Tag Archives: BNE

This week: Focus on Kathmandu Airport after earthquake

This week the Nepalese airport has pretty much dominated airport related news around the world. Here are our headlines in the overview:

The massive earthquake in Nepal that costs Thousands of people’s lives has also had an effect on the country’s main airport: Tribhuvan International Airport in Kathmandu (KTM) stories on LateDeparture. LA Times described the scenes at the airport in their article as following: The plane traffic became so backed up that numerous flights were turned away Sunday and forced to return later. Discarded paper and plastic water bottles littered the tarmac, giving the place the sad air of a site where a carnival had just passed through.

A few days later The Wall Street Journal reported that since the quake, this capital city’s single-runway airport and an adjoining military airfield have become the hub of a massive international rescue and relief effort as the impoverished country struggles to care for the huge number of people wounded and displaced in the disaster.

We encourage all of our readers to provide help through one of the humanitarian organisations’ earthquake appeals.

We’re now moving on to a different topic: This week passengers at a US airport had to endure a rather lengthy wait before getting through to customs. Click2Houston reported that Thousands of furious international passengers tried to catch flights home following a massive baggage blunder at Terminal E at Bush Intercontinental Airport (IAH) stories on LateDeparture on Sunday. As for an explanation from the airlines, passengers were told the chaos was the result of too many international flights arriving at the same time. That’s a rather fishy explanation if you ask us, surely they anticipated the arrival of each of those aircrafts…

Then we got hold of some good news from Down-under: The Sydney Morning Herald reported this week that Brisbane Airport’s domestic terminal (BNE) stories on LateDeparture is set to undergo its biggest expansion since it opened in 1988, with the construction of a new regional airline building now out to market. The expansion will increase the number of gates at the domestic terminal from 61 to 72, with the potential for a further six gates as demand increases. Work is expected to start in early 2016.

And to finish the week off, some ‘storm’ news from New Orleans. According to Reuters a line of storms moving through Louisiana on Monday knocked out power to the New Orleans International Airport (MSY) stories on LateDeparture, sent freight train cars tumbling from an elevated bridge and left nearly 238,000 customers without electricity. At the airport, electricity was off in the main terminal for much of the day and the airfield operated on emergency power, before electricity was fully restored in the evening, an airport spokeswoman said.

That’s all for this week – safe travels.

[Title photo shows the domestic terminal at Tribhuvan Kathmandu Airport before the earthquake; Photo Credit: Debarshi Ray via Compfight cc]

This week: airport heist, budget cuts, fog and clever menus

It’s been a massive week for airport related news. Unless you live under a rock, you probably heard of the airport heist in Belgium. However, aside from this biggie there were also other interesting news from airports in New Delhi, Hamburg, Calgary or Brisbane to name a few.

Continue reading This week: airport heist, budget cuts, fog and clever menus

This week: BAA renamed as Heathrow, bad airport joke & more

We could nearly brand this weeks news an all-British update as so many news pieces this week arrived from the British Isles. However, we worked hard to find three other news flashes from Australia, Brazil and the U.S. to mix it all up a bit.

Continue reading This week: BAA renamed as Heathrow, bad airport joke & more

This week: Cairo to Sydney, Heath-Wick and Sacramento

Wow, what a busy aviation week this one has been! While 2,700 representatives from  300 airlines and 800 airports (BreakingTravelNews.com) gathered in Berlin at the annual ‘World Routes’ event, airports and travellers around the globe continued to work like clockwork. All of them? Not really, this week saw airports from Cairo to Sydney struggling through many problems.

Continue reading This week: Cairo to Sydney, Heath-Wick and Sacramento

A solid mid-of-the-range airport: Brisbane International Terminal

I’ve been in Brisbane quite a few times but whenever I landed there it’s always been the domestic terminal. So when I recently got a chance to fly out of Queensland’s capital to Port Moresby (IATA: POM; LD reviewed), I took the opportunity and reviewed the international terminal of Brisbane Airport (IATA: BNE) for my loyal readers:

Continue reading A solid mid-of-the-range airport: Brisbane International Terminal

This week’s airport events: Tornados, Trump & Terminal upgrade

The long Easter break didn’t just bring travellers to their loved ones or chocolate eggs to the kids, it sadly, also brought the tornado season to the South of the United States with devastating effects in Mississippi, Georgia, Alabama, Tennessee and elsewhere. The New York Times even calls it the worst tornado disaster since 1925. The storms also had severe effects on the aviation industry with delays and some closures throughout the US. One of the worst hit airports, however, was Lambert-St. Louis International Airport (IATA: STL). The drama was even caught on CCTV when the tornado hit the airport; watch it here.

Continue reading This week’s airport events: Tornados, Trump & Terminal upgrade

Flood & snow: the impacts for you

I’m sure by now almost everyone has heard about the current severe flooding in Queensland, the North-Eastern Australian state with the capital Brisbane. Prolonged heavy rainfall over the past month or so has led to a catastrophic situation in much of the state and to the North of its bordering neighbour state, New South Wales.  This event is widely attributed to the effect of “La Niña“, a coupled ocean-atmosphere phenomenon that is the counterpart of “El Niño” which brought drought to the same areas previously.

La Niña, however, isn’t the only ecological hazard and Australia is not the only affected country. Other unusual weather patterns, such as the severe winter weather across Europe in December or masses of snow from Boston to New York and Atlanta more recently are other indicators that these events seem to increase in frequency and severity.

So what do these events mean for you as traveller? There are 3 main impacts you should be aware of:
Continue reading Flood & snow: the impacts for you

Hong Kong world’s best airport

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:

  1. Hong Kong
  2. Singapore Changi
  3. Seoul Incheon
  4. Kuala Lumpur KLIA
  5. Munich
  6. Kansai
  7. Copenhagen
  8. Zurich
  9. Helsinki
  10. 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]