Fire alarm pulled at London City Airport

This week: Fire alarm to catch flight, Singapore’s intelligent airport system

It’s been a rather quiet week this one, but nonetheless we summarize the week with the following three airport stories:

The first story made us lough when it hit our news desk on Wednesday. The Guardian titled “Late passenger sets off airport fire alarm in failed attempt to catch flight”. Well, that’s surely a unique act of desperation. According to the newspaper article, the story goes that a British Airways passenger who arrived late for a flight at London City airport (LCY) used a novel way to try to catch his plane – setting off a fire alarm and triggering a full-scale evacuation. Airport operations were halted for 15 minutes and police were called. The passenger still missed his flight and reportedly was questioned but not arrested and was allowed to board a later plane to Frankfurt. No details were given about the passenger.

Not far away from the place of the first story, London’s Stansted Airport (STN) plans to change the routes some flights use from Stansted Airport are being put forward to reduce congestion in the skies above Heathrow Airport (LHR). The BBC reported that air traffic control service NATS proposes to redirect the majority of Stansted departures from an established southerly route, to an existing route to the east of the airport. A NATS spokesperson said  “Moving the majority of departure flights from one route to another will improve the flow of aircraft around the London system and greatly increase the efficiency of the airport’s operation.”.

And finally there was the story in the Wired magazine this week with another headline that made us curious: Why we’re sad the best airport in the world is getting even better.  Well, first of all, the best airport in the world is of course Singapore Changi Airport (SIN), rated top in this year’s World Airport Award. And why is Wired said about it getting even better? Well, it writes that ‘it’s kind of a bummer that it’s getting a real-time data system that will cut delays by rethinking its operations and streamlining how its moves planes, people, and personnel.’ Fair enough! The entire article goes much more into the details of the new system dubbed “Intelligent Airport” – it sure is worth a read!

That’s all from us this week – safe travels!

[Photo Credit: Shermeee via Compfight cc]