[Bullfrog]

The BAA have every responsibility to ensure the airfield is operational at a safe level during adverse weather & this will lead to reduce flight operations.

The de icing of aircraft is something BA should be responsible. They should ensure they have enough of their own de icing machines to maintain a flight schedule within the confines of the airfield’s operation during adverse freezing weather.

[FlyingChinaman]

To All:

So many debates on the inability for either BAA or BA to remove ice/snow from aircrafts and runways in order to restore air movements, all due to the lack of effective equipment in the current crisis.

On a logistic point of view, is it not possible to have a centralized “depot” where the equipment is being kept and can swiftly be moved to serve LHR or other airports in the country such as Gatwick etc. This operation can be run either by the government/or an authorized body. It could be more cost effective if it works. Surely this tactic can be considered/examined by the related authority or commission. As the saying goes “The show much go on” and the air traffic in LHR can not be paralized for days.

I wondered if the UK public has the political will in asking (demanding may be too strong) the government/or related body for a progressive change.

Or am I dreaming? I am certainly dreaming of a White Christmas in Heathrow now, perhaps also after a dozen Mai Tai in Hawaii!!!!!

[VintageKrug]

Bullfrog: though BA does have limited de-icing rigs, it was not this which caused the delays. It was BAA’s inability to move snow away from the stands which meant there was no safe access for de-icing and other equipment. BA cannot be responsible for the airfield itself; that is firmly BAA’s responsibility and was the critical failure in the recent snow debacle.

FCman: This is not a government responsibility. The airports are privately run concerns, and it is for those companies to assess the financial implications of this on their own bottom line.

The government may have a role imposing better regulation onto the airport operators, but it is not the government’s role to provision, or set up, a centralised depot (which in itself would probably be of limited use in the most severe snow events as these usually impact all the airports in any given location at the same time, not to mention the logistical issues moving heavy plant around on icy roads).

Such depots exist at all major UK airports, there simply needs to be better investment to properly provision the existing depots with better and larger amounts of the right sort of snow clearing kit.

Willie speaks out:

http://www.britishairways.com/travel/weather-disruption/public/en_gb

I like this style of comms; not sure any other airline CEO communicates in this way. Let’s hope Keith Williams does the same.

[FlyingChinaman]

Let’s hope there is going to be a positive improvement in LHR in the coming year which might help to lessen the knock-on effect of this type of snow-bound disruption to air traffic.

Willie is like the Sweet and Sour Sauce! Very human and very hard-bargaining at the same time! No wondered he is at the top!

In the meantimes the public just have to Grin and Bear It. Just hope they will get to their final destinations not in the too distance future!! Sadly many may get there in time to celebrate the New Year!

[fatbear]

My experience last Friday was very similar to Binman62. 20 minutes of snow ( 1cm deep ) causing meltdown ( forgive the pun ), We watched in bafflement as landing aircraft sat motionless waiting for gates, and departure times kept slipping with no sign of any management to communicate what was happening and what was being done to address the problems ( only the junior pilot with the oversized hat as mentioned on another thread ). However, flights from the other terminals appeared to be leaving on a regular basis. In 3 hours I saw just 4 BA flights depart.

My flight to Prague was 7 hours late – 3 hours of no communication from BA in the lounge and 4 hours on the aircraft waiting to be de-iced. I was advised T5 only has a maximum of 7 de-icing rigs working at one time – totally inadequate for 50-60 gates. Top marks to the BA crew who decided to give the inflight service whilst on the ground, and to the Captain who allowed the young children to visit the flight deck ( he’ll probably get the sack for doing so ! ). However, bottom marks to BA and BAA for the way they handled the situation..

On Friday, there was no snow or ice to prevent the aircraft from pulling away from their stands, only a lack of de-icing equipment ( BAA’s fault, and BA ‘s fault for tolerating this ). The priority for de-icing was apparently the large aircraft ie 400 passengers take priority over 120 etc. However, an A320 never seems to take longer than 5-7 minutes to de-ice (compared to 20-30 minutes for a B747 ) so had these had priority more gates could have been freed up much quicker allowing more landing planes to get to the gates and less flights to be cancelled etc.

At just about every other airport the de-icing takes place at a designated area away from the terminal and close to the runway. At Heathrow this happens at the gate, which inevitably leads to problems with aircraft remaining on the stand. Otherwise the aircraft waiting to be de-iced could have been towed away from the stands and could have waited where the planes which had landed were waiting for gates to become available…..

Whilst the weather on Saturday may have been extreme and the problems arising more understandable and justifiable, I’m afraid this doesn’t apply to the incompetence demonstrated on Friday, and we mustn’t confuse the two situations. Most businesses have contingency plans and see these as being critical, it doesn’t appear this was the case with BAA or BA last Friday…..

My return flight on BA on Sunday was cancelled. As I could not get through to the BA call centre we decided to make a new reservation on CSA to fly to Brussels on the earliest flight available, and then booked the Eurostar. The CSA flight was 3 hours late due to the reduced capacity at Brussels due to only one runway being operational ( it was snowing heavily when we landed ), and this resulted in our Eurostar connection being missed. However, I was able to get through to their call centre after a wait of only 10 minutes and was advised to turn up at Brussels Midi the following morning for first come, first served. This was sucessful so we are able to get to Heathrow to collect the car Monday lunchtime.

Had we waited for BA to rebook we would probably still be in Prague. A couple of passengers we spoke to at Prague Airport advised they had been rebooked for Wednesday, but we didn’t have time to join the huge queue in order to find out what they had in store for us. Anyway, I have little expectation of any of the additional cost incurred will be reimbursed by BA even though our actions have saved them 3 or 4 nights accomodation costs !

As an aside, Prague airport was reported to have had 12 inches of snow, the average temperatures over the weekend were minus 8-10 degrees yet was only closed for 45 minutes ( on Wednesday ). The only delays or cancellations on Sunday were as a result of problems at the other airports. Maybe some lessons for BAA learn from them ?

[VintageKrug]

I think the lesson BAA can learn is that Prague is used to weeks of similar temperatures and serious snow event; London simply isn’t, and is therefore not geared up to deal with that level of disruption.

BAA have failed significantly over the past few days, but similarly I do not think they should have the level of snow fighting capability witnessed at airports which suffer this sort of weather for extended periods; it just doesn’t make sense to do so.

What is clear is that this was a lack of the right kit, which was made significantly worse by numbskull management from BAA taking decisions like de-icing larger planes ahead of smaller aircraft, and principally its total failure to communicate anything of value to the airlines.

———-
Dear VK

As you will be aware, British Airways has been affected by severe weather conditions that have swept across the UK and much of Europe.

As a valued customer, we wanted to explain what action we are taking to mitigate.

Severe weather was forecast for Saturday December 18 and we took the decision to cancel much of our flight programme. We took this action early so we could immediately communicate with customers. Although we were criticised in some quarters it was proven the right call as Heathrow was subsequently closed for 20 hours.

Until late yesterday, only one runway at Heathrow had reopened, meaning we were restricted by the BAA to only running one-third of our flight programme.

But where are we now? We will aim to operate the vast majority of flights from Heathrow on Thursday, however, we now have hundreds of crew and over 40 planes out of position so it will take some days to return to normal.

Throughout this period of disruption we have extended our call centre opening times and added extra phone lines to deal with the 150,000 calls we’ve received – that’s double what we would normally expect. BA.com has been regularly updated with the latest information and has three times its usual traffic. We have mobilised 1,000 volunteers to assist our customers either at the airport or over the phone and arranged thousands of hotel rooms for our customers.

I do however appreciate that the unprecedented level of disruption has meant that we have not been able to help all of our customers in the way that they, or we, would have liked and I would like to say a sincere thank you for your patience and understanding during what has been a very difficult time.

We would offer the following advice to customers who are due to travel:
Please do not travel to the airport unless you have a confirmed booking on a flight that is operating
If you are booked to travel in the next few days and your flight has been affected, you can manage your booking via ba.com or call our call centre team. We would like to apologise in advance for the extended call waiting times, given the very high call volumes we are currently experiencing
If you are travelling from Heathrow and your travel is not essential and/or you have the flexibility to change your plans, please could you consider canceling your flight in return for a full refund or changing it to another date in the next 12 months
If your travel is not imminent please can we ask that you contact us at a later date as we are trying to do everything we can for our customers who have been disrupted and/or who are due to travel in the next few days
For the latest information and updates please visit ba.com or follow us on Twitter @British_Airways
We know how important it is for our customers to be with their friends or family at this time of year and please be assured that we will do everything possible to help them.

Yours sincerely,

Willie Walsh
CEO British Airways
————–

I wonder if the Simpson woman is American/Canadian. It certainly reads like it was written by an American.

[fatbear]

VK,

The message from Willie Walsh doesn’t seem to make any attempt to explain the events of Friday though……..and I don’t appear to have received such a letter, I’m obviously not as valuable a customer ( only Silver ! )

Prague Airport is better at staying open in cold weather not because they have invested more in equipment but because they know how to use it better. I read that BAA had crews working all through the night clearing the runways on Saturday night but did not know how to avoid the runways from icing up again after being cleared ( in reported temperatures of minus 2 )

Just because London has fewer days of extreme cold weather is no excuse for not knowing what to do when these days arrive. As I stated, sucessful business have contingency plans, BAA and BA do not appear to have one for cold weather, and do not seem to learnt anything from the bad weather last year, or perhaps even the cold snap of 3 weeks ago

[fatbear]

Just received the email from Willie Walsh !

[DisgustedofSwieqi]

“I think the lesson BAA can learn is that Prague is used to weeks of similar temperatures and serious snow event; London simply isn’t, and is therefore not geared up to deal with that level of disruption.”

Does this read like the defeatist apologist corporate fat cat talking, to anyone else?

Complete with much hand wringing and non learning of expensive lessons (for the travellers.)

[fatbear]

Not really, just a cop-out and a willingness to accept failure.

A bit ironic from a poster who often celebrates the high life being prepared to accept poor standards when the going gets tough !

Many people in the UK seem to just accept we can’t be expected to cope with bad weather. However, it is not about large investments, but being prepared and knowing what to do. There is no reason why we shouldn’t be able to cope far much better

[stevescoots]

I love the

“we will learn from these lessons”

very reactive, never proactive. If my company acted this way..we would close very fast…..but that because our competitors would do better.

[Cedric_Statherby]

Apologies for casting back a few comments, but I must respond to VK’s note of 17.28 yesterday.

VK, you say that “This is not a government responsibility. The airports are privately run concerns, and it is for those companies to assess the financial implications of this on their own bottom line.”

I agree. But this raises a much larger question (which I alluded to in my post of 12.02 yesterday). The cost of the disruption has not fallen on BAA, but on the travelling public. How do you make BAA factor this into their decision on whether to spend the (small) amount of money on snow-delay prevention equipment? To the beancounters at Ferrovial it looks very like a case of “if we spend the money we pay, others benefit; if we don’t, we save, others suffer”. No contest – especially if you are sitting in Madrid.

One may talk of hits to BAA’s reputation, but what monetary cost does this have? They are the monopoly owner of the UK’s premier airport, and unless they are fined by government tens of millions of pounds for this totally unacceptable failure, they will mouth apologies and platitudes and continue to put their (Spanish) shareholders’ interests above the UK public’s.

[VintageKrug]

It’s an appallingly worded email from WW.

If it was my PR who had approved it, they would be busy (mis)reading their P45 right now.

I do think this will have most serious consequences for BAAplc. I hope they address the issue of the Scottish airports, which was fudged under the last government, and make BAA sell of at least one of its LHR terminals to eliminate their monopoly at the airport.

But let’s very very clear that some level of disruption was suffered by most snow affected airports (Amsterdam, Frankfurt and Paris were particularly hard hit); the initial impact was more or less the same, it was a combination of Heathrow’s structural issues (limited stand capacity and having just two runways) coupled with exceptionally cold temperatures, a particularly busy travel weekend and UK regulations which prohibit landing on anything other than fully clear runways (personally, I wouldn’t like to land on anything else, but some people think the CAA are overly cautious on this point) which was all exacerbated by poor preparedness and underinvestment on the part of BAA.

Thankfully, BA’s decision to stop flying on Saturday minimised the numbers of BA passengers left stranded in the terminals.

[fatbear]

Stevescoots

Agreed. I consider BA to be pretty good at reacting to events, but poor at preventing these events from happening.

I think they have handled things well from Saturday onwards ( and been sucessful in making BAA look bad ) – but Friday was a shambles and it would be nice if someone from BA would hold up their hands and say sorry. All i have seen was a passing comment from a spokesperson on the BBC website saying something like perhaps they could have communicated better in T5 on Friday. The problem was a lot more than the failure to communicate !

[Bullfrog]

@VintageKrug

My sources inform me, as you have pointed out, that BA having a ‘limited’ number of de icing rigs.

The BAA have proven that they are incompetent at keeping LHR open during adverse winter weather.

A system is only as good as its weakest point.

I am looking forward to my First Class flight on BA 195 on Boxing Day.

[Author]

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