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Corfu, one of the most famous Greek islands, is the newest destination on offer from London Luton Airport. The flight is part of a UK-wide expansion by Monarch Airlines, which will also see a new route to Bodrum, Turkey, added at Birmingham, Manchester, and Gatwick airports from summer 2011.

In Greek mythology, Corfu was the place where the god of the sea, Poseidon, married a nymph named Korkyra, whom he had recently abducted from the mainland. The island is one of the most popular holiday destinations in the Ionian Sea, alongside Zante and Kefalonia, and apart from sun and sand is perhaps best known for its selection of museums. Corfu’s clement temperatures and forested peaks are not unique in the Eastern Mediterranean, but the island’s Venetian architecture sets it apart from Rhodes, Kos, and other destinations in the Ionian and Aegean seas.

Beginning on May 23, flights from Luton to Corfu International Airport will operate three times a week. The route from Gatwick and Birmingham to Bodrum will also begin on May 23, while the same flight from Manchester will take off on May 2 2011. Kevin George, chief at Monarch Airlines, explained that the new routes being added at four UK hubs were in response to growing customer demand. Monarch recently experienced its most lucrative January on record, experiencing growth of 24% over the same month in 2010.

Monarch, which is based at Luton Airport, says that the May 2011 expansion is separate from a capacity boost in February, which added 135,000 seats onto the carrier’s summer programme. Flights from Gatwick to Palma and Tenerife were increased by one flight per week, while three additional journeys were introduced on to the popular Gatwick-Paphos service. Similarly, at Manchester Airport, routes to Larnaca and Paphos on the island of Cyprus and the island of Tenerife were boosted by one extra weekly flight each.

Tickets for Monarch’s new route to Corfu begin at £59.99 for a one-way trip departing on May 23 2011.

Two computer-generated holograms, or ‘virtual assistants,’ have joined the workforce at London Luton Airport. The unusual couple, dubbed Holly and Graham by their co-workers, were installed inside Luton’s security search area at the end of January 2011.

Holograms, almost as difficult to define, as they are to produce, are 2D projections of light that give the illusion of a 3D object. In other words, Luton’s newest members of staff are short ‘films’ of a real person, produced by recording the way that light scatters from the real-life Holly and Graham, and then replaying the patterns precisely. The concept has been a staple of science fiction shows for decades, featuring in Star Trek, Red Dwarf, and more realistically, in the movie, I Robot.

Described as “absolutely remarkable” by Glyn Jones, managing director at Luton Airport, Holly and Graham were created by Tensator, a company that produces “crowd control and hospitality solutions.” The holographic pair use pre-recorded phrases, such as “place coins, phones, and keys in your hand luggage,” to assist (or terrify) travellers on their journey through the Bedfordshire hub.

Tensator claims that Luton was the first airport in the world to integrate holographic announcers into the regular workforce. However, Manchester Airport has since introduced holographic versions of existing staff members, John Walsh and Julie Capper, and made the same claims regarding their novelty. Manchester’s holograms were created by entertainment firm, Musion, to enable security guards to concentrate on something other than reminding travellers to remove watches and belts.

Whether holograms or other pieces of software will one day replace the lowly human is debatable, but unlikely, as present designs are incapable of interacting with travellers.

Officials at Luton hope to distribute Holly and Graham to other areas of the airport, if the 4-8 week trial is successful.

Weighing scales may seem inoffensive but a Bedfordshire airport has managed to turn them into an object of “fury,” to quote a major news website.

Luton International Airport has introduced a 50p levy for the use of the hub’s weighing scales. The fee is likely to upset the travelling public, but there is no indication that Luton’s new scales, numbering four, are a mandatory expense, or that conventional weighing devices have been removed from the airport’s main terminal.

However, even if the airport has turned all of its scales into coin-operated mercenaries, travellers can save money and time by weighing their luggage at home on a set of ordinary bathroom scales, a course of action recommended by the Air Transport Users Council.

Luton’s ‘pay as you weigh’ scheme, to coin a phrase, is designed to eliminate delays at check-in desks by ensuring that flyers are aware of the total weight of their luggage, and whether their suitcase exceeds the limits imposed by their airline. The scales have a “large, easy-to-read screen,” says a notice on Luton’s website, which can also display a list of “allowances and excess charges.”

Worryingly, such ‘supplemental’ levies are often a means of recouping financial losses, as is the case at Cardiff Airport, where a service fee was recently applied to the hiring of parking spaces, and at Durham Tees Valley, which recently began charging visitors for using security checkpoints.

It is worth noting that baggage scales can be used free of charge at all other London airports, including Heathrow and Gatwick, reinforcing the idea that Luton is trying to refill its dwindling coffers. The airport has also introduced the controversial £1 drop-off fee and a £2 charge for the use of baggage trolleys in recent months.

For many Britons, Christmas is a celebration of the world’s most famous bearded gentlemen, Jesus and Santa Claus, and an excuse to escape the country by any means necessary. It should come as no surprise then that London Luton Airport is expecting thousands of people to arrive at the Bedfordshire hub over the festive season, clutching tickets to more than 90 destinations.

easyJet and Hungarian carrier Wizz Air will provide the majority of Luton Airport’s winter schedule, closely followed by Thomson, Ryanair and veteran British carrier Monarch.

Wizz Air, one of the largest providers of routes to Eastern Europe from the UK, is selling tickets for Varna and Bourgas in Bulgaria, Zagreb in Croatia and the relatively unknown locations Cluj-Napoca and Târgu Mureş in Romania. EasyJet, known for its close relationship with Luton, is offering routes to Amsterdam and Barcelona, as well as ‘sun and sea’ destinations in Egypt and Cyprus.

"The vast range of destinations from London Luton Airport means we can meet the demands of the travelling public and help them to enjoy a fantastic festive season," Simon Harley, airline manager at Luton, explained.

Bosses say that 500,000 people could pass through the airport’s security gates during December and January, with winter ski routes expected to sell just as quickly as flights to coastal resorts in the Mediterranean.

Geneva, for example, is one of the most popular winter routes from Luton, suggesting that a few hardy Brits can’t get enough of freezing winds, snow and sub-zero temperatures.

However, the festive season has some unique security rules that may take people by surprise. Wrapped presents will be opened by border guards, ruining all your hard work, and Christmas crackers are forbidden on all the aforementioned airlines, barring easyJet.

More information on festive security can be found on Luton Airport’s official website.

In this age of tightened security at airports across the world, with new security threats emerging on a seemingly monthly basis to throw security checkpoints into chaos and provide travellers with the worst possible start to their time abroad, the last thing those using British airports need is more cause for delay. However, it would seem that, as travellers, that's exactly what we're getting, and for a reason based solely upon exploitation and greed.

A whistle-blower at London's Luton Airport has publicly accused authorities at that particular airport of deliberately encouraging staff manning security checkpoints to allow queues to grow longer, in the hope that passengers will choose to make use of fast-track security lanes, which can cost up to £5 per person.

Luton Airport introduced pay-as-you-go fast-track lanes last year and they have since been introduced in airports including Leeds Bradford, Liverpool, and Bristol. According to the whistle-blower in question, a policy was introduced prior to the start of the scheme at Luton which encouraged staff to make the queues move more slowly and to do whatever possible to try to create queues when traffic through the security checkpoints wasn't at a high level.

With travellers from the UK currently having to arrive three hours before their scheduled departure time to ensure they get through security in good time, these claims, if true, are simply unacceptable.

Although Luton have denied the accusations, there's no doubting that these claims have done further damage to an industry that could do without any further negative news.

Bedfordshire Police are training an unlikely bunch of people to work as the “eyes and ears of the police” around London Luton Airport, in a bid to catch would-be villains unawares.

The trainees, 550 members of the Luton Airport Aviation Enthusiasts Scheme (AES), a collective of plane spotters, and a real mouthful, have been asked to collect “invaluable intelligence” whilst they watch the planes land at the UK's fifth largest airport.

Police introduced the scheme six years ago, as a wave of paranoia following the destruction of the World Trade Centre in 2001 forced an upheaval in airport security procedures. However, the project was initially used to keep an eye on plane spotters, ensuring that Luton’s anorak-clan masses were not Al Qaeda in disguise.

In 2010, Bedfordshire Police are realising the benefits of having sympathetic spotters stationed around Luton Airport. "(The AES) forms an extra layer of security for the airport," a local police officer explained. “Its hundreds of members have helped in a number of potential security situations,"

AES members are treated to a photo card and a car sticker identifying them as an authorised visitor to Luton Airport. Spotters are also given phone numbers to call in the case of an emergency, such as a hole in perimeter fences.

Despite the high profile of Luton’s plane spotters, the Bedfordshire hub is a “not a fantastic airport to view at all,” according to enthusiast website, Plane Mad, due to the airport’s proximity to cliffs and main roads.

However, local fans are directed to Luton’s high number of executive and private jets, which provide more variety than a Ryanair Boeing 737 or a Thomson Airbus A321.

From the end of October 2010, routes from Luton Airport to Spain and the Canary Islands will benefit from over one thousand extra seats, as veteran airline, Monarch, bolsters its winter sun campaign.

The carrier claims that flights to Alicante and Tenerife, two of the most popular ‘winter sun’ routes offered by Monarch, are in “huge demand,” as the number of passengers choosing to fly with the airline reached “record-breaking” levels.

A quick glance over the airline’s latest traffic figures reveals that Monarch’s PR team is telling the truth: the airline helped almost 465,000 people to their holiday destination in September 2010, compared to 429,000 during the same period last year, a rise of 8.26%.

Similarly, ‘load factors,’ roughly translated as the percentage of airline seats that were sold per aeroplane, were up 4.71% over 2009 figures.

Flights to Spanish resort, Malaga, from Manchester Airport will also benefit from extra seats this winter season. The Spanish city is Monarch’s highest performing route with a load factor of 96%, ahead of Almeria, also in Spain, with 95%.

Combined, extra flight capacity at Manchester and Luton should allow Monarch to carry an extra 2,000 passengers.

Monarch’s Luton route to Alicante will begin accepting extra passengers on October 22, with Tenerife and Manchester’s flight to Malaga following on 28 and 29 October, respectively. Tickets begin at £31.99, each way.

From Luton Airport, Monarch flies to island and coastal destinations almost exclusively, including Larnaca on the island of Cyprus, Faro in Portugal, and Bodrum in Turkey. However, only Alicante and Tenerife will benefit from October’s capacity boost, emphasising the popularity of the two ‘sun and sea’ destinations.

The airline, which is 42 years old this year, has also added a new route from Gatwick Airport to Calabria in Italy, beginning in summer 2011.

Budget airlines at Luton Airport are offering travellers access to “hundreds” of skiing resorts and snowy pistes extending “literally thousands of kilometres” into the Alps, the Pyrenees and the Balkan Mountains in Eastern Europe.

easyJet, which has called Luton its home since 1995, is selling tickets to the French city of Grenoble and, on the other side of the Alps, Turin in Italy. The airline also has a route to Geneva in Switzerland, which should prove popular with fans of the Chamonix and Megève resorts on the Franco-Swiss border.

Hungarian airline Wizz Air is flying from Luton to Sofia in Bulgaria this winter, opening up the resorts of Pamporovo and Bansko to skiers and snowboarders. The airline is perhaps best known for its routes to Poland, and has its largest UK base at Luton, around double the size of its hub at Robin Hood Airport.

Girona in Northern Spain might seem like an odd choice for a skiing holiday, given the country’s ‘sun and sea’ credentials, but the city is the cornerstone of Ryanair’s winter offerings from Luton Airport. Girona enjoys both the heat of the Mediterranean and the chilly slopes of the nearby Pyrenees Mountains on Spain’s border with France.

The ski resort of La Molina, which is 99 years old this year, is located within an hour’s drive of Girona Airport.

Finally, Thomson Airways is providing flights to the Alpine city of Salzburg in Austria. Salzburg is located close to the resorts of Flachau, Bad Gastein and Mayrhofen, known for its “hair-raising” black run, Hara-kiri, named for the mode of suicide favoured by Japanese samurai.

“We aim to cater to the snow sports enthusiast,” Luton’s business development manager, Simon Harley, explained. “Our flights to ski destinations are available between November and March, providing passengers with an extensive choice of winter sports holiday options at convenient flight times.”

Budget airline easyJet has come under fire for its potentially discriminatory treatment of disabled travellers. The problem arises in regard to the carriage of powered wheelchairs which weigh far more than the limit imposed, for health and safety reasons, on baggage handlers.

Batteries must be detached for air travel anyway, but even doing this leaves many powered wheelchairs still weighing 100kg or more. The limit permitted to safeguard baggage handlers is 60kg and unless the wheelchair can be collapsed into separate parts, each of which weighs less than 60kg, the airline cannot accept the wheelchair. As easyJet operates only short-haul routes and does not carry cargo it does not have the aircraft or machinery to get around the problem.

easyJet has said that the CAA recognises the difficulties faced by airlines torn between trying to help disabled passengers and following health and safety rules to safeguard their workforce. The need for co-operation between travellers and the airline is paramount and this is why easyJet ask that travellers with heavy wheelchairs contact the airline 48 hours before travelling as well as bringing the operating manual for their wheelchair with them to the airport.

One disabled traveller, however, is unimpressed. Hannah-Lou Blackall from Hull, whose wheelchair weighs 120kg, is disappointed that her trip to Krakow could be put at risk. She is not at all happy at the thought of anyone dismantling her expensive equipment and feels that this will cause stress for herself and her travelling companions. easyJet is, however, the only airline flying direct to Krakow from the UK.

Campaign group Trailblazers is asking airlines to consider having seats which can be removed to accommodate wheelchairs which would ensure their safety and make the journey more comfortable for the disabled passenger.

Luggage handling firm, Bagport, has announced that it will double the price of its trolley hire service, from £1 to £2. The change affects Luton and Bristol airports, with Cardiff expected to follow suit within the next few weeks.

Based in Redditch, Worchester, Bagport provides a range of baggage related services to UK airports, including weighing, wrapping, and retail. The company has fallen on hard times in recent months, however, and blamed falling customer numbers for the recent price change.

Strangely, the price of a trolley in Euros has not changed, making it the cheaper option at €2 or £1.65.

A spokesperson for Bagport noted that, until now, the company had not altered its trolley fees to reflect a global rise in operating costs and was haemorrhaging money as a result. The price hike was a last resort, explained the spokesperson, but one that should allow Bagport to maintain its customer service standards.

Luton Airport has pleaded its innocence in the matter, claiming that it will not ‘benefit financially’ from any extra profits. Bosses have also said that Bagport made the decision to raise its prices ‘at its own discretion,’ and was not asked to make the change by the airport itself.

Bagport's pricing scheme differs from those used at Gatwick and Stansted airports, which allow travellers to use trolleys free with a £1 refundable deposit. Luton's trolley charge is not refundable.

Whilst lone travellers might not grumble at the new price, school groups and families with children could end up with a hefty bill.

The changes, which were implemented on Thursday, coincide with the busiest period of the summer holiday season. ‘Bagport is fully aware of the disappointment it might leave with its customers,’ the spokesperson said.