What do you do when your airport is old, crowded, and outmoded, but efforts to expand it get blocked time and time again?  Obviously, you shut it down and build a new one on a man-made island. Duh!

Things have gotten so bad at Heathrow Airport that London mayor Boris Johnson has suggested shutting it down and building a new facility on a man-made island in the Thames Estuary, which leads into the North Sea. It's a recycled idea, but it's once again being considered as efforts to build a third runway at Heathrow stall.

It's not the most exciting news we've heard this week, but for those of us who fly regularly, it's important.

Surfers are hacked that cashed-strapped airlines, particularly Delta, have gone big with the fees they charge to check surfboards and they've launched an online petition demanding the airlines back off.

Delta's drawn the most flack for jacking up its fee to as much as $300 yet still letting golfers, hunters, pole vaulters, decathletes and skiers check their stuff for free. That's more than unfair, surfers argue. It's discriminatory.

Sometimes, while waiting for my plane to pull back from the gate, marking the start of another insufferable domestic flight, I find myself getting scared. I look out the window at the rows of planes jamming the taxiways and gate areas and I think to myself, I don't know how the pilot is going to find his way out of this mess. Evidently, he's not always sure either. 

A Delta Airlines flight approaching an airport soaked by Tropical Storm Fay was delayed by four catfish that walked onto the runway. Yes, that's right, they walked, and the plane couldn't land until airport officials dispatched a crew to round up the wayward fish.