Tag Archives: MUC

This week’s airport events: lunchtime concerts, bed bugs and more

Sunday, 27 February 2011 Tom 1 Comment

This one was a rather eventful week for the world’s airports – at least by my news inbox measurements: We found out several interesting things, for example, that Los Angeles Airport (IATA: LAX) is the only airport with a hit song according to the airport’s media department. It’s a bit dated if you ask me, but hey, it’s a proper song! You can listen to it here. Maybe that was why I chose to fly through LAX on my next trip and therefore wrote up the first part of how to properly research an airport.

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Airports, Europe, Reviews, Top-X-Things

Oktoberfest atmosphere at Munich airport

Sunday, 21 June 2009 Tom 1 Comment

Germany’s Munich airport, Franz-Joseph Strauss (IATA: MUC) was recently voted Europe’s second best Airport after Zurich in a “Skytrax” survey; and in my view quite rightly!

Munich is a fairly big airport with 2 terminals serving as Lufthansa’s second hub airport after Frankfurt. With airports however, size is not everything…

It’s not surprising then that Munich airport has two faces: The rather boring and older Terminal 1 which opened in 1992 is not the most exciting place. This terminal serves all non-Star Alliance flights and is divided into subsections A to E. Once you are through security, it’s a very limited experience in terms of what you can do there!

Terminal 2 on the other hand is the flagship terminal of the airport and hosts all Star Alliance flights. It offers a wide range of shops and restaurants even after passing the security section. So, you shouldn’t get bored anytime soon. My personal favourite is the Dallmayr shop: try the fresh “Bretzen” for example. Delicious!

Overall however, I’d recommend you spend as much time as you can in the airports “Zentralbereich”. This is the central area located between the two main terminals.

Here my top 5 things to do:

Enjoy an Oktoberfest atmosphere and super friendly staff at “Airbräu’s” outside beer garden between the terminals
Stock up for an authentic, Bavarian Weisswurst breakfast at the well equipped grocery store “Edeka”
Still haven’t sent the bundle of postcards and gifts you promised? No problem. You can send them off with the all important German post stamp at the “Deutsche Post” office next to “Edeka”.
The ever present Starbucks can sort out your early-flight coffee needs. You find it on the way to Terminal 2 from the outside area.
Oh and did you really, really, really like that waitress from the Airbräu (see first point)? Buy her some red roses from the beautiful flower shop “Airport Flower” next to the Starbucks

Airport Name	Munich “Franz Josef Strauss” Airport
Website	http://www.munich-airport.de
IATA Code	MUC
Design
Shopping
Toilets
Overall

	€ 87.90 (£74.30)
	€ 34.50 (£29.15)

[Picture from Flickr – some rights reserved.]

Airports, Various

Hong Kong world’s best airport

Tuesday, 15 July 2008 Tom 3 Comments

Hong Kong International Airport has been named Best Airport in the world, in the passenger survey results released on Monday by Skytrax. Despite being “only” rated in 5th place in the most-timely airport survey, Hong Kong received the prestigious award after Skytrax collected 8.2 million questionnaires completed by passengers over a 10-month time period. The London based aviation-research company rated the airports in more than 40 categories of product and service quality from check-in to departure, from arrivals to baggage collection – including terminal cleanliness, staff efficiency, staff courtesy, terminal signage, security processing, immigration and customers, walking distances, as well as features like shopping, dining options, internet services.

Second best airport went to last year’s winner, Singapore Changi airport followed by Seoul Incheon. Best European airport was Munich in 5th place and San Francisco took the place for the best ranked US airport but didn’t make it in the top ten. Here’s the that top ten:

Hong Kong
Singapore Changi
Seoul Incheon
Kuala Lumpur KLIA
Munich
Kansai
Copenhagen
Zurich
Helsinki
Cape Town

Note that we already wrote about Zurich and Copenhagen on some delay stories, but both airports rated fairly highly in our own surveys as well.

Also, make sure you check out the full list of the category winners – Brisbane for example received the award for the airport with the friendliest staff. Well, I guess that’s no surprise when you work in a city with one of the best climates and the most leisure attitude…

[Picture from Flickr]

Airports, Europe

Surprise: Heathrow worst performing airport in Europe

Wednesday, 2 July 2008 Tom

What a surprise! According to a study published by the Association of European Airlines (AEA), London’s Heathrow airport is the worst performing airport in Europe:

AEA’s survey of its members’ punctuality at 27 major airports identifies London Heathrow as the most affected, with 44.1% of European departures subject to delays of 15 minutes or more – substantially higher than second-place Dublin with 33.0%, followed by Helsinki, Geneva and Frankfurt – all three of which are customarily to be found in the lower half of the delay table.

This surely comes as a huge surprise to all of us. Not really. Heathrow has long been troubled by lengthy delays many caused by its limited number of runways and overall capacity problems. According to the report 15.3 per cent of outgoing flights delays were caused by problems with airport and air traffic control, while a further 11.1 per cent was blamed on loading and handling issues.

This news couldn’t have come at a worse time for BAA, the owner of Heathrow airport as the Daily Mail writes

The latest figures will add further pressure on the Government to end BAA’s much-criticised monopoly on London’s major airports.

The least affected airport, according to the report, was Munich airport which we already featured in the top 10 most punctual airports worldwide.

(Picture by Flickr – some rights reserved)

Airports

The 10 most on-time airports worldwide

Friday, 27 June 2008 Tom 4 Comments

Airport statistics are a fine thing as they give you an indication of where potential problems lie. Especially if you have the choice of different routes, it makes sense to take the on-time statistics of a particular airport into account when planning your travels.

So, which airport is the worlds most efficient one? According to a Forbes Travlerer article, the winning airport is Haneda airport in Tokyo (HND) with 90% of its arrivals and departures on-time. Never heard of Haneda? Me neither, but according to the article, the airport is the fourth busiest airport in the world primarily handling domestic traffic. It’s bigger sister airport, the well known Narita International (NRT) makes it on to the 2nd place. Well done, Japan!

Interestingly, 6 out of the 10 most on-time airports are located in Asia, only two from the US (Orlando and Houston) and one from Europe (Munich) make it into this elite group – maybe some of these airport managers should have a summer exchange class organized in Asia…

Haneda (HND), Tokyo, Japan – 90%
Narita International (NRT), Tokyo, Japan – 84.2%
Taiwan Taoyuan International, Taipei (TPE), Taiwan – 80.3%
Kingsford Smith International (SYD), Sydney, Australia – 80.1%
Hong Kong International (HKG), Hong Kong, Hong Kong – 79.7%
Soekarno-Hatta International (CGK), Jakarta, Indonesia – 79.3%
Suvarnabhumi International (BKK), Bangkok, Thailand – 79.3%
Orlando International (MCO), Orlando, USA – 79.8%
Franz Josef Strauss Airport (MUC), Munich, Germany – 77.8%
George Bush International (IAH), Houston, USA – 77%

Read the full Forbes Traveler article here.

(Picture by Flickr)

LateDeparture.com