Almost every year sees a few days with severe air traffic chaos. Common causes are adverse weather conditions like fog, storm, ice and snow. Other reasons involve human action, like strikes of service personal or security regulations imposed by governments.
Incidents like the so called “volcano ashes flight ban” in Europe during the spring of 2010 are more severe than problems caused by weather conditions. A computer simulation signaled that time a high probability that dangerous particles stemming from a volcano in Iceland were present in the air. Obviously no government wanted to be responsible for a catastrophe caused by such particles. So they closed almost the complete European air space without any time frame for the end of the flight ban. After a number of days, and only in response to massive pressure from some of the biggest European airlines, governments bothered to check the real concentration of ashes in the air and reopened the air space gradually.
Pandemic diseases like SARS could also lead to such government actions. Riots may cause governments to close airspace and impede air travel as well. It is obvious, that air traffic chaos caused by political decisions is less predictable in scope and duration than problems resulting from weather conditions.
How to Protect Yourself?
What can you do to minimize the impact of such disruptions on you personally? You should take care of three aspects, which have a huge impact on your experience in case of travel chaos.
- While you book the flight:
If your journey runs smooth and without a problem, you do not need and will not miss a high quality score of your travel agency. You buy, pay and fly.
But whenever a disruption occurs, you will feel a big difference between an overwhelmed customer service hotline and personalized service provided by your travel agent who receives timely information from the airlines, together with specific rules about changing schedules and refunding canceled tickets affected by the chaos. You will be in a position to discuss your options with a personal travel consultant – if you have one – and then to reach an informed decision accommodating your needs as much as possible. - Before departure of your Flight:
You should try to confirm whether your plane will be flying on schedule before you go to the airport. In times of disruptions you should inquire already now about details and specific rules to postpone, reroute or cancel your flight. Then you decide what to do.
The same applies before departure of the return flight. Check out, whether your flight operates according to the schedule, before hitting the road to the airport. Weight your options and decide to take the return flight as booked, to rebook or to use another option e.g. traveling by car or train. If you decide to use your flight in spite of the disruption, it is always good advice to have everything you really need in your hand luggage. Otherwise it may happen that imortant items are stuck in a stranded box half a continent away. - If you are hit by air traffic chaos on the road:
From the moment you checked into your flight and received your boarding card, only the airline’s customer support staff can handle any inquiry. If you have missed a connection flight because the feeder flight was late, you need to contact the airline immediately and ask for a solution. They might offer a seat on another flight, possibly with another airline, or a hotel room and a seat one or more days later. Maybe you could finish your journey by rail, bus or car. In some cases the airline will even hire a taxi to bring you home.
The same applies, if your luggage is missing. If you do not find a service official of the airline, ask an airport employee for support.
In Short:
Obviously it is better to avoid being directly affected by air traffic chaos. But if you booked your ticket through a good travel agency, your travel consultant will be an important source of information and advice, allowing you to take informed decisions. If a problem occurs after you started your flight, you have to rely for solutions on airline service staff. Ask for help immediately after the problem occurs.
