It's the weather, stupid
At some point in every 'emergency' caused by the weather, I find myself raging at the TV or radio:
It's weather - just weather!
I've spent more hours than I care to think about waiting for planes stuck at another airport due to bad weather to get to me. I've seen boats nearly reach the pier and then turn back without taking passengers away because it was too dangerous. I've been on planes diverted from Glasgow due to fog, so that I flew over my house on the way to Prestwick but knew I still had to get a bus up to Glasgow International because that's where my car was.
So today, just a few months after the frozen horror of the Beast from the East, we have life being disrupted by an unexpected heatwave. Passengers waiting to board trains at Eurotunnel and flights at Standsted airport are put to great inconvenience. The usual cries go up: why don't they have more staff on duty? Because you can't conjure staff out of thin air, that's why. And if we had extra staff, they wouldn't be able to get here because you lot are clogging up the airport. Why is no one telling us what's happening? You're all standing there with phones in your hands. Look it up for yourselves!
I suppose the difference between regular travellers and folk who just need transport to go on their holidays once or twice a year is that no one who travels a lot expects things to go smoothly.
I've been on a plane that was struck by lightning and on another where the crosswinds were so bad one of the plane's wings touched the tarmac on landing. I've also landed at an airport to find only one of the staff was there (a fireman, luckily) because the minibus bringing the rest out from the nearby town had broken down, which left us sitting at the end of the runway for an hour and a half.
You can fret, curse, beat your chest in exasperation but in the end you just have to suck it up and accept: Stuff happens. Just deal with it.
It's weather - just weather!
I've spent more hours than I care to think about waiting for planes stuck at another airport due to bad weather to get to me. I've seen boats nearly reach the pier and then turn back without taking passengers away because it was too dangerous. I've been on planes diverted from Glasgow due to fog, so that I flew over my house on the way to Prestwick but knew I still had to get a bus up to Glasgow International because that's where my car was.
So today, just a few months after the frozen horror of the Beast from the East, we have life being disrupted by an unexpected heatwave. Passengers waiting to board trains at Eurotunnel and flights at Standsted airport are put to great inconvenience. The usual cries go up: why don't they have more staff on duty? Because you can't conjure staff out of thin air, that's why. And if we had extra staff, they wouldn't be able to get here because you lot are clogging up the airport. Why is no one telling us what's happening? You're all standing there with phones in your hands. Look it up for yourselves!
I suppose the difference between regular travellers and folk who just need transport to go on their holidays once or twice a year is that no one who travels a lot expects things to go smoothly.
I've been on a plane that was struck by lightning and on another where the crosswinds were so bad one of the plane's wings touched the tarmac on landing. I've also landed at an airport to find only one of the staff was there (a fireman, luckily) because the minibus bringing the rest out from the nearby town had broken down, which left us sitting at the end of the runway for an hour and a half.
You can fret, curse, beat your chest in exasperation but in the end you just have to suck it up and accept: Stuff happens. Just deal with it.
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