Tears as Lapland Trip cancelled
 

"Children were left in tears after an air trip to see Father Christmas in Lapland was cancelled.
Hundreds of people were due to board the one-day round trip to Enontekio at Manchester Airport when airline Blueline announced it could not fly. A spokesman said the weather conditions did not meet "safe and operational" standards at the destination. "

So .... What sort of minima will FC accept on Dec 25?

Tears as Lapland Trip cancelled
 

BBC NEWS | England | Manchester | Tears as Lapland trip cancelled

Blueline cancelled MAN-ENF today as conditions at the destination did not meet 'safe & operational standards'.

Tears etc from the children expecting to see Santa who were understandably upset.

However Blueline operated LBA-ENF using Boeing 733-400 series EC-KBO and presumably didn't have the same concerns!!

Presumably MAN-ENF was to be operated by one of their MD83's?

Does little to endear people to the airline industry.

What an absolute shame!!! I did the trip at the start of December from Manchester to Roveneimi with First Choice/Thompson and totally enjoyed every minute......as did my kids!!! :D

So I can understand the poor souls who missed this Blueline flight.....:eek:

What an absolute shame!!! I did the trip at the start of December from Manchester to Roveneimi with First Choice/Thompson and totally enjoyed every minute......as did my kids!!! :ok:

So I can understand the poor souls who missed this Blueline flight.....:{

Enontekio is at 68 degrees North and deep inside the Arctic Circle and the thick snow and ice whilst Rovaniemi is at 66 degrees North and right on the edge of the Arctic Circle (in fact I know that the Arctic Circle runs right through Santa Claus village just to the north of Rovaniemi having been there myself in the mid summer).

But the bigger difference is that the runway length at Rovaniemi (supporting a substantial town) is 9842 feet (see Rovaniemi Airport (RVN) Details - Finland) while the quoted runway length at Enontekio at Enontekio Airport (ENF) Details - Finland is 2625 feet. On that basis I don't see how either of these aircraft can safely land or even more take off at Enontekio even with only passengers with hand luggage on board. Somewhere like Skiathos with a runway length of 5,200 feet cannot let a fully laden A319 make the 3 hour flight to London Gatwick without a refuelling stop at Thessaloniki and London City at 4948 feet had to be specially cleared to be allowed to accept the very small A318.

So is the runway length at Enontekio extended by a snow and ice surface in the winter or is the airport codes database simply incorrect and is it now 5,000+ feet in length after a tarmac/concrete runway extension?

I have an interest in this part of the world having driven all the way to the top of Norway at the Nordkap in 2004 in my MR2 Roadster and then back down through Finland and therefore I have some idea how truly remote and desolate somewhere like Enontekio is, especially at this time of year. God help you if there is ever a crash there is all I can say as the hospital facilities cannot be good with a local Sami population of only 2,000. On the other hand it clearly is the real lapland, much more so than Rovaniemi is.

This Pprune thread about an Enontekio trip suggests the runway is nearer to 6,000 feet as it would clearly need to be for these kinds of aircraft.

See www.pprune.org/passengers-slf-self-loading-freight/254994-20th-dec-bhx-enontekio-lapland.html

Would suggest that the Information could be wrong.
Below taken from another source.

03/21 2001m 6565 feet Ashphalt

2000 odd meters, it is some 6500ft long. I have been there in a 757 and I think I would have noticed if it was 2000ft.

And this Wikipedia page for Enontekio suggests 6565 feet. I suspect someone in Finland created it (may be the airport) so it is more likely to be accurate. Even though one cannot rely on a Wikipedia page not being sabotaged.

See Enontekiö Airport - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Presumably it was extended to take advantage of the Santa trip opportunities as the suggested annual passenger numbers must surely be now many times higher than those given on the Wikipedia page.

Have any aircraft ever been stranded there for several days during a bad storm or whatever.

Answering my own questions further here is the definitive web article on Enontekio airport.

http://www.finavia.fi/files/finavia/...f/enonteki.pdf

Extended to over 6,000 feet in the 1990s it apears.

Can seats on these flights ever be had cheaply at the last minute I wonder? I got a very cheap day trip to Iceland in November about 12 years ago.

Capvermell now seen heading off to tour operator websites to see if any cheapies are going to Enontekio tomorrow as he he lives only 10 miles away from Gatwick.

Too late. Santa trips already over for another year.:{

Helloooo - Father Christmas is not real
 

Yeah, a bit disappointing for the kids, but hey, everyone will get their money back. And it's not as if Santa is real anyway...

This is not an easy part of the world to fly in to if anything starts to go wrong or conditions start to deteriorate in any way (especially this airport compared to Rovaniemi) so if they cancelled I'm sure it was with a good reason from a safety point of view. After all the airline would probably lose its money by not making the trip.

Given the passengers on board the consequences of going ahead in gung ho fashion could have been far more traumatic than the short term disappointment of not seeing Santa this time round.

Flybar
 

'does little to endear people to the airline industry'

Eh? Care to expand. Slightly confused as to your attitude. As I read it an airline had to take a decision to cancel a flight due to weather and safety, and you seem to be suggesting that was the wrong choice?! So what if they were using MD83's out of one field and 73's out of another?! A shame that kids had their xmas visit ruined but I cant agree with your sentiment that by choosing safety an airline has done anything wrong!

Many variables with individual aircraft, types, crew qualifications, defects being carried that made the decision correct.

Statement from Transun:

Statement: Cancellation of Lapland day break from Manchester on 20 December - Transun Holidays

The Captain makes the decision based on the information he/she is given.

However from a media point of view this is exactly what they love.
This follows hard on the episode of passengers being taken to Paris and brought back without landing.

Clearly Transun, for which these flights are their bread & butter, have moved quickly to try and deflect the adverse publicity.

Possibly those of us who operate in the North have a different attitude to those who operate from Heathrow but I feel that more could be done to improve the current image of our industry.

Hence my comment.

Disappointing, yes. But it's better to be down here wishing you were up there than....

What more could be done?

The flight was a one off daytrip, to a destination the company knew was enveloped with wx that made a landing unlikely. Diverting to another airfield was not an option as defeats the purpose of this flight, to visit the particular place for a short period of time then return. The logistics of this include arranging ground transport to the original destination, ensuring engineers are at the revised airfield, sufficient deicing equipment is available, the crew have adequate rest facilities then the passengers are all returned in time to meet the companies scheduled departure time, any slot they may have had, the rest of the airlines schedule, the crews duty times - all in known weather conditions that have already been considered unsuitable. Operating to such places often requires specialised training, certainly specialised handling that needs to be in place and cannot be 'winged' on the day.

Had they operated and gone elsewhere the media and passengers would be up in arms that the day and their money was wasted as the company knew they could not get in.

If making a decision based on safety doesnt endear a company to the public, well that aint the fault of the company. The way it is explained is more than adequate, nothing too technical or complicated - simple and concise the wx was crap, it would be unsafe to operate and are refunding everyone. I ask again what more could they have done?

With regards the Paris incident you refer to, I assume you mean Flybe, again safety and, following sop's and CAA/JAR regulations are what we get paid to do and are paramount. The way it is displayed in the media does not necessarily represent what actually happenned.

I will not be drawn into a petty little spat about the attitudes of those in the north and heathrow, but by making such a comment you give alot away about yourself. Suffice to say whoever is in the position of making safety related decisions must do so purely with regard safety, if it were me I would not let the industry's image in the media influence it.

Enontekio at lunch time in a Boeing 757..............marvellous :D

http://i33.photobucket.com/albums/d9...f68f3bb3-1.gif

Noted. Unfortunately, for them, all other scheduled arrivals managed to operate satisfactorily.

bacardi walla

excellent photograph - Hope you enjoyed your trip!!

What do you mean Santa isn't real?:{