Today’s daily dose of airline industry fear mongering comes from the arrivals hall of Washington DC’s Dulles (IAD) airport.
Late this past week, a mother and daughter arriving at the airport to pick up an arriving passenger had an unfortunate run in with one of the training K-9 customs dogs. The Belgian Malinois, a normally friendly dog, apparently advanced on the scared child and bit her in the midsection, requiring a trip to the emergency room and 20 stitches.
If you have flights scheduled on Lufthansa this week, you may be in for a nasty surprise.
The Lufthansa pilots affiliated with the German pilots union “VC” have voted to strike from February 22nd till February 25th. As usual, the dispute revolves around pay, working conditions and job security.
As can be expected, a decent number of flights will be impacted, and the airline is warning passengers about possible lengthy delays.
When possible, passengers have already been rebooked on flights that are not impacted. To check the status of your current Lufthansa reservation, you can check “my booking” within the Lufthansa web site.
An alternative timetable is available on their site for the 22nd, 23rd, 24th and 25th.
Airline strikes are no fun – I’ve been caught in several of them, and the best thing you can do is be prepared for the worst. Make sure you add all the local phone numbers of the airline in your phone, bring chargers and be prepared to spend the night at an airport or airport hotel (if you are lucky).
The Lufthansa information page with the latest flight status can be found here.
UPDATE: As of midnight (German time), the pilots have agreed to suspend their strike. Lufhansa posted the following statement:
Irregularities of the flight operation will continue, however, on Tuesday. We will inform you of any updates to the flight operation as soon as possible on this page.
Airports are unusual places. Every city of decent size has one, but they are rarely all that interesting. Each day, thousands of people move through these places, on their way too and from all manner of destinations, spending time browsing crappy little bookstores and consuming lousy food that would cost half as much elsewhere.
But sometimes, airports can be unusual for different reasons. Perhaps they’re located in odd places, or maybe they have some unusual feature or monument that makes them stand out. Popular Mechanics has compiled a list of the 18 strangest airports in the world, each of which meet those criteria and more.
The list includes airports large and small from all over the world and in a wide variety of settings. Some of the very unique airports that make the cut include Kansai International in Osaka Japan, which is famous for having been built on a man-made island and Congonhas Airport in Sao Paulo, Brazil, which sits just five miles from the very heart of that large and busy city. Other unusual places to take off and land include a runway made of ice in Antarctica and several that have you actually landing on a beach, proving that if we are determined to reach a destination, we’ll find a way to get there.
With 18 airports on the list, Popular Mechanics has done a fine job of highlighting some of the most unusual airports in the world. But did they miss any? What is the most unusual airport that you’ve ever been? As for myself, I’m looking forward to experiencing the airport in Lukla, Nepal in April. That airport is famous for it’s location, high in the Himalaya, with the landing strip running up the side of a mountain. Arriving and departing there is said to be scary and exhilarating all at the same time.
Be sure to check out the gallery below for some of the coolest airports in the world…
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…or watch the videos that demonstrate why these airports are soooo strange.
Courchevel International Airport
Courchevel, France
Princess Juliana International Airport
Simpson Bay, Saint Maarten
Juancho E. Yrausquin Airport
Saba, Netherlands Antilles
Wash your hands before you went to the airport? You may want to. This week, the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) is beginning new, extra security measures at our nation’s airports: hand swabs.
Have you ever had a bag “randomly” selected for supplemental screening after pushing it through the X-ray? In addition to the manual search, agents often swipe your bag with a clean cloth and put the material into a shoebox-sized detector. They’re checking for the residue of bomb-making material — potentially undetectable by eye but sniffable by the robot.
That same residue will stick to your hands if you’re not careful, which is what the TSA is hoping to identify in their random hand swabs. It’s just speculation, but our guess is that the underwear bomber had traces of PETN on his hands, so the TSA now thinks that they can foil plots better by checking those members.
Provided, that is, that they swab the right person’s hands. As with many of the TSA’s initiatives, this new hand-swabbing effort is a random operation, so if the perpetrator gets lucky and doesn’t get swabbed — well, then the problem moves onward.
Check out these other stories from the airport checkpoint!
Ah, Newark. The same airport that brought us a multi-hour shutdown due to a couple in love has once again allowed a civilian to walk right past TSA.
This past President’s Day, a passenger had his bag scanned and the agent reportedly saw some bottles of wine and referred him to secondary screening. However, rather than getting screened, the passenger walked off. The airport was then shut down for an hour as TSA searched for this walker-awayer. They never found him, he never came forward and he presumably boarded his plane and — shocker — he did not use to wine bottles to harm anyone.
Three things:
First of all, I wonder what kind of person the perpetrator was — perhaps he didn’t speak English very well. I do speak English, regularly, and almost every time I’ve been asked to have my bag secondarily screened, I’ve been confused. “Me?” TSA is generally a messy kerfuffle, and I’ve nearly walked off myself. If the person didn’t speak English very well and wasn’t accustomed to airport procedure (which he probably wasn’t, considering he had wine bottles in his carry-on), I have no trouble believing that this was an honest mistake.
Secondly, I feel really let down by the TSA. How many times have we all reached our destinations and realized we had pocket knives, wine keys with knives, bottles of lotion and what-have-you with us in our carry-ons? We tend to feel a sort of thrill as we realize that we totally pulled a fast one on TSA, but really, we should be angry. Their need to inspect us for every little thing has become an epic, world-wide pain in the hindquarters … how dare they do it so poorly? Is there no one keeping score? If you think about the odds, it’s virtually impossible that a passenger walking away hasn’t happened before — but the agents probably shrugged and let him or her go. Why shut the part of the airport down this time?
Thirdly, hey Newark: invest in some more of this. It might save you some time. Thanks. Look, I even found you a discount code. You’re welcome.
