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Wednesday, November 29, 2006

Weather impacts again

Apologies for the lack of recent posts. I have been travelling (doh) and had very limited internet access. It made me realise how much I take for granted being online regularly.

The past month I have had more weather impacts on my travels than I've experienced for a long time. Fortunately none too serious.

  • I've been locked in during delay while airport isn't closed (see earlier posts here and here).
  • On another occasion, flying in to the same airport, I had several hours delay due to the flow on effects of weather delays earlier in the day. Eventually the flight was cancelled when the pilots and cabin crew ran out of hours. Fortunately this time the wait was at an airport with an airline lounge which I had access to, and thus hardly an endurance. However the airline gave me poor options to use the ticket - stay overnight at their expense and continue the next day (which I could not use since there was a reason the ticket was a same day return), refund which the airline worked out as a token amount, credit for another ticket to the same token amount, or use the flights any time within the next year. This last option isn't as reasonable as it sounds as I need to pay my own way to & from this airport, and to use the flights there needs to be availability in the special booking class. Despite my having top frequent flyer program status with that airline, and willing to be flexible, the airline was unwilling to offer a solution I was happy with.
  • Flying a different airline, to a different airport, we made our way to within a few hundred feet (yes that close) of the runway with no visibility in heavy rain when the pilots pulled out and returned to the airport we just left (which was the closest practical one). In stark contrast to the above case, the airline offered me a new trip from my home airport, ie not just replacing the lost sectors, even to the extent of allowing the rebooking into a higher booking class (within the same cabin) when my original booking class was unavailable on a new date that was convenient for me.
  • The most recent case had me on tenterhooks when check in was closed for an extended period with the airline unsure if the aircraft for our flight would even be able to arrive. This had least impact of all with only a minor delay in the end.

So the moral is, weather delays can happen at any time, and I am experiencing an unlucky spell. Hope it ends soon.

1 comment:

Mikko said...

Thanks for your posts both here and at FT, have helped me along the way a lot. Hope it clears soon - I've been stuck a few times lately, too. I complained about this to a friend of mine some time ago, and he commented 'well, serves you right, it's the airlines that are causing much of the artificial climate change anyway'. I'd hate to agree.