Slow snow
Big blizzards descend on European airports at least a couple of times a winter and they can leave the best-laid schedule plans in tatters.
The public blame ‘winter took them by surprise again’ is of course an international favourite used to accuse inappropriate snow-clearing resources or infrastructure. But in all seriousness, why does a snow storm weaken an airline’s service performance?
There are four main reasons:
1) Traffic is reduced in line with what can be handled by air traffic control. The airport may even have to be closed completely. Air traffic is planned according to a ‘wave’ structure: planes arrive and depart during certain periods to make it possible to offer connections. There may be dramatic knock-on effects if capacity has to be reduced during a main ‘wave’.
2) Ground operations at the airport slow down. Fleet movements and the physical human work done by staff to turn aircraft around are decelerated. In the worst cases, ground service vehicles may find it impossible to get through the snow to approach the aircraft closely.
3) A new stage of proceedings is introduced for ground handling in the event of a snow storm: de-icing. The turnaround of an aircraft from one route to another cannot be done quickly. De-icing takes between 5 and 20 minutes depending on the aircraft type and where it’s flying, and it can’t always be completed according to departure schedules.
4) One delay leads to another. Whenever one flight fails to leave on time, it can lead to special pressure on transit traffic. It doesn’t matter how well-planned staff rota are either; if there is a delay during a peak period it means that there will probably be a shortage of labour somewhere along the chain.
Just as a car driver experiences difficulties in a snow storm when trying to drive from A to B, so does an airline. One of the frequently asked questions that follows is, why don’t airlines and airports give themselves more time and make allowances for special situations?
The answer is that this just isn’t possible in the framework of regular traffic. Traffic programmes and through them the schedules of tens of thousands of customers cannot be made according to weather forecasts. An airline cannot tell its passengers to eat their omelet more quickly because a flight has to leave in accordance with its de-icing schedule. Unfortunately, the dynamic in any case only works in favour of delays.
The effects of the latest storm for Finnair in Finland were nine redirected flights, 15 cancellations, 55,000 delay minutes, 3,000 disrupted connections, 3,000 delayed items of baggage, and a significant fall in overall punctuality for the month.
Finnair has worked its way into the top performers in Europe for punctuality. Many airlines struggle with airspace congestion, for example. Our special challenge is harsh winter conditions and snow.
Filed under: Traffic and punctuality | Tagged: delay, punctuality, snow, winter
All of this makes perfect sense. I am sure there is a lot more concern for safety when the weather is bad as well.