Laurel: To taking flight. More options are on the board for Pittsburgh International Airport.
Air travel has been frustrating lately. Flights have been canceled or delayed. Routes have disappeared. So have airlines. Prices have risen.
And so it is worth celebrating when an air carrier bucks those trends.
Southwest Airlines is adding a seasonal route between Pittsburgh and West Palm Beach while increasing service to other popular destinations, including Fort Myers, Miami and Cancún.
The expansion comes at a time when Pittsburgh gained Aer Lingus but lost the now-defunct Spirit Airlines. American Airlines suspended its Los Angeles route. In Westmoreland County, Spirit was Arnold Palmer Regional Airport’s only carrier, and its loss now threatens even charter flights.
More flights mean more than vacation opportunities. They connect more than cities. They make the region more accessible and more attractive.
Every new route is a plus for Western Pennsylvania.
Lance: To loss of friendship. The death of 22-year-old Lontae Smith is a study in sorrow for a crime that shouldn’t have happened, committed by someone trusted like a brother.
Sincere Kimbrough, 22, pleaded guilty to third-degree murder for the March 2024 shooting in Pittsburgh’s Chartiers City neighborhood. Testimony at sentencing told a story not of random violence but something more tragic. The two men were friends who grew up together.
Kimbrough ate meals in Smith’s home. He slept there. Smith’s mother welcomed him as family.
“I had a place in my heart for you,” Babe Brown-Smith said of her son’s killer.
But Kimbrough’s testimony skirted responsibility: “I’m sorry for what happened.”
Allegheny County Common Pleas Judge Elliot Howsie called out the failure.
“When you say something ‘happened,’ it’s like these events just occurred,” he said.
To be sincere is to be genuine. It is to be heartfelt. It is to mean what you say. The tragedy here is not simply that one young man killed another. It is that he accepted a deal for a five- to 10-year sentence without truly owning up to what he did or why.
Despite his name, Kimbrough’s plea was hard to call sincere.