[Anonymous]

[cityprofessional]

Question to the BA regulars (and to Alex and the rest of BT)…

So I am looking out of my window at mist and fog over London. One of my colleagues is stranded in Milan. One of my team’s aged parents spent the whole of yesterday sat in T5, and then came home and have no idea when they will get to fly

And I read in the papers that easyJet cancelled no flights over the weekend during the ATC standstill; and Ryanair cancelled only 12 (presumably because they were empty…)

Then I see this post on Flyertalk…
http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/21948777-post166.html

…the key points of which are that on Saturday, when UK ATC said they handled over 80% of flights despite their phones breaking down:

– UA cancelled no flights out of LHR
– SK cancelled no flights
– EK cancelled no flights
– SQ cancelled no flights
– CX cancelled no flights
– VS cancelled no long haul flights (but 1 each to MAN, EDI, ABZ)
– LH cancelled 2 out of 27 (1 each to FRA and MUC)
– AF cancelled 1 out of 8 to CDG
– EI cancelled 2 out of 10 to DUB, 1 out of 4 to ORK

– But BA cancelled 95 out of 310 flights
– And over half of all BA flights were cancelled between 10am and 5pm

Why is this?

The moral of the story seems to be, if there is any risk of fog, or wind, or an ATC breakdown, then don’t fly BA ex-LHR unless you’d like to risk being cancelled…

[SergeantMajor]

Although BA bears the brunt of problems, this is an LHR issue.

BA operated more than 70% of its flights in the recent ATC disruption.

Heathrow’s two runways are at 99% capacity – and even larger planes don’t help when the issue is landing aircraft in the first place.

As BA is the largest operator, with over 50% of slots, it suffers markedly (some of the other airlines have just a couple of flights per day, often solely longhaul). It’s not just slots which are an issue during IRROPS, LHR is also short of stands as T2 is not yet fully online and so there are fewer available places to park aicraft as well – a factor that simply adding more runways won’t solve.

BA protects its long haul operation (which is more difficult to re-arrange) in the event of IRROPS and protectively cancels shorthaul (less of an impact, as domestics and near europe can often use alternative modes of transport e.g. train, reschedule to a later flight, and boost capacity by using larger aircraft such as 767).

A single day of longhaul IRROPS can have an impact on the operation for several days after the fact, as aircraft and crew go out of hours and aircraft need repositioning.

A single BA shorthaul aircraft can do as many as eight sectors per day, to multiple Domestic and European destinations.

IRROPS has been identified as a critical issue for the airline, and was a focus of some discussion at Investor Day. Though 95 cancellations sounds high, using larger aircraft (eg 767s) and putting people on the next flight (easier, as BA’s shorthaul services are often more frequent than that of competitors) can mitigate the issue considerably. And for those with lounge access, the wait is more bearable.

While you have set out number of flights cancelled, I’d be interested to know the number of BA passengers who didn’t reach their destination that day, albeit with some delay. I’d guess it would be a relatively small percentage.

On cancellations, looks like EI cancelled around 20% of its operation. BA cancelled about 30%, so not that much of a difference, particularly when you factor in the complexity of BA’s operation.

It would be helpful if there was a clear plan during problems to use Gatwick/City better (though that airport is also nearly full, and both can be badly affected by fog, too). For lots of reasons it’s just not as easy as peopel might think to swap the operating airport (inbound and certainly outbound).

I always think situations like this are something of a survival of the fittest – regulars will know to check regularly at the merest hint of system/weather delays, and can call and get themselves re-booked on an operating flight, or from a different airport, or the first flight out the next day.

Business travellers on flexible tickets and/or wth Gold priority access for rebooking lines and/or full flights will naturally have fewer problems than the infrequent traveller.

Not great for aged parents, who will understandably not be keen on such “seat of the pants” last minute changes.

While we complain about delays, safety must be paramount, and we should remember that decisions like this are made to ensure operational safety, and that should be borne in mind when criticising the outcomes that decision has.

Real issue is the need for more runways in the South East, preferably located on the Isle of Grain.

[TimFitzgeraldTC]

Hi City Professional

I think you’ll find that when similar incidents such as fog/snow hit airports such as Amsterdam / Frankfurt etc then KLM / Lufthansa will suffer in a similar way – and do the same – cancel mostly Short haul operations. Other airlines are generally not affected as much as there presence is far smaller. This happened last year when Amsterdam got nailed by snow. If I recall rightly when Dubai has had problems of one sort or another then it is Emirates who bear the brunt of cancellations & delays.

I think this problem does highlight that LHR urgently needs extra runways (not going into debate of a new airport). Secondly I think BA need to have a more credible contingency plan to use LGW/STN when bad weather affects LHR but not either of the 2 above airports to switch flights to these airports. Even if that means delays but laying on extra evening flights from these points to take the slack and spill over from cancelled / delayed morning flights then this needs to be considered. I doubt it is impossible – it is just whether there is the will to do the right thing by the customer – not the bottom line.

[SergeantMajor]

There’s certainly some focus on using other airports.

But the difficulty is that while that all sounds eminently sensible, the ATC issue affected all airports, and fog often affects both LHR, LCY and Gatwick at the same time.

LCY is obviously constrained by runway size, so isn’t much use in terms of aircraft repositioning.

BA doesn’t have any operations at Stansted (apart from outsourced Cargo Ops with its 747-8s) so it would be difficult to use that airport. While you could land aircraft at STN and offload passengers, what would you do with the aircraft then?

No point in changing the departure airport last minute – for many getting there would be impossible/costly so you’ve still got to reposition the aircraft, and now you’re up against the same weather/ATC/whatever issue and the difficulty of getting a slot, and then coming up against the night curfew which closes the runways at Heathrow for most of the nighttime, when repositioning might be easier.

Now add up all the cost of a single diversion like that – and compare the profit margins most shorthaul sectors generate – and you’ll see it’s really not about penny pinching. Getting a single passenger who has paid even a higher fare of £300, perhaps making BA £50 profit at most – could incur thousands in additional costs, including compensation (for people would surely demand it to get home from Stansted), plus the additional fuel, landing fees and crew repositioning.

Personally, I’d rather wait half a day and get to Heathrow than be sent to Stansted and suffer a bus or worse back to LHR, or struggle to make my own way home.

It’s simply not worth over-engineering this, and the European Union’s compensation culture doesn’t incentivise airlines to try and help – it’s simply and more cost effective to cancel the service, so that’s what happens.

[cityprofessional]

Yes, yes, yes, I understand why it’s more economic and cost effective for BA to cancel flights, but I still don’t understand why other airlines operated so well out of LHR and BA did so badly – most other airlines were running on time, or had delays of no more than an hour

SM, you are right. Aer Lingus cancelled 20% vs BA’s 30%. However, with 8 other flights to DUB, this is not a problem. BA’s 30% was all concentrated on short haul flights (purely for its commercial convenience), so on some routes, more than 70% of BA flights were cancelled, including the last flight of the day, so no consolidation possible

BA did not endorse its tickets over to other airlines (e.g. to EI) or to rail operators (you’d think they’d proactively do this, if it happens so frequently – 3 days out of the last 5 so far). I personally am out of pocket because I paid full whack for alternative arrangements by train

All of this does not encourage me to book on BA for short haul. Lounge or no lounge, frankly when I book a flight, I’d rather, ummm, you know… get there?

TimFitzgerald, yes, I agree, LH in particular is woeful at IRROPs, but it managed 93% of its LHR flights on Saturday, and the vast majority were on time!

[TimFitzgeraldTC]

Hi SM

I hear you – but if you have flights in FRA/GLA/EDI etc, rather than try to get them inot LHR they go for example go into STN/LGW and then operate a return back (then back to LHR), thus negating a reposition movement. For those getting into STN/LGW you then offer paid for train tickets on Stansted / Gatwick express (or other rail services to where they need to go – and have an agreement with rail companies perhaps – in the same way Bus companies might take train tickets in event of disruption), or a coach transfer to LHR. When rail lines get affected by incidences they tend to be able to get hold a few coaches within an hours notice. So no reason why an airline can’t do the same.

It isn’t necessarily easy – but I do think it comes down to willpower. A bit more progessive thinking between organisations in this country who have responsibilty for moving people.

Another issue this highlights is a very British tendency (up for debate perhaps) to run organisations to such capacity that any external strain on systems leads to total break down (The danger of highly leveraged companies having to sweat there assets for example?). Our railways are full for the most part on key routes, LHR is 99% full, electricity generation is cutting it close with demand to name a few things. Is our drive for efficiency actually damaging our ability to cope with spikes / issues / events that aren’t really unusual.

[SergeantMajor]

I think I’ve set out in some detail the reasons why BA faces the brunt of disruption, caused by factors outside its control, and the type of operation BA runs when compared to other airlines operating at Heathrow.

I’ve also set out why the cost/”commerical convenience” issue isn’t as small as you might perceive.

So I’m struggling to see, if indeed you are a city professional, why, it’s so hard for you to understand “why other airlines operated so well out of LHR and BA did so badly”.{when in fact it operated nearly 70% of flights}

Willie cannot simply magic functioning ATC, the weather and more runways at Heathrow overnight.

The Leprechaun only has three wishes, and he’s dealt with the Unions, paid off the Pension Deficit and secured the scale the airline needs for future expansion though some excellent acquisitions! 😉

[AMcWhirter]

Interesting piece in today’s flightglobal.com by David Learmount which will answer some of the points raised here.

http://www.flightglobal.com/blogs/learmount/2013/12/flying-backwards/

[canucklad]

I’m definitely in the anti BA camp on this one.

A whisper of snow and the BA cancellation brigade go into full swing.
A couple of questions……

As the main operator at LHR, surely they have greater influence than other carriers?

I’m a bit Foggy on this issue , but has auto land disappeared after the last Trident retired?
(And I know that you have to restrict operations due to airfield limitations)

Why did I have to endure on a regular basis BA customer’s mumping and moaning at having to fly BMI after they had been let down by the worlds favourite airline.

Cityproffesionals question is valid…..
Checking the departure boards and BA’s whole operation “ cancelled”
BD’s were “ Delayed” or occasionally cancelled. And BD LHR operation was not small !

I would simplify the question , Is BA more interested in their shareholders or their customers ?

[edwardbm]

Any disruptions – Air Traffic Control or Fog means that planes cannot take off or land at the tiny intervals they do on a normal day. Running at 99% capacity means there is simply not the time to fit every flight in.

British Airways as the main carrier will always suffer the most.

Don’t bash British Airways – Bash the Politicians who won’t built a 3rd and 4th Runway at Heathrow!

[cityprofessional]

SM, frankly, I don’t care what BA’s commercial problems are. I want to get from A to B. Other airlines do it fine. I’m only having to suffer BA now, because bmi no longer exists. This is why I used to fly bmi. I used to get there, when my colleagues on BA didn’t

Alex, nice blog link, but a bit of a Learmount rant, don’t you think?! I don’t think he’s right, but given that LHR gets “weather”, surely BA has a contingency plan for “days when it’s foggy” – it appears to be chaos, with no other strategy than “cancel every short haul flight, and it will all be fine”

[SergeantMajor]

BA cannot control the weather, the ATC system, the building of runways.

canucklad is hardly in the “anti-BA camp on this one” he has a whole anti-BA multi-use residential development waiting for any opportunity to cast aspersions! 😉

canucklad’s disingenuous suggestion that “bmi’s operation was not small” is not really fair, as it suggest it was on a par with BA’s. bmi was never even approaching the size of BA’s operation, never had such complex fleet issues, had low levels of transfer traffic and certainly never operated significant longhaul operations from LHR.

BA needs to operate safely, or is cityprofessional suggesting safety isn’t important to him and BA should just throw the planes in the general direction of the runway and hope for the best?

David goes some way to explaining the constraints on Heathrow:

“Today at Heathrow there was Cat II fog, and my BA flight to Stockholm was cancelled along with lots of others. It was not for lack of technical capability, just because Heathrow’s schedules depend on good weather. If the weather is anything other than good (particularly visibility and wind), cancellations result because there is no slack in the system to allow for delays.

“The delays are inevitable in fog because, for safety, aircraft on approach have to be spaced further apart when the pilots cannot see the aircraft ahead, and the same for departures. And taxiing on the ground is slower.”

One really has to wander at the mindset posting hear, supposed frequent flyers with an appreciation of business constraints, which cannot appreciate the operational constraints that Heathrow is under.

We should be impressed that BA operated 60% of its operation, and managed to get the vast majority of its passengers to their destination under such circumstances.

I suggest you go and read the story of King Canute.

[SergeantMajor]

While cityprofessional may think the decision to cancel some short haul *flights* while still endeavouring to get most *passengers* to their destination by consolidation flights and using larger aircraft resulted in chaos, I can assure him that not cancelling these services, or cancelling longhaul, would have had a far greater impact on both passengers and BA’s operation.

It’s not like BA has a great deal of room for manoevre….

[Papillion53]

SM – Nanny on holiday is she???

Canucklad – I’m with you darling.

When we we sat in T5 galleries south on Saturday morning and there were a few, and by few I mean maybe half a dozen red cancelled flights on the departures board, we still had hope. But when everything went red, and I mean everything, complete with the announcement that all flights until 1500 were cancelled, what hope is left washes quickly away. And then it was estimated 1700, so I am struggling to believe these percentages of cancelled flights which are being bandied around! So now SM is saying BA operated 60% of its operation, that doesn’t fit with previous comments that only 20% of flights were cancelled! And they certainly did not get the vast majority of passengers to ABZ, if Avis car hire returns was anything to go by!

But of course, these cancelled flights were mainly domestic and European short haul.

And, yes I understand the nightmare and the commercial decisions that would have had to be made in looking at the bigger picture, but when someone pontificates about how we should basically have just shut up and got on with it, and that it wasn’t such a big deal, that makes me quite cross.

As I said, Nanny must be on holiday and if she’s got any sense she won’t be coming back either!

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