UK Flights Disrupted By Iceland!

[whole diary]

[John R]

Return flight from Tampa via Chicago worked fine. The BA^» (British Airways - about) crew had been stuck in Chicago for a week, and were clearly as delighted to be travelling home as their passengers were. Noticeable how everyone was much more friendly - even the normally straight faced immigration staff at Heathrow were chatting, and making jokes to my children about how they could be back in school by the afternoon.



   

[Chris from Nailsea]

Welcome home, John! 

[johoare]

I have a friend and her 8 year old daughter who are stuck in Lanzarote.. Due to fly back last Thursday (so 7 days ago).. Many many other people have been flown back in the last 48 hours, but as one of the first people to have been stuck there, they still haven't been flown back... Surely this isn't right? I'd like to name their tour operator on here (it was a package) but probably had better not..

[John R]

It seems a bit of a lottery. For scheduled airlines, if you have a confirmed booking and your flight runs then you are OK. So in our case, when our original flight was cancelled last Friday,  we rebooked for Wed (which, to be honest, seemed a long time in the future at that point).  As things had started running again, we were fine. But if our rebooking had been for Tuesday then it would have been cancelled and we would then have been at the end of a very long queue.

Though I'm not sure how else it could be managed. I suspect it also depends on the destination. Orlando will be mainly holidaymakers on 7+ days holidays onwards, whereas New York will be a lot of business trips and 2 or 3 day breaks, and more trips originating from NY. These factors will change the dynamic of who cancels, and the availabilty of seats to repatriate people.

I don't think the railway companies have come out of this too badly, if a little slow off the mark, in terms of their response. 

     

[johoare]

Well yes it really does seem a lottery.. package holiday customers (apart from my friend) have done fairly well. People who've booked the flights themselves may not be so well off.. I'm not sure if that could be handled better but people could be delayed by weeks if they've booked the flights themselves which doesn't seem quite right in the circumstances..

The package holiday companies have been generally really good and flying loads of people back.. On the first day of flights back from Lanzarote (tue), when my friend asked why she wasn't on the flight.. she was told they had her down as having gone already.. ok mistakes happen...

However when the next flight left today.. and she asked why she wasn't on it.. She was told the same thing.. Now that is bad, they obviously hadn't amended their records after the first missed flight.. she is a teacher and has now missed a week or teaching which is very bad for her class.. Next flight back to her airport is "sometime" next week now.. If they have worked out by then that she really is still there..

[Mookiemoo]

The bit that annoys me are the comments about "new passengers are being given priority over those stranded". 

I fly on May 6th by virtue of the fact my friend is a tax accountant so is fully occupied in April with work.  Had she not been, given the crap in my life, I may have been booked for today.

I would NOT be happy had my flight been cancelled in order to relocate stranded people.  That surely just compounds the problem - I am then out of position.

In normal circumstances, if your flight is cancelled you go on standby for a free seat on the next flight.

And that is the only way it can sensibly work - unless they can rustle up aircraft for mercy flights

[John R]

Apparently the 1545 additional service from KX to Edinburgh yesterday had around 450 on board, ie pretty full, but seats for all.  Good to see the extra services being of use, and not so crowded that might discourage air refugees to consider the train in future. 

[Chris from Nailsea]

From the BBC^» (British Broadcasting Corporation - home page):

Volcano ash: BA^» (British Airways - about) defends policy on stranded passengers

British Airways has rejected suggestions it is prioritising new passengers over those stranded abroad.
Tens of thousands of people are hoping to return home after the airline disruption caused by volcanic ash.
Some passengers have complained that BA appears to be selling empty seats to new passengers on earlier flights.
But BA said these were being offered at very high prices to keep them empty on its computer booking system, so stranded passengers can be slotted in. "There are some seats available but at a much higher price. This is done on purpose, not to cash in," the spokesman said.
Meanwhile the airline is flying out some empty planes to certain destinations to bring back stranded customers.
"It remains an enormous challenge," said a BA spokesman of the task of flying home thousands of people whose flights were cancelled because of the recent cloud of volcano ash over Europe. He said thousands of its flights had been cancelled between Thursday last week and Wednesday this week.
Extra BA planes were despatched, on Thursday and Friday, to Hong Kong, Bangkok, Dubai, the Caribbean, and Sharm el-Sheikh.
Over the weekend the airline hopes to send out more extra planes to repatriate customers from New York, Newark, the Maldives, Mumbai, Bangkok and Hong Kong. Most of these will fly out with freight, or completely empty, and will be for the use of stranded customers only.
However, the number of extra flights is limited by the availability of empty planes, pilots and cabin crews.
In general, stranded customers of BA are being offered guaranteed seats for their replacement flights, which can be a week or so in the future. To get them back earlier, BA says it has to keep its computerised live seating system open, and this entails keeping some seats empty by overpricing them. The computer system will not allow BA to pretend there are no potential bookings - hence the empty seats must remain available for sale. This is the "most efficient way of handling the situation", said the spokesman.
However, if a new passenger does want to pay the much higher price for a ticket they will get it.
Ultimately the high price is proving to be a deterrent, keeping seats unsold, the airline said, so allowing it to allocate them at the last minute.
However, BA is urging customers to keep in close contact with it to be given free seats.
The airline says its much more difficult for BA to pro-actively keep in touch with stranded passengers than vice versa.
While they wait, stranded passengers flying into the EU^» (European Union - about) should be being offered accommodation and food by their airline.
Meanwhile, Thomson Airways has apologised for the "confusion" caused by its reimbursement policy. It said it would now allow passengers a full refund of flights that were cancelled or allow them to be rebooked on flights to the same destination with no additional charge before 21 May.

[johoare]

It is good to see that BA^» (British Airways - about) don't appear to be sure where their stranded passengers are, or if in fact they have them.. Perhaps they should keep records..

And I still find it very bad that new passengers are being given priority over stranded passengers..

To be fair this isn't just BA doing this....

[inspector_blakey]

As I understand it BA^» (British Airways - about)'s reasoning goes something like this...

1. They can't turf pax with confirmed reservations off flights to get stranded people home (fair enough)
2. Seats for stranded pax are allocated on a "stand by" basis
3. For some technical reason with their booking systems (which is said to be connected to many different travel agencies/websites having access to the Amadeus system) they can't simply remove the seats from sale, so...
4. They've put all remaining seats on at the highest possible fare to deter people from booking them, so allowing as many stand-by pax as possible to board.

All well and good, but it's beyond me why they can't simply do a "booking change" and rebook the people who are stuck into those empty seats. Possibly a manpower issue given the sheer numbers of people they need to handle...?

In other news, was reading the Guardian's live blog yesterday which picked up an intriguing story...scroll down to the 3.40pm update. It's been posted on a BASSA forum (so take that with whatever-sized pinch of salt you choose...) that a BA 747-400 has landed with ash deposits on its wing and collected ash in the engines. I really would love to know how something as bone-dry as volcanic ash is supposed to adhere to an aircraft's wing in a 500+ mph slipstream.

[grahame]

4. They've put all remaining seats on at the highest possible fare to deter people from booking them, so allowing as many stand-by pax as possible to board.

Which also has the completely unintentional (  )effect of making it very much more expensive for anyone who really must travel.

All well and good, but it's beyond me why they can't simply do a "booking change" and rebook the people who are stuck into those empty seats. Possibly a manpower issue given the sheer numbers of people they need to handle...?

Or perhaps it would cost them a lot of money to do it?

I was booked on a flight that BA^» (British Airways - about) cancelled a few years ago - due to fly out on 15th December to the USA.  The first flight they would offer me in its place wasn't until 28th December, and their rep explained to me "but that was a low cost ticket, sir - what do you expect?"  So I guess anyone with open tickets which allow for flight changes, but who were booked on the cancelled services, will be home earlier.

To be fair to BA, it sounds like they are not the only airline who are operating in a similar manner, but then my experience is that this type of behaviour is not universal across all the operators.

[John R]

All well and good, but it's beyond me why they can't simply do a "booking change" and rebook the people who are stuck into those empty seats. Possibly a manpower issue given the sheer numbers of people they need to handle...?

They are, and it could also be done via "Manage my booking" yourself as soon as the flight is cancelled, without any charge if the seat was available. The point is that the seat has to be available on the system for it to work on Manage my booking.

I can understand why they would want to give priority to their own pax, so I think this is a case of BA^» (British Airways - about) being misunderstood (spoken as someone who has gone through this.)

As for asking for confirmation from pax as to who is still stranded, again I think that's not unreasonable given many people will have tried to make alternative arrangements.

[Chris from Nailsea]

From the BBC^» (British Broadcasting Corporation - home page):

Volunteers asked to give seats to stranded passengers

UK^▸ (United Kingdom) airlines are seeking volunteers to give up return seats so passengers still stranded after the volcanic ash cloud disruption can return home.
British Airways (BA^» (British Airways - about)) has asked customers who are booked on long-haul flights up to 2 May to make way for those who were stranded.
And Virgin Atlantic says many such volunteers have contacted the airline.
Earlier BA rejected suggestions it was prioritising new passengers over those stranded abroad.
British airspace reopened on Tuesday following almost a week of grounded flights. Although more planes than usual are flying, tens of thousands of Britons are still stuck overseas.
It is estimated that 10,000 are stranded in Egypt, 8,000 in India, 9,000 in Florida and 2,500 in Thailand, according to industry figures compiled by travel journalist Simon Calder.
Airlines are adopting different strategies to get their customers home as soon as possible.
BA is seeking volunteers who can delay their journey and give up their seat for a stranded passenger.
The company says those volunteers can then re-book on later flights at no extra cost.
BA said re-booked flights had to be at least 7 days after the original departure date.
Some passengers have complained that BA appeared to be selling empty seats on earlier flights to new passengers.
BA said its computer system forced empty seats to be made available for sale, but that the tickets had been significantly overpriced so they would remain unsold, allowing stranded passengers to be accommodated.
Virgin Atlantic is also taking up offers from volunteers who can fly home at a later date.
EasyJet said it was setting up stand-by desks in airports to process waiting passengers, while Ryanair said it had already cleared its backlog.
The Association of British Travel Agents (Abta) said it aimed to have repatriated more than 100,000 British passengers by the end of the weekend.
But chief executive Mark Tanzer said: "While most flights are back to normal, and most stranded British passengers will be back by the end of this weekend, there is still quite a high level of disruption in some destinations.
"In some areas of the world, there is a significant lack of air capacity to enable British people to be returned quickly."
Extra BA planes were despatched on Thursday and Friday to Hong Kong, Bangkok, Dubai, the Caribbean, and Sharm el-Sheikh.
Britons stranded in Bangkok are said to be too scared to leave Suvarnabhumi Airport for fear of being caught up in anti-government protests taking place in the capital.
Some passengers have described the situation as a "dog-eat-dog atmosphere" as fellow tourists scramble for flights home.
Briton Tim Rutledge, who is awaiting a flight home, said not only was there trouble with the protests, but it was "brewing up" and "getting a bit nasty" inside the airline offices at the airport.
Over the weekend BA also hopes to send out extra planes to repatriate customers from New York, Newark, the Maldives, Mumbai, Bangkok and Hong Kong.
Most of these will fly out with freight, or completely empty, and will be used for stranded customers only.
However, the number of extra flights is limited by the availability of empty planes, pilots and cabin crews.
A spokesperson for Virgin said the worst affected areas were the Caribbean and Florida and that they were chartering extra flights from other airlines to return those stranded there.
The spokesperson added that people who do not have a flight reservation should not turn up at airports.

[woody]

Air Southwest teams up with Brittany Ferries to speed passengers on their way.
 Brittany Ferries' flagship the Pont-Aven will be arriving in Plymouth from Santander tomorrow (April 23) morning with an estimated 1,100 foot passengers on board, most of whom have been stranded abroad.
 
Air Southwest is offering those Brittany Ferries passengers a rescue fare of just ^50 for travel tomorrow afternoon on its scheduled services to London Gatwick, London City, Leeds, Manchester and Glasgow from Plymouth City Airport where the airline is based.
http://www.airsouthwest.com/news/shownews.php?ne_id=270

[JayMac]

Good value for the destinations north. Even I'd consider Air SouthWest over 4-6 hours on a vomiter!

However ^41.50 gets you to Paddington on a Sunday with FGW^▸ (First Great Western).