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…
Another busy aviation related airport week has passed and with that news about missing cats, stranded passengers a new runway, the world’s worst airports and a frequent renaming of a US airport nicely filled our inbox. Let’s start chronologically:
With the pleasant memory of JetBlue’s dedicated Terminal 5 still in the back of my head (we wrote about it), Terminal 7 at JFK feels a bit claustrophobic upon entering. But it takes a lot more for me to give up. Surely there has to be more to the home of British Airways at JFK. Let’s have a more closer look:
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:
Have you ever dreamt of an airport with an attractive, yet functional design? An airport with beautiful and innovative food outlets, great shopping? Or what about an occasional live concert? And on top of it all speedy and efficient operations? Dream no longer, this airport actually does exist: It’s called Terminal 5, the dedicated JetBlue terminal at John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York (IATA: JFK, LD hub page).
Let’s start with some good news and let us congratulate Vancouver Airport (IATA: YVR) as the Canadian airport celebrated its 80th birthday this week. According to the Vancouver Sun, it drew delegations from airports around the world to admire its public art and West Coast decoration.
It’s been another busy week for airports around the world. And once again we have seen the full spectrum of news articles coming in: everything from small animals delaying flights at one of the busiest airports in the world to an “animal-named” airline being grounded due to safety concerns. Oh and then there’s the one with new bathrooms too. But let’s start at the beginning:
What’s so comfortable in sleeping high up in a US airport control tower you might ask after having read this week’s news about controller number five and six falling asleep during their night shifts. Number five was reported to have happened mid week at Reno-Tahoe International Airport (IATA: RNO) where a medical flight carrying a sick patient tried to land without anyone responding. The latest one, number six, was reported on Saturday. Here the controller fell asleep during his shift at the Miami Air Route Traffic Control Center, which oversees mostly high-altitude, long-distance flights. According to the FAA, this time the controller did not miss any calls from aircraft and there was no operational impact. With all this, voices suggesting problems in the system rather than failures of individuals now become louder as stated in a Washington Post article. This won’t be the last time we wrote about it!
