Happened to be on stand at time when the OAL A340 landed in STN and there were some interesting exchanges between ATC and the A340.
THe crew of the A340 were continually asking how long the fire engines were going to be? This went on for about 15 minutes. Crew sounded very agitated as you would expect considering the crew told ATC they had given 50 mins notice of arrival.
ATC explanation "local airport problem"
Next question from crew was how many sets of steps were coming to aircraft. The answer from ATC was 1(one) which resulted in a curt response of "well done England" from OAL crew.
One set for 290 pax!! Think they blew some slides in the end.
Was parked on other side of airport so didnt have a first hand view but it sounded like a farce listening on radio.
Hope for all our sakes there was a master plan in place and I didnt have the big picture but it sure as hell didnt sound like it.