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Tag: airports (by name)

  • Airplane bounces along Heathrow runway during Storm Gerrit | CNN

    Airplane bounces along Heathrow runway during Storm Gerrit | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    It’s been a stormy tail end to Christmas for the UK and Ireland, as the countries were hit by Storm Gerrit coming in from the Atlantic on Wednesday, bringing gale force winds and flooding in its wake.

    It caused havoc for aviation, with flights being canceled across the countries. Air traffic restrictions saw major delays at Heathrow, with flight cancellations across the UK, including Manchester and Glasgow. The UK’s flag carrier British Airways canceled 13 flights because of the weather. In Ireland, Dublin Airport remained unscathed, though Cork saw four diversions, to Dublin and Shannon.

    Planes that managed to take off faced an equally difficult fate: trying to land in the storm.

    One American Airlines flight was caught on camera during a particularly bumpy landing at Heathrow on December 27.

    The Boeing 777, coming in from Los Angeles, was seen wobbling from side to side as it came down, toppling briefly towards the left, before appearing to bounce or “bunny hop” on the runway before sticking to terra firma and slowing down.

    The “insane” landing was filmed by Big Jet TV owner Jerry Dyer, who regularly sets up livestreams at airports around the world to watch flights coming in, and has a particular soft spot for stormy weather.

    Dyer told CNN in 2022 that he’s drawn to the “battle” between man and nature during a storm at an airport.

    “Whenever there’s windy conditions, stormy conditions, I’m always up at Heathrow,” he said at the time.

    “It’s a lot more exciting to watch than aircraft just landing down and touching down and all that kind of stuff. It’s the battle, isn’t it? It’s the forces of nature against an alloy tub with wings on it that we built and we have to control it down onto the ground in Mother Nature’s winds.

    “It’s a fantastic thing to watch.”

    His livestream of Storm Eunice in 2022, in which planes battled to land at Heathrow despite 122 mile-per-hour winds battering the UK, captivated the entire country.

    There were more than 200 severe wind gust reports across Britain and Ireland on Wednesday, with a possible tornado sighting in Stalybridge, Greater Manchester. A level 2 of 3 threat for a severe storm remained for far southeastern Ireland and west-central UK until early Thursday morning, according to the European Storm Forecast Experiment (ESTOFEX).

    Streaming the AA flight, Dyer’s famously enthusiastic commentary noted the air “vortex” around the wings as it came in, before lamenting “oh stop it, stop that” as the plane bounced down the runway.

    “How he did not go around I just have no idea,” he commented.

    Despite the conditions, flight AA134, which had departed LA on December 26, touched down just one minute late – at 11.41 a.m. on December 27, according to flight tracker FlightRadar.

    It then took off again around two hours later, making its way to Dallas, where it landed early. Luckily with a different crew.

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  • Emergency evacuation slide from United flight falls into neighborhood near Chicago O’Hare International Airport | CNN

    Emergency evacuation slide from United flight falls into neighborhood near Chicago O’Hare International Airport | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    A United Airlines Boeing 767 plane lost its emergency evacuation slide in mid-air Monday – and it ended up in the backyard of a home near Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport, officials and a witness said.

    Patrick Devitt lives in the neighborhood where the slide came down, several miles from the runways at O’Hare. He told CNN affiliate WLS his father-in-law and son were inside their home and heard a boom in their backyard around 12:15 p.m. CT. Devitt’s father-in-law walked outside, saw the slide in the backyard and told Devitt’s son to call 911.

    Devitt was on his way home from work at the time. When he got to the house, he dragged the slide from his backyard to the front of the home. He said the large piece of equipment damaged the roof of the home and a kitchen window screen, WLS reported.

    “When it’s all stretched out,” Devitt told the Chicago station, “it’s larger than a small car. It’s a very, very big piece of equipment that fell.”

    Maintenance workers at O’Hare discovered the plane was missing its slide after it landed, according to the Federal Aviation Administration. United Airlines said, “We immediately contacted the FAA and are working with our team to better understand the circumstances around this matter.”

    The Chicago Police Department said it responded to the incident in the 4700 block of North Chester Avenue but deferred questions about the investigation to the FAA, the lead agency.

    In 2019, a slide fell off a Delta flight landing at Boston’s Logan International Airport. It, too, fell in a residential area. There were no injuries.

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  • Amsterdam Schiphol Airport proposes a ban on private jets | CNN

    Amsterdam Schiphol Airport proposes a ban on private jets | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    High flyers hoping to hop to the Netherlands in a private jet might be forced to rethink their travel plans, as Amsterdam’s Schiphol Airport is proposing a private jet ban.

    The notoriously busy airport has suggested a series of measures to reduce its air traffic and create a “quieter, cleaner and better” system, according to a Schiphol airport statement.

    Under new proposals the airport hopes will come into effect “no later than 2025-26,” private jets will “no longer be welcome” at Schiphol. There will also be no aircraft landing between midnight and 5 a.m. local time or taking off between midnight and 6 a.m. local time. Plans for a new runway have also been scrapped.

    Schiphol says it’s targeting private jets because they cause “a disproportionate amount of noise nuisance and CO2 emissions per passenger.” Private jets produce up to 14 times more planet-warming pollution than commercial planes, and 50 times more than trains, according to European clean transport organization, Transport & Environment.

    When these small, swanky aircraft depart from Schiphol, 30% to 50% of them are heading to vacation hot spots like Ibiza in Spain, Cannes in France or Innsbruck in Austria, according to Schiphol. The airport argues there are plenty of airplanes flying from Amsterdam to those destinations, and suggests private passengers should go commercial instead.

    “Sufficient scheduled services are available to the most popular destinations flown to by private jets,” says Schiphol Airport in a statement, adding that small police and ambulance aircraft will be permitted to take off and land as they do currently under the new system.

    Last month, the Dutch government announced plans to restrict international aircraft departures in a quest to cut the country’s carbon emissions.

    The Dutch government’s “Preliminary Scheme Schiphol,” published in January, proposed slashing flight numbers from 500,000 to 460,000 between winter 2023-2024 and summer 2024.

    Airlines including Dutch flagship carrier KLM, as well as Delta and EasyJet, pushed back on this proposed flight cap, launching a legal challenge against the Dutch government.

    The airport’s recent statement suggests limiting nighttime air traffic would mean 10,000 fewer night flights each year, and therefore could help get Schiphol to its target.

    Cutting down on overnight landings and departures should also reduce noise pollution for local residents, with airport data suggesting the number of local residents experiencing severe sleep disturbance will fall by approximately 54%.

    It’s not uncommon for even the busiest airports to implement nighttime curfews – take London Heathrow Airport, for example, which restricts overnight operations.

    “Around 80% of the night flights at Heathrow are between 04:30 – 06:00 with an average of 16 aircraft arriving each day between these hours under normal pre-Covid conditions,” reads Heathrow’s website, which adds that flights are never scheduled to depart between 11 p.m. and 6 a.m.

    Frankfurt Airport and Zurich Airport are among the other travel hubs with limitations on overnight air traffic.

    Concerns about noise are also reflected in Amsterdam’s proposed “stricter approach regarding noisier aircraft,” with Schiphol suggesting it will gradually tighten “existing standards for aircraft that are allowed to take off from and land at Schiphol.”

    The airport also pledged to put aside 10 million euros a year for an “environmental fund for the local area,” in a bid to be a friendlier neighbor to its surrounding residents.

    In these new measures, Schiphol also promises to safeguard cargo flights, reserving 2.5% of the available takeoff and landing slots for cargo.

    “However, cargo flights will have to adhere to new, tighter rules for noisier aircraft and the new night closure will also apply to cargo,” reads the airport’s statement.

    Ruud Sondag, the CEO of the Royal Schiphol Group, which manages Amsterdam’s airport, says the Schiphol proposals demonstrate that “we mean business.”

    “We have thought about growth but too little about its impact for too long,” he said in a statement. “We need to be sustainable for our employees, the local environment and the world. I realise that our choices may have significant implications for the aviation industry, but they are necessary.”

    Many of the currently scheduled Schiphol night flights are operated by KLM or its subsidiary Transavia. In response to Schiphol suggestions, KLM said in a statement that the airline was “astonished,” and planned to put forward alternative proposals later this year.

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  • Power outage disrupts New York’s JFK Airport Terminal 1 | CNN

    Power outage disrupts New York’s JFK Airport Terminal 1 | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    A power outage is disrupting flights at a John F. Kennedy International Airport terminal, the airport said Thursday.

    The outage at Terminal 1 was caused by an electrical panel failure that resulted in a “small isolated fire overnight that was immediately extinguished,” the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey said in a statement.

    “The power outage is currently impacting the terminal’s ability to accept inbound and outbound flights,” the statement said.

    Other terminals are being used to accommodate the affected flights, and travelers should check with their airlines for flight status, the Port Authority said.

    An Air New Zealand flight that was due to land at JFK at 5:40 p.m. ET Thursday was diverted back to its origin airport, according to flight tracking site FlightAware.

    Some arriving international flights were diverted to other East Coast airports, including Newark Liberty International Airport in New Jersey, Boston’s Logan International Airport and Washington Dulles International Airport, JFK’s website showed.

    The Port Authority is trying to restore power at Terminal 1 by working around the circuits affected by the overnight fire, according to a Port Authority official with knowledge of the outage.

    If this method of restoring the power to the terminal is not successful, they are prepared to use generator power to get Terminal 1 back online, the Port Authority source added.

    The aircraft ramp around Terminal 1 has been closed and is scheduled to reopen Friday morning, according to a notice posted in a Federal Aviation Administration safety database.

    The FAA referred questions about the incident to the airport operator. The Transportation Security Administration said: “TSA is eagerly awaiting the power situation to be resolved.”

    Passengers on the Air New Zealand flight found themselves on a nearly 16-hour flight from Auckland back to Auckland after ANZ2 turned around because of the disruption at JFK.

    “Diverting to another US port would have meant the aircraft would remain on the ground for several days, impacting a number of other scheduled services and customers,” the airline said in a statement to CNN.

    Airline staff will be on hand to rebook passengers when they arrive back in Auckland.

    “We apologise for the inconvenience and thank our customers for their patience and understanding.”

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  • The rich should pay higher fares to clean up aviation, says Heathrow boss | CNN Business

    The rich should pay higher fares to clean up aviation, says Heathrow boss | CNN Business

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    London
    CNN
     — 

    Rich travelers will have to pay more to fly if the aviation industry is to transition to greener fuels, the boss of one of the world’s biggest airports said Tuesday.

    Speaking on a panel at the World Economic Forum in Davos hosted by CNN’s Richard Quest, Heathrow CEO John Holland-Kaye said that wealthy individuals and companies should pay extra to fly with sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) in order to bring the costs down for everyone else, particularly people in developing countries.

    He said that financiers and energy suppliers should invest in SAF production, including in emerging markets.

    “But as individuals and companies we need to be paying the premium for sustainable aviation fuels so that we can get the cost of it down so that the mass market and developing countries don’t have to pay for the energy transition. The wealthy people in this room and wealthy nations should be funding the energy transition in aviation to help support developing countries,” he added.

    Holland-Kaye said the solution to sustainable aviation was not to fly less, which was not necessarily an option outside Northern Europe, but to use cleaner sources of energy to travel.

    SAF is viewed as critical to reducing aviation’s carbon emissions but its green credentials come at a hefty price. Some airlines allow passengers to offset their CO2 emissions by paying more for their tickets to cover the extra cost of using SAF, but very few travelers currently make use of this option.

    Holland-Kaye said that companies can play a major role accelerating the adoption of SAF because business travel accounts for about 30% of fuel used in aviation. He cited the example of Microsoft

    (MSFT)    , which has an internal carbon tax for travel that requires each business unit to pay a fee based on its carbon emissions.

    Produced mainly from recycled food and agricultural waste, such as used cooking oil, SAF is a type of biofuel that cuts greenhouse gas emissions by 80% compared to conventional jet fuel.

    It also costs between two and eight times more than its fossil-fuel based alternative, which is why in 2019 it accounted for just 0.1% of jet fuel used in commercial aviation, according to a report by the World Economic Forum and McKinsey.

    In 2021, the industry pledged to replaced 10% of global jet fuel supply with SAF by 2030. This year, Virgin Atlantic plans to fly a Boeing 787 from London to New York powered solely by SAF in what has been billed as the world’s first net-zero transatlantic flight.

    Clean energy investments need a major boost if the world is to meet its climate goals, according to Fatih Birol, executive director of the International Energy Agency. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has prompted a surge in investment in renewables as countries race to secure alternative energy supplies, but much more needs to be done, he said.

    Speaking on another Davos panel hosted by CNN’s Julia Chatterley earlier on Tuesday, Birol said that for every dollar invested in fossil fuels, the world is now investing $1.50 in clean energy. That needs to increase to $9 to keep global warming below 1.5 degrees Celsius, he added.

    — Anna Cooban contributed reporting.

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  • Fire on board a JetBlue plane forces the evacuation of more than 160 passengers at New York’s JFK airport | CNN

    Fire on board a JetBlue plane forces the evacuation of more than 160 passengers at New York’s JFK airport | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    A fire on board a JetBlue Airways plane forced more than 160 passengers to evacuate using emergency slides at New York’s John F. Kennedy International Airport on Saturday, fire department officials said.

    The incident – which happened shortly after the flight from Barbados landed at the airport – may have started due to an electronic device and is under investigation, according to JetBlue.

    “On Saturday, JetBlue flight 662 with service from Bridgetown, Barbados (BGI) was evacuated shortly after landing at New York’s John F. Kennedy Airport (JFK) due to reports of a customer’s malfunctioning electronic device or battery,” company spokesperson Derek Dombrowski said in a statement to CNN.

    The New York City Fire Department reported a plane fire around 9 p.m. at the airport’s Terminal 5, saying the regional Port Authority agency evacuated the JetBlue plane.

    A total of 167 people were evacuated using emergency slides, the FDNY said. Five passengers had minor injuries.

    “Safety is always our number one priority,” Dombrowski said, adding JetBlue is coordinating with officials from the Federal Aviation Administration and the National Transportation Safety Board.

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  • 2 Black comedians file lawsuit over police jet bridge stops at Atlanta airport | CNN

    2 Black comedians file lawsuit over police jet bridge stops at Atlanta airport | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    Police officers stopped Eric André as he boarded a flight from Atlanta to Los Angeles in April 2021 and, a few months earlier, the same thing happened to another Black comedian in the same place, a lawsuit alleges.

    André and fellow comedian Clayton English filed the lawsuit claiming the stops were the result of racial profiling.

    “Police officers came out of nowhere in like, almost like an ambush style and started, singled me out. I was the only person of color on the jet bridge at the time,” André said in a news conference Tuesday.

    “They singled me out. They asked me if I was selling drugs, transporting drugs, what kind of drugs I have on me,” he said.

    A lawsuit filed Tuesday by André and English alleges that this stop was part of an anti-drug trafficking program carried out by the Clayton County Police Department in Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport that unfairly targets Black fliers.

    “It was clearly racial profiling. The experience was humiliating and dehumanizing, degrading, I had all the other passengers squeezing by me on this claustrophobic jet bridge gawking at me like I was a perpetrator,” André said.

    Police stopped English on a flight, also to Los Angeles, in October 2020.

    CNN has reached out to both the police department and the Atlanta Department of Aviation for comment.

    “I was almost on the plane when, in the jet bridge two officers popped out, showed their badges and started asking questions whether I had illegal drugs like cocaine, and I feel cornered in a jet bridge and I felt the need to comply,” English said in the news conference.

    After the incident involving André, Clayton County police denied any wrongdoing, CNN affiliate WSB-TV reported.

    The station published this statement released then by the police:

    “On April 21, 2021, the Clayton County Police Department made a consensual encounter with a male traveler, later identified as Eric Andre, as he was preparing to fly to California from the Atlanta Airport. Mr. Andre chose to speak with investigators during the initial encounter. During the encounter, Mr. Andre voluntarily provided the investigators information as to his travel plans.

    “Mr. Andre also voluntarily consented to a search of his luggage but the investigators chose not to do so. Investigators identified that there was no reason to continue a conversation and therefore terminated the encounter. Mr. Andre boarded the plane without being detained and continued on his travels. The Drug Enforcement Administration and the Atlanta Police Department did not assist in this consensual encounter.”

    The lawsuit claims that the Clayton County Police Department describes the “jet bridge interdiction program” as “consensual encounters” carried out at “random,” but argues that in a post-9/11 flying atmosphere, encounters with law enforcement in airports are unlikely to be seen as anything but required.

    The two name multiple members of the Clayton County Police Department in their lawsuit and allege that the department carries out these stops and searches in a way that targets Black passengers. The filing cites Clayton County Police Department records showing 56% of passengers (or 378 individuals whose races are listed) stopped in this manner are Black.

    “The Clayton County Police Department, along, sometimes, with the county district attorney’s office has been conducting interdiction of passengers on jet bridges as they’re getting on their airplanes to ask them about whether they have drugs on them,” Barry Friedman, an attorney for the plaintiffs, said in the news conference.

    “It’s not a very successful interdiction program,” Friedman said. Clayton County Police Department records show that out of 402 jet bridge stops from August 2020 to April 2021, only three seizures were made, according to the lawsuit,.

    “They’ve come up with very little drugs, but they’ve taken a lot of cash off of passengers,” Friedman said. The lawsuit filing calls the jet bridge program “financially lucrative.”

    “Over the 8-month period in question, the program seized $1,036,890.35 in cash and money orders via 25 civil asset forfeitures,” the filing reads.

    Civil asset forfeiture allows law enforcement to seize property they allege is connected to a crime. Organizations like the ACLU have criticized it as a legal way for police to steal from civilians, as obtaining one’s property after it’s been seized is notoriously difficult.

    “Yet, of the 25 passengers who had cash seized, 24 were allowed to continue on their travels, often on the same flight, and only two were ever charged with any related crime.”

    “The Clayton County Police Department has described this program as a drug interdiction program. For what we’re able to see by simply looking at the open records information that we’ve received, it seems to be a distinctly unsuccessful drug interdiction program, if that’s what it is,” Richard Deane, another member of the plaintiff’s legal team, said in the news conference.

    “What appears to be happening is that this is organized largely in order to seize money from people, on the hope that they’re not going to thereafter make the claim for those funds,” he said.

    André called the experience “traumatizing.”

    “When two cops stop you, you don’t feel like you have the right to leave, especially when they start interrogating you about drugs. The whole experience was traumatizing. I felt belittled,” he said. “I want to use my resources and my platform to bring national attention to this incident so that it stops.”

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