Weather & Technical Diversions, Delays & Cancellations

[TheLocalYokel]

With the media at a successful airport like Bristol unless there is a very good relationship between the airport and the local paper then the negatives probably would get promoted more as it's more click bait news. Also you have to ask is Bristol Airport a customer of the Bristol Post by advertising with them or doing sponsored articles? If they did more like that with the Bristol Post then the stuff produced would come out generally more positive.

The Bristol Post is one of Trinity's Mirror's 200+ regional newspapers: newspaper in the loosest sense as it's more like a comic with journalists (again in the loosest sense) whose main attribute appears to be that they are cheap to employ. Many seem just out of school with an appalling grasp of syntax, grammar and spelling. There appears to be no requirement for sub-editors these days who, if they were employed, would at least correct the worst excesses of the fledgling reporters.

A responsible newspaper should not need to be bribed in order to write favourably about an organisation, although in truth I don't believe the Bristol Post is in that corner. Their main source for articles about anything is the press release which they invariably publish virtually unedited. Their junior hacks are also encouraged to trawl social media sites to come up with stories of 'local interest' and that is often where negativity flourishes, including comments about the airport. People are far more likely to tweet negative comments about an airport than positive ones and the same applies to such websites as Skytrax, also a useful source of 'stories'.

A few weeks ago, during a trawl of Skytrax, the Bristol Post's finest discovered that BRS had (still has) a running score of 3/10. They went to town on this suggesting that Bristolians have a dodgy airport in terms of passenger satisfaction. They made no attempt at context. Had they done so they would have found that 3/10 is an average score across many UK airports including the likes of ABZ, BFS, BHX, CWL, EDI, LPL and MAN. Some score worse with EMA, LBA, STN and LTN 'boasting' 2/10.

The BRS Post regularly sets its staff at following the BRS website on those days when visibility is likely to be poor, with headlines trumpeting diversions away from Lulsgate to other airports. Curiously, they never take to tracking the website on those days when BRS takes diversions from other airports. All this feeds the notion amongst local people, most of whom have no more than a passing interest in aviation or airports - if that even, that BRS is one of the few airports in the country where aircraft are forever having to divert to other airports because of inclement weather.

My view is that there is no Bristol Post agenda that seeks to sabotage the airport in some way. I think that it's just slipshod reporting often caused through a need to keep costs low and, as Jerry suggests, bad news is often more attractive for newspapers than good because for some reason many readers enjoy reading about adversity.

 

[TheLocalYokel]

Wednesday 3 January 2018

KLM has cancelled a number of flights tomorrow in anticipation of gale-force winds. KL 1049 due BRS 0835 and KL 1050 due to depart at 0905 is one of the rotations cancelled.

BRS has had quite a lot of KLM cancellations so far this winter, mainly weather related in AMS although the aircraft off runway at BRS just before Christmas added to the list.

 

[TheLocalYokel]

Wednesday 3 January 2018

KLM has cancelled a number of flights tomorrow in anticipation of gale-force winds. KL 1049 due BRS 0835 and KL 1050 due to depart at 0905 is one of the rotations cancelled.

BRS has had quite a lot of KLM cancellations so far this winter, mainly weather related in AMS although the aircraft off runway at BRS just before Christmas added to the list.

KL 1053 due BRS 1650 and KL 1054 due to depart BRS at 1720 now also cancelled.

 

[alphagolf]

KL 1053 due BRS 1650 and KL 1054 due to depart BRS at 1720 now also cancelled.

KLM cancelled 96 flights to/from AMS today due to Westerly Storm hitting Europe today.

 

[TheLocalYokel]

Sunday 7 January 2018

The BRS website arrivals page is showing EZY 6168 from Amsterdam due 2140 with an expected arrival of 2220 with a note saying 'diverted'.

The outbound hasn't left BRS yet. Its scheduled departure time is 1805 but a note on the BRS departures page currently shows 'final boarding'.

Is the 'diverted' note another example of the unreliable or incomplete information seen so often on the BRS departures and arrivals pages? If someone is meeting a passenger from the flight later this evening and the diversion note is an error it will reflect poorly on the airport and possibly cause inconvenience to the meeter. If it's not an error I wonder where the aircraft will go and why they already know it will be diverted.

 

[Aviador]

I'm not familiar with the system in use at BRS but it sounds like a glitch. I know the system that used to be in use at LBA called "airport2020" was notoriously unreliable and once a flight had been designated landed or diverted it couldn't be changed. If the BRS system is similar it might not be possible for the person who updates the FIDS to alter it if a mistake has been made. It might require a software administrator to change it. I could be way off the mark though.

 

[alphagolf]

Sunday 7 January 2018

The BRS website arrivals page is showing EZY 6168 from Amsterdam due 2140 with an expected arrival of 2220 with a note saying 'diverted'.

The outbound hasn't left BRS yet. Its scheduled departure time is 1805 but a note on the BRS departures page currently shows 'final boarding'.

Is the 'diverted' note another example of the unreliable or incomplete information seen so often on the BRS departures and arrivals pages? If someone is meeting a passenger from the flight later this evening and the diversion note is an error it will reflect poorly on the airport and possibly cause inconvenience to the meeter. If it's not an error I wonder where the aircraft will go and why they already know it will be diverted.

Just had a look at the airport website arrivals page and its now expected at 2250 with no note now showing so looks like someone may have made an error.

The outbound is showing as departed on BRS departures, also on FR24 it suggests it left BRS at 1921, 76mins late.

 

[TheLocalYokel]

Just had a look at the airport website arrivals page and its now expected at 2250 with no note now showing so looks like someone may have made an error.

The outbound is showing as departed on BRS departures, also on FR24 it suggests it left BRS at 1921, 76mins late.

Thanks for that, alphagolf. It was a completely unnecessary error but unfortunately typical of the arrivals/departures website pages.

I read a piece in a Plymouth newspaper recently about the day the aircraft left the BRS runway just before Christmas leading to scores of cancellations/diversions. It focused on people from Devon who had been caught up in it all and the main gripe, as always in these situations, was a lack of information, with the BRS website information boards coming in for criticism by some travellers.

Poor communication with customers seems to be a fact of life these days in any organisation. It's supremely ironic given that the means of communication have never been so widespread or instant. I've had two business letters from major companies in the past week that appeared to have been written by 10-year olds (if that's not unfair on 10-year olds). The spelling and sentence construction was bad enough but they failed to answer a basic, simple question that I'd posed in both cases. One of the letters was dated July 2017 yet I hadn't contacted them until October this year.

 

[alphagolf]

Just had a look at the airport website arrivals page and its now expected at 2250 with no note now showing so looks like someone may have made an error.

The outbound is showing as departed on BRS departures, also on FR24 it suggests it left BRS at 1921, 76mins late.

Inbound is now expected at 2218 so clawed so time back as only 38mins late.

 

[TheLocalYokel]

Monday 8 January 2018

Four easyJet inbounds diverted to CWL this afternoon and evening: Glasgow, Funchal, Venice, Geneva.

Active runway was 09 with no Cat3 and the mist/fog was presumably intermittent at the airport as the overwhelming majority of flights landed.

 

[Aviador]

Bristol Airport flights diverted due to low visibility
Four EasyJet flights were diverted while mist blanketed the runway

Another non-event reported by the Bristol Post.

 

[TheLocalYokel]

Bristol Airport flights diverted due to low visibility
Four EasyJet flights were diverted while mist blanketed the runway

Another non-event reported by the Bristol Post.

They seem to have an obsession with showing BRS in a negative light. They never ever report when flights are diverted to BRS. Yesterday four of around 80 inbound flights were diverted yet they went to town once more. The tenor of their limited coverage of the airport's master plan consultation process was generally negative. They must have sent a prayer of thanks to their God when the bmir e-Jet left the runway last month as this enabled them to fill their columns with airport bashing stuff for days afterwards, including a fatuous remark in one of their reports that the aircraft had finished up in a nearby field.

The other day they carried a story saying that there was a unique opportunity for people to fly from Cardiff to see the Northern Lights, suggesting that this sort of flight had never happened before. The fact that BRS and other regional airports have been operating such flights for a number of years and that an identical Omega Holidays flight they were highlighting from CWL was operating from BRS the following day was ignored.

I don't know why the airport PR people don't make a stand against this shower of excrement that have the brass neck to use the name of a once great and highly respected local newspaper. Les Wilson would never have allowed them to get away with it. He would have kicked up a hell of a fuss about the one-sided reporting of his airport.

It's not only with airports that this pathetic attempt at a newspaper is a laughing stock. Apart from dreadful spelling and syntax their (mainly) 'apprentice' reporters who no longer appear supervised by sub-editors publish some of the most inaccurate, risible dross that would have proper journalists of the past banging on their coffin lids.

Trinity Mirror seems to be like this with most of its regional titles these days. From what I've seen of social media sites, and I'm not a member of any so my experience of them is not massive, the digital versions of Trinity Mirror local papers are little more than a professional (in the loosest sense of the word) extension of Twitter or Fbook or whatever. They are no longer newspapers in the accepted sense.

 

[Jerry]

Clickbait journalism is what it is.

 

[TheLocalYokel]

Tuesday 9 January 2018

Still foggy but 27 seems to be active today with its CAT3b despite what appears to be light easterly or perhaps south-easterly winds which means I suppose that the downwind component might be lessened to a degree.

Despite that two bmir flights - from CDG and MUC - have diverted to EXT as they are not CAT3 compliant. The CDG seemed to be circling BRS for nearly an hour before diverting. Thus far everything else has landed including two other bmir flights (BRU and FRA) and Aer Lingus Regional ATR72s from DUB and ORK, none of which are CAT3 equipped so far as I am aware.

 

[Aviador]

Tuesday 9 January 2018

Still foggy but 27 seems to be active today with its CAT3b despite what appears to be light easterly or perhaps south-easterly winds which means I suppose that the downwind component might be lessened to a degree.

Despite that two bmir flights - from CDG and MUC - have diverted to EXT as they are not CAT3 compliant. The CDG seemed to be circling BRS for nearly an hour before diverting. Thus far everything else has landed including two other bmir flights (BRU and FRA) and Aer Lingus Regional ATR72s from DUB and ORK, none of which are CAT3 equipped so far as I am aware.

Trinity Mirror will be dossing up some fanciful tosh as we speak about the latest diverts. You can imagine the headline now "mist-shrouded hilltop" , "major delays at village airport", "hundreds of passengers suffer misery" whatever next.

 

[TheLocalYokel]

Trinity Mirror will be dossing up some fanciful tosh as we speak about the latest diverts. You can imagine the headline now "mist-shrouded hilltop" , "major delays at village airport", "hundreds of passengers suffer misery" whatever next.

They will have been disappointed today. Apart from the two bmirs that went to EXT this morning the only other diversion was a lunchtime Ryanair from Budapest that went to BHX. I'm not quite sure why as other aircraft were landing at the time including two or three other Ryanairs.

Given the horrible murky conditions today - the top of Dundry Hill was mist-shrouded all day viewed from where I live - and the fact that the light wind was out of the east/south-east for the non Cat3 runway 09 I expected more diversions. This morning they seemed to be using the Cat3 equipped 27 with tailwind landings. Not sure whether they continued with 27 throughout the day.

More fog is forecast for Thursday morning according to the local tv weather man.

 

[NOSIGWX]

Flybe E195 EDI-CWL diverted into Bristol this morning due to fog at Cardiff. Several other aircraft were in the Cardiff hold, but eventually all were able to land when weather conditions improved.

 

[TheLocalYokel]

Flybe E195 EDI-CWL diverted into Bristol this morning due to fog at Cardiff. Several other aircraft were in the Cardiff hold, but eventually all were able to land when weather conditions improved.

Well, here's a totally expected thing! Today the Bristol Post is doing a minute by minute 'live' rolling report about the day in the life of an air traffic controller at Bristol Airport. The CWL diversion has actually been mentioned in passing.

Perhaps they've been reading the complaints in F4A. Still using a completely out of date picture of the airport though.

http://www.bristolpost.co.uk/news/bristol-news/what-like-air-traffic-controller-1047463

 

[TheLocalYokel]

Well, here's a totally expected thing! Today the Bristol Post is doing a minute by minute 'live' rolling report about the day in the life of an air traffic controller at Bristol Airport. The CWL diversion has actually been mentioned in passing.

Perhaps they've been reading the complaints in F4A. Still using a completely out of date picture of the airport though.

http://www.bristolpost.co.uk/news/bristol-news/what-like-air-traffic-controller-1047463

Since this morning the Bristol Post has replaced the old aerial picture of the airport and replaced it with a much more up to date one. Perhaps they do read F4A.

 

[Jerry]

Since this morning the Bristol Post has replaced the old aerial picture of the airport and replaced it with a much more up to date one. Perhaps they do read F4A.

Nice little bit of advertisement in their for Cardiff Airport!