The Anonymous Widower

British Airways Tries To Commit Suicide

I’m sitting here listening to the radio at one in the morning, as the drama at Heathrow unfolds.

So no-one has been killed and it’s only the usual chaos caused by rather heavy snow and cold weather, that happens about one in four hundred days or so at Heathrow.

These things happen and you have to have a plan for recovery when it does.

In this instance, the following statements have been made on BBC Radio 5 Live, by professional journalists acting on behalf of their listeners and those stuck at Heathrow.

1. Passengers after being stuck on a plane for several hours are finding, the Help Desk has closed.

2. The phone-in Help Desk has also closed.

3. The staff in Terminal 5 have gone home.

4. Baggage is stuck on the plane.

5. Passengers are being given no help to get a hotel.

6. Stephen Nolan was also trying to get British Airways on the phone to his radio program before it closed at one in the morning.  He failed.

The only excuse, British Airways and Heathrow have is that the weather is unprecedented and they can’t get any more staff to the airport.

But where are just a few staff at Heathrow working through a plan to at least sort out the more pressing problems?

It would appear that British Airways and Heathrow, didn’t have any plans to handle such an extreme situation.

So if this weather was unforeseen, why wasn’t their trouble at Gatwick, Stansted, Birmingham and Manchester.  There was a couple of problems at Belfast City and Bristol airports involving low-cost airlines, but nothing on the same proportionate scale.

In fact the problems at Heathrow seem to be centred only on British Airways Terminal 5, with the runways and the other terminals seemingly working without major trouble.

I would argue that all airports and airlines must have disaster plans, after all they are very vulnerable from incidents like a blocked runway or perhaps a strike in a critical area like baggage handling or air traffic control.

Admittedly, there has also been a lot of trouble on the roads. But nothing on the scale of the problems at Terminal 5.

The trains have been affected too, but they generally made the sensible decision to run a reduced timetable and asked people to think twice before travelling. Buzz Aldrin arrived safely in Scotland in good spirits as reported here, although the train might have been thirty minutes late.  But then that is minor compared to the problems at Heathrow.

Sometimes I think, I’ve made two sensible decisions since my stroke; to not drive and not to fly long haul. There are millions of places worth seeing within the UK, Ireland and the nearer parts of Europe.

I just can’t see any point in having all the hassle of a boring long-haul flight!

January 19, 2013 - Posted by AnonW | News, Transport/Travel | British Airways, Flying, Heathrow Airport, Trains