Cold Weather

Housemate was booked on a Lufthansa flight to Germany from Dublin this afternoon. Currently in Zurich airport.

I was on flight EI233 from LGW to Dub today, original Dep 11.05. Was sitting in the terminal for three hours, then on the aircraft on the ground for three hours, and eventually taking off at 17:00.

Before getting in the air, I was looking at Flight Radar and all the arrivals into Dublin. A couple of hold patterns at most so knew when we got going shouldn't be too bad.

Interestingly, this was the fight path at low speed for EI233 today arriving into Dublin. Not a usual hold at LAPMO. Thought it was worth sharing.

I presume there is no chance of EU comp on these. Ryanair 8018 to Paris. Scheduled to go at 12:30. We got ten hours of delays before they threw in the towel.

It's not the DAA is it? I think it's the airlines that are responsible for the de-icing machines. 95 per cent of the impacted flights were Ryanair apparently.

Looking at the Dublin airport departure boards here, it's seems to have been a slightly cleaner start to the day today. A lot of flights are either taking off on time or are cancelled altogether. At least people aren't waiting around in airports (so far).

Aer Lingus were a mess aswell yesterday don't know where 95% Ryanair impact has come from?

I find it hard to believe the DAA can claim they have no responsibility in operations running smoothly at their own airport by ensuring their airlines had contingency planning in place over a week long build up to these cold temperatures to ensure the airlines had sufficient de-icers available/ready/working

You can be sure that the two main airlines have regular meetings with the airport about various things including whether setting up remote de-icing would work better. I have absolutely no doubt that this would increase costs and as a result the airlines said no especially as snowy conditions are rare here. Frosty conditions are common but this can be done easily by de-icing aircraft before crew or passengers arrive at the aircraft and works well most of the time.

They most likely will claim it was extraordinary circumstances because of the weather and not the fact they hadn't enough de-icing trucks, fluid or trained staff.

They rarely admit guilt even when it's blatant. However you should absolutely put in a compo claim and then take it to the small claims court if rejected.

Interesting to try to think this through from a who-is-responsible perspective.

Presumably the airport operator needs to keep the airport functioning; ie the runways, taxiways, aprons and stands are clear of snow and ice; and capable of use. For an airport of Dublin's national importance, any failures in this regard are becoming less and less excusable, so perhaps there should be more consequences when they are at fault. To a sensible degree, DAA's snow & ice clearance capability needs to be proportionate to the weather risk however; otherwise airport charges will be higher, but sensible capacity measures such as having tractors and their drivers that can mow the grass in summer and clear snow when needed should mitigate the costs. Comparisons to airports in much colder locations aren't really appropriate as the risk and cost-balance in those climates is different; but there is an argument that as an airport gets more economically important, busier and therefore more prone to the disruptive impact of bad weather, that the airport should carry more prudent levels of capacity so that they can minimise disruption to operations in almost all reasonably foreseeable conditions.

The airlines, one would think(?), should be responsible for making sure their aircraft can fly to schedule from an open and functioning airfield - ie managing the de-icing, either directly for a major self-managing operator at the airport, or via a handling agent. Therefore there should either be a risk-assessed de-icing capacity for the self-managing airline or an agreed service level agreement between the airline and agent; with a better, higher capacity service obviously therefore having a cost impact. Either way, operator-specific needs (such as the frosting effect of cold fuel in recently-arrived long-haul aircraft that are turning around quickly - such as the EI321Neos) would need to be factored in by the airline. Presumably this is a difficult cost balance for airlines with bases in our normally relatively temperate climate - too much cold-weather capacity gives you a cost disadvantage; not enough leads to ****-show days and reputational damage (but do some of the airlines really care in what is really a duopoly situation?). Similarly, scheduling with in-built allowance for de-icing time which may not be needed will have negative economic impacts.

I guess the logical conclusion overall is that our airports should remain open and, in all reasonably-foreseeable weather conditions, fully-functional; but we can't expect to have reasonably cheap fares from the airlines without a degree of capacity-related disruption when the weather is colder than is statistically normal. If we want perfection in all weathers, it will come at a cost to the consumer.

I'm not saying that yesterday was acceptable at all - I suffered a frustrating and lengthy delay to tag on to the end of what had already been a 14 hour-long trip - and having paid a pretty hefty long-haul ticket price, it was very annoying to have an 'oh, everything in and out of Ireland is badly delayed today because it's been a bit frosty' explanation given to you in Heathrow...

There is no shortage of kit to clear the airfield, and it was kept clear all the time.

The airlines and their handlers are 100% at fault here

Is there a thread on any Ryannair cancellations during this cold snap?

Ryanair have started posting this, it's the second time I've seen it in last few days. This isn't cold weather specific but it's definitely a DAA issue

T1 security queue at 5am - 15 minutes. It hit max 20 mins this morning.

I've seen these tweets the last few days but nobody else is complaining about security wait times at Dublin and everything is moving well. It's a non issue

More deflection from Ryanair from their own ops issues at Dublin.

Dublin Airport have also corrected that Ryanair tweet in recent time