 Poster: A snowHead
|
Resort: Gatwick Airport (LGW)
Country: UK
Author: ousekjarr
Date: Wednesday 13th - Sunday 17th Jan, 2010
Our holiday: Booked a short boys trip to Zell im Ziller in Austria. Flight from Gatwick to Innsbruck was scheduled for 06:55, on Easyjet.
Weather: forecast was for light snow down to resort level
Summary of The Saga: It went wrong, we stayed at home.
Summary lesson from The Saga Don't ever fly from Gatwick.
References: http://news.cheapflights.co.uk/2010/01/gatwick-airport-london-city-airport-close-due-to-snow-delays-cancellations-elsewhere/
Background To The Saga: Given the forecast and the recent headlines about grit stocks being low and less being used to conserve what was left, we decided to head off to Gatwick early to ensure that any delays didn't cause us any difficulties. A few jokes about the airport closing were shot down in flames, since they'd had three weeks of practice to get it right, and in any case it was just light snow that was forecast.
Arrived at the long term car park at 0300, having experienced moderate snowfall en route. The M25 was clear, but with the outside lane beginning to be covered due to the lack of traffic in it, while the M23 was completely clear with good grip. We didn't see a single snowplough on a 2 hour journey, but it looked like they had been out and had been effective. The car park showed the effects of the last fall, with the main road clear but no attempt had been made to clear the parking bays and access roads. The shuttle bus got us to the terminal at 0400, and we joined the Easyjet check-in queue.
Check-in: 10 minutes, no issues.
Security: 5 minutes, no problems with boots and helmets in hand baggage.
Outlook: All flights listed as scheduled, with gates to be announced. First flight out was at 0600. As 0600 came and went, the status of that flight changed to "Please wait", then the next flight did the same a few minutes later, and so on. A quick query to the information people confirmed that the runway was closed due to the 2" of snow which had fallen over the last 8 hours, with a decision at 0700 on when it would open.
Industrial (in)Action: BA then cancelled all flights, presumably because many of them had to cross French airspace, so with the ATC people in Paris deciding that it had been too long since they'd last had a day with their mistress, all of them walked out on strike. Cue chaos in the departures lounge, as all of the smug gits who had booked BA because they didn't want to mix with the sheep suddenly turned into headless chickens and squawked around with mobiles glued to their ears while trying to find any member of BA staff or their agents to help.
Management Decisions: The Gatwick management had by this time decided that they needed to avoid making any unpopular decisions, so they decided to wait until 0800 to make a decision. At 0800, they decided that it still wasn't a good day to stick their necks out, so the next decision on when to make a decision would be at 0900. Surprisingly, 0900 resulted in a decision to delay a decision until 1000.
Light at the end of the Tunnel: At 09:50, a miracle happened - two Easyjet flights had a gate announced, and ours was one of them. The gate status immediately changed to "Gate closing", and an announcement asked us to make our way as quickly as possible to the gate. Gate 105 being 15 minutes away, some jogging with boot bags ensued, but we reached the gate at the same time as the orange-clad dispatcher, who checked the status and prepared the gate computers for departure. Outside, the lights came on on our aircraft, and the accumulated snow started to melt off of it as the cabin heat grew and percolated through the skin. An announcement asked us to wait until called, and a second gate operator turned up ready for departure. We were informed that our baggage had been loaded, the flight crew were ready, and all we needed was clearance from the airport to start loading passengers.
Oncoming train... At 10:00, we were told that the runway had again been declared closed, despite Easyjet being told that it would definitely open at 10:00, so our flight was again postponed, and we were instructed to return to the departures lounge, as there would be no staff at the gate, no announcements made there, and no information board or staff to tell us what was happening. So, 15 minutes back to the lounge...
Pitch inspection: At 1030, a trip to the balcony allowed the terminal surrounds to be examined. The runway was some way off, but it was clear that vehicles were travelling down it at some speed, and it could be seen that the taxiways had been cleared of enough snow to allow the lines, markings and lights to be seen, and just below us, one of the stands was being cleared of snow for an incoming flight to use that gate. Working on the principle that you don't spare a snowplough to clear a stand if the runway or taxiways are still blocked, everything was looking up, and the promised 11:00 decision on when to make a decision looked like it might provide the green light for the runway.
Hurry up and wait: As the long-haul passengers were issued with "light snack vouchers", the rest of us were left to find a patch of floor to sit on while we waited for the airport management to remove their buttocks from their hands, and begin to initiate the difficult process of identifying the elbow and posterior, and then documenting the differences between them.
Bail out: At 1215, Easyjet cancelled any flight which had been due to leave before 1200. No reason was given for this, but clearly the number of take-off slots remaining in the day meant that something had to give, so it made more sense to cancel everything which was very late, and start afresh. Plus of course the punctuality stats look better if you cancel 40 flights and then run the rest on time, rather than delaying them all by 4 hours. We were left with 3 options by Easyjet: have a full refund, re-arrange our flights to a difference Easyjet flight, or get a flight with another carrier and claim the cost of this back from Easyjet. So far, so good - it's not great because we've been inconvenienced, but at least the airline are handling it as we'd expect.
More Headless Chickens: By now, Easyjet had 1600 passengers in the departure lounge, all of whom now had no flight, so they needed to re-arrange, and they needed to do it quickly. This first meant getting out of the departures lounge and recovering our luggage, which had been ordered to be unloaded. Easyjet's agents (did you realise that the total staff headcount of Easyjet at Gatwick is zero?), dressed in the natty orange uniforms (but actually not employed by Easyjet at all), staffed the information stand and asked all passengers to come to them immediately. Cue 1600 people trying to get themselves and their hand luggage around a 10x10ft information kiosk. Announcements were made in a croaky shout for the first 10 minutes until they realised that there were speakers around the booth for a reason, and the microphone was found and blown into, with flights being called in departure time order, and the people identified as having been booked on that
flight being herded together with a member of staff to be escorted back to the baggage reclaim, since we were at that point on the secure side of the airport, and couldn't just walk around on our own through doors which are normally locked and alarmed. Our flight was called, we were met by a member of staff, and then we were off - anyone who missed the call was left behind, as were those who sent a lone delegate from their party to find out what was going on, as of course they had to go back for their hand baggage and friends/family while everyone else was whisked away.
Yet more fowl with nothing above the neck: At the guarded back route out of Departures, we were informed that anyone who had bought anything in the Departures area had to take it back to the retailer and get a refund, as it had been bought "duty free" and could not be re-imported into the UK as we had never left. Now, I'm no expert, but I thought that duty free didn't exist any more within the EU, so if I bought an iPod in Departures (and paid UK VAT on it, as I was on an EU flight), what's the problem? And did they want the baguette and cup of tea back as well? More people rushing around in a state of panic...
Baggage handling roulette: Having very carefully called the flights in departure time order, we concluded that Easyjet had employed an agent with some brains, since the last thing you want is 1600 irate people fighting their way through baggage reclaim at the same time. Instead, they had asked for the luggage to be unloaded in order, and were sending down each load of passengers in order, so they should arrive at the same time as their bags, and clear the area quickly. Wrong. Easyjet and their agents may have a brain somewhere in the organisation, but the baggage handlers were unloading the nearest aircraft first, then the next, and so on, oblivious to the fact that this meant the people sent down first got their baggage last, while those sent down last found it had been waiting for them for 70 minutes, and had been pawed over, sorted, re-sorted, moved by others, and generally climbed over for the past hour while they waited to be called. This was followed by the fastest transit through passport control ever.
Scramble to re-arrange: Outside at 1300, everyone headed for the Easyjet desk - when was the next flight, was there space on it, who else flew to Innsbruck, how do I change my flights... and so on. About 800 people were queueing to speak to the 3 staff, while others frantically opened their laptops and tried to find a 3G signal. The Internet access points in the terminal are of course in the Departure lounge, which was out of bounds as we no longer had a valid boarding pass, so having dumped my laptop at home because I'd only be off work for 3 days, we decamped to relatives 15 miles away for tea and PC access. Innsbruck is served by very few airlines, so it was quick and simple to establish that Easyjet's only other flight that day had been cancelled, that Austrian went via Vienna and took 18 hours, and that FlyBe required us to drive to Southampton, while BA had already cancelled their fights as they had to cross France.
Alternatives were discussed, including Heathrow, Stansted and London City to Innsbruck, Salzburg, and so on, but we spotted that Easyjet had a flight from Gatwick to Munich at 1855 which hadn't been cancelled, and having established that Gatwick was close to opening, we booked ourselves on it, and immediately set off back to the chaotic airport. All roads were of course still completely clear, so we made it back at 16:00.
Management sticks its oar in again... Officially, Gatwick re-opened at 1515 - which is surprising, as the departures information on their website confirmed the first flight out at 1605, and nothing landing at all [ Correction - BA got a flight to Jersey off at 15:13, according to a flight info website ] . As we arrived back at the north terminal car park in the hope that they would still honour our 5 day booking which we had used already that day (they did...), we then had the shuttle bus to the north terminal again, then a second shuttle to the south terminal (the Munich flight predictably left from there). We arrived to find all of the check-in desks for Easyjet closed off, and a queue at the information desk. Passengers for some flights were being allowed to check-in, but of course we'd checked in online 30 minutes before, so we only had to drop our bags and skis. However, even with arrivals suspended, Gatwick decided that they didn't have enough slots to get all of the flights off, so the airlines were
asked to cancel more of their flights. Logically, Easyjet seem to have chosen to cancel any flight where passengers could fly the next day, and to get their once-per-week destinations sorted out as a priority. Surprise surprise - the Munich flight was also cancelled.
The denouement: 17:00 saw us deflated, frustrated, and beaten. There were no more flights until one to Munich at 18:55 on Thursday, which was almost full anyway and likely to be full by the time we managed to re-arrange our bookings, by which time our 5 day trip to get 3 full days and two half days of skiing had been reduced to 2 full days of skiing, and 2 half days of flying and driving. Having had 2 hours of sleep in the last 36 hours, we'd had enough - the trip was cancelled. We recovered the car, and made our way home for some sleep.
Marks out of ten:
- Surrey council road gritting team: 10 (all roads clear)
- Easyjet agents at Gatwick: 8 (could do better - communications were average)
- Gatwick baggage handlers: 3 (they didn't lose anything, but it was very random)
- Gatwick runway operations: -23 (the words brewery, up and p*ss were used a lot)
Conclusions: As far as we can tell, the 5-day warning of snow, 3-day forecast confirming it as highly likely, and Tuesday evening weather warning forecasting 1-2" of snow across southern England resulted in no change to the operations planning at Gatwick. Between 0330 and 0545, we saw no evidence of anything being done to clear the taxiways or runway, so we assume that the late shift went home around midnight with the snow falling, and the early shift turned up at 05:30 to discover that it had been snowing. At that point, they half-heartedly started work, only managing to clear the runway at 15:30, a full TEN hours later, and EIGHT hours after the snow had stopped. City Airport had sorted themselves out by 12:00, and Heathrow suffered a total of zero cancellations due to snow yesterday despite getting the same weather system which shut down Gatwick.
The management at Gatwick have to take 100% of the blame for this one, and it's not even the first time they've had these issues:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/travel/travelnews/3723869/Airlines-demand-investigation-into-Gatwick-runway-closure.html (December 2008)
Thinking positively: This is a trip report, not a whinge. I've done enough of that in person, so this is just documentation of events. Easyjet will refund 100% of our flight costs and car hire, while our travel insurance will cover the accommodation costs minus a small excess. That means that we're not massively out of pocket, although the day of annual leave lost is an annoyance. However, we can still try again - next week or the week after are looking like possibles, and of course my main trip on 6-13 Feb is still on - although as we're flying with Easyjet from Gatwick (doh!) I may be back with a second trip report in a few weeks...
Last edited by Poster: A snowHead on Thu 14-01-10 18:35; edited 2 times in total
|
|
|
|
|
|
Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
|
|
For the pedants, when I said "Booked a short boys trip", I should point out that while I am 5'6" and one of the (aged 40+) "boys" is 5'2", the other is 6'3", so this was a short trip for the boys, rather than being restricted to those of us who don't have to duck when walking through the doorways in older buildings.
|
|
|
|
|
|
Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?
Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?
|
ousekjarr, Interesting views from a passengers point of view, and thank you for not placing all the blame on easyJet.
I was one of the crew on board, by the way 
|
|
|
|
|
|
You need to Login to know who's really who.
You need to Login to know who's really who.
|
|
ousekjarr, Just about the best trip report I have read on this site. A quality effort.
|
|
|
|
|
|
Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.
Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.
|
|
|
|
You'll need to Register first of course.
You'll need to Register first of course.
|
A tertiary thought - all that baggage lying around to be reclaimed by upset people who were on their way home was not subject to any sort of security checks, so if I'd picked up a ski bag belonging to someone on the later Innsbruck or Geneva flights and walked off with it, no-one would have realised. Must remember this for next time... 
Perhaps some basic checking that anyone with an Innsbruck-tagged bag also had an Insbruck boarding card? Or has there really been nothing go missing in the scrum?
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
An early candidate for post of the year. Top marks.
|
|
|
|
|
|
You'll get to see more forums and be part of the best ski club on the net.
You'll get to see more forums and be part of the best ski club on the net.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
snowHeads are a friendly bunch.
snowHeads are a friendly bunch.
|
how were the thomas cook passenger being treated?
i imagine if on a package one wouldbe looked after??
|
|
|
|
|
|
And love to help out and answer questions and of course, read each other's snow reports.
And love to help out and answer questions and of course, read each other's snow reports.
|
Michelle, we met for about 5 seconds at Hemel in December, I think, unless it wasn't you handing out the tickets?
cockerhoop, I have no idea whether Thomas Cook had any charter flights out of Gatwick yesterday, but until such time as they could relocate their chartered aircraft to a working airport or hire another, I suspect that their customers would be in a similar situation, as all they could do is wait. They'd also have the option of a shorter trip or cancellation, but as they'd be offered overnight accommodation that would be one advantage of being on a package. Having to take 7 or 14 day trips is the big disadvantage for someone like me who can afford the trip, but not the annual leave.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
ousekjarr, sounds a little bit similar to Geneva, yesterday.
What a frustrating day.  Sorry about your trip. Excellent report, though.
|
|
|
|
|
|
You know it makes sense.
|
|
|
|
Otherwise you'll just go on seeing the one name:
Otherwise you'll just go on seeing the one name:
|
|
Michelle, As ousekjarr, has reported from a pax point of view could you write one from a 'person involved in aviation' point of view. (I guess it would be frowned upon to write about your job )
|
|
|
|
|
|
Poster: A snowHead
|
Boredsurfing, got to work - sat on aircraft - got bored - watched snow fall - got stood down - got stuck on the way home. Day done 
|
|
|
|
|
|
Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
|
Great trip report - best bit was the saga of giving the duty free stuff back.
You would have had better skiing a few miles away at Box Hill.
You did miss out the report of the mountain restaurants at Gatwick! Take it they were overpriced and poor quality.
I can't imagine how bad it must have been there yesterday. On a normal day Gatwick airport is my idea of hell....all those charter flight passengers..
Well done for not getting completely wound up by the experience. Hope you manage to rearrange your trip soon.
|
|
|
|
|
|
Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?
Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?
|
|
snowymum, all mountain restaurants at Gatwick are at the top of the lifts, and are surprisingly good for somewhere which has a captive audience. In particular, "Eat" were to be commended on their breakfast muffins, organic whole milk for drinks, and their reasonable prices. Unfortunately, there was no tirolergrostl or apfel strudel, and certainly no gluwein. Beer quality was poor throughout as well.
|
|
|
|
|
|
You need to Login to know who's really who.
You need to Login to know who's really who.
|
Michelle, when I book my next flight, can I ask that you make sure you're not on it? While I can't prove that you jinxed it, I don't want to take any chances next time
You're not doing the early flight to Salzburg on 6th Feb are you?
|
|
|
|
|
|
Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.
Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.
|
|
ousekjarr, darn - I'm day off that day
|
|
|
|
|
|
You'll need to Register first of course.
You'll need to Register first of course.
|
ousekjarr, Excellent `report, amazingly observant .. if very frustrating for you.
My views on that airport operator are generally unprintable ... and they are amazingly consistent at all the airports they operate ...
Michelle, Have you actually flown with any pax during the last month ?
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
FAQ
Would you recognise me without it, then 
