Major delays across UK – Air Traffic Control system problems

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-25278163

Many delays plus cancellations. Estimated fix by 14:00.

NATS has explained that its Swanwick control centre experienced a technical problem in the early hours of Saturday morning.

Heathrow had cancelled 60 flights by 09:45 GMT, with these evenly split between arrivals and departures. A spokeswoman said: “Due to a technical issue with air traffic control, flights from many UK airports, including Heathrow, are subject to delay and cancellation.”

A spokesman for Stansted Airport said all of its flights were delayed for up to two hours. Gatwick said 20% of its departures had been delayed, with passengers being warned they may have to wait for “a couple of hours”.

Edinburgh, Manchester, Birmingham, Southampton, Luton, London City, Newcastle, Exeter, Bournemouth and other airports have also reported delays and are asking passengers to check with their airlines.

Why is there no back-up? No plane would be designed without a fallback system (or indeed systems) to cut in if a primary function failed. The cost of failures like this is huge: who pays?

What was the plight of the other passenger?

So we arrived into T3 on Saturday morning around 0800, quickly transferred to T5 for our connecting flight up to ABZ. Went to the domestic fast track border control to be told “flight cancelled, ATC”, but BA has just been told, so no more information than that. Directed to the ticket counter and we were first in line to be rebooked on a later flight at lunchtime. Again, the girls on the BA desk were just finding out themselves that flights had been cancelled and certainly didn’t know anything else other than it was “something” to do with ATC.

Although we had lounge access, the BA lady gave us each a £10 refreshment voucher, which came in handy later as you will find out. She advised us to go straight to the lounge as she expected the lounges to become very busy with the cancellations.

OK, we were a bit disappointed as when we left the USA the day before we had been slightly smug in that our flight was leaving exFLL to ORD enroute to LHR, when loads of passengers heading west e.g. to DFW had flights cancelled due to the horrendous weather they had across the mid USA. You’ve heard of karma, right???

So we headed to galleries south business lounge and it wasn’t as packed as we had been dreading. I went off for a shower, literally got the beeper, came back up and it went off, so no real wait for that either. Then DH went for his. Had a couple of croissants which were nice and crumbs everywhere! Staff keeping tables cleared and clean. After the AA lounge at ORD, this place was bliss!

Then the fun started! Well I call it fun now I am sitting at home!

You can imagine how it all played out. Second flight cancelled, but this time it was around 12 noon and then BA announced everything until 1500 was cancelled.

At that point we considered our options, which were:

Join some interminable queue somewhere to rebook and place ourselves totally in the hands of BA; or look after ourselves. (We had already phoned BAEC and after 35 mins on hold finally got an operator who knew nothing of the ATC chaos but was blaming the weather for the delays/cancellations, so that really was a none starter!)

We made an “executive decision” and decided the latter.

So, should we book a hotel near LHR and book ourselves on a flight on Sunday as it was becoming obvious that nothing was going anywhere that day, well not to ABZ anyway!

Or should we hire a car and head north and at least we knew then we would get home on Sunday, stopping overnight on the way, because there was no guarantee the the same thing would not happen again the next morning with ATC.

Either way we would have to get our bags back. As we were pondering how on earth we would do that, BA announced to go to gate A23 and collect our bags and then head landside to the ticket desk to be rebooked on a later flight. So I quickly booked a car with Avis online (thank goodness I did that as by the time we got to the Avis desk, there was another queue and it looked like they were bringing cars in from other locations, so goodness knows how long we would have had to have waited there as well!)

So off we went to Gate A23, which as you know is the furthest gate at the south end of the terminal, only to be told when we got there that domestic connections had to go to Gate A1, which as you know is the furthest gate at the north end of the terminal. Mrs P was not at all happy with this!

Schlepped along to A1 and descended into what I can only describe as baggage hell. (The BA staff were telling people pretty much the same as we had already worked out. Wait at LHR, or sort yourself out.) We waited and waited, no signs of any of our bags on the carousel we were told to go to, and Mr P was continually looking on other carousels as people around were saying that bags were all over the place, which they were.

Asking the so-called Baggage Hall Manager for some clearer information was useless. In fact the words “as useful as a chocolate teapot” came to mind when dealing with this man.

After standing waiting for two hours, Mrs P was in need of facilities, so wandered off to find them, only to discover all the ABZ bags had been unloaded at another carousel further along, but thankfully on talking to the baggage handlers there, they has just been gathered on the floor off the belt a few minutes earlier. They were at least now trying to put all the bags from each different flight together in groups with whiteboards indicating the flights in that area. But this was after two hours of standing around, with no seating, and not even as much as a bottle of water! As we were leaving they brought bottled water in, but they should have done that sooner.

Lots of people were queuing in the baggage hall at the BA desks which are for lost bags enquiries only, but people were queuing there thinking they could sort out their flights as well. Finally BA did make an announcement to tell people that they had to go upstairs to the BA ticket desks to get rebooked.

Well, I cannot imagine how any people were in the queues “upstairs”, and we were not going to find out!

So 2 hours and 10 minutes after we first arrived in the baggage hall and 6 hours 20 mins after we landed, we headed out to find the car rental desks. Where on earth is the signage for them? We asked the chauffeurs waiting and they directed us to the car park. Oh and those £10 vouchers came in handy, with a couple of coffees, sandwiches and a “fine piece” for the road from Costa coffee.

We were given a Kia something or other, and much as I am unused to a saloon car and a manual at that, I have to say I was actually very comfortable sat there and the DH said it was a very nice car to drive.

Oh I forgot to tell you I was snuffling and sneezing with a frightful head cold thanks to American who flew us over on a 777 with the electrics not functioning well including the air conditioning, so by the time we landed, lots of people were sneezing and eyes were streaming. I was not a happy bunny. Added to all of this, we had to phone kennels and cattery to extend stays, and I had a Tesco.com coming on the Saturday afternoon! I phoned Tesco and they were absolutely brilliant at re-scheduling the delivery, in fact I had to phone them twice to do so and each time they sorted it out with no problem at all.

When we sail across the Atlantic, I am always amazed at just how much water there is in that incredible ocean, you just don’t realise it when you fly over in so few hours. Well, I can now say I had forgotten just how much Tarmac there is between London and the north-east of Scotland – you forget when it’s such a short flight and its been a few years since I drove up and down that road. But these days, it is a much improved road and on Sunday, very little traffic.

We stopped at a Premier Inn near Manchester, had a good night’s sleep, got up early and continued our journey on Sunday morning, finally arriving home around 2.

When the DH returned the car to Avis this morning at ABZ, they had already had 12 returned from London – so we were not the only ones to make our own destiny!

As for the latest of Mrs P’s adventures, and a review of that American 777 flight, and a few BA flights, all will have to wait for another day ….. 🙂

I now need to sort out what we can claim back in expenses from BA and FDoS if you are reading this, maybe you can give me some advise please as I know you know the score! 😉 🙂 We are not looking for compensation, just reasonable expenses, like the hotel, car hire fee. Thanks! 🙂

Hope you are all well, it’s been a while since I posted, but nothing wrong, just busy and doing a few trips with DH.

I too was stuck because of ATC delays

EU261 is a debate, I think. Yes, ATC delays are out of BA’s control, and I was willing to put up with 3 cancelled flights to come back on the last flight of the day

However, when BA cancelled that last flight too (i.e. 66% of flights ex-NCL) leaving me no other way of getting back to London, I was forced to take a train. Then I found out that only 20% of UK flights were cancelled

Now, it’s obviously up to BA which flights to cancel, but they chose to cancel 4 flights ex-NCL instead of, say, 20% = c.1 flight ex-NCL. Instead they operated flights on long haul routes where they do not have a monopoly. One would say that was a commercial decision that had nothing at all to do with ATC

Therefore I have made a full EU261 claim, for compensation, unused flight segments (surely no PSC, APD or fuel surcharge, as I went nowhere near the airport) and expenses, and look forward to full payment of these costs. I would also encourage BA and other airlines to seek full compensation from NATS for their technical failure and lack of back-up systems that caused all these delays to start with

cityprofessional, not sure about your 20% argument relating to long haul operations. I think BA would argue that domestic flights are, at least, substitutable (by train, car) whereas longhaul is not. In my experience, domestic are always the first to go – OKish if you are point to point, not so good if you are connecting.

There was a wonderful case, during the ash cloud ‘crisis’ where a Scottish teacher failed to report back to school after the holiday because she was ‘stuck’ in London and unable to get a flight back to Glasgow. Not sure she got much sympathy…….

Just a thought, did BA advise you of your EU261 rights? If not, you can reasonably argue you thought it was your choice and it’s their fault for not telling you, especially as their staff were saying you had 2 choices 🙂

In reference to the volcano, I think the ruling was to deem that airlines have to provide care regardless of the cause, my earlier post was based on you leaving without giving them the chance to, but the para above may be the way to go, epecially as it is the truth.