D.C. area airports pet relief areas – fake fire hydrant included

by Scott Carmichael on

I am not a pet owner – so I never thought about the challenges involved in letting Fifi or Mr. Bigglesworth relieve themselves during a trip.

Apparently, the Washington D.C. airports did consider these challenges, because they just opened several designated pet relief areas.

At Dulles, two of these areas are actually inside the airport. Each of these fenced in areas has a fake fire hydrant, artificial grass and bag dispensers. To keep things clean, these locations also have special ventilation and a flushing system. Three other locations at Dulles are pre-secruity, outside the main terminal building.

At Reagan National, all the relief areas are outside the terminal buildings. They are located at Terminal A, B and C. A map of the locations can be found here. The relief areas were originally intended for service animals, but traveling pets are also welcome.

Another new day, another drunk passenger tries to open the aircraft door mid-flight

by Scott Carmichael on

Rarely does a week go by without a flight being diverted because someone became “unruly”.

These incidents are often pretty innocent, involving a drunk passenger trying to harass fellow passengers. But every now and then the really insane (or drunk) take things to the next level, often with violence or by attempting to damage the plane.

Last night, United Airlines flight 223 from Washington to Las Vegas had to divert to Denver to drop off a passenger who had attempted to open the cabin door mid-flight.

Thankfully this is almost impossible to do because of door seals and the pressure difference, but that doesn’t change the fact that in his mind, he was ready to kill himself and many others on board the plane.

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again – insane and drunk passengers are a far greater danger than terrorists. See, you can use technology and profiling to spot a terrorist, but the seriously deranged are almost impossible to detect.

As usual, the culprit in this case was alcohol. He had been drinking before and during the flight, which once again shows how dangerous in-flight booze can be, and how important it is for cabin crew to stop serving intoxicated passengers.

The 129 passengers (minus one) continued on to Las Vegas arriving about two hours late.

Photo of the day 12.21.09

by Karen Walrond on

Come on: you didn’t think I could let “Snopocalypse” or “#snOMG!” or the Nor’easter Known by So Many Names get by without featuring it here on Gadling, did you? Luckily for us, Cazimiro shared this beautiful image of the amazing snowfall that pummeled the east coast of the United States this past weekend in our Gadling Flickr pool. Talk about walkin’ in a winter wonderland.

If you’ve got some great travel shots you’d love to share, be sure to upload them to the Gadling pool on Flickr. We might just pick one as our Photo of the Day.