Defeated On All Fronts
Two men and a brush apparently equates to BAA’s £6m investment in snow clearing equipment.
What is utterly unforgivable about both BA and BAA are that they are supposed to be in a ‘service industry’, that means that their focus is on the customer. Yet hundreds are dossing down on floors at Heathrow again without blankets, facilities and worst of all information.
Three years ago I was flying to the States, my youngest son was in Scotland flying down to meet us at Heathrow from Glasgow. There was a bit of fog, having got ourselves into a hotel at Heathrow, the first indication was a text from BA informing us a 9pm that my sons flight had been cancelled and ‘sorry for the inconvenience’, after that it was radio silence from BA, their lines were then engaged for the next six hours.
Having got to Glasgow, with a promise from BA that he would be put on an airline that was still flying, no BA staff turned up until ten minutes before projected boarding time. It was only through the intervention of a member of staff from another airline who physically ushered him onto another flight that he made it to Heathrow. Then as we we were boarding the flight to Dulles, it became apparent that whilst BA had effectively abandoned him in Glasgow at 9pm the previous evening, they had managed to sell his seat to another passenger in the meantime, ‘because he had not travelled on the flight that was cancelled’. Before I blew my top, he was upgraded to business class at the aircraft door.
Since then I have had a completely jaudiced view about BA and their ability to manage anything.
The shambles at our airports reflects pretty much the low standard of expectation we now have from anybody involved in ‘management’ in the UK. Clearly there was no contingency plan, a simple telephone contact to stop people arriving at Heathrow would be a start. First Direct Bank have a hugely efficient and friendly bank of telephone advisers, there is never more than a few minutes delay. BA should get some of their managers to learn from other organisations who can do it right. Once there it is not beyond the wit of man to get food, water and blankets for those that are stranded.
Meanwhile in La La Land the Unions involved BA/BAA are planning a wave of strikes in support of ‘public services’ with the help of Ed Miliband. I am still baffled by their definition of public services because it appears not to include serving the public.
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December 20, 2010 at 09:36 -
…as my old economist muckers say: “it’s an elasticity of demand problem” (or at least the perception of one). BAA behave like a monopoly – which in the short term they are (and this is a problem with airports everywhere) – since we have little alternative. On the other hand BA are just useless and overpriced.
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December 20, 2010 at 09:58 -
It seems lately that air travel is becoming more and more difficult. Volcanoes, bad weather, strikes by groundcrew, aircrew, baggage handlers, air traffic controllers, similar strikes by similar staff in any number of other countries, terrorist alerts – we’ll soon be back to the days when human flight was impossible. Booking a ticket these days does appear to be the start of a period of anxious waiting.
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December 20, 2010 at 10:03 -
“It seems lately that air travel is becoming more and more difficult.”
Or people are becoming more and more risk-averse. My mother runs a social club for the active elderly, and she’s been told that the Dial-a-ride service that brings some of them to the club is holding ‘a meeting’ at 10:00 to decide if they will run as more snow is forecast.
This despite the fact that the main roads are clear and cancelling the service would effectively mean stranding them at the club!
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December 20, 2010 at 11:04 -
Common sense is increasingly uncommon. We have bred a whole generation of snotty-nosed nincompoops, waiting for nanny whilst complaining about their “oomun rites”.
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December 20, 2010 at 20:03 -
Andrew, you expect somebody to do something? in the yUK? Really!
No sir, but, repeat after me-LESSONS have been LEARNED. You know just like the time before and the the one before that, ad infinitum.
In yUK it is most important that lessons are learned not that actions are taken. You know, just like camoron and huhne are learning lessons about energy supply.
Enjoy the snow and make sure you are well stocked with candles and fire wood-the government “manages” power generation too.
My perception of the problem is that there is an environmental concern about drainage of the glycol solution de-icers and therefore all economic activity has to be suspended.
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December 20, 2010 at 22:04 -
Allow me to answer my own question….”Transport Secretary Philip Hammond has asked the government’s chief scientific adviser for advice on whether the government should be planning for more severe weather in future.
“The question I’m asking him is whether we should go on assuming that an extreme weather event is something that will happen perhaps once every few years and just recognising that we just can’t invest large amounts of money preparing for it, or whether it is something now that we have to assume will happen perhaps two or three times a year.” ”
The question has been asked, soon the lesson will be learned, NO ACTION REQUIRED.
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December 20, 2010 at 22:17 -
Almost any eventuality can be planned and provided for, but at what cost?
We can be fairly sure that floods will occur somewhere when this lot thaws. The problem is working out exactly where….
No matter how clever we think we are, Nature is bigger than us, and much less predictable than we’d like to think.
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December 21, 2010 at 18:58 -
“Almost any eventuality can be planned and provided for, but at what cost?”……No disagreement with that statement, and I am certainly not advocating for any level government to spend frivously. However is it not reasonable in this age of constant green propoganda to use public transportation to expect that it might be servicable in all but extreme weather?
One of the major problems in yUK is that there is always plenty of money to talk about proposed solutions and set up committees but nothing is actually done. If you want to maintain the pretense that you are a major economy then transportation is important and a minor snowfall should not be cause for large portions of the transportation infrastructure (air, rail and road) to fail for days (maybe weeks) on end.
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