Flight risk

Pictures: Twitter/Sean Mallon

I don't know about you, but one of the things I've struggled with the most during this lockdown is the sight, in television programmes clearly recorded before the crisis, of people crowded together. As we endure a seventh week shut indoors, studiously avoiding all other human contact apart from those we live with and (on a Thursday evening) those we live opposite, a crowded pub scene in EastEnders just looks plain weird. So, when Aer Lingus passenger Sean Mallon tweeted pictures of his packed flight from Belfast to London earlier this week, I thought it was a mistake. The cabin looked normal, i.e. rows of three-abreast seating with passengers sat shoulder-to-shoulder. That might have been normal once, when flying was almost as routine as getting on a bus, but not now, not when commercial air travel has dropped off a cliff, so to speak.

The thought of spending any amount of time in a cabin, breathing recycled air at 30,000ft, fills me with dread. Come to think of it, I can't even contemplate getting on a plane in the first place. The whole process of flying, from check-in to passport control at the other end, involves queuing. Airports, especially one like Heathrow, handling hundreds of flights a day in normal times, are usually a hive of human activity, when you add up passengers, the families seeing them off or greeting them, and the vast numbers of workers, all under the same roof at the same time. No wonder John Holland-Kaye, Heathrow’s chief executive, has said that social distancing at an airport like his would be impractical. "Forget social distancing, it won't work in aviation or any other form of public transport,” he wrote this week in the Daily Telegraph. “The problem is not the plane, it is the lack of space in the airport. Just one jumbo jet would require a queue a kilometre long.”  Holland-Kaye has called on world leaders to agree a "common international standard" to put new health and safety rules in place to get air travel moving again. These, he said, should include mandatory health checks for passengers and "fantastic levels of hygiene" in airports to minimise the risk of infection.

This does, though, draw attention to the issue of the role aviation has played in the UK's succumbing to COVID-19 to begin with and, as we now know, reaching the grim milestone of exceeding 30,000 deaths from the virus, the highest death toll in Europe and second only to the United States in world rankings. For the sake of drama, it should also be pointed out that the UK represents less than 1% of the world's population and, yet, now accounts for nearly 12% of reported COVID-19 deaths. The UK is, obviously, an island, and without going down a Faragist route on border controls, our airports have continued to accept planeloads of passengers arriving from all over the world throughout the time the virus has been amongst us. Figures obtained by The Guardian found that only 273 people out of 18.1 million travellers were quarantined in the UK in the three months before the lockdown, a period when the spread of infection was already known, including a "big influx" from so-called hotspots in Italy and Spain. Many of these arrivals were only advised to self-isolate if they had any symptoms. Sir Patrick Vallance, the government's chief scientific officer, recently told MPs that biological mapping of COVID-19 infections revealed that UK cases have come from all over the world, but the emphasis on European origins is particularly alarming. "Whether that was people returning from half-term, whether it is business travellers or not, we don’t know," Vallance told the Health & Social Care Select Committee. "A lot of the cases in the UK didn’t come from China and didn't come from the places you might have expected. They actually came from European imports and the high level of travel into the UK around that time."

Even now, Heathrow Airport is only just starting to trial temperature detection cameras, and even then, initially only in Terminal Two as part of an effort to screen passengers. If the trial proves successful, the equipment will then be rolled out throughout the airport. However, with air traffic at the airport now down by as much as 80%, you get a sense that the stable door slammed shut a long time ago. Data has suggested that the countries who closed their borders early in the crisis have done better in controlling the virus locally. Norway and Denmark closed their borders in mid-March within two weeks of recording their first cases of COVID-19, and both countries have had only 40 and 87 deaths per million people. For comparison the UK's rate is 433 per million. Sir Patrick Vallance told MPs that SAGE, the government's scientific advisory body, had advised that ministers would have to be "extremely draconian" in blocking travel from entire countries, otherwise "it really was not worth trying to do it". That point of view was underlined by security minister James Brokenshire who told the BBC that "the scientific advice was very clear" and that "up to this point in time, placing restrictions at the border would not have had any significant impact on epidemic progression in the UK". Some scientists have, however, argued that banning travel would have made little difference. Even if there is a strong suggestion that Brits returning from half-term skiing trips to Italy may have played a part in the island's outbreak, there are many more variables that, ultimately determine the scale of any outbreak.

Whatever the arguments about what did or didn't happen, the damage has been done. 30,000 lives won't come back. The economy will return, though how and when is anyone's guess. The aviation industry will be a key component, though how much compared with before is up for debate, given that no-one is yet predicting what any semblance of normality will look like. With airlines facing bankruptcy and those who survive more than likely to raise prices - which, to be fair, they're more than entitled to do - the relative freedom with which we've been able to jet off to places or jet in from may be over for a long time. Even if technology and strict safety measures at airports and on planes themselves could be effectively applied, public confidence in flying is still to be tested, although Sean Mallon's fellow passengers seemed, apparently, at ease being sardined onto that Aer Lingus flight.

I'd love to fly away, but not just yet

It is Day 35 of the COVID-19 lockdown in the United Kingdom. Since it began I have started a new job, lost almost a stone in weight and, thanks to tauntingly sunny weekends spent in the garden (not Richmond Park) I’m showing the first brown shoots of a tan. In April. This not-going-out-further-than-the-back-door regime has entailed a lot of looking up into geographically unfamiliar Tuscan-blue skies over south-west London, a vista seemingly unblighted by the ever-present traffic pollution that hangs over the city. 

Another notable absentee has been the air traffic that usually, at certain times of the day, takes off from Heathrow in a south-easterly direction and over our house. Being a bit of a plane geek (I spent many happy hours of school holidays on the roof of Heathrow’s Terminal 3 logging tail numbers in the days when such things were allowed), I’ve been fascinated by the stark reduction in aircraft overhead. What has been taking off has been the occasional passenger flight to eastern Europe or Middle East destinations, while the flight radar app on my iPad has shown that UK commercial airspace is mostly being used by cargo planes. Environmentalists will, of course, be delighted: the blue skies and reappearance of wildlife to suburban gardens is just the return to pre-industrial times they long for. You can’t help, either, enjoying sitting in a garden with the only noise pollution being birds tweeting and children letting off steam in a distant backyard. 

It does, though, makes you wonder how we might return to normal, and what the next normal will be. I’ve always looked at planes in the sky as a symbol of escape, of getting to be somewhere else, somewhere more interesting. And with what should be the holiday season approaching, and the lockdown showing no signs of being lifted, the chances of seeing the outside tables of a Greek taverna, a Sicilian trattoria or a Spanish tapas bar anytime soon seem depressingly limited. Not that I’m craving flying anywhere. The experience of my last job disproved wholesale the idea that it’s better to travel than arrive, and even, to travel at all: in the 12 months between September 2018 and September 2019 I took 51 flights, a ridiculous programme, especially in terms of my carbon footprint, but also in arcane face time philosophy. 

If one good thing has come out of this coronavirus crisis, it’s that the Internet hasn't broken and video conferencing technology is more than adequate at keeping in touch professionally and socially. The first few weeks in my new job may have been a bit weird, in that I’ve seen more of the interiors of my new colleagues’ homes than in any previous job in my 34-year career, but that hasn't stopped being able to function perfectly adequately. Of course, if you work in a job where collaboration and spontaneous engagement is productive, e-mail, Skype and instant messages are a little limiting, but nowhere near the inhibition some might have argued they were. There’s no immediate sign that I’m going to set foot any time soon in my company’s Paddington offices, and I'm fine with that. Our technology is holding up brilliantly, everyone is making the best of it, and it has even fostered an uplifting bunker spirit. Going back into the office will be a challenge for employers, especially as they ensure safer social distancing in communal areas, in canteens, meeting rooms and lifts. The average desk distance in most modern offices is around 1.5 metres, which would require new thinking by corporate real estate planners if employees are to come back. 

Picture: British Airways

So if we’re still, as a nation, wisely reluctant to get on public transport again to get to work, I can’t see much appetite for getting on a flying toothpaste tube for a couple of hours or more for leisure. The other week it was reported that IATA, the international airline trade association, had suggested that for mass air travel to resume, airlines would be forced to fly with at least a third of their planes’ seats empty, with middle seats on single-aisle, three-abreast configuration short-haul flights left vacant to maintain social distancing. Michael O’Leary, the outspoken Ryanair chief executive has branded the idea “idiotic” and said it offered little benefit in mitigating the spread of COVID-19. O’Leary’s airline, of course, has benefited more than most from packing ’em in, last year flying more than 152 million people, placing it at the top of European carriers by passenger numbers. “We can’t make money on 66% load factors,” O’Leary has said. “Even if you do that, the middle seat doesn’t deliver any social distancing, so it’s kind of an idiotic idea that doesn’t achieve anything anyway,” he told the Financial Times. As we've seen with Richard Branson's attempt to have the UK government support Virgin Atlantic financially in the crisis, a well-paid airline CEO complaining about not making money is not going to wash too well. 

When life returns to normal for the airline industry - if it returns to normal - things will clearly be different. Business travel still accounts for the bulk of airline profits, but with video-based professional distancing being accepted like never before and, ideally, remaining the default, non-essential trips abroad for work are going to be pared back, and that’s even before CFOs impose even more draconian travel restrictions as the financial crisis grips harder. The future is certainly looking bleak for the airline industry, even if a partial lifting of the lockdown frees up the leisure travel market. Michael O’Leary believes that normality could return if airlines adopt Asian practices and force passengers to wear face masks, and airports bring in mandatory temperature and even virus testing. That still won’t stop airlines collapsing. The Airport Operators’ Association has said that passenger numbers are unlikely to return to pre-pandemic levels until 2022. British airports have seen passenger numbers slump by 97%, with up to 80% of staff being furloughed in some cases.

All this, though, assumes that 'normality' will be anything like that we enjoyed as little as a few weeks ago. There are, for now, too many variables, and even if lockdown rules in all those countries affected by this pandemic start to relax, what that relaxation will be like, and how long it will remain in place before a second phase of COVID-19 forces us back behind our front doors again is anyone's guess. The extreme view of the world today is that the virus has initiated a form of Pol Pot's Year Zero regime. It's not, obviously, but the absence of planes in the skies, and even traffic on our roads, may be one of the things that doesn't recover. Bad news for the airline industry, which has enjoyed an unprecedented boom in the last couple of decades. Bad news, too, for the likes of Boeing and Airbus, who were pumping out new planes at a rate of knots until relatively recently (Airbus CEO Guillaume Faury told his 133,000 employees in a letter last Friday that the business was “...bleeding cash at an unprecedented speed, which may threaten the very existence of our company”). It is, though, conceivable that the world will start moving again. Chinese tourists will still want to visit Paris, Americans will still want to have their photographs taken outside Buckingham Palace, and I for one will still want to see the Mediterranean again. Just not yet.

Heathrow face-off

Picture: Heathrow Airport

I have had my new UK passport for exactly three years, give or take a week. The previous one was starting to fall apart - no great surprise given that I was living abroad, travelling a lot and carrying my passport everywhere as a required legal form of identification in the Netherlands and France.

With my new passport came the magic biometric identification, theoretically allowing me to pass through so-called ‘e-gates’ at British airports, thus speeding up the transit process while reducing the need for the UK Border Force to have expensive human beings checking my document. Except it hasn’t worked that way: from the moment I had the new passport (at a cost of £177 for a rush job), it has failed to work at the electronic arrival gates of any UK airport I've landed at. Passport officers have assured me there’s nothing wrong with it and, yet, arriving at Heathrow, Gatwick and London City, the passport refuses to work. Not even the British airports authority will acknowledge there is a problem, though a quick search online reveals that I’m far from alone. I - and they - are simply the unlucky ones. It’s quite galling to watch hundreds of other passengers breeze through e-gates while I have to queue up, old school, to have an officer look at my virtually new passport and wonder why I haven’t joined everyone else to go through the ‘digital border’.

The irony of all this is that, as a holder of a good old red European Union passport, I can and do freely pass through the e-gates at other countries’ airports. I’ve arrived at Amsterdam’s Schiphol, Barcelona, Helsinki, Madrid, Stockholm, Zurich and Rome and walked straight through the biometric barriers. A small, but significant victory for Brexit being delayed, perhaps. And, still, no one will admit in the UK that there’s a problem. Other airports have gone further with easing the security process: at Schiphol now new scanners mean that you no longer have to remove your belt (one of the major causes of airport stress for me, given what horror it could unleash…) or take out laptops and tablets from your carry-on. Frankly I find this as big an innovation in air travel as anything else, given that, 18 years after 9/11 we’re still being made to shuffle through departure security in our socks with our trousers at half mast hoping some git hasn’t made off with your out-of-reach MacBook and house keys.

Picture: Heathrow Airport

So this morning I read with interest in The Times news that Heathrow is to install permanent facial recognition technology this coming summer that will mean passengers will no longer have to show their passport at all when departing. It’s long been the case that when taking off the only time you have to show your passport is at the departure gate, along with your boarding pass. I’ve noticed British Airways progressively experimenting with e-gates of their own to speed up the boarding pass check process. The new facial recognition technology will, in principle, do without the need for both passport checks and boarding passes, relying instead on facial biometric identification. The process won’t be without need for passports, however: the £50 million project will require passengers to get their passports scanned and their pictures taken at automated kiosks before then running through the biometric gates.

Heathrow claims the new facial recognition booths could reduce the average passenger's journey time by up to a third, being implemented at various stages of the departure process, from check-in and bag drop to boarding gate. A Heathrow press release says that: "The long-term aim of the technology will be for passengers to be able to walk through the airport without breaking their stride. Passengers have already been trialling the new services in the live operation throughout 2018 and feedback has been tremendously positive." The airport cites International Air Transport Association (IATA) research which revealed that 64% of passengers would choose to share their biometric data in exchange for a better experience when travelling.

Picture: Heathrow Airport

There are, of course, inevitable concerns about privacy with facial recognition. While that might have validity for application in public spaces, airports have to, by need, to be amongst the most secure environments anywhere. Anything which ensures security while speeding up the departure process is surely a good thing, seeing as passing through a hot, sweaty airport while stressed by everything from other people to flight delays is one of life’s least enjoyable experiences.

Heathrow, and when others join it, is playing catch-up, however. “Major American airports already have this [technology] and Asia is light years ahead,” aviation consultant Alex Macheras told The Times. “From the point of view of convenience it undoubtedly works, although customers will have concerns about how their data is protected and airports must be transparent about this.” In the US - which has traditionally been behind the rest of the world when innovating in travel - facial recognition has been introduced for international passengers, in which their faces are compared to a central database. It is claimed that the introduction in the US has halved the time it takes to board flights.

"As our passenger numbers continue to grow, we must look for innovative ways to make it easier and quicker for them to travel through Heathrow with choice, whilst keeping our airport secure," says Heathrow's Customer Relations and Service Director, Jonathan Coen. "Biometrics are key to helping us do that and we are really excited about the biggest roll out of this equipment at any UK airport.  With this technology we’ll be able to offer passengers choice on how they travel through our airport, with colleagues on hand to guide passengers that require it. Biometric technology has been well received by our passengers so far and we’re looking forward to working with our colleagues and the airline community as part of our ongoing transformation at Heathrow, with a focus on enhancing passenger experience."

All well and good, but seeing as I still haven't had any official recognition from Heathrow, the Passport Authority or the Border Force as to why my expensive, three-year-old passport won't work in any of the current e-gates at British airports, I hope the rollout of facial biometrics will be a genuine boon to this passenger's experience, rather than the somewhat irritating barrier my biometric passport has been when arriving in the UK.

Computer says no. Again.

Picture: British Airways

When Robert Louis Stevenson wrote “for to travel hopefully is a better thing than to arrive” he probably wasn’t considering flying any distance in economy class. Airlines today are so cost-conscious (i.e. profit-minded) that those utopian days of the proletariat joining the jet-set are now a distant memory as we cram into 10-abreast seats too narrow, and in rows so tight we resemble the enmeshed and entangled bodies of Picasso’s Guernica.

Now, I know what an elitist (and faintly pretentious) thing that is to say, but as my new job will involve frequent international travel, which means flying economy in accordance with responsible company rules (unless upgrades can be scored by a combination of personal cash and general obsequiousness at the gate...), I have a vested interest. And because the majority of my airline loyalty points are with dear old British Airways, I will probably be defaulting to the creaking flag carrier, just to maintain my lounge status. Yes, that’s just how shallow frequent flyers are. Except that BA, once the “world’s favourite airline”, no longer is. In fact, events - largely, it would appear, of their own making - have contrived to make BA anything but.

BA's CEO Alex Cruz will probably be glad to see the back of September: earlier this month he had apologise before the media after it transpired that BA’s website had been hacked - possibly over the course of several days - during which data including customers’ e-mail addresses and credit card information (including critical three-digit CVV codes) was lifted, affecting some 380,000 transactions. Just this last weekend the airline suffered yet another “technical issue with some of our internal systems” (or ‘IT failure’ in clearer parlance) at its hub, Heathrow Airport’s Terminal 5. Once again, this led to horrendous check-in queues and delays of up to two hours (“slight”, according to BA) to flights all over the world as computers managing the entire bag drop-to-boarding process fell over.

Twitter, as ever, bore the brunt of passengers’ frustrations: journalist Andrew Neil vented: “Yet another computer failure at Terminal 5 Heathrow for British Airways. Now regular occurrence. Flights delayed. Usual shambles, not yet on huge scale.” I’d hardly call it “regular”, but BA’s recent history of IT disasters certainly warrants the “shambles” part. “I think somebody at your organisation should press Ctrl+Alt+Delete and just start again,” another tweeted. BA strenuously denied that computer failure was at fault, calling it a “temporary glitch with some of our internal systems”. In other words, an IT failure.

IT problems have been at the core of BA’s worsening reputation in recent years. Having rolled out its new “cost-effective” ‘BA FLY’ IT system in 2015, it has been beset with problems. Employees reported it breaking within only a few weeks of coming onstream, leading to heavy delays at Heathrow and Gatwick. Almost a year later, on 7 July, 2016, the system suffered another failure, causing enormous queues for check-in at Heathrow. The system was to break down twice more that month, and again the following September, causing problems for the airline throughout the world. And then, in May this year, BA suffered its most reputation-damaging outage to date, when an employee error brought down the BA network leaving 75,000 passengers, their luggage and their planes stranded around the world, leading to 670 cancelled flights and a heavy dent in BA’s profits to boot. It’s easy to blame IT failures, but then again, they shouldn’t be happening so often to all the ‘mission-critical’ parts of an airline’s day-to-day operations, like check-in, baggage and boarding. And a multi-million pound retail activity like a national flag carrier's website, shouldn't be getting so comprehensively compromised by hackers. The suspicion is that penny-pinching, as BA obsessively tries to compete with budget airlines like easyJet and Ryanair, is undoing the reputation of an airline that once justifiably claimed to be one of the world’s best.

It’s no accident that most of my frequent flyer miles are with BA, built up mainly over the 17 years I lived abroad and made frequent trips back to the UK. However, over those years, the quality of BA’s service has noticeably eroded, and not just when ‘turning right’ into the supposedly cheap seats. Eager to cram in as many people has possible, even BA’s business class cabin has shrunk, squeezing rows tighter. Business class is where any airline makes its money, but without the high volume of economy passengers, a global carrier like BA would struggle. On short-haul flights, economy passengers now have to pay for snacks. This might be expected on budget airlines, but even when those sandwiches come from Marks and Spencer, it only adds to the cheapening of the BA product.The airline is also somewhat behind on what it provides for long-haul flights: the other week I flew to San Francisco on a 22-year-old Boeing 747. It’s a dear old aircraft - perhaps my favourite widebody still flying - but is definitely showing its age. Even BA's inclusion - finally! - of inflight WiFi on the outbound flight (notably missing on the return trip…) and a refresh of the seats doesn’t mask the fact that other airlines are streets ahead in bringing new planes into their fleets. But even where BA has introduced new aircraft, there are mixed results.

Picture: British Airways

A while ago I flew to Newark in New Jersey from Heathrow in one of BA’s new Boeing 787 Dreamliners, an aircraft much vaunted for innovations to enhance passenger comfort. The reality was that, flying in economy, it was probably the most uncomfortable flight I’ve ever experienced. Similar complaints can be found online of BA’s Dreamliner service between London and San Jose (a return journey on such planes I’ll be taking at the end of October...). Rather than being a sumptuous experience, BA has, it would appear, crammed as many revenue-bearing seats and rows into the 787 as possible. Frankly, I’m not looking forward to it, to the extent that when I repeat the trip to California in December I’ll be booking myself back onto the ageing 747, flying to San Francisco and putting up with a long hour on the 101 freeway to get down to San Jose.

Of course, I have options. Even with corporate travel, there are probably better options with other airlines, but these will almost certainly involve either American carriers (to avoid at all costs) or time- and patience-sapping stopovers where, inevitably, luggage will go missing, to be retrieved usually after the trip is complete. And now I think of it, BA’s history of losing luggage is not one to be proud of.

Whether they admit it or not (and I’m still prepared to defend it), BA has lost its sheen. Middle-eastern airlines like Emirates, Etihad and Qatar, have long eclipsed BA for service, comfort and innovations. Likewise one or two of the Asian carriers, like Singapore and Cathay Pacific. In Europe, I’ve had better experience with Air France, KLM and Lufthansa, carriers of similar or equal historical standing to BA. CNN’s business and travel reporter Richard Quest recently blogged that BA-bashing is “a national pastime”, saying that its status as a national institution put it on a similar par to the BBC or the Church of England for sniping. But having travelled almost exclusively with BA for many, many years, its decline - while not necessarily acute - has been palpable. A spoon fewer here, a more basic meal there - it all adds up. Quest points out that BA is, at least, refreshing its fleet with newer, more efficient planes like the Airbus A380, the Dreamliner and the A350 (which, in the example of the Finnair examples I’ve been on, is extremely comfortable), but if it is just going to squeeze in the maximum number of economy seats as possible, as my experience already of a BA 787 has found, all they are doing is putting Ryanair-standard cabins in the air on premium routes.

Picture: British Airways

Not everyone can fly in business class, and yet those of us flying economy on corporate tickets have often forked out business class pricing, as business travel agents tend to book expensive, fully flexible tickets, rather than the cheap-and-cheerful prices we see as consumers when booking our holidays. I have no problem with budget airlines: easyJet and BA’s own stablemate, Vueling, are perfectly fine for travelling down to the Mediterranean, for work or pleasure. But for long distances, the sort of flights that made BA the national flag carrier to begin with, there’s a sense of non-premium passengers being treated like commodities. I recognise the argument that we, as travellers, want to fly for the least amount of money possible, but I also think that if you want no-frills, you fly with a no-frills carrier (like Norwegian). For what British Airways charges for its longer flights, you’d have thought that passenger comfort - for those of us who ‘turn right’, would be given more attention.

As Quest points out in his post, BA will be 100 years old next year, “a perfect chance to turbo charge the necessary changes”. It was, once, a pioneer, introducing things like premium economy, in which you can ‘almost’ experience business class without paying the high price. Perhaps with a little premium thinking BA could do something about overhauling its currently bruised reputation, both on the ground and in the air.

Snowmageddon out of here!

It was supposed to be a romantic weekend for two. My girlfriend and I visiting Amsterdam, a city I lived in and around for nine and a half years, and just before Christmas. A little sightseeing, some festive shopping, a couple of cosy dinners and then home to start another working week. And even though the weather forecast had talked of snow, being the out-in-the-Midday-sun Brits that we are, we didn’t see this as a reason to worry.

Even on the Sunday morning, as we trudged to breakfast pancakes through blizzard conditions like Captain Scott just popping out for a bit, we were confident that all would be fine later. No, really, this was just a dusting of snow, and that by the time we were meant to leave that afternoon, our modern plane, with its weather radar and automated flight systems, would soar up through the clouds.

It didn’t. As we were getting into the taxi to Schiphol Airport, a text message from British Airways said our flight had been cancelled. No suggestion of how we were now meant to travel, mind, just that it was off, and have a nice day. Tra-la-la. The missive provided a couple of numbers to call: the first didn’t work at all (BA’s Amsterdam call centre) and the second just offered details of a third number, in Newcastle, which of course everyone else was ringing, so you couldn’t get through. For the next 45 minutes I listened to a loop of soothing string music and suggestions of how I could get the best out of my weekend away. Marvellous.

At Schiphol we joined a queue that possibly led to a British Airways person to see whether we could get a new plane, or a hotel room, or a pot of gold or, frankly, anything. I decided to be bold and secured accommodation for the night at the Schiphol Sheraton (no point being inconvenienced for a night and uncomfortable). Eventually, a clearly already-weary BA employee rebooked us onto a new flight departing the next day, and that was all we could do about it. No other options, not even the train.

It was at this point that I begun to wonder where we actually were. This was Amsterdam, a city founded by intrepid international traders and now inhabited by one of the most vibrant, affluent, technology-savvy urban populations on Earth. And yet it was starting to feel like we were struck in the back of beyond in the midst of a crippling natural disaster. Little did we realise just what a crippling natural ”“disaster” we were stuck in for real.

That morning’s photogenic frosting had reduced the seven-runway Schiphol to just one and, worse, London City (where we were supposed to fly back to), Heathrow and other airports in the UK had been closed. Europe - or at least those parts of Europe unable to cope with snow - was grinding to a complete halt. Flights into and out of Schiphol, and again to and from the UK, were being progressively cancelled, leaving planes, crews and passengers in the wrong places at the wrong times. BA alone was said to have 50,000 passengers stranded around the world, which meant more than 300 aircraft were not moving.

The following morning we stoically camped in the Sheraton’s executive lounge, with the Schiphol and BA websites continuing to say our flight was on time, even when most others were being cancelled for a second day running. Ominously, it started snowing again, whiting out the planes we’d been reassuringly watching taxiing for most of the morning. But, thinking we still had a flight to catch we boldly left the comfort of free refreshment and went off to drop our bags at the terminal.

It was almost inevitable that our hubris would be shattered. In the 15-minute walk from bag drop, through an empty security inspection, to the lounge, our rebooked flight had been cancelled. And this time, no 24-hour delay. It would be a full two more days before BA would be able to get us out of Amsterdam. This was no longer a mere inconvenience: our two nights in Amsterdam had extended to five. Yes, there’d be compensation, hotel costs covered and a somewhat miserly £25 a day to keep us fed and watered. But we would now be delayed 72 hours to get home from a city only 230 miles away as the crow flies (were it able to get clearance to take off...).

Now, I know what you’re thinking: why, at this point, didn’t we drive or take the train? Well the first option was nixed by an absence of driving licences (plus the conditions would have been treacherous) and the second by train seats costing hundreds of Euros each disappearing before our very eyes.
By this stage we'd been reduced to the ‘you couldn’t make it up’ state of mental paralysis. We weren’t yet ready to cry and, oddly, not yet ready to lose it, either. Northern Europe had been caught by the weather, and Sunday afternoon’s chaos had snowballed - if I can use that word - with knock-on effects. BA's rebooking algorithms had made a huge assumption that it would be OK for us to turn a basic weekend into a five-day holiday, and that our employers and (in my girlfriend’s case) children wouldn’t have a problem with us being away for three nights longer than planned. But, of course, throughout there was no one to actually speak to, even if we wanted to complain as - guess what? - you couldn’t get through to anyone if you tried.

Luckily, got yet another hotel booked - our third of the trip (and, as it turned out, a rather nice one) - and headed off to the lengthy taxi queue where, as if trying to make a point, the weather conditions seemed to worsen further as we snaked slowly towards a ride back into Amsterdam.

So how does this story end? It is now Wednesday and we’re in the British Airways business lounge at Schiphol, checked in for a flight back to London this afternoon. The snow is clearing and it is drizzling, but the temperature has gone up and Schiphol has declared itself fully operational again. Life returns to normal.

Frankly, I’m amazed that both of us have remained sane throughout this experience. We've repeatedly reminded each other - and our Facebook friends - that there really is not a lot we can do other than sit it out. Our respective employers have also said the same, which has been wonderful of them (lucky that we have jobs with such flexibility). But, really.

Travel, as I'm prone to observe, seems to bring out the worst in people. But sometimes it brings out the worst in travel. Situations like ours are where people go mad and start lashing out. Twitter provides a somewhat healthy outlet for venting, as a search of the word “Schiphol” revealed. Inevitably, though, the poor employees staffing airport desks have taken the brunt of frustrations. To be honest, you can’t blame some complainants, as missed business meetings, college lectures, family gatherings and everyday normality is turned upside down by a transport infrastructure, that we normally use without blinking an eye, comes to a halt.

Those of us of a more rational composure will accept that snow is simply Mother Nature at work, even if mankind has done much to make severe weather “events” more severe. And we will accept that for all those hundreds of days in the year when planes take off and land like clockwork, once in a while it will all go Pete Tong, and there’s absolutely nothing you can do.

If there is one observation to offer, however, it is to British Airways: the blame for Sunday’s 'Snowmageddon' could hardly be placed at the airline’s feet (no - that must surely be shared between whoever didn’t order enough snowploughs and the weather forecasters who didn’t see such a huge dumping coming...), but there’s plenty BA must improve upon when these situations occur. It was only a few months before that an IT outtage left 75,000 of its passengers stranded throughout the world, and the once proud British flag-carrier’s reputation has taken a pounding ever since, by everything from shrinking seats and charging for food on short-haul flights, to its ageing aircraft fleet and making passengers with the cheapest tickets board those planes last.

BA’s low-cost rivals have their faults (Ryanair’s pilot shortage catastrophe might even make this week’s difficulties pale), but the absence of true customer service since Sunday seems to point to a threadbare organisation more concerned with short-term profit margins rather than long-term sustainability built on a quality product and the customer loyalty that deserves. And while BA’s chief executive Alex Cruz has promised a multi-billion pound investment in much needed new aircraft, as well as facilities like an improved business class and in-flight WiFi to help it catch up with its biggest competitors, this will do very little to repair the company’s reputation today. Because issues like paying for a sandwich are trivial when you can’t even get through to a helpline to get on a plane to begin with.

I’ve worked in corporate PR for many years and know that the first rule of crisis communication is to engage your stakeholders properly. If that means calling in every single employee on a Sunday to man the phones or hand out coffee and snacks at the airport, that’s what you’ve got to do. You can’t rely on automated text messages and bots rebooking people onto flights three days after they were due to depart as customer engagement if that customer isn’t being informed of the whys, hows, and whens. In a crisis you communicate and communicate often. Because if you don’t, an information vacuum  develops leading to frustration and, in the case of travel - rarely the most placid of human conditions - palpable anger.

Lessons should have been learned from the May IT meltdown, when passengers complained about the lack of information as to what was going on, either collectively or in individual situations. A cursory text message may be a modern way of saying getting out information quickly, but if the follow-up process falls down, the engagement is pointless. Just as airports should have been better prepared for the snow, airlines should have been better prepared by putting staff on standby. Just two people on BA’s information desk at Schiphol on Sunday wasn’t enough (a problem replicated throughout the airport with other airlines), and although Schiphol employees were handing out bottled water and bars of chocolate on Monday, there was no such comfort on the day it all went wrong. 

Perhaps, though, the worst lapse was in something that shouldn’t have cost a penny: an airline acknowledging that lives had been disrupted, that people wouldn’t be returning home to families or that business appointments would be ruined, that what should have been the simplest of excursions had been turned on its head.

Attack of the drones - eye in the sky or public menace?

One way or another, yesterday was all about drones. In the evening I went to see Eye In The Sky, the terrific and tense thriller about an operation by the British, American and Kenyan military to take out a terror cell in a Nairobi suburb. Without giving anything away, drone technology in various shapes and sizes features centrally in the film, which stars Helen Mirren as the British colonel running the operation, Alan Rickman - in his final role - as her boss, and Breaking Bad's Aaron Paul as the US Reaper drone pilot operating out of a metal box in the Nevada desert while politicians from London to Singapore debate the morality of firing a missile to prevent a suicide bombing but which could also cause collateral damage.

It's a brilliant, thought-provoking essay on modern warfare, on the decision making, on the chain of command and the political blowback of the decisions made. Under taught direction by Gavin Hood, Eye In The Sky' articulates how drones aren't just pilotless bombers.

Even when the aircraft and its pilot are continents apart, someone is still responsible for pulling the trigger, even if that turns warfare into a detached video game, policed by politicians and lawyers, rather than generals. As Alan Rickman icily reminds a politician near the end, they might make the decisions, nursing cups of coffee and plates of biscuits in front of a big screen, but they should "Never tell a soldier that he does not know the cost of war."

There's no dispute that drones have improved the effciency of prosecuting war. And while it might still be the ambition of would-be top guns to fly jets into battle rather than sit in front of a screen with a PlayStation joystick, such stand-off weapons do, at least, reduce some of the risk to military lives.

In peaceful applications, drones have plenty of uses: my company, Nokia, was recently involved in the trial of drones to improve traffic management in Dubai, something that will become particularly viable when 5G wireless technology comes into use later this decade; in film and television production, drones have become particularly useful for aerial shots - especially good when filming nature documentaries and you don't want to spook animals with a loud and expensive helicopter; and even Amazon and Dominos Pizza are considering drones for making deliveries. All examples of how drones can work in the right hands.

But in the wrong hands...? Yesterday, as I emerged from Eye In The Sky, news appeared of a British Airways plane being struck by a drone on its approach into Heathrow Airport, after increasing warnings in recent months of the possibility. This wasn't just a close encounter - the Airbus A320, which was carrying 132 passengers, was apparently struck by a drone on its nose.

Thankfully, it landed safely, but God only knows what would have happened if the drone has been ingested by one of the Airbus's engines. Landing a plane is tricky enough, especially on the Heathrow flight path that takes jets from the east to the west side of London, let alone with the instability of a single engine working.

Not long after yesterday's incident reportedly too place, I was in Kingston's Bentall Centre and walked past one of those gadgets-for-blokes shops. Piled high in the entrance was a selection of what the shop categorises as "remote control toys" - drones as cheap as £70. Now, drones at that price are unlikely to reach the sort of altitudes to bother an airline pilot on final approach, but for a few hundred quid more you could buy one that could reach up to 2000ft - about the height commercial aircraft are at over the boroughs of Richmond and Chiswick, five to ten minutes away from landing at Heathrow. Remote control aircraft used to be an expensive hobby conducted by enthusiasts who knew what they were doing. Now, a small aircraft can be put in the hands of people who chose one over buying a puppy or a hoverboard or whatever else was the in-vogue must-have last Christmas.

Speaking about yesterday's incident, Steve Landells, of BALPA, the British Airline Pilots Association, and a former RAF and British Airways pilot, said: "Frankly, it was only a matter of time before we had a drone strike given the huge numbers being flown around by amateurs who don't understand the risks and the rules." Between April and October last year there were 23 near-misses between commercial aircraft and these hobbyist drones in the UK. One incident involved a drone missing a Boeing 777 that had just taken off from Heathrow by just 80 feet.

Despite the threat of up to five years in prison, incidents like this (as well as people shining laser pens into the eyes of pilots) are on the rise. Heathrow, too, seems to be particularly targeted, with large parks like Richmond Park and Osterley underneath the flight path providing plenty of open space for someone to launch a drone. If an irresponsible idiot can do all this just for laughs, what could a terrorist do, given the obsession they seem to have with aviation. As someone who flies in and out of London frequently, I'd rather not die in a ball of flames in Hounslow as a result of some moron in a tracksuit thinking it might be fun to fly their Christmas present into the path of my flight.

Britain's Civil Aviation Authority maintains what it calls the "drone code", which dictates that drones of any kind - professional or amateur - should not be flown above 400ft and should certainly not be flown near planes and airports, usually within a two-mile radius. For pilots, however, the big worry is that drones in amateur or even some professional uses, like film making, are just too small to show up on their anti-collision radar systems, and certainly not on air-traffic control. As, no doubt happened yesterday, by the time a drone is in a position to potentially cause a problem, it is probably too late.

"Much more education of drone users and enforcement of the rules is needed to ensure our skies remain safe from this threat," Landells has said. The British Government says that work is going on with international bodies to develop a stronger regulatory framework. But if rules are going to be ignored by either the ignorant, the anti-social, or those with seriously nefarious intent, then laws need to be toughened, police enforcement needs to be improved, and the penalties made even more punitive than a five-year-stretch. Otherwise the next time a drone and an airline meet, the outcome could be a lot worse than just the chills yesterday's incident sent down my spine alone.