This week has been very busy for one country in the Southern Hemisphere: Australia. In one of the busiest week’s in the country’s annual calendar, when school holidays are in full swing and the Grand Final of the footy and rugby leagues are played out, the Australian aviation industry went through a lot of turbulence.

First, on Tuesday, customs staff walked off their jobs for a few hours over a pay dispute. The same happened again in Sydney (IATA: SYD: LD reviewed) on Thursday as reported in the Herald Sun. As if this wasn’t enough, baggage handlers walked off their jobs on Friday morning for an hour and bad weather in Melbourne (IATA: MEL; LD reviewed) led to additional long delays. In case of the latter, Qantas – for the first time – even used an Airbus A380 to clear the backlog of passenger flying from Melbourne to Sydney, reported the Sydney Morning Herald.

Then, for the second time in two months, we received news of a power failure that darkened an international airport. Last time it was Delhi’s new Terminal 3 (IATA: DEL) – we wrote about it – this time it happened at Juarez International Airport in Mexico City (IATA: MEX). According to The Washington Post, the power outage lead to a diversion of an unspecified number of flights.

On Thursday TechCrunch let us know that Microsoft’s search engine, Bing, launched airport maps for 42 US cities. According to the article the service lets you see inside airports in order to locate terminals, check-in counters, restrooms, shops, restaurants, baggage claim areas, information desks and more. More airports are to follow with time.

And finally to our odd news of the week. We couldn’t decide on the winner this week, hence we’re going to present both to you: First up was the news from WSBT who wrote that Atlanta police shut down parts of the baggage claim area at Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport (IATA: ATL) on Monday afternoon after they received reports of a suspicious package. It turned out that it was a bag of fish!

Second up was the news about Marlborough Airport in Massachusetts (IATA: MXG) seeking compensation for $676,048 in damage that resulted from a visit by Barack Obama. The Boston Business Journal wrote Obama landed at the field on April 1, 2010, so he could visit an emergency bunker in the state.

That’s all we have for this week – safe travels everyone!

[Photo from Flickr – Some rights reserved by Christopher Neugebauer]