Like many other people trying to plan arrangements over Christmas, I am keeping a close eye on the weather reports. I have the grim task of driving to East Anglia on Tuesday for a family funeral; on Thursday, I am due to be flying to southern Germany to stay with relations but have no idea whether that is likely to happen. But at least I am able to be in the comfort of my home. Thousands of people are not so lucky.
Watching the BBC’s rolling news channel today, I listened as a woman, who has been on board a BA flight to Pakistan, described how her aircraft has been standing on a runway, moving no-where for about 6 hours. Passengers were suffering panic attacks; the cabin was very hot and there was no water to drink; and of course there are few toilet facilities. One thing that the woman said struck me: the passengers were not allowed to try and get off the plane. If they did, she said, they’d be arrested. The staff were to all in intents and purposes holding passangers hostage, a nice inversion of a hijacking.
It seems to me that this situation is absurd. Given the privileged position of an airline operating under such laws governing international flight, there ought to be a clear “duty of care” on such airlines to provide all decent condtions, including things like food, water and so on, for passengers. If they cannot do this on the plane, then the passengers are entitled to ask to get off, go to a building and wait for developments.
What we are talking about are hostage conditions. I’d be interested to see if the passengers could join together and bring a lawsuit against the airline, and what the outcome would be.
The weather has been severe – and flight safety is a key concern, but the airlines are having a bad Christmas. And it does not look to be getting better any time soon. As far as I am concerned, I cannot wait to see the end of December soon enough.
Johnathan:
This is a fascinating metaphor for the modern nation state!
The airlines do have a duty of care, and the captain will taxi back to the gate if he deems that the situation merits that. But it’s important to remember that the captain has to decide for all the passengers. For safety, security, and practical reasons they’re not going to let passengers out on the ramp or taxiways.
People have a pretty wide range of tolerance for those kinds of conditions, so in any real-world scenario there will be passengers who find the conditions intolerable and would rather taxi back to the gate while other passengers are still serene and comfortable and want to carry on with the trip.
Tedd, it seems to me that there won’t be a single one of the passengers who is “serene and comfortable” after six hours sitting on the tarmac. We occasionally see this type of story in the US, and it always raises my ire. It would be interesting to see what would happen if someone opened an emergency exit and slid down the ramp to freedom. I have a hard time believing that any jury would convict such a person of anything.
Sure, Laird, but with the government sector monopoly on airports and air traffic control, how much of this is caused by the government?
Every time there’s talk here in the states of a “passengers’ bill of rights” or some such crap, it’s always the airlines that are being forced provide all the compensation when things go wrong. The people running the airports, and certinaly not the legislators who vote for this sh*t, are never expected to provide any compensation.
Does anybody have any theories as to why the UK is so crap at coping with weather? (God help us if ‘climate’ happens)
I know, I know; it doesn’t snow heavily very often so it is not economical to spend a lot of money preparing for it. So it may be understandable that councils don’t bother investing lots of money in snow ploughing machines. But international airports – come on!
The rights and responsibilities of airlines to look after their passengers is an interesting question. Frankly I have no idea where private and state regulations start in this case so don’t feel able to comment. Of course, its easier to treat customers badly if you can blaim it on regulations.
Best of luck with your travel plans JP! My mum is due to fly to NYC on Tuesday. Magic!
Laird:
I don’t mean serene and comfortable relative to some absolute standard of luxury, only serene and comfortable relative to other passengers. The point being that they’re not yet ready to give up on getting to their destination.
I agree that six hours sitting on the ground is a long time, but I don’t think we can conclude from the description that the majority of passengers were willing to taxi back to the gate, disembark, wait some undetermined period of time, and then start all over again.
Jonathan, yes, it seems to me that we (well, not you, or you wouldn’t be writing this post, but ‘we’ as a society) have let the attitude grow up over the last few years that the vicinity of an aircraft makes behaviour allowable that would be considered false imprisonment in any other context. I wonder if someone did bring a legal challenge whether the government would lean on the judge.
But who would you sue? Ted Schuerzinger made a good point about the government being quite happy to put the blame on the airlines when it may in fact be their fault or the fault of the airport. I suspect that all three have a vested interest in leaving the question unclear. Sure, they may whine about paying compensation but it is also advantageous for the airline to be able to put the blame elsewhere.
Peter T, I’ve heard that one particular problem with the UK is that our temperature fluctuates around zero degrees celsius, so that snow and ice repeatedly melts and re-freezes – making it slipperier than the snow in somewhere like Canada where the temperature stays solidly below zero day and night for weeks or months on end.,
Natalie:
Yes, snow and ice are in many ways more of a challenge when the temperature hovers near zero than when it stays consistently well below zero. I used to race cars on ice (non-studded class). When it’s -25 or colder, driving on snow-covered ice isn’t all that different from driving on a dirt road. Very cold snow can become packed and polished such that it’s fairly slippery, but still not as slippery as ice or slush near zero is. Near zero, when the conditions are right, it can be so slippery that you might slide sideways a considerable distance, on level ground, clutch in, at not much more than walking speed.
But, to be fair to Canada, a large portion of the population lives in areas (such as southern Ontario) where the temperature does hover around zero for much of the winter. Same with the northeastern U.S.
cities in Canada don’t have snow plough machines, they just bolt a plough blade onto existing trucks that the city has for road maintenance, gardening etc. How much will a steel blade cost? When snow is forecast here in Vancouver the trucks are ready to roll, with salt to spread behind them as they plough in front.
Also bus routes have priority, side roads are not ploughed. Residents are responsible to clear the pavements in front of their houses, I’m pleased that I don’t have a corner lot.
1. Winter temps in southern Ontario hover around 0F, not 0C.
2. I live in one of the areas where the 0C rule applies. Last year we had one snowfall, and it hung around for a good 20 to 22 hours. This year the snowfall was last month and it remained for three days.
3. The local rule is to prepare for lots of snow: once the first snowflake hits the ground, the plows are out and cleaning the streets. This continues until the snow stops and the streets are dry. The main street outside my front door is plowed every 30 -45 minutes, round the clock. It’s expensive but but nothing closes due to snow except in extremis.
4. The local ski hill lists a 245cm base this PM.
Cheers
J.M.Heinrichs wrote:
‘1. Winter temps in southern Ontario hover around 0F, not 0C.’
Not so. Winter average temperatures in sourthern Ontario do indeed hover around (slightly below) 0°C. Here, for example, are the monthly temperature averages for Windsor. The average minimum never even approaches 0°F (-18°C) as you suggest.
http://www.livingin-canada.com/climate-windsor.html
The lowest average minimum is -8°C, for the month of January.
llater,
llamas
Having got the boring facts out of the way . . .
Yes, large parts of the northern tier of the US states and southern Canada spend month of the year with temeperatures hovering around freezing – the ideal conditions for the formation of traffic-disrupting things like black ice and freezing fog. No amount of road maintenance can make the fog go away.
Yes, many places convert their ‘regular’ road maintenance vehicles by adding snow plows in the winter months. But these are not normal vehicles – they tend to be extra-heavy duty 6x trucks, which are built to do plow duty, and then used for summer work as well. Running a plow blade, especially a front plow, especially a ‘state’ plow, is incredibly hard on any vehicle and they have to built to take this duty. Many of these trucks are also fitted with interchangeable bodies – dump body or flatbed for the summer, a salt hopper for the winter. All of this adds up to a very expensive truck – and one that may use up a plow edge every shift, at $300 to $500 a crack. All of those plow trucks need skilled drivers, too – a driving a 16′ ‘state’ plow, in the dark, on slick roads, is not the same as driving a dump truck to the yard on a sunny day.
So I understand where this sort of weather, especially over an extended period, can lead to problems in nation that’s not used to it.
However, I do note that the vast majority of UK vehicles do not seem to pay the slightest heed to the possibility of ice and snow when it comes to tires – motorway performance on a sunny June afternoon appears to be the main selection criterion. This may explain why so many vehicles find themselves unable to proceed in what would be classed in most parts of the northern US and Canada as a minor inconvenience.
The county (dirt) road where I live has not been plowed at all since a 6-8″ snowfall 8 days ago. We have had mostly freezing temperatures ever since, so no thawing at all – we’re driving on 6″ of packed snow. And it won’t get plowed, for the simple reason that nobody is having the slightest difficulty getting around. Most residents don’t want the roads plowed, because once the dirt is exposed, the road will get rutted and washboarded out almost immediately. Packed snow rides smooth and the car stay clean. When the frost has penetrated 18″ into the ground – then we plow.
This time last year, UK comenters were seriously suggesting the need for snow chains in the Home Counties. Nonsense. All you need is all-season tires and a reasonable degree of driving skill. My 70-something MIL came over to our house yesterday, driving her boring FWD grocery-getter sedan. The snow doesn’t stop her at all.
llater,
llamas
tranio:
I don’t mean to be insulting, but that’s an unbelievably parochial thing to say. I’ve lived in seven Canadian provinces, in cities and towns of various sizes, and I can tell you for certain that it’s quite normal for Canadian cities to have all manner of specialized snow removal equipment, from dedicated sidewalk plows to multi-tier screw blowers. As is normal for heavy equipment, the traction device and the implement are typically modular. But, in many cases, the primary purpose of both is snow removal.
Llamas:
Thanks for the correction on J.M.Heinrichs’ post. Having lived in southern Ontario for nearly 30 years it’s nice to know that my memory of it isn’t completely wrong.
I hope you get there J.P.
Germany (especially southern Germany) is supposed to be a wonderful place to be for Christmas.
On the “hostage” thing: Over Here, in one of the rare outbreaks of common sense, Congress decided that keeping passengers locked in an airliner on the ground for more than x hours (I think it’s three or four, can’t remember) constitutes involuntary imprisonment, and passed some decent legislation (for once). Now the airliner HAS to go back to the terminal once that limit is reached, and the passengers have the right to disembark, or not, until such time as the plane is free to leave. Those 6-8 hours stuck on the runway are a thing of the past.
Thanks, Kim. I hadn’t heard that.
Apparently I was speaking a bit too broadly, and my memories from three years living in Windsor (1983-86) are now completely over turned.
Cheers
On J.P.s specific point.
Passengers who want to get off – whilst the aircraft is on the ground and they have been kept on board for hours.
Of course they must be allowed to get off – at their own risk. Otherwise it is Common Law false imprisonment.
And if a government (via its regulations) says it is O.K. for people to be kept on an aircraft (for hours – on the ground) BY FORCE. Then the government should be firmly told to go fuck itself.
Of course with the servile population (for example allowing themselves to be sexually assualted in a pretense of looking for terrorists – i.e. the Muslims airport security would not dare touch in this way) standing up to government is unlikely.
Security should be a matter for the airport owners and the airlines.
They, if they have any sense, will not offend their customers. And they will not wish their customers to be blown up either – as this is bad for business.
A few years ago I got stuck on a BA flight at LHR where they pushed back late and then announced a 2-3 hour “hold” due to a melt down of Northern Europe’s air traffic control system. As I was due to be in Sweden for less than 24 hours and the delay would have me arriving at 3am for a 9am meeting and a 2pm flight home, I informed the Captain that there was no point in me making the trip.
It was a slightly different scenario but interestingly ATC had us in the air about 20 minutes later…
Any hoo… One of the possible side effects of “global warming”, although frankly climate change has been a more accurate name for a while, is a disruption in the water patterns in the North Atlantic as Arctic Ice pushes the North Atlantic Drift south – the result of that is that Britain and Northern Europe end up with a climate more appropriate for 50+ degrees North… One of the more “amusing” side effects of that would be we could end up with a cooling pattern and a new Ice Age.
It all goes to show that more Climate Change research is needed.
Even in La Nina years, 6 inches of rain in a couple of days is not normal for San Diego, and 27″ is unheard of in NorCal.