Well, what can I say? For the first time in the history of the weekly LateDeparture airport news round-ups, I decide to take a leave of absence for a couple days. Plus – and this really was the big mistake – I decide to pre-write the news without a disclaimer of when it was written. Naively I thought, what can possibly shake up the airport world in the 3 days I’m away? Oh dearie-me, how wrong was I? One day into my leave (note, I didn’t even have any means of communication at all), the Australian carrier Qantas decides to ground its entire fleet worldwide. Thousands of passengers got stranded across the globe while Irish-born Alan Joyce – the airline’s CEO – bet on a solution to its ongoing, costly disputes with the unions. He got his way, even though they say it’s not yet entirely over, but further threats of future strikes from the unions are out of the way for the moment.
As another week comes to an end another weekly round-up of airport aviation news is due from us! There’s a bit of interesting follow up to do from last week’s news, news from a often forgotten continent and finally a three-letter-acronym that oftentimes makes news – this time it’s, well, juicy…
Decommissioned airports often become home to aviation unrelated occupancies as seen for example with Hong Kong’s famous old airport Kai Tak, which at one point was being used as a concert venue. In other times such airports can become a much needed infrastructure for humanitarian relief efforts as we have seen recently in the example of Thailand’s Don Mueang International Airport.
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:
It’s not often that we get detailled insights into the shopping behaviour of travellers at airports. Singapore Changi Airport (IATA: SIN; LD hub page) has now analysed sales information from its four terminals, and found that travellers’ most preferred gift is chocolate.
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.
Aerial displays are something all airports are good at, well, at least if you classify the graceful starts and landings of aircraft as such. Now Changi Airport in Singapore (IATA: SIN; LD reviewed) put up a whole different kind of aerial show: To publicise their Changi Millionaire draw, the airport invited Strange Fruit, a world-renowned Australian performing arts company, to perform at Changi Airport’s Terminal 3 last Friday.
In 2017 the Beijing New International Airport (BNIA) will open for business and will then become the world’s largest airport in terms of aircraft movements. Clearly such a large airport needs an extraordinary master plan. NACO, a Dutch airport planning company recently won the design for the master plan – we wrote about it in our weekly news. We now have the chance to speak to NACO’s managing director, Rik Krabbendam to ask him a few more questions. Continue reading Interview with NACO’s managing director about Beijing New International Airport→
This week three US airports caught our attention: First on Tuesday there was San Francisco’s International Airport (IATA: SFO; LD reviewed) which made headlines with the arrival of the first scheduled Airbus A380 flight. The Lufthansa plane with flight number 454 landed at the Northern Californian airport on Tuesday morning for the first time and was welcomed by a fire truck and many eager plane spotters as reported by the San Francisco Chronicle.
Last night as part of the Passenger Terminal Expo 2011 held in Copenhagen, Skytrax announced this years World Airport Awards. The most prestigious price, Airport of the Year, went to Hong Kong International (IATA: HKG) for the 8th time since 2000. LateDeparture video reviewed the award winning airport. Last year’s winner Singapore Changi (IATA: SIN) came second and South Korea’s Incheon International Airport (IATA: ICN) third.
