Airports, Americas, Europe, In the News, Weekly

This week: Korean Air’s late departure, Atlanta’s second airport & more

We’re back after our extensive trip through the U.S. – watch this space for some upcoming posts! But back now to our weekly airport news round-up: This week started relatively quiet and then certainly picked up the pace with interesting airport news towards the end. So, here’s what we have for you for this week:

On Sunday a Korean Air flight from Dallas to Seoul made an emergency landing at Dallas-Fort Worth Airport (DFW) after problems during takeoff. The Dallas News wrote that Korean Air Flight 32 took off around 11:50 a.m. and soon after departure, its pilot reported an issue and said the plane needed to land, an airport spokesman said. The plane circled overhead for about 40 minutes to dump fuel and landed safely. No one was injured. A news reporter who was on the flight posted a picture of the fuel dump on her Facebook page – it’s worth checking out!

Atlanta, home of the world’s busiest airport, is in discussion of getting a second commercial airport. USA Today reported that the idea has been broached many times during the past two decades in Atlanta, currently the largest U.S. metro area to be served by a single airport for commercial passenger airline flights. It further outlined that the latest effort to develop a second airport in metro is now underway at a small airport northwest of Atlanta. Backers aim to bring in commercial airline flights and a cluster of aviation-related businesses, though the project faces a significant hurdles — including infrastructures needs as well as opposition from Atlanta-based Delta and the city of Atlanta.

Then, on Friday several flights have been diverted or cancelled as a result of an incident at Britain’s Cardiff Airport (CWL). The BBC reported that during the landing of Aer Lingus flight EI3296 from Dublin, a tyre burst occurred and the aircraft came to a stop on the runway. The airport runway was closed while the recovery of the aircraft was underway. It reopened two hours later which lead to several flights being diverted or cancelled.

Lighter news reached us from New York’s JFK Airport. According to the NY Daily News the airport is the latest hub to host a farmer’s market in an effort to tout locally grown products. At the end of the month, low-cost airline JetBlue plans to set up a pop-up market in its Terminal 5 that will feature farm-fresh produce from the fall harvest like pumpkins, apples and corn. What a great idea!

And to finish this week off, here’s a link to some amazing ‘then and now’ pictures of Chinese Airports. Published in the Business Insider Australia, the essay reads that the photos reveal just how much progress China has made, from an aviation backwater to one of the most important markets in the industry. Check them out here.

That’s all for this week – safe travels!

[Picture from Wikipedia – some rights reserved]