Im well aware of the geography, thank you, but when is 40 minutes not 40 minutes....
- Who will and what contract is in in place for ground handling? Provide chocks, stairs, staff to marshal passengers?
- Passengers make it to terminal, can immigration cope with 300+ arrivals from a non-EU airport (more likely to have less EU passport holders)?
- Are customs available to handle all those passengers?
- Does PIK have the necessary Hi-Los to remove containers of luggage from the aircraft? Again provided by who?
- Does PIK have the ability then to unload those containers so passengers get their luggage on the belt
- Who is arranging transport to GLA? Do EK have a contract with a local bus company, if not when will bus arrive? Who is marshalling the passengers / providing information to now tired passengers (no EK staff at PIK).
So thats just the passengers off the aircraft then we have to look at recovery, reducing schedule disruption etc...
- Who will, and what contract is in place for fuelling?
- Crew now out of hours, so they will now need a full rest period. In NCL you may be able to have a whole crew already in hours, just have an earlier report
- Then we need hotels for the the now out of hours crew, contract hotel? whos transporting?
- Aircraft in PIK is out of service as long as crew are
- Hows about engineering? Any techd items made on last flight?
As stated before the only reason to go to PIK is lack of fuel = time. PIK is full of questions, at least in NCL you have exactly zero of the above problems. So yes its 40 minutes drive away , but it will not only take your passengers considerably more than 40 minutes to get to GLA, it has more of a chance of delaying the rest of the operation further.