between 2014 and 2019. She was ultimately remanded to a residential detention facility in Chicago after multiple arrests, and last we heard she had been arrested in 2021 after escaping the facility with an ankle monitor on and heading to O'Hare.

But in the case of Ochigava, there could of course be something more nefarious going on. He apparently only allowed federal agents to see six photos on his cellphone, and one showed an airport screen displaying flights going all over the world. Another image showed "screengrabs from a maps app of a hostel in Kiel, Germany, and street maps of 'an unknown foreign city,'" per the Times.

Photo: Maxence Pion

This report originally appeared on LAist.com

A Virgin America flight headed from Boston to L.A. Monday had to stop in Omaha because of an allegedly drugged man who was masturbating mid-flight, who later tried to open an exit door.

The Omaha Police Department says that 26-year-old Doug Adams of Woodside, California became increasingly frenzied during the flight, touching himself and attempting to open the emergency door, forcing the crew to land, NBC reports.

Christie O'Toole, a Virgin America spokesperson, said in a statement that the plane had to land because of a "medical incident involving a guest on board." However, Omaha Police say Adams' behavior was due to a drug-related mental breakdown, according to ABC.

Filmmakers Sam Slater and Paul Bernon (both producers of Drinking Buddies) were sitting in front of Adams during the flight, and said that Adams was wearing a hospital bracelet.

Slater, who also shot cellphone footage of Adams being taken off the plane in handcuffs by police in Omaha, told CBS that Adams was muttering about not wanting to be a violent person. Then he began arguing with a woman seated next to him after returning from the bathroom. After a doctor on the flight took Adam's blood pressure, the flight crew and two off-duty Boston police officers moved him to a seat by himself in the back of the plane.

That's when Adams began trying to open the emergency exit door. At one point, Slater tweeted that he helped restrain Adams.

Adams was taken to a nearby hospital after being removed from the plane, according the U.S. Attorney's Office.

If you live in San Francisco, you're more or less guaranteed to run in to Sean Penn at least once during your tenure. It's a rite of passage like drinking your first Fernet or spotting your first wild parrot. Unfortunately for Cuban actress Maria Conchita Alonso, who starred across from Penn in 1988's Colors, was less like a fun celebrity sighting and more like a public cursing match.

According to a report from the New York Post's always-scurrilous Page Six, Alonso ran in to Penn while picking up her mother (awww) at a lost luggage area at LAX. Alonso, who grew up in Venezuela, has decried Penn's public support of President Hugo Chavez in the past, so naturally an airport meeting would make a fine place to have a political debate. When Penn, who had just flown in from Haiti, declined to indulge her in a bit of debate, Alonso lashed out. (Humorous censorship, theirs):

I went back to my mother, and he started yelling at us,” Alonso told us. “I yelled back, ‘Communist [bleep]hole!’ Nearly 60 people were watching, shocked. My mother wanted to clap, but she couldn’t because she was in a wheelchair and she had a small dog in her lap.

Penn, meanwhile, claims he didn't recognize the actress he once shared a love scene with, even though he did recall she had been "saying a lot of things about [him] in the press. Alonso later apologized for calling Mr. Wright-Penn an asshole, but explained she did not regret calling him a communist.

Previously: Sean Penn Helped Free UC Hikers By Visiting Hugo Chavez
Here's a Look at Sean Penn's New Goth Movie. Also: What's Your Sean Penn Story?
[NYPost]

American Flight 442, bound for Miami, made an emergency landing at LAX today after the pilot "reported smoke and the smell of fuel in the cockpit." Egads.

All passengers are safe, according to CBS 5/AP, but it seems that "the plane was carrying hazardous material in its forward cargo area," which... isn't that unusual? Anyway, whether or not the material was the source of the smoke has yet to be confirmed.

This brings up a good question: Amtrak trains, yes or no? We've been meaning to take one down to SoCal, but are the classy? Or, well, klassy? Please advise.

This morning, SFO crews found a dead body lodged in the wheel well of the nose of a United plane coming in from Shanghai. It might have been a stowaway.

A woman was arraigned in Denver yesterday, after getting arrested on Monday for beating her kids on a Frontier Air flight that took off from SFO. Witnesses report that she seemed intoxicated on the flight, was yelling and hitting the kids, and then threw a drink at a flight attendant and then followed the attendant into the aisle while yelling and pointing. This lady's got our vote for the SF Board of Supes!

And we've got a new airline flying in! Starting today, you can start buying tickets on Virgin Air from SFO to LAX (starting at $44) or JFK (starting at $139). Flights to Dulles and Vegas are forthcoming.

On Friday, the U.S. Department of Transportation dotted the eyes and crossed the tees for Sir Richard Branson's airline, Virgin America, to begin flying out of SFO, which will actually be its home base. Huzzah, more local jobs! The company is planning a mid-summer launch.

The airline is billing itself as a "a new low fare U.S. airline," though the proof will be in the pudding; it seems to us that airline competition is more or less stagnant; everyone has low-cost flights available if you're willing to be flexible (at least for the flights we've taken in the past year or two).

The first flights will be between SFO and New York (JFK); eventually expanding service to LAX, Washington/Dulles, San Diego and Las Vegas by the end of its first year of operations.

Hey -- maybe we'll see some hot air balloon action soon in the states!

It's "all airlines, all the time" here on SFist.

After the lukewarm-to-good news of JetBlue flying out of SFO, we're greeted with some bad news: Frontier Airlines is vacating the premises--no more "commuter flights" to and from LAX.

It's a shame, really. This airline, from the four times we flew this route, appeared to be have everything that JetBlue is known for, minus the history of extended runway visits: Frontier is low-cost, friendly, and, yeah, has that 20-odd channels of DirectTV thing going for it. Plus each plane has a really cute animal on its tail.

Anyways, bad news for those of us for whom visiting L.A. is a semi-frequent and necessary evil. Hmmmm . . . what's that? Southwest and Virgin are coming soon? At least there'll be a few options besides the "majors."