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Is the EU going to reorganizethe chaos at airports ??

EU   -Commission: Chaos  at airports is  "inacceptable"  (in German) 

The message caused a lot of hilarity

Pete and I laughed for ten minutes...

Is an EU-commission really going to

discipline an airline like British „Imperial“ Airways ?

An airline which never ever committed itself to customer service,but instead invested in a large staff of lawyers?

Where an Act of God is being acclaimed as Thanksgiving Dayand all employees retreat in their closed offices for a paid “holiday” filled with

smoking cigarettes and small talk....

The wintertime comes and goes, the tempests, the foggy season, strikes and volcanic

ashes may be around, but a decent monthly Heathrow Hassle is the best way to fill aboring day.

"Certainly Heathrow does shame London. It is typical of the English short-termism, lack of planning, lack of investment.”

“The Airline and the Traveling Agents MUST allow their stranded passengers totelephone, write e-Mails and provide them with beverages and meals or pay for extra

costs1“

Of course this statement is nonsense. In a Heathrow Hassle the telephones will be

switched off, you are not allowed to rebook any flight and you may pay for your foodat the counter. None of your extra costs will ever be repaid. We are still waiting for 

repayment of extra charges of 1400 Euros.

• Fines for any repeat of Heathrow snow chaos  23 Dec 2010

• BAA chief 'sorry' for Heathrow disruption  21 Dec 2010

→ Our advice to the EU-commission: “Forget it!”

This airport and its airline belong to a fourth world category2...

1Weitere Rechte von Fluggästen (in German)

2 See the appendix for details

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On the day before Pope Benedict XVI begins a four-day visit to the United Kingdom,one of his top advisers landed in hot water for saying that landing at London'sHeathrow Airport was like arriving in "a Third World country."

• Britain's airports branded '  Third World ' as flights grounded by ... 

These are the old standard Heathrow Hassle's reports to be repeated every couple of months...:

• Airlines accused of misleading passengers over rights  24 Dec 2010

• The Civil Aviation Authority has written to a number of carriers who, it says,

failed to provide care – including food, phone calls and hotels – for passengerswho were stranded after hundreds of flights were scrapped.→ Nothing has changed in years - just compare these charges against: The Heathrow Hassle - and the

Heathrow Hysteria - 

• Heathrow snow plan found lacking  08 Mar 2011

• Lessons must be learnt from Heathrow chaos  21 Dec 2010

• Snow 'has cost British Airways £40m'  22 Dec 2010

•

Thomas Cook blasts Gatwick over snow closure  01 Dec 2010

Let's explain the standard procedures at Heathow Airport...

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Once in a while Pete needs a flight from Frankfurt to Dublin and he definitely refusesto fly OVER Heathrow. He is looking for a flight eastward to cross Russia, China, thePacific Ocean, the Americas and the Atlantic Ocean to fly from Frankfurt to Dublin.

He has some other advices as well.

The re-booking officeAs soon as an Act of God occurs the main operator at Heathrow's re-booking-system

switches off the mains switch for the re-booking office. From that time the re-booking office is disabled for an indefinite number of hours...

Fig. 1: mains switch for Heathrow's re-booking office

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Forget online re-booking as well 

Simultaneously the Internet-connections for online re-booking will be disabled at themain server station as well:

Fig. 2: Main server station for Heathrow's online re-booking system

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Advise on re-booking 

The only way to re-book your flight is to take a fully charged cellphoneand take place at one of the phony booths,

where you may try to connect to a foreign BA-office,

e.g. at Timbuktu or Minsk or any other non-British location,who may enter your booking manually...

Therefore BA-passengers are advised to ALWAYS carry fully charged cell-phones tore-book their flights and NOT to use the phone-numbers handed out by BA-

employees...

Fig. 3: phony booth for re-booking your flights...

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First Class Passengers

Lucky first class passengers are invited to sleep at a gymnastic mattress at no EXTRAcharge; the unlucky ones may sleep at the barren floor....

Other suggestions have been documented at the full reports:

The Heathrow Hassle - and the Heathrow Hysteria - 

The Heathrow Hassle and other Incompetence in Organisations 

Fig. 4: Sleeping at Deathrow Airport 

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Appendix: Some of the worst documented Heathrow Hassles

Most businesses would not survive the sort of criticism heaped on Heathrow but then this is noordinary business. It is part of a monopoly and, with a pivotal position as the "gateway to Europe",its customers often have little choice but to use it.

In June 2006, a Ferrovial-led consortium purchased the British company BAA Limited, for 10bnpounds.[9] BAA owns and operates seven British airports, including London Heathrow Airport, andoperates or carries out retail management in several others.

Ferrovial borrowed heavily for the purchase. It said little about the Heathrow chaos until recently,when Ferrovial's chairman Rafael del Pino admitted the airport had "many deficiencies". Ferrovialmight argue the security clampdown was something it could not foresee but has to enforce. Butcritics say that, 12 months on, BAA has done nothing to ease the situation. Nor does it explain thepre-existing operational problems.

"Certainly Heathrow does shame London. It is typical of the English short-termism,

lack of planning, lack of investment.”

08-24-2004

Thousands of disgruntled vacationers were stranded at Heathrow Airport Tuesday when BritishAirways canceled scores of flights because of staff shortages and technical hitches.Passengers at Europe's busiest airport slept on benches, joined long lines to rebook their flights or simply gave up and returned home as the airline grounded 46 flights in two days."To be told that they've got no staff is ludicrous," said Tom Edmonds, 36, whose flight to Nice,France, was canceled. "I'm only going for four days and I now have to queue up to try and getmyself booked on a later flight."

12 August 2006

British Airways, along with all other airlines, is experiencing major disruption to its operations atLondon Heathrow today, Thursday 10 August , because of the severe airport congestion, followingthe introduction of new security arrangements.

All British Airways shorthaul (UK and European) inbound and outbound flights to and fromLondon Heathrow up until 3pm (BST) this afternoon are canceled.

"This is the mother of all injunctions. We've long known the airport operators to bearrogant, but trying to ban 5 million people from coming near them is conceited

even by their standards," said John Stewart, the chairman of the Hacan group thatopposes the new runway.

BA is facing a bill of £50m for the disruption at Heathrow and Gatwick caused by last Thursday'sterror alert. A DIRTY tricks row has broken out between BAA and its biggest customer after insiders at the airports operator alleged that British Airways  used the recent security crisis as acover to cancel unprofitable flights from Heathrow. A BAA source claimed the airline had cancelledmore flights than needed to cut out unprofitable routes.

 

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25 December 2006

Probing the baggage chaos at London Heathrow over the Christmas period - some 25,000+ bagswere lost, and British Airways, once again, was in the firing line. Clearly the bag mountain anddealing with it was a mess. Did BA deal with it as best they could? Probably not.

2007-01-19Winds eased on Friday but there was still disruption at London Heathrow and other British airports.British Airways cancelled more than 130 domestic flights on Thursday.

27/1/2007

British Airways announced cancellation of about seven flights to the UAE from London during thismonth end, due to the strike planned by the cabin crew. Walsh comments "We're no longer theworld's favourite airline, we're the world's favourite headline."

10 Juli 2007

British Airways is facing a mounting baggage crisis at Heathrow with a backlog of 22,000 items of "lost" luggage. The UK's largest carrier does not have enough baggage handlers to cope with thesummer peak. The situation is so serious that BA has drafted in its own office workers who"volunteered" to help out, along with staff from an outside agency.

20 of July 2007

British Airways doen not learn from and experiences as a Swiss businessman adds his ownexperience with BA at a stormy night of Friday, 20. of July 2007.

He reports of same ignorant and shameless treatment by BA-employees...

10 Mar 2008

High winds and torrential rain have caused serious disruption to Britain's airports, with dozens of flights cancelled. A spokesman for London City Airport said it had so far axed 95 flights, whileHeathrow Airport this morning cancelled 34 short-haul flights because of the poor weather conditions. (Gatwick, Stansted and either Glasgow or Edinburgh airports will have to be sold byBAA under a ruling by the Competition Commission.)

March 29, 2008

British Airways, the sole occupant of "T5," said 67 flights were canceled Saturday, including 33arrivals and 34 departures. They were the kinds of problems that have long plagued Heathrow's four older terminals, earning the airport the nickname "Hassle Heathrow," and the kinds of problems themodern T5 was designed to fix.

03 Feb 2009

Heavy snowfall at Heathrow arport caused disruption and chaos. 650 flights had to be cancelled andthousand of passengers stranded... Heathrow, Gatwick, London City, Luton, Stansted, Southampton,Edinburgh and Birmingham airports were closed for all or part of the day, causing knock-on delaysat most regional airports. At Heathrow, a Cyprus Air passenger jet skidded off the taxiway, comingto rest with its front wheel on the grass.

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Saturday, May 23, 2009

British Airways (BA), the flag carrier for the United Kingdom, announced record losses today. For the first quarter of the year ending March 31, the airline reported losses of £401 million before tax,

despite revenues which rose to £9 billion over the previous year.

Well, who is surprised?

Not me!

Planned Hassle at Christmas Eve, 2009

For BA's passengers and crew the bad news keeps coming. The travel plans of almost 1 millionpeople face disruption after the strike vote by British Airways' 13500 cabin crew.Airlines will also suffer bigger than expected losses of $5.6 billion (£3.5 billion) next year, itemerged today, as British Airways (BA) faced-up to a multi-million pound bill from a planned 12-day strike by its cabin crew.

Monday's announcement of a holiday-season strike by cabin crew came hours after the U.K. airline

revealed a bigger-than-expected pension deficit of £3.7 billion ($6.03 billion).

January 13, 2010

Snow and ice in Britain caused British Airways to cancel numerous flights at London's Heathrowand Gatwick airports on Wednesday. The airlines issued a statement on its Website advisingpassengers not to travel to the airport if their flight had been canceled and apologizing for theinconvenience.

British Airways also advised all passengers to check on the status of their flight before heading tothe airport.

The carrier told people to call if they couldn't access the website.

-> They'd better say: "don't try to call if you can't access the website". These phoney phones won'twork anyway...

March 20, 2010

Thousands of passengers are suffering due to three days strike of British Airlines. Crew cabinemployees had been started four day strike from yesterday. Heathrow is the worst effected airportdue to strike.

In November British Airlines cuts 1,700 jobs. The airline also wants to freeze salaries this year for 

three quarters of cabin crew. BA may go bankrupt as soon as the staff notices the management isgoing to treat them just like their passengers - dumped into the lobby of a draughty terminal....

Enjoy your hassle!

April 17, 2010

Thousands of passengers left grounded at European airports, concentrating at the isolated area of Heathrow. Experts warn of threat to economic recovery.

Smoke and steam hangs over the volcano under the Eyjafjallajokull glacier in Iceland. Volcanic ashdrifting across the Atlantic forced the cancellation of flights in Britain and disrupted air trafficacross Europe.

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December 2010

Just a few new links added to the old reports:

• Airlines accused of misleading passengers over rights  24 Dec 2010

•

Heathrow snow plan found lacking  08 Mar 2011• Lessons must be learnt from Heathrow chaos  21 Dec 2010

• Snow 'has cost British Airways £40m'  22 Dec 2010

• Thomas Cook blasts Gatwick over snow closure  01 Dec 2010

• December to be coldest on record  25 Dec 2010

• Snow chaos: the families who spent Christmas at Heathrow  26 Dec 2010

• Fines for any repeat of Heathrow snow chaos  23 Dec 2010

Planned hassles in 2012

With fears mounting of chaos when the city hosts the Olympics in 2012, government officials andbusiness figures are calling for urgent improvements at the world's third-busiest airport.

Incompetence may be located anywhere : Scientists and airline-managers are aware of the danger of volcanic eruptions for air traffic. It is well known we have a dozen of dangerous volcanoes inIceland and in Italy, which may become active any day. Yet nobody seems to be interested in analert system for air traffic in case of volcanic eruptions...

I can imagine what's happening at Heathrow, where BA-passengers are left to their fate, sleeping on a bare floor without any BS-employee around to help them. I feel pity for anyone that's stuck upat the airport.

Having identified an Act of God BA will probably have switched off the rebooking system and sent 

the crew home by now just like they did at the 12th of August 2006...

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Appendix

There is ample evidence that Heathrow and BA belong to a Fourth World category.

The message reported 19thof December 2010 is similar to my experiences 5 years ago.

The telephones do not work, no connection can be made to British Airways by phone,

by web, by voice. Passengers are being isolated and left at their fate...

“I was in London yesterday and at Heathrow in the afternoon. Around 3-4 inches of snow fellbetween say 11:00 and 13:00. I drove to Heathrow at 14:15. The A4 was clear but slushy. InsideHeathrow the LT car park was fresh snow, and the buses were running but at long intervals, as theysaid that the internal roads into T5 were closed.

At T5 the problem was lack of information. There was a long long queue to use the internet cafe("information area") in arrivals. There was a whiteboard stuck up with two phone numbers: 0800 727

800 and 0844 493 0787. The first number was a recorded message telling you to use the website

ba.com. The number just rings off after this message. The second number either rings off or puts you

on hold and then rings off. The website ba.com also ceased to work. There is no ticket desk (andeven if there were, there would be too many people). There was a huge queue for three desks in the Azone, which had no sign up but someone said they were the Standby desks. The check in desks wereunmanned, and all had a sign up with the phone number, which as I said was not taking calls. I met afew BAA and BA staff, perfectly polite but with no information, just a leaflet giving the same phonenumbers and website.

I met one couple arriving who were going to miss a Cruise from New Jersey. Another couple leavinghad arrived at 7:00 am from Preston, had checked in, and had waited till 7:00 pm to get their bagsback after the flight was cancelled.

So in summary there are two different problems: the inability to deal with a moderate amount of snow and cold weather; and the complete collapse of BA communication systems: telephone, web,

human and signage.”