Confus

1500. Winds were above limits between then and 1900ish.

GSE = Ground Service Equipment (see post 4 in this very thread)

KARFA

So you are saying NATS regulated the arrival rate at LHR to 6 per hour between 1500 and 1900?

EDIT: playback on FR24 for yesterday afternoon shows actual arrivals as

1500-1600 - 29
1600-1700 - 23
1700-1800 - 24
1800-1900 - 26

A reduction to 6 ph would be a very severe restriction and not really in line with the message I posted upthread from the Eurocontrol tactical update.

kbooks66

BA is a mess right now due to the Weather. I flew into LHR from Seattle yesterday and it was a VERY rough landing and the worse of the storm has passed. They cancelled all domestic flights and almost all other flights were either delayed or cancelled. However, with hall the delays and cancellations they are a compete wreck. The transfer customer service line was 500+ people deep, and they were handing out hotel vouchers to try to get people out of line to just get them to rebook on the phone. I have a feeling these delays will continue for a few more days, especially with a new storm blowing through.

HarryHolden68

At the start of Covid, I remember a conversation with friends about "it all being over in a few weeks". Had we known back in February 2020 what we know now, how many of us would live those two years the same. Yes, hindsight is a wonderful thing. When I was at school, our PE teacher had a sign in the changing rooms that said "Losers complain about bad luck. Winners make their own luck". Sean Connery said that "Losers whine about doing their best. Winners go home and **** the prom queen"

The situation at BA is teetering on the brink of total collapse. Yes, they can complain about the weather being bad luck, but the decisions made by the (now departed) management at the top of BA and IAG are seriously threatening BA's position as someone anyone can trust. The current position is compounded by a lack of staff numbers, a lack of reliable infrastructure, an abysmal IT setup, removing layer upon layer of management with now no ability to service queries at their base in T5 and most importantly, a workforce who for the most part, would not spit on the management if they were on fire.

Sorry BA, you can blame the weather for your symptoms but a decade of "cost cutting being in your DNA" is what is killing you. You reap what you sow.

HIDDY

I think they left the reorganisation of the airline far too late.Unfortunately for them, events outwith their control has caught them out.

Tobias-UK

[Redundant post]

atcodave

Karfa, NATS don’t regulate arrivals at Heathrow, HAL do, admittedly in consultation with NATS amongst others, but HAL set the landing rate. Running an international airport during multiple storms aint easy boys!

ratechaser

Apparently BA couldn't find a prom queen, so they had to settle for their customers...

oneworldglobetrotter

On the other hand, BA and IAG have been unique in surviving a 2 year pandemic with almost zero demand without being bailed out by the government. Look at their peers in Europe (LH/AF/KL/TP/AZ) all of which were bailed out by their respective governments. Look at the U.S. where the government paid the wages of airline staff for 18 months and gave direct grants to all U.S. airlines.

Surely it’s the BA/IAG management team that deserve enormous credit for how they have managed the company over the past 10 years to be able to continue to operate without requiring a bailout?

SxMan

if you look at the constant stream of comments and complaints on social media – I don’t really think you can say this. So many hundreds of people have been left high and dry over the past week – the airline has been found wanting. I certainly shan’t be gracing them with my presence in the near future.
it is primarily the lack of apology and communication which is appalling. Just as though they have no crisis management at all. Goodness knows what they are going to do come a major disaster – such as a jumbo crashing.

🙄

choosethedrew

BA has secured a £1B loan direct from the UK government and a further £2B in UK government-underwritten loans. Iberia has separately accessed €1.1B in loans from the Spanish Government. How is this is not a bailout?

BA used the furlough scheme, how is this any different to the US situation you describe?

noFODplease

This seems bizarre - so a financially beleaguered HAL could make a business decision to keep a high rate of arrivals during a storm, or fog, against advice of NATS? I'm not saying they would, but the authority over safety seems to lie in the wrong place (I know nothing about this so I'm sure someone will know why this is sensible).

BOH

It would probably not be BA's problem as they stopped flying them 18 months ago

13901

We need the likes of Heathrow Tower here but I remember the BA LHR Ops messages referring to flow rates for the approach into LHR as being monitored/controlled/regulated by NATS.

A friend from Ops was saying that during the weekend they had restrictions in the 20s, plus gusts so strong that exceeded the limits for a lot of GSEs. Especially the belt loaders for Door 5, the high lifts, and even bins or cargo doors had issues.

oneworldglobetrotter

Any debt BA has received has been on commercial terms and has also been available to other publicly traded companies in any industry. The airlines I listed have received government bailouts that do not need to be repaid.

The furlough scheme used by BA is a world apart from the labour support provided by the U.S. administration and the support received by BA was a small fraction of what the U.S. carriers received all the while they were operating in a market domestically that had almost no Covid restrictions. The same can’t be said for our 5 colour traffic lights system here in the U.K.