Brussels Airlines flight SN2908 is the evening counterpart of SN2901, the red-eye Brussels-Vienna flight that takes you to that magnificent city in time for a meeting that can start as early as 10.00 and conclude as late as 18.00 since SN2908 will bring you home comfortably. The only trouble with SN2908 is that it is apparently late in nine cases out of ten… No doubt this is a flight at the end of the series of rotations assigned to the 737 performing it and ATC delays and a bit of bad weather can all conspire to make an on time run a mission impossible. I have spent quite some time and euros at the Starbucks outlet conveniently located near the gate usually assigned to 2908 waiting for her to put in an appearance.
But in all cases, we knew about the delay right on arrival at the airport and could plan our extra sojourn accordingly. But not on this Friday, 18 June when we were dished up something completely new, shaking my trust in the information management savvy of our industry.
In case you are not familiar with Vienna airport, in the terminal used by Brussels Airlines the gates have a kind of holding area which you enter through a security check done at the entrance. Each gate has its own screening equipment. The gate and the security check point is normally manned about one hour before the published boarding time.
The boarding time for SN2908 was 20.05 and so a little over 19.00 processing of passengers into the holding area began as usual. One would assume that all this activity is started on the basis of the news that the aircraft is in the air and will be landing more or less on time.
As I don’t like queues, I was one of the first through security and then planted myself near the air-bridge doors ready to walk when the sign was given. I like to have a place for my flight case in the overhead bins…
It was close to 20.05, the nominal boarding time when I noticed that the trickle of passengers had slowed to nothing with the holding area containing very few people. Then came the announcement: our flight was delayed, new ETD 22.00 and the gate has been changed, so will we please go out and then report again for security check at 21.00. The new gate was in fact the one just next to the one we were using originally.
As I walked through the metal detector in the WRONG direction, with all my metal stuff and flight case on and with me (boy how I wished I could do that in the past!!) all hell broke lose but that was no problem… we were evacuating the sterile area, so no sweat.
Heading back to Starbucks, I was trying to figure out how many layers of information management had to go wrong before the airport would start the boarding process (getting into the holding area is in fact the first step of boarding) for an aircraft that was hours behind schedule. Collaborative decision making (CDM) is all about sharing information and ensuring that all partners concerned have the same view and same understanding of the world. Obviously, something had gone very wrong on the evening of 18 June between Brussels, Vienna and Brussels Airlines.
To add insult to injury, the displays in Vienna kept urging passengers to come to the gate even when it became clear that they would be greeted by an empty desk… I came back munching my well earned doughnut and staked out a position as usual but this time with the result that I had to explain about 50 times that the gate would not be manned until 21.00. I should really send an invoice to Vienna for this service…
Thanks to the airport’s incomprehensible decision to change our gate to the adjacent one, we had to go through the hassle of security a second time with the additional complication that the gate agent had to search through a pile of boarding passes taken on the first, aborted try… Had they left us alone with the option of leaving the sterile area for those who wanted to, a lot of aggravation could have been saved.
We were finally on board and the plane was apparently ready to go at 22.00. Apparently… I am sure you have experienced this: half the cabin crew at the door and a guy comes with some papers, then a cabin crew member grabs the phone and asks via the PA system if Mr. this and Mr. that will please make themselves known to the crew. If you are lucky, one or several people will put up their hands and that will be the end of the story. On this particular night, we were not lucky. There were no takers and as it turned out, six people were missing and their baggage was probably on the aircraft. Probably they said as they were not sure… They were checking. Even the captain got out of his office and descended into the Vienna night to check. Was this a case of more information management cock-up?
The icing on the cake? The guy with the papers was an agent who had just finished the boarding of an Air France flight to CDG right next to our gate… Were they missing some passengers and bags and thought they might be on our flight? We will probably never know.
Clearly, this Friday night was not one of the better ones for Vienna or SN flight 2908.
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