This week: worst airport named, new arrival service & all lights out

This week we received airport news from around the world. Well, surely you would expect that but it isn’t always the case as the US is by far the most dominant source of (juicy) airport news. Actually, let’s start with the US and then make our way eastwards: The Wall Street Journal this week published a report compiled by the Transportation Department’s Bureau of Transportation Statistics about the timeliness of US airports. Of the 100 most-delayed flights over the past year, 40 come and go from Newark Liberty International Airport (IATA: EWR) making it the worst airport for punctuality.

And one more before we leave the US: A partial shutdown of the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has halted more than 250 aviation development projects and caused thousands of construction workers to lose their jobs, wrote USA Today earlier in the week. The FAA’s partial shutdown is a result of an FAA funding standoff between the House and Senate, and their inability to reach an agreement to re-authorize the agency’s operations said the article.

Now let’s move over that big pond called the Atlantic and go to the United Kingdom: There the smallest commercial airport in the Greater London Area, London City Airport (IATA: LCY; LD reviewed) revealed the arrival of a new service by British Airways, exclusive to the airport. According to the page, Passengers travelling on the all business class British Airways, New York to  London City route can now take advantage of BA’s complimentary service  for arriving passengers at the Radisson Edwardian New Providence Hotel, including use of spa, gym and breakfast facilities. In our view this is a great service making up for some missing infrastructure at the small airport.

To conclude we travel even further to the East, to India. There we read today that New Delhi’s swish Terminal 3 (IATA: DEL) caused some headaches when it plunged into darkness and chaos for more than four hours early on Sunday when the airport’s power supply and back-up systems failed simultaneously, reported the Times of India. Almost 80 flights, most of them international, were affected and thousands of passengers groped in the dark as virtually all operations at the airport came to standstill wrote the paper.

That’s it for this week – have a safe and interruption free week and don’t forget that torch next time you fly through New Delhi!

[Photo from Wikipedia – some rights reserved]