I’m in the travel industry, working for a large travel agency, so I feel I can voice my opinions on this mess in the air. Over the weekend, the hold times with the airlines was over 60 minutes….that is a long time! What is happening right now is insane.
According to my sources, this is a bigger mess than 911, in terms of how it is effecting travelers and the amount of money the airlines are losing each day. Mother Nature has never effected air travel like this in our history. When 911 occurred, all flights were grounded for a couple of days. With the Iceland volcano, some flights are departing and some are grounded. It appears they are taking an hour-by-hour approach. The information we are receiving is to go to the airport, wait in the long lines and find out then if you are on the flight or not. Sounds pretty organized, I think not!!! Talk about creating confusion and/or showing a lack of given information to our travelers.
What I find to be the most bizarre to say the least, is hearing that some flights are being coined as “test flights.” Test flights being sent to either go around the clouds of volcanic ash or to even go through the clouds and see if they make it. Say what?!! Who volunteers for that flight, is what I want to know? Those pilots better be getting time and a half!! What has happened with these test flights has created these decisions to leave it up to the airlines and our weather system to see if flights will make it. If I am a passenger, I don’t want to be on a flight that has made a rash decision to fly (losing millions if the plane stays grounded as a motive) through the mess. According to our sources at United, UA’s test flights were able to go around the clouds, some returning over the weekend, however the military sent a test flight to go though the clouds and considerable damage was done to the engine. The volcanic ash is made up of rock and glass which could make a plane lose all power and go down over the frigid waters. Luckily the plane didn’t crash!
All in all, the airlines (I think!) are doing what they can considering this has never happened before. The team work also involved by other countries to try to get people back to their homes in the UK, has also been unprecedented. Spain sent a navy ship with 2oo+ passengers back to the UK to get them home. Hertz rental car has opened up a special hotline noting all their international cars available in case you are in Europe and want to drive to another country to get home. Some inter European flights have also been able to fly as they are flying at lower altitudes in order to keep people flying.
Besides all the earthquakes that we think too are happening more frequently right now, here is another way nature is impacting us without our abilities to make a change to stop it from doing what it does.
My advice, don’t travel this week. Seems pretty simple, ha!
