Dublin have over 120 vehicles for snow-clearing and de-icing equipment. How does MAN compare when they handle more passengers and have a second runway.
Edit - According to Man Evening News they have over 40. There is the problem..
If you are talking abut this quote from the MEN
As an airport we have over 40 pieces of snow clearing equipment and have invested over £2m in upgrading this fleet in recent years.
then I think you'll find this refers only to the Airport Company's airfield clearing equipment and therefore does not include any of the handling agents de-icing rigs. Are you comparing apples with pears?
And the second runway is the lowest priority for clearing. If you can be arsed you can find the Winter Ops Plan on the internet.
As for the general snow closures, we saw a post recently showing off all the investment MAN made yet it was still closed for a substantial period of time. Do people believe the airport were adequately prepared?
Overnight a small covering of snow accumulated and the runway was cleared with a short closure about 0730. After opening again, all the hard work was undone by about 4+ inches in just over 2 hours starting just after 0900, so opening again about 2 hours after it stopped snowing was a pretty good job IMHO.
The fact that there were problems with de-icing is down to the handling agents who in the UK are involved in "a race to the bottom" as one of their board members once told me. Undercut the other guy and get the volume in; then we'll see how we can achieve it. There is no redundancy at all in the system to use when things go t*ts up and everything unravels.
And Ringwayman and Skippy put it very well, airlines want lower prices to reduce their costs so will drive a hard bargain. Passengers generally want the lowest prices too, so how do you get out of that one?
The answer seems to be that you don't and passengers will have to accept that in order to enjoy their low cost trips, don't expect the system to work properly when unusual situations are encountered. But nowadays people will mouth off about any little thing if they think it will get a like on Faceache or create a Twitterstorm or even worse there is some compensation likely.