The good and the bad of using Bristol Airport was demonstrated over the past two Saturdays.
We flew out on Saturday 8 September to Innsbruck with Austrian Arrows, a weekly charter on behalf of a major lakes/mountains tour company. Take off was scheduled for 1220.
1220 came and went with no sign of the inbound CRJ (due 1140), but an Austrian Arrows F 100 was already parked on the far end of the western apron when we arrived in the departure area at 1015 (incidentally, the extended Echo Bar is a great improvement giving a decent view of part of the apron).
Around 1220 the dreaded words, ‘delay – further information at 1300’, appeared on the departure screen against our flight number. My wife wandered around the departure lounge area but could not find anyone from the airport or Servisair from whom to seek further information. A security man told her this was not unusual.
At 1315 we were still expecting further information at 1300 when I spotted a ‘suit’ with a mobile phone looking up at a departure screen. I buttonholed him and he told me he was from the airport and was trying to gee up the handlers re further information. He was able to tell me the Austrian Arrows flight from INN to EXT had diverted to Bristol earlier that morning because of fog and it had been decided to combine the Bristol and Exeter flights to INN on the F 100 parked in the country.
The board then changed to ‘further information at 1400’, followed after that with an announcement apologising for the delay which was due to ‘operation reasons’.
Around 1400 a further announcement was made that the flight would commence boarding soon. I had asked the ‘suit’ and, later, the woman at the gate about seating and was told by both it would be ‘free seating’, so our previously allocated seats would be irrelevant. No-one had told the cabin crew who insisted we take our allocated seats only to discover shortly afterwards that people who had checked in at EXT had the same allocated seats. This was repeated around the aircraft. Eventually everyone found a seat.
The captain told us they had been parked for five hours because of the inordinate delay in getting pax coached from EXT. Few people were impressed with the airport over this although the likelihood is it was not the airport’s direct fault. We finally took off two and a half hours late.
Now, why could not an announcement have been made at an early stage explaining what was going on? Simple communication seems to be a forgotten art in today’s society, whether in the airline world or elsewhere.
The good was demonstrated today. Our Austrian Arrows CRJ arrived twenty-four minutes late at 1204 right in the middle of the busiest lunchtime period of the week when around twenty-four arrivals occur in a two-hour period. We landed amongst a bunch of six or seven other aircraft, mostly easyJet.
We parked on (I think) stand 11 and our baggage was on the belt within twenty minutes of our aircraft touching the runway. I thought this was a marvellous effort, and congratulations and thanks to those involved.
Incidentally, Austrian Arrows brought back memories of charter flights of the 1980s. The cabin crew (all female on both journeys, as it happens) were smart, attentive and friendly. The food was good; there were two rounds of tea and coffee, and two rounds of complimentary alcoholic drinks (we didn’t even get the latter on charters in the 1980s!) – on flights of not much more than ninety minutes. The leg-room on both the F 100 and CRJ was good, although the latter aircraft was slightly cramped, but completely acceptable on such a short flight.