New week, new topics – same writer. I hope that’s a combination that works for you. LOL. This week we have news from the USA, London, Colombia and Germany. Quite an interesting mix of topics too – everything from a fire to beer to a volcano. Got your attention?
Let’s get going then. First up and freshly in from the newsroom is airport trouble coming from the Northeast of the United States. There, two news bites reaches us from the area a short time ago. The first one was about a fire that started on Friday at the technical center at New Jersey’s Atlantic City International Airport (ACY). In a post-event article, the Washington Post wrote that Friday’s fire forced the evacuations of thousands of workers and helped wreak havoc on flights around the country. It also said that some operations have now resumed.
The second one came from only a few hundred kilometers away in New York. There the Sacramento Bee reported that hundreds of air passengers and staff were evacuated from a terminal at New York City’s Kennedy Airport (JFK) after a metal detector malfunctioned at one of the security checkpoints. In the article the Transportation Security Administration says it closed Kennedy’s Terminal 7 for about two hours Saturday morning after discovering the equipment problem and realizing that people had been let through without being properly screened. Procedures call for the entire terminal to be emptied and the passengers re-checked whenever that happens. Terminal 7 (we reviewed it here) is used by British Airways, United, Cathay Pacific, Iberia and Qantas.
Then there was this: Anheuser-Busch, the company that owns Budweiser beer among others this week paid US$11,500 for an application to trademark 42 U.S. airport codes as reported by Fox News. According to the article the airport list includes Boston, Atlanta, Austin, O’Hare and Midway Airports in Chicago, LaGuardia and JFK in New York, Denver, Orlando, Seattle, Will Rogers World Airport in Oklahoma, Los Angeles and San Francisco International. Some people suggested the company is planning to sell localized brews at the various airports. Let’s watch this space and hope we won’t have to pay the company each time we write those 3-letter-codes!
It’s not often that we receive airport news from Colombia. This week, however, we heard that a second of the countries airports was affected by the ash cloud of a nearby and ready-to-erupt volcano. In the Wall Street Journal an official with the civil aviation authority Aerocivil said the Matecana Airport (PEI) in the city of Pereira was closed Wednesday “as a precaution” due to continued ash clouds in Colombia’s central, coffee-growing region, located just west of the volcano. The nearby Nubia airport in Manizales (MZL) has been closed since the beginning of June after the Ruiz Volcano began rumbling and spewing gas and ash.
Now moving to Europe where this week Munich was in the airport news: Reuters reported that the city’s residents voted against development of a third runway at Germany’s second-biggest airport, Munich International Airport (MUC), dealing another blow to airlines clamouring for growth in Europe’s biggest economy. The article continued by saying that just over 54 percent of polled voters were against the new runway and 45.7 percent in favour, according to preliminary results of the vote.
To finish we have some news from London for you: With only 33 days to go to the 2012 Olympics, giant Olympic rings (see photo) have been unveiled at Heathrow Airport (LHR) to welcome athletes and spectators to London, reported The Telegraph on Wednesday. The aluminium rings which measure 12 meters in width, the same as a double-decker bus, have been installed in Terminal 5 international arrivals where they will be seen by two million passengers travelling through Heathrow concluded the article.
That’s all from us for this week – safe travels everyone!
[Photo from London 2012]