Category Archives: Airports

Last news of 2011: Christchurch again, French strikes & free Wi-Fi

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!

Continue reading Last news of 2011: Christchurch again, French strikes & free Wi-Fi

Video of Amsterdam Schiphol’s banner vending machine

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: three news pairs & a redesign

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!

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This week: a cat & mouse game from down-under plus more

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.

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This week: some good, some bad and a baby

On the negative side, this week we found bankruptcy and strikes dominating the global airport news; yet on the positive side, helpful Singaporeans and a new born traveller in the USA made the headlines. Plus we’ve been very busy too as you might have seen with the release of our newest story on Wednesday where we wrote about the hidden “backstage action” of refuelling planes.

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A day at the airport: refuelling planes

Most people never really think about what is involved in getting a plane ready before take-off. One of those important jobs is refuelling the aircraft. It’s something the general public doesn’t get much insight about, so clearly I jumped at the opportunity when offered to shadow the refuelling operation for a few hours at Melbourne Airport (IATA: MEL).

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This week: Heathrow angst, Schiphol innovation & the bikini girl

Unexpectedly no Thanksgiving horror stories hit us this week, but we did receive a long number of other stories coming all the way from Thailand and Amsterdam. Angst surrounding the United Kingdom’s largest airport also made it into our round-up this week. And finally we found a story that’s been waiting to be published from Los Angeles. Well, sort of.

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This week: Thanksgiving plans, angry passengers and new technology

Okie dokie, let’s get this week’s news round-up going as we’ve got a lot to get through! Our tour will bring you to Singapore, Hong Kong, Los Angeles, Melbourne, Moscow and London. It’s obviously been a news week from around the world!

Continue reading This week: Thanksgiving plans, angry passengers and new technology

Changi Airport helps students to get a real-world experience

Being a student can be a lot of fun but when it comes to applying the learnt it can be a different story altogether as students often fail to see the direct practical application or they are finding it hard getting jobs where they can apply the newly gained knowledge. Now the Singapore Polytech (SP) has found a clever way around this by partnering with long-time innovation centric Changi Airport (IATA: SIN) in Singapore. The two provide a real-world experience for students through SPELL, a retail store wholly run by students.

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