The Week In Travel

Thousands of flights have been grounded this week after a major outage hit the UK’s air traffic control system. Over 200,000 passengers were affected by delays and cancellations, with the situation leading to the worst day of flight disruption in the UK since the Icelandic volcano ash cloud incident in 2010. The disruption has been attributed to a ‘network-wide’ failure, with controllers having to enter flight details manually, massively slowing down proceedings.

Moving to Eastern Europe, AirBaltic has announced that 11 new routes will be added to its summer 2024 schedule. The flights will leave from airports in Latvia, Estonia and Lithuania, with the new destinations including Tirana, Sofia and Ljubljana, with plans also in place to expand its routes to Rome, Prague and Tel Aviv.

In technology news, Virgin Australia has rolled out a new baggage tracking tool which allows passengers to check the status of their checked bags, including which carousel to head to at the end of their journey, via the airline’s app. The tracking tool is available on most domestic routes between major airports, including Sydney-Melbourne, Brisbane-Sydney, Melbourne-Gold Coast, Melbourne-Hobart, Adelaide-Melbourne and Sydney-Sunshine Coast among others.

Over in South Korea, start-up Toff Mobility has announced plans to offer both passenger and logistics flights via electric aircraft in 2024. The company claims to have started this initiative in order to aid South Korea’s aims of reaching zero carbon emissions. Toff Mobility intends to use EASA-certified electric aircraft and will form a team of professionals with real-life expertise with both electric and fossil-fuel aircrafts.

And finally, residents of a picturesque village in Austria have staged an anti-selfie roadblock to stop tourists from snapping pictures. People travelling to the Alpine Settlement of Hallstat – widely believed to be the inspiration for the kingdom of Arendelle in Disney’s Frozen – are being met with an icy reception from locals. Tens of thousands of visitors arrive at the village every day to take selfies, much to the frustration of the 700 or so people who live there. Are the people of Hallstat right to take a stand, or should they ‘let it go’?