Wow, what a big week for LateDeparture this one was! On Monday we announced the winner story from our Airport News of the Year award voting process. As you probably heard by now, the story about Jack the Cat who was lost at the JFK airport won the title. Subsequently many of you commented on the sad fate of Jack and reinforced on your views about who was to blame. If the award did one thing, then it showed that some airlines still have a long way to go in regards to handling incidents like this one.
Well, well, finger-point, finger-point… yes, okay we admit it, we’re about 24 hours late with our weekly news round-up. But hey, better late than never or isn’t that what they say? Whatever; let’s not get into excuses but rather focus on the task at hand.
FlightStats, the leader in flight information services announced the winners of the 2011 Airport On-Time Performance Awards (OPS). In its third edition, the award honours airlines and airports for their performance. As airports are (obviously) our thing, we want to focus on them. According to FlightStats, the winning airports are recognized for delivering the highest percentage of departure from the gates less than15 minutes after the published scheduled departure time. So without further ado, here are this year’s winners:
Winner – Departure performance among major international airports: Seattle-Tacoma International Airport (SEA)
Seattle, WA, USSEA achieved a 2011 on-time performance record of 86.28%. The average on-time performance was 71.02%% for this category. This is the second year in a row SEA has won the award. “The investments we’ve made improving our facilities and operations continue to pay off,” say’s Mark Reis of Sea-Tac Airport. “Credit goes to the efficiencies built into the airfield, terminal and runway operations as well as the terrific work from the entire team of port employees and our operational partners.”
Winner – Departure performance among major North American airports: Salt Lake City International Airport (SLC)
Salt Lake City, UT, USSLC achieved a 2011 on-time performance record of 86.55%. The average on-time performance was 76.67% for this category. Portland International Airport (PDX) was a very close second in achieving an on-time performance of 86.38%.
Winner – Departure performance among major European airports: Oslo Airport (OSL)
Gardermoen, NOOSL achieved a 2011 on-time performance record of 87.17%. The average on-time performance was 73.42% for this category. This is the second year in a row OSL has won the award.
Winner – Departure performance among major Asian airports: Haneda Airport (HND)
Tokyo, JPHND achieved a 2011 on-time performance record of 95.05%. The average on-time performance was 55.03% for this category.
Winner – Departure performance among regional North American airports: Keahole Airport (KOA)
Kona, HI, USKOA achieved a 2011 on-time performance record of 92.57%. The average on-time performance was 80.90% for this category. This is the second year in a row KOA has won the award.
Winner – Departure performance among regional European airports: Bordeaux Airport (BOD)
Bordeaux, FRBOD achieved a 2011 on-time performance record of 90.13%. The average on-time performance was 78.66% for this category.
Winner – Departure performance among regional Asian airports: Itami Airport (ITM)
Osaka, JPITM achieved a 2011 on-time performance record of 95.60%. The average on-time performance was 69.74% for this category.
This week we have three main stories for you plus a little bonus one to finish off. Two stories are again related to this time of the year and come from the same country versus the other two both focus on airport expansions in the wider sense. Before we lift the curtain though, we want to update you on our Airport News of the Year voting feature. We’ve received quite a few votes this week and so far the “lost cat” and the “wrong airport” stories are neck on neck, where as the “rivalry” story is lagging a bit behind. There’s one week left for you to vote, so make sure you have your say before the time runs out!
As another busy airport week is ending we have snow, strikes, brains, one exotic animal and new and exciting airport art for you. But first, the most exciting day in the history of airport news must have been Monday when we launched our reader campaign for you to vote for the Airport News of the Year. Make sure you check it out, we’ve secured some awesome prizes for a lucky few!
Only seven more days remain in 2011 and it’s therefore time for us at LateDeparture to pack up and enjoy a little (well deserved?!) break. But of course, we won’t leave you before we put another, final round of airport news in front of you. Besides that, you should already get excited for coming back to LateDeparture in January as not only will we continue to review airports and bring you weekly airport related news, but also we will be presenting you with the very first Airport News of the Year Award in early January. The best of all this is, that you can vote for the news you liked best and as a result win some awesome prizes! So stay tuned and get ready for a big 2012!
A few weeks ago we reported in our weekly news the arrival of the world’ first airport self-serving banner printing machine at Amsterdam’s Schiphol Airport (IATA: AMS). According to the Reuters report then the airport has the world’s first vending machine capable of printing out personalised giant canvas banners in just a few minutes. Apparently you can pick your message, whether that is “Mama = sweet” (as pictured), “I love you”, “Will you marry me?”, or anything else that makes you stand out from the crowd, choose the font and background design, pay between four and 15 euros ($19.98) depending on the length of the banner, and hit the button.
Reading a press release and seeing it in action are often two things, so ever since we read that story we wondered how this service really worked and – in true LateDeparture style – we didn’t rest until we got hold of a video proof of the ingenious machine.
While the video is in Dutch, the lovely guys at Schiphol provided us with English subtitles. But who cares anyway as pictures speak a million words:
Case rested. We now we only wonder who will be first to print out a large “LateDeparture.com rocks!” banner? Whoever it is, a fabulous prize will be awaiting them (photo proof required)…
[Pictures and video from Schiphol Airport – all rights reserved]
This week we’ve done something different by pairing up the airport news of the week. Before we get into it, we would like to make an announcement of our own: if you’re reading this on LateDeparture, you might have noticed that we changed our site layout quite dramatically. The old layout has seen its days, so we redesigned the whole thing with the aim to make it a lot more user friendly and give you a better experience. Let us know what you think!
Pre-Christmas time is definitely a busy period for everyone and it’s therefore no surprise that airports around the planet stirred up a lot of headlines this week as well. On Tuesday we brought you a piece about the newly proposed Thames Hub in the United Kingdom yet today we have a cat and mouse game from down-under, environmental impacts in Scotland and Beijing as well as two tabloid stories from the United States for you.
First it seemed all just a distraction from the failed third runway expansion for London Heathrow but more recently, the concept of an entirely new airport located in the Thames estuary is gaining momentum. This is the time for us to investigate and report on this idea in more detail.
