23rd December 2006

My ire has now been raised by the British Airports Authority (BAA) and Swiss International Airlines.

BAA is the operator of Londons Heathrow Airport which, over the last few days leading up to Christmas, has been crippled by fog. There are lessons to be learnt from this debacle.

The first is the desperate need for greater capacity at Heathrow. With only two runways, Heathrow is almost always running at nearly full capacity. The additional runway at Heathrow will provide valuable additional capacity for exactly these kind of circumstances as the runway allow longer times between take-off and landing of planes.

The opposers of the fifth terminal and runway ought to be ashamed of themselves for being responsible for causing the delay of the runway and such incredible inconvience to both the British economy and the people who who travelling to their families at this time of year.

Swiss, having cancelled the flight we were on, did manage to rebook all passengers on other flights bound for Heathrow. However, were unable to give any information on likely delay time, probability of take-off to those of us on the late flight (LX340) which was, in itself, delay by around 90 minutes. There was no attempt to even offer a voucher for coffee even though we would be waiting at the airport for nearly six hours. Once on the flight, we were all restricted to one drink each. What?!? You keep us waiting for hours with not even so much as an apology for the inconvenince (ok, it wasn't your fault but you didn't try till now!) and then you can even get two glasses of water on the plane! This apparent contempt for their customers is probably why Swiss International Airlines continues to be held in contempt by it's customers and, therefore, loss-making. Swiss really need to buck up their ideas when dealing with many passengers delayed. This is not acceptable.

To add insult to injury, once we had landed we were kept waiting on the tar-mac for over 30 minutes as our "parking-space" was already taken. Quite why an airport operating at half-capacity has problems managing it's gates is a complete mystery. The pilot did his best to aplogise for this additional delay. Once again, no real explaination for this was forthcoming just announcements that we would be waiting. Again. My suspicion is that the people who run Heathrow have no contigency plan for this kind of event. They should have. Heathrows bad enough to use at the best of times. We now know what happens at the worst of times.

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