[Magdalen] air transport snarl

[ROGER STOKES]

Various Trade Unions in France are also engaged in a programme of industrial action which will help snarl things up. Relatively short delays are also expected on flights into London over the next couple of days as the air traffic controllers start working with a new system. Apparently, National Air Traffic Service will be working to minimise disruption by managing the flights into the London area.
Jim's wife's experience also shows the wisdom of having essentials as cabin baggage as I always do, certainly on the way out. On the way home I know I will have spares at home. 

Roger
 

    On Tuesday, 3 April 2018, 20:47, Michael Bishop <rev at michaelbishop.name> wrote:
 

 I am glad that she is not travelling through Europe today. According to 
the BBC, "Up to half of all European flights could suffer delay due to a 
failure in one of the systems used to manage air traffic.
Eurocontrol whichco-ordinatesflights across the continent said almost 
15,000scheduled trips"could have some delay"

God bless

.....
.....
Michael Bishop
rev at michaelbishop.name


> On Tue, Apr 3, 2018 at 2:19 PM, James Oppenheimer-Crawford <
> oppenheimerjw at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> My beloved spouse was on a trip to India and Nepal, and was coming home on
>> Saturday. I wasn't sure what time.
>> I got a call on my cell. She was stuck in Dubai. The plane out of India was
>> a couple hours late, and they missed their Dubai connection. The Emirates
>> (NB!) Airlines folks had plenty of warning that this was happening and made
>> absolutely no effort to prepare for the glut of passengers lining up to
>> re-book.
>> It appears that for reasons not clear, Christine's bag never got loaded
>> onto the plane in India to begin with, so she arrived home with just her
>> back pack. Fortunately, everything essential was on her person. She tries
>> to do this all the time, and she had a premonition her bag would get lost.
>> At the baggage problems desk, the person there was from another airline and
>> said that, yes a person from Emirates Airline ought to be there. He was
>> nice enough to take down her information.
>> I had to call the limo service's emergency line and explain that my wife
>> had missed her plane, so she would not be at the airport at the scheduled
>> time. I gave him the new info, and he said he would "figure something out."
>> A couple minutes later he called me back to say that the information my
>> wife gave me could not possibly be accurate, and could I see what was going
>> on?
>> I spent a lot of time looking at airplane schedules, and left messages on
>> my beloved's cell. She has a hearing deficit, and generally does not hear
>> her phone unless she happens to be in just the right situation. Worries!
>> After a while she called me, saying she saw I tried to call her, so we
>> chatted. It turned out that the slip of paper the airlines gave her for her
>> re-booking was a confusing mess, and she had copied some irrelevant number
>> instead of her flight number. I got this info to the limo man, and he said,
>> "We will be there." What a soldier!
>> Her plane landed in Milan to refuel, and they had all passengers deplane
>> into the airport's secure area, and then they all had to be vetted again,
>> even though they were all in a the security zone of the airport and never
>> left it. They take security very seriously. Better some annoyance now than
>> a phone call that somewhere over the Atlantic some internal explosion
>> turned your sweetie's airplane into a bunch of spare parts.
>> She finally got home about midnite easter eve (missed the vigil) and we
>> chatted for a bit and retired (we're already retired, but you KWIM).
>> After some phone calling some people said they would do what they could to
>> locate her bag. Later I got a text saying they had SUCCESS! and her bag
>> would shortly be back to her.
>> About 9 PM easter, got a phone call that her bag would arrive around 12.30
>> to 1.30 -- and should they just leave it somewhere rather than awakening
>> us.
>> We assured him we would be up.
>> By about 3AM I called the number back to ask where the delivery person was.
>> The phone got answered, which I thought was a good sign. The person
>> answering was on top of the situation and asked me to hold for a moment. He
>> then told me the driver was about 45 minutes out. He wanted to know again
>> if we wanted them to just leave the bag, and we said no. Call us when he
>> gets there.
>> In the fullness of time (I just love writing that phrase) the truck
>> arrived, and we got my sweetie's bag. Its locks had been cut off, but it
>> appeared (the next day) that nothing was missing. Customs probably cut the
>> locks.
>> I decided to skip Easter morning service too, and just recuperate.
>>
>> But -- (or "Butt" -- as Deb Bly used to write) all was not lost. We were
>> able to stay awake to watch the Jesus Christ Super Star on the telly. I in
>> general enjoyed the production, although the subordinate voice parts were
>> not as good as they were in other productions I've heard, and there's lots
>> of room for some moving special moments, like Pilate's vision, recalled
>> with incredible dread, of "Thousands of millions crying for this man, and
>> then I heard them mentioning my name -- and leaving me the blame."
>>
>> It's quite effective how a small number of themes are used in different
>> ways throughout the work, giving it a sort of cohesiveness that one does
>> not appreciate until it is heard a few times.
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> James W. Oppenheimer-Crawford
>> *“A life is like a garden. Perfect moments can be had, but not preserved,
>> except in memory. LLAP**”  -- *Leonard Nimoy
>>