Jerry Meekins, who is battling cancer, has a new foe: Spirit Airlines.

Meekins recently purchased an airline ticket from Spirit Airlines to visit his daughter in New Jersey. “Two weeks after I bought the ticket, I found out I was terminal,” Meekins, a Vietnam veteran, told NBC affiliate WFLA-TV in Tampa, Fla.

Read the original report from WFLA-TV

Meekins says his doctors advised him not to fly. But when he asked Spirit Airlines for a refund, they refused.

When contacted by WFLA-TV, Spirit Airlines issued this statement: “Our reservations are non-refundable, which means we don’t do refunds and we are not going to issue Mr. Meekins a refund.”

You know that pre-flight announcement urging you to shut down your cell phone before takeoff? Perhaps it should be mandatory in the cockpit as well.

It turns out a pilot’s chiming phone onboard a Jetstar flight was part of a chain of events that ultimately forced the crew to execute a “missed approach” before landing on the second try, the Australian Transport Safety Bureau found in a report released on Thursday.

The crew was distracted “to the point where their situation awareness was lost, decision making was affected and inter-crew communication degraded,” the report found.

NASA mounted space shuttle Discovery on a jumbo jet Sunday (April 15), in preparation for the retired orbiter’s delivery to the Smithsonian. The paired air- and spacecraft are expected to depart Florida for Washington, D.C., on Tuesday morning (April 17), weather permitting.

Discovery’s mating to the Shuttle Carrier Aircraft (SCA), NASA’s modified Boeing 747 jetliner, came a day later than the space agency had planned. On Saturday, wind gusts at the Kennedy Space Center’s Shuttle Landing Facility set the 167,000 pound (75,300 kilogram) Discovery swaying under its lift sling, posing a risk that it could impact the Mate Demate Device (MDD), the gantry-like steel structure used to hoist the shuttle onto the jetliner.

Updated at 8:24 a.m. ET: MOSCOW — Thirty-two people were killed but 11 were rescued alive from a plane crash in Siberia, Russia, an official reportedly said Monday.

The ATR 72, a twin-engine, turbo-prop plane, with 43 people aboard, crashed some 18 to 22 miles from the western Siberian city of Tyumen, Emergency Situations Ministry spokeswoman Irina Andrianova said.

The mid-range plane belonging to Russian airline UTair crashed after taking off from Tyumen on a flight to Surgut, an oil town further north in Siberia.

There were 39 passengers and four crew on board, according to preliminary information, Andrianova said.

Updated March 27, 10:50 a.m. ET — U.S. legacy and low-fare airlines have agreed to increase airfares by up to $10 on roundtrip flights.

Airlines have attempted five fare increases so far this year, and three have stuck.

In the second quarter of 2011, prices jumped twice, Rick Seaney, CEO of FareCompare.com, said in an e-mail. “I expect to see something similar this year as we head into the historically busy summer travel season which is likely to be much busier this year.”

“Consumers who are traveling through early June should be shopping now and holding off a bit for late June onward,” Seaney said, as airlines haven’t yet unveiled their cheapest prices. “Those that wish to lock in tickets today should recall the drop in oil prices last summer.”

(CNN) — Thousands of travelers have been left in the lurch around the world after the carrier Air Australia went into administration and grounded its fleet Friday.

“It currently appears that there are no funds available to meet operational expenses so flights will be suspended immediately,” the company said in joint statement Friday with its newly appointed administrators, KordaMentha.

About 4,000 passengers in total have been left stranded in Hawaii, Thailand, Indonesia and Australia as a result of the suspension, said Michael Smith, a spokesman for KordaMentha.

“It also appears highly unlikely there will be any flights in the short to medium term,” the airline’s statement said, advising passengers to make alternative arrangements.

DETROIT (Reuters) – A federal judge is set to decide on Thursday if the Nigerian man who pleaded guilty to trying to blow up a U.S. airliner bound for Detroit in 2009 will spend the rest of his life in prison.

A bomb hidden in the underwear of Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, now 25, caused a fire but failed to explode on a Delta Airlines flight carrying 289 people on December 25, 2009.

U.S. District Judge Nancy Edmunds will decide whether Abdulmutallab should be sentenced to life in prison as called for under existing sentencing guidelines.

For military personnel far from home for the holidays . . . few sounds are more welcome than the words MAIL CALL. And dedicated volunteers here on the home front are working hard to make sure that none our troops anywhere in the world is disappointed. Our Cover Story is reported now by Tracy Smith:

For a few days every year, hundreds of volunteers crowd a National Guard armory in Van Nuys, Calif., making boxes bound for war.

They’re packed with little bits of home: new toothbrushes . . . DVDs . . . Girl Scout cookies . . . hand-knit scarves . . . things that can make life in the combat zone easier, or at least bearable.

The name on the side says it all: Operation Gratitude.

When Tracy Smith asked if there were still a need for care packages since the U.S. has withdrawn troops from Iraq and Afghanistan, Carolyn Blashek – founded Operation Gratitude eight years ago – said, “There’s absolutely still a need.

RENO, Nev. (AP) — As thousands watched in horror, a World War II-era fighter plane competing in a Nevada event described as a car race in the sky suddenly pitched upward, rolled and did a nose-dive toward the crowded grandstand.

The plane, flown by a 74-year-old veteran Hollywood stunt pilot, then slammed into the concrete in a section of VIP box seats and blew to pieces in front the pilot’s family and a tight-knit group of friends who attend the annual event in Reno.

“It absolutely disintegrated,” said Tim O’Brien of Grass Valley Calif., who attends the races every year. “I’ve never seen anything like that before.”

New York (CNN) — Thousands gathered Sunday morning at New York’s Ground Zero, stood still in silence, some crying as they listened to the names of victims of the September 11, 2001 attacks were read aloud.

“They were our neighbors, our friends, our wives, children and parents,” said New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who, along with President Barack Obama, helped lead the commemoration on the 10th anniversary of the attacks.

The solemn ceremony at the site of the World Trade Center came amid a heavy security presence permeating the area in lower Manhattan, as authorities continued their search for possible plotters of another terrorist strike.