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What happens when your luggage pass through those black rubber flaps at the airport? Delta Airlines sent a camera through the conveyor belts to give you a glimpse of a day in the life of your luggage.
Hit play or go to Link - via Laughing Squid
The Heathbrow Airport in London has unveiled the future of public transportation with these new shuttle pods. Laser-guided and battery-operated, they mosey at up to 25 miles per hour and are said to be impossible to crash.
Photo: D. Byron Darby
D. Bryon Darby's new home in Arizona, is directly within the flight path of Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport, so what's a photographer to do? He made an art project out of it, of course:
I photographed Seventy Flights in Ninety Minutes from the top of Hayden Butte in Tempe, Arizona. The publicly accessible volcanic butte is just beyond the airport and is straddled by Sky Harbor’s two busiest flight paths. For 90 minutes, I photographed every airplane that flew overhead, and then I digitally stitched together the many individual photographs. I hoped to re-create the experience of living in a flight path by compressing an hour and a half into one apparently single moment.
It sure can, if the birds
turn out to be a major safety hazard for airplanes at a nearby airport.
Here's the story of how 59-year-old business owner (and bird lover) Charles Douglas got arrested over a flock of pigeons:
Airport police Cmdr. Allen Schmitt said a plane strikes a bird at the airport once every two months on average. But the rate of strikes has increased recently, with five incidents in July alone, he added.
"Most of those were multiple — 10 to 20 to 30 birds at once," Schmitt said. "Now it's becoming extraordinarily dangerous."
In July, a Southwest Airlines flight was diverted to Ontario after it flew into 20 to 30 pigeons during takeoff, he said.
"A pigeon is not a problem, but a flock — that's a problem," he said.
Douglas' arrest was the culmination of months of legal wrangling to stop the feeding.
No
more surly boarding agents in Orly, wary travelers! The Paris airport
is experimenting with "virtual" boarding agents that materialize
out of nowhere at a touch of a button (bonus: they never go on strike)
The images materialize seemingly out of thin air when a boarding agent — a real live human — presses a button to signal the start of boarding.
They are actually being rear-projected onto a human shaped silhouette made of plexiglass. Three actual airport boarding agents were filmed in a studio to create the illusion, which the airport hopes will be more eye-catching and easier for passengers to understand than traditional electronic display terminals.
"Bonjour! I invite you to go to your boarding gate. Paris Airports wishes you a bon voyage," the image appears to say, while the name of the destination flashes in front of him.
Now if only they can make those security checks more pleasant ... Link (Photo: Francois Mori)
Wait for it…. -via reddit
Miniatur Wunderland Hamburg, which has the world’s largest model railroad, has yet captured another superlative to its name: it has recently opened Airport Knuffingen, the world’s largest model airport.
Over an area of 150m², there will be almost 40 different aircrafts taking off and landing, up to 360 times, daily. Since 2011, more than 150.000 working hours, and round-about 3.5 million Euros have been invested in this spectacular project.
Hit play or go to Link [YouTube]
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Where do unclaimed baggage from the airport end up? In Alabama, actually – at the aptly named Unclaimed Baggage Center, where you can browse and buy things that your fellow travelers left behind:
Welcome to the final resting place for lost luggage.
Along a country road next to a muffler shop and a cemetery is a 40,000-square-foot store filled with all the items that never made it home from vacation. Shoes, samurai swords, iPods, even lingerie, all available for 20 to 80 percent off.
When airlines can’t determine who owns a bag, they sell it for a few bucks to the Unclaimed Baggage Center, a warehouse-sized facility that would put your local PTA garage sale to shame.
Past an entranceway of world clocks and columns decorated with foreign currency, one traveler’s misfortune turns into a bargain-hunter’s paradise.
"You never know what you may find," says Clayton Grider, a Scottsboro youth minister who often starts his day at the store. "It is a sport."
Link (Photo: hiddenlibrary [Flickr])
Still crammed in a packed airport terminals awaiting your flight with fellow commoners? You’re missing out! Michael Gros of WorldMate Travelog wrote a list of the best business and first-class lounges from airports around the world.
This one above is Cathay Pacific Pier at the Hong Kong International Airport:
Cathay Pacific went out of its way in its Pier lounge to provide for personal comforts. The Pier’s private Day-Break Rooms include showers, wake-up calls and waiter service with food and drinks. Or you can sink into each room’s Balzac armchair and flip on the TV. To catch up on your work, head to the Personal Living Spaces. They feature
spacious work areas with wired PCs or high-speed wireless Internet connections for your laptop. Hungry? The Pier includes a wide variety of dining options, including the Haven for fancy dining; the Short Bar, which includes a full selection of beverages; the Long Bar which features widescreen TVs and the Noodle Bar, with many hot items on the menu. The Pier also features a juice bar and coffee bar.
Link | Complete List at WorldMate Travelog
Denied by the TSA because he forgot his ID and desperate to make his flight, a young man decided to ride the luggage carousel:
Edward Hall III, 24, (pictured) tried to make a United Airlines flight set to depart at 8:11 a.m., but a TSA agent refused to screen him when he couldn’t produce photo ID, police said.
Hall then asked a dumbfounded ticket agent, "Can you put me in a suitcase and send me down the baggage belt?"
She refused, and he strode behind the counter, and jumped onto the moving baggage belt. He was arrested about 20 minutes later near the tarmac, and told cops, "I just wanted to make my flight."In an online profile, Hall fittingly said he researches "human impatience."
Human impatience, indeed! Link
Sean Murtagh of London, England was scheduled to marry Natalie Mead of Brisbane, Australia surrounded by family and friends in England. They had a civil ceremony in Australia already, and were on the way to the big British ceremony when they were stranded at an airport in Dubai due to the volcanic ash cloud that cancelled many European flights. Instead of canceling the wedding, they were married via Skype! Assembled wedding attendees in Ealing, west London, watched the couple take their vows aided by a laptop and a webcam at the airport.
Natalie Mead told Gulf News: “Passengers stranded in the hotel were getting excited for the first time in days when they heard about our wedding; some even helped me with my hair and make-up. It was also great to see everyone in the UK on our wedding day, even if it was via webcam.
“It has been an amazing day and we are just so grateful for everything that everyone has done for us. It is definitely a story to tell the grandchildren. There was no way we were going to let this volcano stop us [from] getting married.”
Caroline Black, a celebrant who conducted the online ceremony from London, said: “It was just like any other wedding except the bride and groom weren’t there.”
The airport donated flowers and a wedding cake for the celebration. Link -via Bits and Pieces
This video shows a huge Russian transport plane taking off from Canberra International Airport in Australia. It barely makes the takeoff, using every inch of runway available. Warning: NSFW language from the air traffic controllers.
via Ace of Spades HQ | About the Plane
Popular Mechanics has a photo gallery of eighteen unusual airports around the world, including the above airport of Courchevel, a town in the French Alps. The runway has a hill the middle with a 18.5% grade. Landing on this airstrip is so difficult that it requires a special pilot’s certification.
Link via Glenn Reynolds| Photo: Popular Mechanics
You’ll be on video at Narita International Airport in Tokyo, but not for security purposes. An infrared camera scans incoming international passengers looking for people who may have a fever! Those who show signs of a fever are interviewed and may be given medical treatment. Link
(image credit: Lazlo Thoth)
The hassle, the invasion of privacy, and the potential for abuse and embarrassment … what’s to like about the full body scanner at airports? Plenty, according to the American Association for Nude Recreation (maybe NSFW, mind you), the oldest and largest group representing nudists in northern America:
“Put this issue in its proper perspective,” recommends AANR Executive Director Erich Schuttauf. “A trained security professional in a remote monitoring station takes a few seconds discreetly screening passengers to be sure they’re only bringing what nature gave them aboard. In exchange for safer skies, AANR believes it’s completely worth it. But you don’t have to be a nudist to agree these measures are based on common sense.”
Adds Schuttauf, “Polls regularly show that about one in five North Americans have skinny-dipped in mixed company already. So if travelers just think of the screen as a virtual skinny dip, something regarded as American as apple pie since before Norman Rockwell, everyone wins in the name of better air travel security. And as an added bonus, you can add the experience to your ‘bucket list’ as a virtual dipping of one’s toe into taking a Nakation – that’s a nudist vacation!”
Thanks Carolyn Hawkins!
It’s been locked up since 9/11, but Ransom Riggs of mental_floss managed a visit to the Mojave Air and Spaceport and took plenty of pictures. The inactive airport is used as a parking lot for planes and also a junkyard of planes that will never be flown again. The result is a collection of photographs that are urban decay with an aviation slant. Link
You know the honeymoon is over when this happened: when the husband found out that his new wife took too long in the airport restroom, he decided to get on the plane without her!
The woman in question, a teacher, had gone to use the facilities at the airport before boarding a flight back in Saudi Arabia.
Quite how long she stayed in the toilet remains unclear. What is certain is she emerged to discover her husband had vanished without trace. The woman, who had paid for the holiday, began a desperate search of the airport and grew increasingly concerned that something terrible had happened to him. [...]
When he arrived at his destination, he calmly told relatives his new wife was still in Malaysia. His bride was not so calm about his behaviour. She has demanded an immediate divorce.
After hitting pay dirt with his Military Truisms forum post, Neatorama reader SparkS did it again with this gem: Aviation Humor.
This one made me ROFL:
The German air controllers at Frankfurt Airport are renowned as a short-tempered lot. They not only expect one to know one’s gate parking location, but how to get there without any assistance from them. So it was with some amusement that we (a Pan Am 747) listened to the following exchange between Frankfurt ground
control and a British Airways 747, call sign Speedbird 206":Speedbird 206: "Frankfurt, Speedbird 206 clear of active runway."
Ground: "Speedbird 206. Taxi to gate Alpha One-Seven."
The BA 747 pulled onto the main taxiway and slowed to a stop.
Ground: "Speedbird, do you not know where you are going?"
Speedbird 206: "Stand by, Ground, I’m looking up our gate location now."
Ground (with quite arrogant impatience): "Speedbird 206, have you not been to Frankfurt before?"
Speedbird 206 (coolly): "Yes, twice in 1944 — but I didn’t land."
