Groundbased

For the first day or so I was pretty unimpressed with the media in their constant efforts to isolate a "lack of preparation" during what was clearly more snow more quickly than we have had for a long time.

However I am at a loss to understand why the second runway hasn't been cleared by now?

It certainly seems that the balance between infrastructure being there by the country for the country and it just being a profit centre has swung too far in the wrong direction.

An earlier poster mentioned using trains to get passengers to where the planes are. Can you imagine how that would go given the number of different private companies involved? It would be a car crash, but when there is no effective single control of such big elements of infrastructure you can't get them to interact like that.

stormin norman

Some serious questions need to be asked about the senior BA and BAA management with regard to LHR .With one runway down BA was assured by the BAA/Nats that they would get at least 12 departures away per hour.BA invested millions in a state of the art de-icing facility and de-icing Rigs at T5 so should have had no difficulty achieving this target.

Ever since the 747 came into service in the 70's its been known that a fully fuelled aircraft at low ambient temps on snow will be diffficult to move .Why were the aircraft not moved earlier and the stands cleared of snow and de-iced before repositioning on stand ?

BA had a very robust snow plan a few years back ,it seem the management eyes have been firmly off the ball.

4 days on and i'm embarrassed every time i switch the TV on.

sky9

Stormin Norman, I imagine the reason is that all the old experienced people have been pensioned off and their jobs taken by young whipper snappers who have never seen snow in their working lives and don't have the experience to know what works.

How many times do we see people having to relearn lessons from previous incidents? I would love to see the BAA Operations Manual on what to do when snow is forecast.

FlightCosting

BAA Traveller magazine page 66-67 has a piece about how prepared they are for the weather with their "68 strong fleet of de-icers, snow blowers, ploughs and tractors"

A total of 68 bits of equipment to clear 8 kilometres of runway and 200 stands.

Skavsta ( also Spanish owned) has around 30 bits of equipment for 2.3km of runway and 15 stands.

even taking into account the shortage of equipment, not being able to clear the second runway is baffling

stormin norman

'ploughs and tractors'

Its snow thay want to get rid of, not grow potatoes.

fivegreenlight

What really annoys me ( among many things) is during interviews with that BAA bloke nobody actually challanges him as to why one runway is STILL closed. He just side steps the question. Time to bring on Paxman...

True Blue

I have to say I have absolutely no sympathy with either BAA or ANY of the airlines. We are given to understand that Lhr works at about 98% capacity and carries what, maybe 20m more pax than it was designed for. So what happens, Lhr keep letting more flights in and airlines want to get more flights in. Look at the number of services that have been transferred from Lgw. All in the pursuit of profit. If it all works perfectly, then not too many serious problems, but there are still problems. When the smallest thing goes wrong, it all goes very badly wrong. Why, because working at almost 100% capacity allows for no room to try and make anything work if something goes wrong, it all falls apart and very fast. And so the extra profit they claim to make by flying from Lhr over say Lgw has just disappeared over the past few and next few days. The first thing that Lhr should be ordered to do is reduce to say 90% capacity to allow a little bit of wriggle room. If Lhr and the airlines had their way, they would have Lhr operating at 120% of capacity or any other figure. Nothing can work at 98% all the time and work well. We see the effects of this all the time, snow, fog etc. I often wonder why H & S has nothing to say about the overcrowding at Lhr. Would they allow it elsewhere, apart from Lhr, trains and underground.

I have great pity for all the poor people stuck there, many will have xmas and other plans ruined.

TB

HZ123

I have been stuck allbeit at DUS since Saturday and there are numbers of people since Friday. Today once again there is little infomation other than come back tomorrow.

From a customer perspective it is all unacceptable and I agree why do they not know when the second rrunway is to open, why was that BA made the statement -of its closure not BAA.

Let us face it the UK is poorly served in most forms of public transport and with more cuts nothing is going to improve.

c52

I have little doubt that BAA's evidence to the Government enquiry will state that with a third runway, none of this would have happened.

throw a dyce

Yes they would have 2 runways blocked with snow instead of 1.

Skipness One Echo

Profits came from retail, winters got warmer, the assumption was made this was the norm, forever.....management took a short term profits view and the old skills were lost as the focus shifted from operations to shopping. Now in fairness BAA are trying to turn back with a lot of money being invested into LHR but they're learning the hard way as they have to reinvent the wheel. The fact that Andrew Teacher is the public face of BAA in the worst crisis since well, April frankly, says a lot of how prepared they actually were.

Our ability as a nation to influence events at LHR is also less than it was as we sold off a strategic national asset to a Spanish firm drowning in debt.

Short term profit versus long term strategy. What good is sacking the Transport Secretary going to do? He won't know the job for another six months and bringing in someone else will push that learning curve further back. Our system is broken and we keep saying "Lessons have been learned" except the evidence suggests that often that is merely a platitude.

I'm not moaning as frankly we're all bang at it in the UK. We reap what we sow. All of us. Hands up who's got their pension sorted? *cough* Public sector put your hands down please!

* Having re-read that I am aware it's sounding a little bit Old Testament.

Moldiold2

Ok so can someone tell me exactly WIHIH? Is it lack of equipment, lack of de-icer, lack of trained apron personnel or just plain greed to pay 'top people' bonuses rather than on infrastructure. Years ago BAA stood for Build Another Arcade now that philosophy is comming back to bite them - good job we dont try and hold the Winter Olympics here. Still if we did it might mean our athletes were the only ones who would be competing!
I just feel sorry for the paying customers and poor front desk staff who have to face them but are not backed up by 'senior management' or given procedures for these situations. PPPMPP.
By the way I remember the winter of '63 when deep snow blanketed the whole country from Christmas till March and there was none of the chaos we have today.

JamesT73J

Pretty much on the money, actually.

DCS99

Seems a fairly new Executive Committee:

BAA: Executive Committee

Apart from Terry Morgan, I see no Airport or Airline experience, albeit Matthews was head of Engineering whilst I was at BA.

FlightCosting

Sky News had an interview with Mathews.

Seems they did nothing at first because the met Office said more snow, which did not happen but now they are going to clear ALL the stands before they start on the second runway.

The PBS machines that they use for the runways are no good for use on the stands so it must be that they do not have the staff and the drivers of the runway clearing equipment are out with the shovels n the stands.

What a shower, couldn't organise a pi$$ up in a brewery.

Just pleased I decided to stay in Sweden for Christmas 6ft of snow and -18 but no problems anywhere.

JamesT73J

The thing that really worries me, is that people will accept it. "Oh well, never mind. That's just the way it is, isn't it?" Except it doesn't have to be. The whole of Europe is laughing at Britain, and that's okay. That makes me a bit downcast.

Married a Canadian

I wouldn't worry too much about that given the problems that AMS, CDG and FRA have had.

I do agree though that it has reached a point where something has to be done...and the same excuse can't be brought out EVERY time it snows. I get tired of hearing how "unique" Heathrow is with the complexities of snow clearing. It seems to be so unique that they can't figure out how to clear the place and keep it moving in the winter.

WHBM

For those who whinge on about how comparisons with never-closed Helsinki Vantaa airport are invalid because Heathrow is such a large airport, some statistics for you, as many won't believe that, in world terms, Heathrow is actually quite a small place.

Total land area :

Helsinki - 1,700 acres
Heathrow - 1,227 acres

Helsinki 38% larger land area

...

Total runway length :

Helsinki (3 runways) - 9,401 metres
Heathrow (2 runways) - 7,561 metres

Helsinki 24% more runway distance to clear.

...

I suppose there's one more statistic.

Master snow-handling plans :

Helsinki - 1
Heathrow - 0

sky9

WHBM
Are you saying that LHR doesn't have a snow plan? I wonder what Phillip Hammond thinks of that.

411A

Don'y worry, there's more snow on the way....there is a huge storm over California at the moment, that has so far dropped 12 feet of snow on the SierraNavada mountains, and...the jet stream is all lined up to bring this monster to the UK in about 10 days, perhaps less.
Better get more shovels...