Rome's Ciampino Airport
Airlines, Airports, Europe, In the News, Weekly

This week: Bad week for Ryanair in Rome, when to get to the airport & more

More interesting airport related stories reached us from across the world this week. Here’s what we found:

It’s interesting how sometimes we don’t hear any significant news from a particular airport for ages and then all of a sudden there are two reports coming in during the same week. This is exactly what happened this week with Rome’s Ciampino Airport (CIA), located about 12km southeast of central Rome and Ryanair’s hub to the Italian capital: The Associated Press reported via Aviation Pros that passengers at the airport are facing long lines and flight cancellations because of a wildcat strike by baggage handlers. According to the article about 850 workers of Groundcare, one of seven private companies that handle unloading baggage and cargo at Rome airports, are striking to recover back pay. Groundcare recently filed for bankruptcy protection.

It was certainly a bad week for the Italian operation of Ryanair as the second news from the same airport was about and investigation that is under way after a plane of the budget airline rolled backwards and crashed into an airport building, destroying its tail wing. The Daily Mail reported that a Ryanair plane has been left with £200,000 worth of damage to its rear stabiliser after it rolled backwards 40 metres crashing into an airport fire station. The force of the impact tore apart the ‘tail wing’ of the £72m Boeing 737 at Rome Ciampino Airport yesterday. Luckily no one got hurt as the accident happened after all passengers and crew disembarked.

Then, sometimes we receive links to interesting articles that don’t rely to some current affairs, but are more of investigative or – like in this case – educational content. The Business Insider this week published a highly interesting article where a mathematician explains what time you should get to the airport before your flight. Surely, at some point you’ve wondered what the answer to that question is too. Well, in short, the article suggests that if you’ve never missed a plane, you’re spending too much time at airports. The rest is a bit more complicated, but it’s worth a read!

Moving to England where on Wednesday London Heathrow’s new Terminal 2 (LHR) had it’s big day and opened to the public. The BBC wrote that the first flight, a United Airlines from Chicago, arrived at 05:49 BST and passengers were greeted by staff in Beefeater costumes. The airport will open in stages to avoid the chaos in 2008 when Terminal 5 opened and staff struggled to cope with the computer and baggage systems.

And to finish the week, we’ve got something calming for you. Like San Francisco Airport, Helsinki Airport (HEL) launched a yoga class as part of a new concept testing out new services that are designed to make traveling through the airport less stressful and more interesting to passengers, especially for transfer passengers who may need stay longer in the airport to wait for their connecting flights. Apart from Yoga, the project includes pop-up restaurants, a crash course on Finnish coffee culture and more, wrote PSFK.

That’s all for this week – safe travels!

[Photo via Wikipedia from Raboe001 –  some rights reserved]