Airports, Americas, Europe, In the News, Weekly

This week: Rome’s miserable year continues & more

It’s been a moderately busy airport week. Here are our headlines:

Reuters was spot on with its headline about Rome’s Fiumicino Airport (FCO) this week: How unlucky can an airport be, it read. The reason for this headline was because first, a fire in May reduced operations at Fiumicino airport for more than two months. On Wednesday, a forest fire caused cancellations and delays, and on Thursday a black-out left much of it without power for an hour. And according to the article […] its biggest tenant, national carrier Alitalia, has threatened to move its hub elsewhere unless airport operator ADR does more to improve infrastructure and services. Alitalia CEO Silvano Cassano said the airline, which operates about 50 percent of flights at Fiumicino, had avoided polemics while the airport was recovering from the May fire in a terminal but made clear it was now taking the gloves off.

Moving to New York where CBS News wrote that a year after comparing New York’s LaGuardia Airport (LGA) to “some Third World Country,” Vice President Joe Biden helped unveil an ambitious plan Monday to rebuild its collection of aging terminals into a modern, unified hub while easing congestion by doubling the space available for planes to operate. “I wish everything I said that was truthful but controversial would turn out this well,” he joked during the announcement with New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo. The overhaul would remake the entire footprint of the airport, which is shoehorned onto a small, oddly-shaped property of about 680 acres on the shore of the East River. The space is a fraction of what’s used at other airports around the country handling similar passenger loads, and there is no room to expand it.

And lastly news from Dallas through ABC News: It was a rough afternoon for air travel at Dallas/Fort Worth Airport (DFW) [on Thursday]. One plane was forced to evacuate and another experienced a landing gear tire fire in separate incidents, officials said. An American Airlines flight reported possible smoke in the cabin and a Spirit Airlines flight experienced a fire in one of the landing gear tires. The American Airlines flight, from Dallas to Chicago, was ready for takeoff when the incident occurred. “American Airlines Flight 1658, from Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport (DFW) to Chicago O’Hare International Airport (ORD) deplaned using emergency exits at gate A14 because of possible smoke in the cabin,” American Airlines said in a statement. “Our fleet service team was still on the ramp and assisted passengers and crew with a successful evacuation of the aircraft.” The flight was carrying 141 passengers and a crew of five. The airline says three people sustained minor injuries during evacuation.

That’s all for this week – safe travels.

[Title photo by “Rom Fiumicino 2011-by-RaBoe-02” by Ra Boe / Wikipedia. Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 de via Wikimedia Commons.]