Africa, Airports, Americas, Europe, In the News, Weekly

This week: Boston’s winter struggle, wild boar in Madrid & more

Let’s not loose any time and dig straight into this week’s airport news which has been a fairly colourful one if you ask us. Here’s the overview:

We tweeted twice about Boston this week and both times the cause of the airport delays were the same: the ongoing, harsh winter. Earlier in the week the Boston Globe wrote that about 70 percent of flights have been canceled at [Boston ] Logan Airport (BOS) Monday, marking the third time in as many weeks that airlines have halted hundreds of daily flights due to major storms. Then just today we heard from CBS Local reporting that several hundred in and out of Boston have already been canceled with another blizzard set to hit Massachusetts. Massport said on Saturday that more than 250 flights at Logan Airport have already been canceled and no flights will arrive or depart from the airport on Sunday morning. Let’s hope for a better week coming up!

The United States were again in the news when we heard from USA Today that a prisoner being transported through the Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport (DFW) was shot Friday by an officer accompanying him after an altercation. The officer and the prisoner got into a fight in a restroom near Gate 8 in Terminal C, and the prisoner was shot in the hand, a spokesman said. No one else was injured and the airport’s operations continued as normal.

The next news didn’t really come as a surprise as it was pre-announced: Reuters reported on Monday that the German trade union Verdi has called on security personnel to go on strike at three German regional airports — Hamburg, Stuttgart and Hannover — on Monday, leading airline Lufthansa to cancel 18 planned flights. The strike is intended to increase pressure over stalled wage negotiations in three German federal states, Verdi said in a statement on Sunday. Hamburg Airport (HAM) said many of its passengers, which average 40,000 per day, would be affected, with significant delays at security checkpoints.

We’re staying in Europe for our next article which – we find – is slightly amusing. FoxNews Latino reported that Spain’s airport authority says a wild boar (similar to the one pictured in the title photo) that broke through a perimeter fence at Madrid’s international airport (MAD) caused runways to be shut briefly and two landings to be delayed. The beast set off security alarms late Friday and when cameras focused on the spot, operators observed it turning around and loping off through the hole it had made, the article said. Newspaper El País reported the captain aboard Iberia flight 3179 inbound from London told passengers an animal had “surprisingly” forced him to abort a landing approach.

Moving across the Mediterranean Sea where Tuesday this week wasn’t great for travellers flying in and out of Egypt. Reuters reported that Egypt’s two main airports suspended landings and redirected flights when a dust storm severely reduced visibility, forcing two planes to make emergency landings in Cairo (CAI).

And to finish the week off – plus since it’s still Valentines Day in some parts of the world when we write this – we found this topical article in USA Today: An 8-foot heart is set up in the atrium at Atlanta Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport (ATL) for fun photo ops and selfies that the airport is encouraging you share with the hashtag #ATLlovesU. ATL also plans to hand out 23,000 pieces of candy by the time Valentine’s Day is over.

That’s all for now – safe travels everyone!

[Title photo ‘Wild Boar #WildlifeWednesday’ by Allan, through Flickr – some rights reserved]