A mammoth undertaking

After another overnight ferry from Orkney to Aberdeen, a small group of us were transferred from the dock to Aberdeen airport to catch our flights home – I was booked onto an early afternoon Flybe flight to Birmingham. This was the Saturday that BA had its IT meltdown, and it was really interesting to watch from the sidelines. There was one BA flight to London in the morning, and two in the afternoon,  which were all initially showing as operating normally.

The first indication that something was going wrong was when the morning flight was flagged as “delayed”, and all affected passengers were invited to go to the enquiries desk to pick up a meal voucher. Then the morning flight was cancelled entirely, and the afternoon flights were “delayed”. The PA asked anyone whose final destination was London to go to the check in desk where they would see what could be done to rebook them onto alternative flights. There was an EasyJet to Gatwick that left just before my flight, and I imagine that all the spare seats on that were snapped up. There were also quite a few London-bound passengers put onto my Birmingham flight – including one very cross businessman who asked me if there was actually a train station at Birmingham airport, and could one get to London from there?! My flight was absolutely full as a result, but at least the passengers were heading in roughly the right direction, even if it is a pig of a journey from Birmingham to either Heathrow or Gatwick if they needed to collect their cars from their original airport.

Then things got trickier from a BA perspective. Both the afternoon flights were cancelled and the announcer came back on over the PA reiterating that they were only able to try to rebook people whose final destination was London. All their systems were down and they were unable to book any onward connections. The final announcement I heard, just as my flight was called for boarding, was to the effect that all remaining BA passengers should collect their baggage from the check in desk and leave the airport – “There is nothing more that we can do for you”.

I felt so sorry for those people at the beginning of their half-term holiday who were flying down from Aberdeen and catching a connection at Gatwick or Heathrow to head off on holiday. They were going to lose at least a day, and probably two or more days from their vacation. It’s somehow not so bad to have disruption at the end of your break. And I did think the “There is nothing more we can do for you” message, whilst despairing and probably accurate, was not at all helpful. I was so pleased that I wasn’t flying BA that day!