French air strike today - real delays (TLS to LHR)

[anonymous-user]

[redacted]

[Le TVR]

Real time schedule is here:

http://www.toulouse.aeroport.fr/static/index.html

[Simpo Two]

When you said 'French air strike' I thought they had attacked something...

[Buzz word]

It seems to be affecting loads of flights. My parents are flying over france (i assumue) from portugal and have a ETA of 19:10 from a flight that was suppost to have landed at midday. Seems like it's a real mess out there at the moment.

[Manicminer]

BA has the two remaining flights down as 3hr delays. Given that the flight out will take longer to get to TLS and the return flight will probably take a little longer than normal I'd say this is realistic.

I flew this route every weekend for 3 months last year without a single delay, guess you're just unlucky!

[911newbie]

I read 'French air strike' and thought 'Where... Syria ?! OMG'

... but no

[Le TVR]

If its BA373 it should be landing in LHR in 50 minutes.

anonymous said:

[redacted]

It didn't go via CDG so there's a vague possibility the luggage may arrive too.

[Manicminer]

anonymous said:

[redacted]

Let's hope not, I'm sure he won't bother and PH ers on that flight, they'll al be travelling club class up the front whilst your smelly offspring is running riot in peasant class

[Mojocvh]

Bad news tonker.

Once watched a simple mainwheel change develop into a 4 plus hour marathon from those self same plate glass windows.

It was the cooling fan that got them. 3 different sets of spanner monkeys couldn't fathom it out. There were folk screaming instructions from behind the windows in the departures lounge.

Boy that screwed a lot of folks plans up.

[Buzz word]

A lex said:

Apparently Ryanair had been telling passengers that it was US on strike, and the poor buggers on the telephone exchange had been fielding angry calls the whole day.

Ryanair get no sympathy from me. My parents flight with them ended up being cancelled I assume. After waiting all day and getting to 7pm the flight status changed to on time. I got a call saying that they had a new flight with easyjet and were landing 00:50 in a different airport. 12hrs late and all they had to do was go over france.

[jimnicebutdim]

Flying Alicante to Gatwick last night.
The flight was two hours late to arrive, we then boarded, and spent an additional two hours waiting on the pan. Finally landed at Gatwick, but the jet went to the wrong terminal causing mega-confusion amongst the passengers as no one had told us they were changing terminals and nobody could find their taxi's lol
However, apart from the terminal faux-pas, I must give top marks to EasyJet for looking after us well, when their day was going just as st as ours

[Ali Chappussy]

Lots of ingenuity being used by foreign airlines.

Good example yesterday was a Royal Air Maroc flight from Rabat to Frankfurt. Normally uses French airspace, yesterday it skirted right out over the Atlantic and entered UK airspace somewhere round Lands End and cut across to Dover way and onto Germany.

Michael O'Leary's attitude is cancel, what a plonker!

[bertie]

So the bloody French air traffic are at it again for the next 3 days!

They do my head in!

[bertie]

A lex said:

Yes

and yes.

I feel very sorry for the travelling public.

We are working our tits off to try and minimise the chaos, but we can only do so much!

I'm supposed to be traveling today as you might have guessed, not happy!

[lazyitus]

Tracked an Air France (AFR536) earlier this evening heading back to CDG airport squawking 7700. Bet that was fun with an ATC strike on.

Wonder what that was all about.

[Chuck328]

A lex said:

They have to provide a legal minimum of staff cover to cater for such events, so it won't have been an issue per sé.

The French sector neighbouring the one where I work was accepting a throughput of 4 aircraft per hr. today.

A joke of biblical proportions.

Alex, what would be a typical throughput for a sector like that? With min manning levels, could they manage more?

Colleagues of mine on the radio at about 2020z calling to check CTOT (ATC slot time) "Yep still 0130am".

We tried not to laugh, it's really not funny....

[jonnyb]

Yesterday, to get to Palma, we went via Amsterdam, Frankfurt, Swiss Alps, Milan, Corsica. To get back, it was via Santiago, over the Atlantic to Lands end. Total flight time over 6:30 for what should have been 4:20. And that's with out factoring in the ATC slots that had delayed us by 2 hours anyway, and we got off lightly.

[stevesuk]

Got caught up in this yesterday flying back from Palma to Bournemouth on Thompson. Should have arrived back just after lunch, ended up getting home late evening instead, having had to fly across Spain and then up the Bay of Biscay (seemed it was OK to take a short-cut across Brittany).

Problem compounded by a technical issue with the plane that caused us to miss our (already very delayed) valuable take-off slot, so after sitting for ages in the departure lounge, we then spent not far off 4 hours sitting on the tarmac in a hot sweaty plane full of pre-school kids and grumpy parents, with just one small glass of water on offer. We were lucky to get back at all really, as I was beginning to picture an unplanned overnight stay when one thing after another seemed to go wrong.

I know that these things are sometimes unavoidable, but at the airport there was no report of a delay until we were sat at the boarding gate and all the displays suddenly switched to "gate closed". No Thompson staff anywhere to be found, and no announcements. Just seems that airlines (or maybe its just cheap airlines?) have no contingencies in place to make sure their customers are at least kept well informed and comfortable when stuff like this happens.

[SVX]

Any idea if this will affect traffic out of Schiphol? I'm scheduled to fly AMS -> BHX @ 16:20 this afternoon.
No information on the Schiphol website.

[jonnyb]

stevesuk said:

I know that these things are sometimes unavoidable, but at the airport there was no report of a delay until we were sat at the boarding gate and all the displays suddenly switched to "gate closed". No Thompson staff anywhere to be found, and no announcements. Just seems that airlines (or maybe its just cheap airlines?) have no contingencies in place to make sure their customers are at least kept well informed and comfortable when stuff like this happens.

Most airlines have handling agents for this sort of thing. They wont be from Thomson as such, but from Service Air or Swissport something like that. However, each handling agent may operate for 3 or 4 different airlines, and so their staff are spread thinly across the airport. This is fine when every things going ok, but when the proverbial hits the fan there are not enough people. And when you do find someone you will probably find they are 18 or 19 years old and on minimum wage, and show very little interest in your plight. This is usually because they will be getting it in the neck from about 600-800 people all with the same complaint, they wont actually know any more than you do and they don't earn enough to really care. Also, a lot of airports now wont allow PA announcements in the departure lounge.

It comes down to cost. If you want to fly from your local airport, cheaply, then this is the sort of service you can expect. If you want better service in a comfortable lounge, the put your hand in your pocket and pay for it. You have choices, you just have to pay for them. The trouble is very few people sit at home and say I want a decent service and I'm prepared to pay for it. Most just want to get where they are going as cheaply as possible, and moan about it. Im sorry if that sounds harsh, but you paid your money and you got the service you paid for.