Airports

This week: Fighter jet escorts plane to Stansted, dubious Wi-Fi & more

It’s been a rather slow week here at our LateDeparture news desk. Nonetheless, we did manage to find a few interesting airport related news articles:

On Wednesday the Telegraph wrote that  two RAF fighters triggered a sonic boom across a large area of South East England when they intercepted a foreign aircraft which was “causing concern”. According to the article the Typhoons were scrambled to escort a Russian-made Antonov An-26 cargo airliner from Latvia into Stansted Airport (STN). Police later said that the incident occurred as a result of a “loss of communication with the aircraft”. Having spoken to the three passengers on board they agreed that the plane could continue its journey to Birmingham.

The next news could nearly be funny. Business Insider reported that a flight from Los Angeles to London was delayed on Sunday night after a passenger on board the aircraft discovered a Wi-Fi hotspot named “Al-Quida Free Terror Nettwork.” The American Airlines flight was forced to return to the gate at LAX after a passenger expressed concern to a flight attendant. It’s believed that he spotted the suspiciously named hotspot on his phone while searching for Wi-Fi networks. One of our Twitter news readers had this – what we find quite funny – response to this news article:

Not funny at all was the incident that happened in Texas last Thursday and was reported this week by The Daily Mail and others. According to the article a homophobic passenger at a Texas airport had to be subdued by a group of spectators on Thursday after he began bullying and assaulting a man waiting to board his flight. Footage on YouTube of the brawl at Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport (DFW) shows a man teasing another passenger for wearing a pink shirt at Gate 30 in Terminal C. The unprovoked ringleader of the fight can be seen removing his jacket as he continues to shout at the man in the pink shirt. All of it was captured on camera.

And now to a lighter article as our final news bite for this week. Did we write bite? That’s pretty much half the article. Basically, Rocketnews 24 this week reported of a (hilarious) vending machine at Japan’s Fukuoka Airport (FUK). What does it do? It sells fresh crepes. Yep. Read and see it for your self here.

Safe travels!

[Photo Credit: “The Wanderer’s Eye Photography” via Compfight cc]