This week we saw airport news all the way from Beijing, Los Angeles, Manchester and once again even from Australia. Let’s start with that: On Wednesday Tiger Airways Australia’s grounding received an extension until end of July. It has now also finally stopped its ticket sales, reported the Wall Street Journal.
Continue reading This week’s airport events: Carmageddon alert & a flamingo
It’s been another busy week for airports around the world. And once again we have seen the full spectrum of news articles coming in: everything from small animals delaying flights at one of the busiest airports in the world to an “animal-named” airline being grounded due to safety concerns. Oh and then there’s the one with new bathrooms too. But let’s start at the beginning:
Continue reading This week’s airport events: turtles, tigers and more
A recent article from the UK’s Daily Mail caught our eyes as it claims people find airports as stressful as moving house. The article claims it questioned 2,000 [British] holidaymakers of which 9 per cent – or almost four million in the wider travelling population – now avoid flying because of airport stress including flight delays, mislaid belongings and getting to the gate on time.
This week Paris put on a good show by hosting the 49th International Air Show at Le Bourget Airport (IATA: LBG), 11km northeast of Paris. While the usual purchase orders of new aircraft made the rounds throughout the week, EADS, the parent company of Airbus announced its details of a hypersonic transport concept cutting air travel times down significantly as reported by FlightGlobal and others. It is said that the plane could cut the Tokyo-Los Angeles journey to as little as 2h 20min.
Continue reading This week’s airport events: the show, protests & more
It’s surely been a week from hell for many travellers in Australia and New Zealand as the ash cloud from the Puyehue volcano, high in Chile’s Andes, disrupted air traffic first in New Zealand, then over in Australia in Hobart (IATA: HBA), Melbourne (IATA: MEL; LD reviewed) and Adelaide (IATA: ADL; LD reviewed) before moving further east and affecting Perth in Western Australia (IATA: PER) later in the week. Interesting was that there were massive differences whether flights were cancelled or not depending on the individual airline. Qantas took the cautious approach and grounded most of its flights on affected routes whereas its competitors Virgin Australia and Tiger Airways argued they could take routes avoiding the ash or fly below the cloud. In an email to its frequent fliers, Qantas CEO Alan Joyce backed his airlines decision on the fact that “unlike the meteorological authorities in Europe, Australia’s [Volcanic Ash Advisory Centre] VAAC does not have the ability to calculate ash density so we are unable to access definitive measurements.”
Continue reading This week’s airport events: more ash, glitches and pranks
Little Britain stars Matt Lucas and David Walliams return to make a new US television appearance in their airport “mockumentary”, Come Fly With Me on BBC America. The new series starting this Saturday features the duo as they play almost 50 characters found in a fictional airport terminal. A few weeks back we wrote an article about the show being mostly filmed at Stansted airport (IATA: STN; LD reviewed), 48km (30mi) outside of London.
Continue reading Little Britain’s Airport mockumentary premiers on BBC America
Frequent travellers and residents in London already love it: the iris scanner that awaits you for checking your identity upon entering the United Kingdom. The system aptly called IRIS (which stands for “iris recognition immigration system”) is very popular there and certainly makes immigration procedures a lot quicker. Now IATA, the International Air Transport Association unveiled a new technology at their annual meeting this week which could cut the time it takes to clear security checks at airports from the current 35-minute average down to seconds while it also dramatically improves security.
Continue reading New Iris Scanners to speed up airport security
It’s been a rather uneventful week in airport news terms. But that, of course, doesn’t mean we can’t present you with some interesting and some juicy aviation stories this week! First of all, the spotlight is put on a nation that’s not regularly in the news and most certainly not with aviation stories: Mongolia. This week Passenger Terminal Today revealed hat the landlocked nation has agreed with the government of Japan on a US$270 million soft loan, repayable over 40 years, to build a new airport to service Mongolia’s capital Ulaanbaatar. The city’s current airport, Chinggis Khaan International Airport (IATA: ULN; pictured) suffers from occasional high winds and has a relatively short runway unsuitable for 747s and larger aircraft.
Continue reading This week’s airport events: Mongolia, a flirt and a proposal
It was easy to pick this week’s biggest airport event. And no, it wasn’t the free roaming airport bear in Montana nor was it the airport toilet song writing artist. More of that later. It – of course – was all about the volcanic ash cloud over Britain and mainland Europe. After the eruption of Icelandic volcano “Grímsvötn” on Sunday evening, we posted an article on Tuesday asking whether this would bring down much of Europe’s air traffic again similar to last year. Luckily the outcome so far wasn’t as grim as widely forecasted. The Wall Street Journal even calls the threat to be entirely over while other media aren’t all too sure yet.
Continue reading This week’s airport events: a volcano, a bear and Taylor Swift
Well, well – don’t they say what goes around comes around? After last year’s disastrous effect on European air travels caused by the ash cloud from the erupting Icelandic volcano Eyjafjallajökull, many voices were heard on how to better deal with such an event the next time it occurs. Last year the resulting airspace closures cost economies world-wide billions of dollars, no wonder everyone is eager to handle the problem better this time.
Continue reading Is Europe facing another Volcanic flight cancellation debacle?
