It’s been one of those odd weeks where one particular news story just didn’t go away; more about that later. In other news we found bits and pieces from the US (this time San Francisco and Denver made the cut) as well as our almost surely reoccurring news from England.

Let’s start with the elephant in the room: It was the Frankfurt Airport (IATA: FRA) strike that just seemed to stick around like a bad smell for the entire week. If you look back at our Twitter feed, you discover that we wrote almost daily about it. Yesterday then Reuters wrote that Fraport, the airport’s operator failed to to reach a pay deal. This pretty much means there’s a high likelihood of continued strikes.

In other European news we heard this week from our friends in the United Kingdom that high-tech eye scanners have been scrapped at two airports and are now closed to anyone not already registered as the UK Border Agency has said. The Press Association article revealed that the future of the Iris Recognition Immigration System (Iris), criticised for adding to rather than cutting delays, is being reviewed and it has already been scrapped at Manchester and Birmingham airports. Iris has been closed to all new applicants since last year but will remain open for registered passengers at terminals 1, 3, 4 and 5 at Heathrow Airport (IATA: LHR) and Gatwick North (IATA: LGW) until after the Olympic and Paralympic Games this summer.

Over in the US, the Washington Post wrote on Thursday that strong wind gusts delayed flights arriving in Denver for part of the day, downed power lines and trees, and fueled two wild-land fires in Boulder County. The article detailed that for part of Wednesday day, flights arriving at Denver International Airport (IATA: DEN) could only approach from the west as winds gusted up to 40 mph. That delayed arrivals an average of 1 1/2 hours before the wind shifted.

And finally a woman in a wheelchair caused major delays at San Francisco International Airport (IATA: SFO) on Saturday. According to the article in the Los Angeles Times the woman caused a bomb scare and triggered the evacuation of Boarding Area C, which serves Delta and Frontier Airlines flights. The article revealed that the threat turned out to be an oxygen tank that a woman in a wheelchair had placed in her carry-on baggage.

That’s all we have for you this week. Safe travels!

[Picture from Flickr – Some rights reserved by gynti_46]