Believe it or not, but we don’t have any strikes to report this week. Instead we found quite a few other (more?) interesting airport news stories from the U.S., the United Kingdom, Canada, Germany and India.

Let’s start with India where this week the country’s Civil Aviation Ministry granted five airports international status. In a Business Today article Finance Minister P Chidambram said the five airports have been upgraded to the international standards and that this declaration is expected to provide impetus to domestic or international tourism and contribute to economic development of the concerned regions. The five airports are Chaudhary Charan Singh airport in northern city Lucknow, Lal Bahadur Shastri airport in northern city Varanasi, southern cities of Mangalore, Tiruchirapalli and Coimbatore.

Progress was also made in Germany this week where Frankfurt Airport (FRA), Germany’s biggest hub, opened an extension of one of its two terminals on Tuesday as it seeks to boost capacity by six million passengers a year. Construction of the 800-metre long complex cost 700 million euros ($900 million) and took about four years, the airport’s management, Fraport, said in a statement which was reported in Business Recorder.

Over to North America where we picked up four stories this week: First up was Miami International Airport (MIA) which was announced to be the star of a new TV show. CBS reported that this week the Travel Channel, which usually features shows on spots where people travel to, has a new show on the people who get them there. “Airport 24/7: Miami” will give viewers a behind-the-scenes look at the workings of Miami International Airport. The first two episodes of the show premiered on Tuesday. Here’s the YouTube trailer:

Boston’s Logan International Airport (BOS) made the news in The Washington Post that wrote American Airlines said a Boston-to-Miami flight had to make an emergency landing at New York’s JFK airport (JFK) over the weekend due to a row of seats that became loose. The airline says it’s conducting an internal investigation to determine why the row of seats became loose.

Then just today we heard of a story from Canada where – according to the Toronto Sun – Montreal’s international airport (YUL) is investigating how a 9-year-old boy found detailed maps of its runway in a neighbourhood recycling bin. In the article the child said he saw a large roll of paper – as tall as him – in a recycling bin in the town of Sainte-Julie, just east of Montreal. Apparently the document was titled “Redevelopment of international and domestic runways, Phase 2A.”.

The last North American news concerned a fellow blogger’s challenge of the use of full-body scanners and thorough pat-downs at airport checkpoints. Reuters reported that the Supreme Court declined to take up Jonathan Corbett’s complaint that the Transportation Security Administration’s use of the screening techniques violated passengers’ protection against illegal searches under the Fourth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. The article continued by saying that Corbett, who maintains the “TSA Out of Our Pants!” blog, complained that the TSA lacked unilateral authority to adopt the procedures.

And finally we focus back on the old continent where Sky reported this week that London’s Mayor Boris Johnson has accused the Government of setting Britain on course for “economic catastrophe” by ducking decisions on airport expansion. It was quoted that Mr Johnson insisted a third runway at Heathrow was not a solution and that a four-runway airport in the Thames Estuary or possibly at Stansted (STN) was required.

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

[Photo from Flickr – Some rights reserved by rebeccaseung]