It only took five minutes for three commuter jets to collide at Baton Rouge Metro Airport in Louisiana yesterday.

WAFB TV in the Louisiana capital says the incident happened at the airport's new regional maintenance hanger for Atlantic Southwest Airlines.

The three planes were valued at $100 million, and reportedly one was totaled.

It happened when a mechanic hit the starter switch on one of the planes that was meant to get compressor blades to slowly start spinning. Instead, the plane went into full takeoff mode, pivoting wildly throughout the hangar at 90 degree angles before crashing into the other planes.

Witnesses tell the television channel that it was a lucky turnout that only the three planes were damaged. There were 14 ASA maintenance workers in the hangar, and in such a closed space the accident could have resulted in a serious explosion.

Confronted with an exodus of veteran air traffic controllers who are hitting retirement age, the Federal Aviation Administration is busy recruiting -- at, among other places, high schools.

The FAA is busy wooing recent high school grads to come right on board, so to speak, and begin training to be controllers. They'll go through three months of training before becoming "controllers in training." Not long after that, they'll be staff.

The New York Post broke the story today.

The FAA has just completed a recruitment drive that placed ads on Craig's List, Myspace and at high schools nationwide. The feds were offering more than $100,000 in signing bonuses to newbies to draw them to the New York area's five understaffed radar centers, says the Post.

There's a one-time $27,000 bonus at the start of training, with another $75,000 paid out over four years.

So far, the Post says, one recent hire is a 20-year-old man who is currently monitoring radars at a station in Westbury, LI. He happens to have majored in air traffic control, but the FAA says students who have completed the 12th grade are eligible.

This news comes after two recent near-misses above the skies of New York that are being attributed to understaffed radar stations.

On July 5, two passenger jets inbound to JFK came within 100 feet of colliding in mid air, which the FAA considers to be an extremely close call. On June 25, a Learjet was given the green light to land at Teterboro Airport on a runway on which maintenance employees were busy working.

By 2011, nearly 60 percent of all air traffic controllers nationwide will have less than five years experience on the job, the Post says.

I don't know how to feel about this. On the one hand, the FAA has to get new people in there to bring staffing numbers up to a safe level. Then again, how safe do we feel knowing the FAA is searching out applicants for this life-or-death job on Myspace?

It's hard to imagine that an airport is actually a place that you would want to spend some time when you're stuck in Newark's Northwest terminal, but believe it or not, there are actually a few really fantastic airports out there.

Domestically, San Francisco recently won the award for best airport facilities and my personal favorite is the Detroit McNamara Terminal, but Skytrax took an in-depth look at airport amenities and service around the world. And their winner for best airport on the planet?

Hong Kong International.

With sprawling, well-lit terminals, excellent connections to the city (you can check your luggage in HK before even getting on the train to the airport) and a friendly and efficient staff, it's not hard to believe.

In fact, five of the top ten airports ranked were in Asia, with four more in Europe and the final airport in Cape Town, South Africa. Where are the American airports, you ask? San Francisco is at number eleven while Atlanta, Dallas and Dener. The top ten list (in no particluar order)?

• Hong Kong
• Singapore
• Seoul, South Korea
• Kansai, Japan
• Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
• Munich, Germany
• Copenhagen, Denmark
• Zurich, Switzerland
• Helsinki, Finland
• Cape Town, South Africa

Click on the links below to see some images from the top ten.

The Dalmatian Coast and Marrakech are so 2007 -- you aren't a real hipster traveler until you've visited Iraq's newly accesible tourist destination: Najaf.

Officially opening its doors this month, Al-Hamza airport was just revamped by Kuwaiti investors and is now geared towards bringing in tourist dollars. Najaf, a southern city in Iraq, is home to the shrine of Iman Ali, the son-in-law of the Prophet Mohammed, and apparently attracts over nine million pilgrims each year. Their hope is that this airport will increase tourism by an additional ten percent.

Know what else might increase your tourism? Not being at war.

But perhaps this is an indication of the state of affairs in the war stricken country. As a country, when you're able to concentrate some effort on development, infrastructure and tourism instead of security and defense, perhaps things are looking a little brighter.

As a destination, Iraq has plenty to offer. Before the war, the Antiquities Museum was supposed to be among the richest in the world, while what remains of The Hanging Gardens of Babylon are allegedly in Al-Hillah.

Given the current conflict, I'm still a little hesitant to book my trip out to Iraq. Hopefully some day I'll be able to take my children to see what's left of Babylon.

I've never put an animal in an airline's care before, but I have friends who have. Friends of ours shipped their dogs to and from Singapore. One person took a parrot and another shipped two cats. All went well in these instances.

The situation where the dog was lost by United Airlines this past week is not common, I would guess, otherwise it wouldn't have made it to the national news. Grant gave a Gadling heads up, and this article on ABCNews this past Monday outlines more specifics about the unfortunate situation when Jeddah, the beloved dog of John and Ronia Weisner went missing at Dulles International Airport after only an hour in the airline's care.

If you are wondering what the statistics are for problems when shipping pets, and the airlines involved with the mishaps, check out this PDF file to Air Travel and Consumer Report published by the Office of Aviation Enforcement and Proceedings: Aviation Consumer Protection Division.

May 2008 was just posted this month. On page 38, you'll find the recent stats for pet troubles. Here's the summary:

No animals were lost in May.

Two were injured. (Alaska-1; Skywest-1)

Four died. (Continnental- 3; United-1)

The chart doesn't list the specifics of the incidents, but you can click on the airline name in the chart in order to get the report summaries.

In the Weisner's case, I can't imagine what it must be like to have such a significant change already in ones life such as a move to Saudi Arabia for a year only to have it start out with a missing dog.

For those of you following the story of the the solider's dog that was lost by United Airlines earlier this week, you can now get updates on the unfolding events on the website helpfindjeddah.com or via a Twitter feed that they set up.

Apparently, enough people had caught wind of the story via the web such that there's a serious movement towards finding the animal -- well over five hundred people are now following the feed, garnering enough attention to get the Washington Post to run an article this morning.

In it, we learn some new facts about the debacle, including the interesting note that the owners only fed the dog people food and are concerned about her ability to fend for her self on her own.

Judging from some of the intense comments we got on our earlier story, there seem to be two schools of thought on the attention and resources that this search is getting: either you think we should shut down DC tomorrow and form a human chain across the the metropolitan area or you think we should sack up and let things sort themselves out -- haven't you ever seen that movie Homeward Bound?

I personally am a bit divided. I do hope that we find the dog quickly and think that all of the effort that people have put into finding her is quite touching. At some point, however, we'll probably need to stop consuming resources and leave the rest up to fate.

The airplanes flying in and out of Fresno Yosemite International Airport might still be running on traditional fuel, but the airport itself will be saving $13 million in energy costs over the next 20 years thanks to solar power. Yesterday welcomed the dedication of the new solar array which will provide 40% of the day-to-day lighting, air conditioning, controls and towers of the airport.

Given that the Fresno airport is the gateway to the famed Yosemite National Park, taking steps to be more environmentally friendly makes sense. So if your looking to green your next trip to California, fly into Fresno and be happy that the airport lights are partly fueled by the outdoor sun.

[Via Treehugger]

I'm not sure if I'll ever get married, but if I do, I'm clear that I'd want it to be as quick as possible, a couple of minutes is what would work best for me. Being Indian, a wedding under four days is sacrilege, but oh well.

A registered wedding at the court was what I thought the only option, a super boring option indeed, until I read in USA Today about quickie weddings possible at the airport!

At Los Angeles International Airport, a man called "The Officiant Guy" can marry you without witnesses and in full confidentiality. You don't even need to be an LA resident! At Sweden's Stockholm-Arlanda Airport, you can arrange to be married in the airport church or by a registrar; last year the 500 couples got hitched there. "Say Yes and Go" marriages sound awesome too -- say "I do" and jump straight onto a plane, a common wedding style in Amsterdam's Schiphol Airport.

However, if that's too simple and you want a bit of a novel themed wedding, you can tie the knot inside a parked Concorde Airplane at England's Manchester Airport, and Schiphol Airport has a wedding planner who will organize it the way you want at the airport (boarding pass style invites? Air crew uniforms as outfits?). The airport will even allow you to have a champagne brunch, and should you want to take all your guests on a trip straight after, a special "Ticket to Paradise" package deal can be sorted out.

So if you are looking for a different, cheaper, and quicker way to get married, you might want to ring your nearest airport!

Now that Open Skies is in full effect, carriers left and right are scrambling to take advantage of all of the sweet landing slots in the EU's congested airports.

Case in point, London's Heathrow Airport. Most travelers flying into the United Kingdom prefer landing at Heathrow because of better connections and proximity to London via the Tube. But landing slots at LHR are all full, so whenever one opens up, competition is hot to fill it in. Similarly, carriers want to hold on to their high-value slots to make sure that any competition doesn't come in and snatch up some capacity.

So what do you do when you can't book enough passengers to justify flying in and out of your slot? This case might show up if, say hypothetically, you've been cutting capacity like crazy to save cash and demand is low because travel is so expensive. Sound like any economy you know?

In that case, what do you do with your landing slot? Well, according to BMI, or British Midland Airways, you keep flying. Without passengers.

British Airways did the same thing earlier this year to try to preserve landing slots and we figured that the subsequent disgust with their MO combined with the price of fuel would be a deterrent for other carriers to do the same thing. But I guess those slots are just too valuable.

Why not at least auction off the empty seats on the aircraft? I know that you have to pay flight attendants if you have passengers onboard, but I feel like you can make enough to pay a few employees and offset the price of jet fuel a bit. But I guess that would make too much sense.

If you happen to be riding around in one of the Moon Rovers at Washington Dulles in the next couple days, keep your eyes peeled for any four legged creatures running around the tarmac.

John and Ronia Weisner, two owners of a dog that was traveling with John, an active member of the armed forces, en route to Saudi Arabia, were horrified to find that their pet was lost at Washington DC's Dulles airport, not an hour after they turned her over to United Airlines' airport authorities for luggage check in.

The culprit, they suggest, is the substandard cage that the FAA required them to use -- apparently the new kennel that they purchased had to have screws in it but was still not structurally sound enough to handle the baggage system.

But how did the dog escape? Once the dog and cage went down into the luggage system, it appears that something struck its side and the dog broke free. As to whether the dog could have broken itself free, the Weisner's state:

"There's no way, no something hit it, bended it inward."

Now, in an effort to find the missing animal and restore peace to John and Ronia, the two have offered a $2500 reward, while United has put up another matching $2500. The pair have been scouring the tarmac with escorts looking for the dog and apparently have still yet to find the animal.

My bet is that it will show up in someone's luggage in Abu Dhabi.