February 12, 2018

London City Airport is closed today due to an unexploded World War II-era bomb being discovered nearby.

Fortune writes:

Construction workers found the bomb in King George V Dock, which is a stone’s throw away from the end of the London City Airport runway, on the River Thames. After they reported it to the Metropolitan Police in the early hours of Sunday morning, the airport was shut. It remained closed on Monday.

The police set up a 214-meter (702-foot) exclusion zone so they could deal with the bomb without endangering the public. That meant evacuating residents and setting up road cordons.

According to the Evening Standard:

London City Airport has urged passengers due to fly on Monday not to travel to the airport. The airport is likely to remain closed all day.

London City Airport posted a statement from their CEO, Robert Sinclair, regarding the closure:

“The airport remains closed this morning following the discovery of a World War Two ordnance in King George V Dock on Sunday. All flights in and out of London City on Monday are cancelled and an exclusion zone is in place in the immediate area.

All flights in and out of London City on Monday are cancelled and an exclusion zone is in place in the immediate area. I urge any passengers due to fly today not to come to the airport and to contact their airline for further information.

I recognise this is causing inconvenience for our passengers, and in particular some of our local residents. The airport is cooperating fully with the Met Police and Royal Navy and working hard to safely remove the device and resolve the situation as quickly as possible.”

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February 11, 2018

A Russian plane crashed shortly after takeoff from Moscow on Sunday and is believed to have killed all 71 people on board. This is the first commercial passenger jet crash for more than a year – 2017 was the safest year on record for air travel.

According to CNN:

All 71 people aboard a Saratov Airlines plane died when the plane crashed southeast of Moscow on Sunday, Russian state news agency Tass reported.

Those on board included 65 passengers and six crew members, the Russian news agency Interfax said.

The Antonov-148 aircraft disappeared from the radar shortly after takeoff from Moscow’s Domodedovo Airport and crashed soon afterward, Tass reported.

The plane went down in Ramenskoye District, in the Moscow region, the Russian emergency ministry told CNN.

“The snow is very dense … the Moscow region has had some of its heaviest snowfall in decades,” CNN’s Matthew Chance reported from Moscow. “It’s not clear at this stage whether weather was factor in this crash.”

The BBC reports:

The Antonov An-148 was en route to the city of Orsk in the Ural mountains.

Flight-tracking site Flightradar24 said the aircraft was descending at the rate of 1,000m (3,300ft) per minute shortly after taking off early on Sunday afternoon.

Pieces of wreckage and bodies were found spread over a large area. One of the flight recorders has been recovered, officials say.

All 65 passengers were from Orenburg, the Russian region to which the plane was flying, a spokesman or the regional governor told Interfax news agency.

This is the first commercial passenger jet crash for more than a year – 2017 was the safest year on record for air travel.

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February 9, 2018

The Eiffel Tower has been closed since Tuesday due to the heaviest snow in three decades that has covered the French capital. Several flights from Paris airports and in Amsterdam were cancelled or delayed. Hundreds of people spent the night trapped in their vehicles in Paris.

According to The Daily Mail:

Eiffel Tower is closed because the stairs are too icy as snow and freezing rain hits northern France. Authorities are telling drivers in the Paris region to stay at home as snow and freezing rain have hit a swathe of northern France.

The company that manages France’s most-visited monument said the 19th-century Eiffel Tower will be closed all day Friday and Saturday ‘to ensure the security of visitors’.

The Evening Standard reports:

Commuters faced a fourth day of travel chaos as freezing conditions caused transport to grind to a halt following heavy snowfall on Tuesday evening.

Authorities urged motorists to stay off the roads in the Île-de-France region as more snow was expected to move in throughout Friday morning.

It is anticipated that Parisians could see between 4cm and 7 cm of further snowfall.

Meteo France said that Friday’s snow will not be as heavy as Tuesday night’s flurry, but said that due to the plummeting temperatures there was danger of ice on the roads.

On Thursday evening forecasters issued an alert across Paris warning of dangerous conditions.

Railway lines were up and running again on Friday morning with the Metro and RER reported to be working as usual.

But an announcement on the RATCP said that it would update travel services as the weather changed throughout the day.

Temperatures are expected to reach lows of -3C and highs of 4C on Friday as the cold snap wears on.

The Netherlands Times reports:

Snow fall in the Netherlands is causing problems with air traffic. Schiphol lists a number of flight cancelations, and KLM announced on Thursday that the airline is canceling 26 flights scheduled for Friday. Motorists, especially in the west of the country, are warned to be careful of icy roads during morning rush hour.

The snowfall is expected to start around 10:00 a.m. in the west of the country, and then spread out through the rest of the Netherlands during the course of the day. Meteorological institute KNMI issued a code yellow weather warning.

Between 1 and 3 centimeters of snow is expected during the afternoon, and that will cause dangerous driving conditions in the west, southwest and center of the country during evening rush hour, according to Weeronline. The eastern and north eastern parts of the Netherlands will only see snow during the evening.

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February 9, 2018

Chicago is undergoing the effects of a severe winter storm, including numerous canceled and delayed flights at O’Hare and Midway airports.

According to the Chicago Tribune:

As much as 5 inches had fallen by 7 a.m., causing dozens of crashes on area expressways and canceling more than 800 flights at O’Hare and Midway airports. School officials in Chicago and across the area, faced with an early forecast of more than a foot of snow, canceled classes for the day. Hundreds of schools are closed.

A winter storm warning remains in effect until noon, nine hours earlier than when it was first issued on Thursday. The weather service said 3 to 6 inches more snow was expected through the morning.

USA Today provided updates for the situation yesterday and today:

FRIDAY’S UPDATE: Airlines were canceling flights and waiving changes fees Friday as a winter storm brought heavy snow to airports in the Midwest and Great Lakes. Nationwide, more than 1,000 flights had been canceled and another 200 delayed as of 7:20 a.m. ET, according to flight-tracking service FlightAware.

THURSDAY’S UPDATE: Flying on Friday? Brace for another round of winter-weather disruptions.

Airlines were already canceling flights for Friday ahead of a winter storm that’s forecast to dump up to a foot of snow across the Midwest, including in Chicago and its busy air-travel hubs. Most big carriers also were waiving rebooking fees for fliers ticketed through Chicago and at airports across the Great Lakes region. 

Nationwide, about 925 flights had already been canceled, flight-tracking service FlightAware showed as of 10:15 p.m. ET on Thursday. The bulk of those came at Chicago’s two major airports: O’Hare is a hub for both American and United while Midway is one of the busiest bases for Southwest. At Detroit — a hub for Delta — about 15% of Friday’s flight schedule had been preemptively canceled.

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February 7, 2018

This morning, a Southwest Airlines plane headed to Montego Bay, Jamaica skidded off the runway at Baltimore-Washington International Airport while taxiing. No injuries were reported.

The Baltimore Sun writes:

BWI Airport spokesman Jonathan Dean said that the plane’s wheels never left the taxiway. But he confirmed the plane stopped at the edge of the pavement on Taxiway P, and that airport operations employees, fire department, Maryland Transportation Authority Police and Southwest Airlines personnel “responded to the incident scene.”

No one was injured. The cause of the plane’s skid is under investigation.

The flight already had been delayed more than an hour before the incident. The plane was evacuated, and its 143 passengers and six crew members were bussed back to the airport, according to Southwest Airlines. Skid marks on the taxiway pavement could be seen in a photo [passenger Charlie] Simmons took of the plane.

The plane was towed about 12:30 p.m., and the taxiway and section of the runway were reopened afterward, with negligible effect on airport operations, Dean said.

CNBC reported:

Skids or slides off runways and taxiways are the most common type of accident in commercial air travel, according to the International Air Transport Association, which represents most of the world’s airlines. In 2016, runway and taxiway excursions accounted for about a fifth of total accidents involving commercial aircraft.

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February 6, 2018

At least two people are dead and 202 injured after a 6.4-magnitude earthquake struck Tuesday just off the east coast of Taiwan late Tuesday, local police said. The first through third floors of the Marshal Hotel in Hualien county caved in, causing the death of one employee. Another person died in a residential building.

CNN reports:

The quake was centered in the East China Sea about 21 kilometers north-northeast of Hualien City. Light shaking was felt in the capital of Taipei, about 120 kilometers north of Hualien City, according to reports sent to the US Geological Survey.

Three buildings have collapsed, including the Marshal Hotel in Hualien City. Jeff Lin with the Hualien Police Department described the other two structures as “city department buildings.”

About 400 rescue workers scrambled to locate people, and a crane was brought in to help, footage from CNN affiliate SET TV showed. One building apparently had collapsed onto what once was the ground floor.

The injured are mainly from the Marshal Hotel, and a few of the injured were in the city buildings. One hotel employee was rescued from the basement and three others remain missing, officials said.

At least 50 Japanese tourists were among the injured, a Hualien City police dispatcher said.

Officials had no numbers for missing people.

In addition, two bridges in the area were damaged and have been closed, Lin said.

A 5.4 aftershock hit near Hualien City shortly after the larger earthquake, according to the USGS. There have been several other strong quakes in the area in the last few days.

Cellphone video from Hualien City shows a large building leaning at a dangerous angle as sirens are heard in the background. The video shows people gathering near the building and shining flashlights on windows.

According to The Weather Channel:

The temblor knocked out power to 1,900 homes in the city, The Epoch Times reports.

Some of the highways and bridges in the area have been shut down by authorities so that inspections can be performed, AP reports.

Officials shut down the Hualien Bridge and the Su-Hua Highway was temporarily closed due to a surface uplift on the roadway, Xinhua News Agency reports.

Multiple landslides that occurred along the Su-Hua Highway also contributed to its closure, according to Taiwan News.

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