Knowing that airlines put most of their efforts into the lounges at their home airport, I expected big things from the SWISS lounges at Zurich Airport (IATA: ZRH; LD hub page). SWISS – or Swiss International Air Lines – serves 72 destinations in 39 countries – most of them through its main hub in Zurich. The airline claims that because it is the airline of Switzerland (albeit owned by the Lufthansa Group), SWISS is the byword for traditional Swiss values. Surely you now want to know what those values are. Being Swiss myself, I want to come up with ‘attention to detail’, ‘high quality’ and ‘hospitality’. Others might add that the Swiss are known for staying on the fence and that they can be slightly boring. So, how do the SWISS lounges fit into this?
This week has been very busy for one country in the Southern Hemisphere: Australia. In one of the busiest week’s in the country’s annual calendar, when school holidays are in full swing and the Grand Final of the footy and rugby leagues are played out, the Australian aviation industry went through a lot of turbulence.
It’s early morning and you just realized that your travel department booked you on a flight with a four hour stop-over in Copenhagen in contrast to the direct flight you normally get. You may think this is another one of those ridiculous cost saving tasks recently implemented by your company. We disagree and think, someone really liked you and gave you a well deserved mini-break for free. We think so, because Copenhagen is one of the cities that are so accessible, you can see a good part of it in a very short time.
You don’t believe us? Well, we tried it ourselves and produced a minute by minute report:
Well, you may be delighted or you may be disappointed, but this week’s airport news update is going to be an “all US” one. While we saw some minor articles coming from other parts of the world (e.g. Spain’s Santiago airport (IATA: SCQ) unveiling a new €230m terminal or the opening of Saudi Arabia’s new Najran regional airport (IATA: EAM)), the majority of relevant articles – twist it anyway you like – came from the United States. Let’s then get right to it:
A couple of months ago we wrote about the glamorous side of Las Vegas’ McCarran International Airport (IATA: LAS; LD hub page). Whilst we found a lot of movies that were filmed at the famous airport, we weren’t sure about most of the locations. So this time, when we visited the airport, we got some professional advice – directly from the airport’s PR team.
This week a large online company got into some turbulence, we received additional input on our new airport review, Heathrow leapt into the future and a star was spotted at a Californian airport. Surely this is juicy enough for you to read on, right?
Syracuse is the fifth most populous town of the state New York and as pretty much all US towns of that size, it has an airport. Well, of course it does, otherwise we wouldn’t be writing about it. The airport, Syracuse Hancock International Airport (IATA: SYR) is, according to Wikipedia, a joint civil-military public airport located 7.4 km (4.6 mi) northeast of Syracuse. The main terminal complex is located at the eastern end of Colonel Eileen Collins Boulevard.
Phew, this one was a big week. We saw tons of aviation relevant articles – most of them featuring around one particular topic from the US. Other stories reached us from Hong Kong, Italy and Greece. Plus we’ve even found another ‘odd news of the week’ piece for you – more about that later.
A little while back we reviewed Los Angeles International Airport (IATA: LAX; LD hub page). With the help of the friendly LAWA staff, we were able to provide you with plenty of options for when you have ample time at this massive airport. One of the most interesting suggestions, however, was the one where you can get to Hollywood Boulevard when you have 4 hours or more and are on a budget. We now put this to the test – in true LateDeparture style. Click on the video above to watch it or view it directly on YouTube.
This week has been a mixed one. While it certainly wasn’t a quiet one for the US East Coast airports, elsewhere, things were more on the normal side with one notable exception: China. But enough of the vagueness, let’s get straight into it:
