Airports, Americas, Europe, In the News, Weekly

This week: Denver evacuated over a joke, Teddy returned with a message & more

We’re back from our extended leave. This week it’ll be just a quick update though – here’s what we found:

The Daily Mail reported this week that a wedding gift was no joke to TSA agents checking bags in a screening room at Denver International Airport (DEN).  According to the article an agent watching an X-ray monitor spotted wax and fuses labeled, ‘TNT,’ inside a checked bag at the airport and thought the baggage was cause for alarm. TSA issued a statement on Instagram saying there was a 20-minute evacuation while bomb specialists checked the bag. It goes to show, you shouldn’t joke with such things and think before you fly – especially in the USA.

Over to London where we know that London City Airport (LCY) is up for sale (we reported it). This week it emerged through the Telegraph that a secretive Chinese investment fund is understood to be poised to enter the £2bn bidding war for London City Airport. Gingko Tree, a division of the Chinese state’s foreign exchange regulator, is believed to be in talks with Australia’s Macquarie about teaming up to make an offer for the East London airport. […] a number of consortia have started to form, including a group that boasts the support of the sovereign wealth fund of Kuwait and Canadian giant Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan. An information memorandum on the sale is expected to be issued later this month, with first-round bids for City likely to be submitted by the end of November.

And to finish this week off, we found a cute story from Canada. There Huffington Post wrote that losing your luggage – or your best fluffy friend – is never fun when you’re on a trip. But it’s not so bad at Toronto Pearson International Airport (YYZ), where staff recently went above and beyond in returning a lost teddy bear to its owner after he went missing. By the time the Steel family realized they had left behind RaRa, a good friend of four-year-old Phoebe, it was too late: They were already home in Saskatoon, Canada. The family posted a photo of RaRa on the airport’s Facebook page, and staff were able to find and identify the bear. But before he arrived home, he went on one epically adorable journey, documented on the newspaper’s website.

That’s all for now – safe travels everyone.

[Title photo via Wikimedia – TastyPoutine – some rights reserved]