Category Archives: Various

This week: strike pairs, renaming pairs and a new runway

This was an amazingly busy week in airport newsland! We found articles about the renaming of two airports, strike updates from two countries and an improvement project given the green lights. Oh and then there’s the pope too, but more about that later.

Continue reading This week: strike pairs, renaming pairs and a new runway

This week: Vancouver wins, Bangkok loses and London is in question

This week we have three news stories that have all one thing in common: the airports the articles are about are regulars of our little weekly news round-ups. We’re talking about Vancouver, Bangkok and candidate number one – drum roll please – Heathrow Airport.

Continue reading This week: Vancouver wins, Bangkok loses and London is in question

Airports of the Future

In a recent CNN interview Ryanair CEO Michael O’Leary said that airports have become unnecessary shopping centers run by rich airports. Being the CEO of an ultra low cost carrier, he certainly has an interest in seeing airports become a lot more cost efficient. Then cost efficiency wasn’t a key element of a design contest for the future of airports that recently announced the spectacular winning designs.

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This week: More London rivalry and Hawaiian welcome gone wrong

This is going to be fun, as we have another one of our rivalry reports between Heathrow and Gatwick. And this week it’s all about the luggage which went right for one and oh so wrong for the other; more about that in a few paragraphs.

Continue reading This week: More London rivalry and Hawaiian welcome gone wrong

This week: an airport runway car chase & more

Righty-o, as we say here in down-under, let’s get this show on the road. This week we have airport news from across the globe for you: There’s the closure of an Asian airport’s terminal building, a computer glitch in Europe, Sweden’s suspicious bag and a police chase down an active airport runway in the US.

Continue reading This week: an airport runway car chase & more

This week: Strong winds, strikes and a wheelchair bomb scare

It’s been one of those odd weeks where one particular news story just didn’t go away; more about that later. In other news we found bits and pieces from the US (this time San Francisco and Denver made the cut) as well as our almost surely reoccurring news from England.

Continue reading This week: Strong winds, strikes and a wheelchair bomb scare

This week: Jamie’s Gatwick, 79 turtles, and German strikes

What a busy airport week this one was again! We’ve got more strikes albeit this week from a different European country, a culinary feast about to be unveiled in the UK, Chinese turtles and a couple of “interesting” stories from the US of A. So let’s get started right away!

Continue reading This week: Jamie’s Gatwick, 79 turtles, and German strikes

This week: Ice Age in Europe, Super Bowl congestion and Bieber’s apology

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.

Continue reading This week: Ice Age in Europe, Super Bowl congestion and Bieber’s apology

Jack the Cat wins Airport News Story of the Year

That’s it; the results are in as my loyal readers have decided …drum roll….wait for it… it’s the “Lost Cat” story that wins the first ever LateDeparture Airport Story of the Year Award. The voting took place over three weeks and was open to all LateDeparture readers. And what a finish it was as counting in the vote went down to the wire, with Jack’s tale winning by just one vote over the story about a plane landing at the wrong airport. They both easily beat the final entry – a story about the rivalry between London’s two major airports – Gatwick and Heathrow.

The winning story of Jack the cat who got lost at JFK Airport in New York (IATA: JFK) was mentioned in three different weekly news articles. It had everything from an emotional plea to find the cat, an apologetic airline when it was found and a very sad ending when the cat had to be put down due to its condition.

You can read the full stories here:

It’s certainly been an amazing race to the finish and I would like to thank all loyal readers for their contribution and of course all the award sponsors for their amazing prizes. Speaking of prizes, the winner of the 1st prize, the two JetBlue return tickets is Abhishek Duggal from Honolulu – congratulations! All other winners have also been notified, so check your inbox to see if you are one of them!

2012 will surely be another interesting airport news year, so make sure you follow us right through it!

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