With Storm Sabine flooding streets and knocking down trees and power lines, all flights were suspended from Munich Airport. That created a de facto refugee camp in the terminal halls of Germany’s second largest airport.
Storm Sabine (called Storm Ciara in non-Germanic countries) has brought destructive winds and rain across the United Kingdom and Continental Europe. The German state of Bavaria, which includes Munich, was hit particularly hard.
My business partner got caught in the winter storm, arriving on Sunday morning and finding his flight to Frankfurt was cancelled, along with all other flights. He was rebooked on Monday but nearly every flights, including his, were also cancelled again.
Two days without flights creates a bottleneck at a hub airport. While my business partner was accommodated at the Hilton Munich Airport, others–including first class passengers–were not so fortunate.
Take a look at these pictures:
Weather does not trigger compensation under EU261, a European Union law which protects consumers from delays within the control of airlines. That meant airport cots and packaged snacks for most travelers.
My business parter was traveling first class on Lufthansa, but even first class passengers were not all accommodated. He spent yesterday at the airport trying to get out and witnessed explosive verbal conflict between passengers and Lufthansa staff at the first class check-in desk. Unsurprisingly, the Hilton filled up and first class passengers were being accommodated at a Holiday Inn and being told to take a shuttle there. That did not fly for many passengers. Poor agents…
Flights are again operating today, but a backlog of passengers remain.
These sorts of delays can happen anywhere, but I cannot imagine spending a full day just waiting in line only to be rebooked on a flight that would soon be cancelled anyway. In all my years of travel I’ve never been caught in a storm like that at a transit point.
For those in Munich, I hope you make it out quickly!
I work near the MUC airport. We were watching FR24 Monday morning, and everything was canceled or diverted. Except a couple lone A320s, one Finnair and one Aeroflot. They just flew right in and landed. Just a little wind for them 😉
If only all refugee camps were this nice…
I don’t get why airlines struggle so much to handle delays and cancellations. Surely there are things that can be simulated and get people trained for. I my company we simulated and trained for (massive) disasters.
This kind of mess demonstrates lack of preparation and lack of readiness. I had a very bad experience with Austrian where a predictable delay was not anticipated, resulting in hundreds of people that needed to be rebooked and accommodated. Similar events on SQ resulted in SQ staff waiting at the gate with new boarding passes, and all went smooth. Simply because SQ anticipates and acts accordingly.
I’d sooner be in the ‘luxury’ of the Airport Holiday Inn than being on one of those last flights to land or leave ( now prominent on Twitters and YouTube).
I got stuck in the Beast From the East a couple of years ago, twice …once at LHR, the other at LCY ( 24 and 36 hours). No amount of hostility is going to alter the fact of being stuck, so it’s better just to accept it as the ‘luck of the draw’. I was in no rush to leave.
Wait you mean the airline can’t magically create new hotel rooms EVEN FOR FIRST CLASS PASSENGERS?!? Horror upon horrors. What if some…gasp…economy passenger just PAID for a room and TOOK one from a first class passenger who now has to sleep at the Holiday In??? Scandal.
@ Matthew — Holiday Inn can’t be that bad, especially for one night, mostly spent sleeping and eating. Some people are truly full of themselves.
Seriously. Get over it. Anyone who’s never spend a night on an airline floor has never done much traveling. Good lord.
I nearly had problems due to Storm Ciara on Sunday, when BA canceled my LHR-MAN connection. It would have “only” been a 12-hour delay, but I told them forget it and just rented a car and drove from Heathrow to Manchester instead. Not a bad drive on a Sunday morning actually. In England, it seems BA at least pre-canceled a bunch of flights, so those that actually operated ran without much delay.
Airline margins are thin as it is; they can’t put extra staff on payroll. So when you get a cancellation, it’s ugly. It’s doubly bad-looking when you realize that elite travelers are getting taken care of quickly and usually off the floor. Passengers only see other passengers waiting in line. Now, do that to a hub, and that’s what you get. Can you staff for 100 percent cancellations and make a profit?
And yes, elites get faster treatment. They also get more IRROPS than your average passenger.
I was one of the people landing in Munich early Monday morning from US.Kudos to our captain ,who despite the weather, landed us safe to the destination!I was supposed to take a short flight from Munich later that morning. That didn’t happen,I was rebooked 3 times.I booked my own hotel room @ the Hilton while I was in line to a rebook a flight, (online Hilton had no rooms available,but over the phone I was able to secure a room) when I realized no one is getting out of the Munich airport so I can at least have a bed to sleep in that night.The Lufthansa employee who rebooked my 2nd flight could care less that I was stuck there over 24 hours and made my next flight even worse (robooked me with a connection for a short 1.5 hour flight) ,I stood in 3 different lines for several hours ,when she could ‘ve booked me on a direct flight which had seats available! (my original flight rhat was cancelled twice) !!! Another employee tried to fix the problem ,but the system she was working on didn’t allow her to rebook me.My only option was to wait in line for 6-8 hours to try and re-book again.Luckily I had help due to personal connections…..not because of Lufthansa.Their contribution for my >24 hours stay in Munich was 47 euros in food vouchers. The lost time,hope ,luggage doesnt matter.They will do the least amount of work to help you . My advice in cases like this is to be proactive and take charge,do not rely on the airline or you will sleep in the airport!
Yes, well that sounds sadly typical of Lufthansa, characterised as it is by arrogance, a ‘take it or leave it’ mentality, presumably based on a ‘we’re too big to fail’ mindset.
For all Matthew’s common sense on most issues, I don’t get his unquestioning loyalty to Lufthansa ( recent Y breakfast notwithstanding). In my experience LH ranges from the very ordinary to the just plain awful. Then again, he likes United, so maybe that’s a clue.
If you read Matthew’s posts I don’t think you would find anything resembling unquestioning loyalty to LH except for award flights in First.
He’s been critical of their policies many times and critical (see his most recent LH coach review) of their products in J and Coach.
Correct! I love first class on LH and the lounges in FRA/MUC, but that’s about it.
Don’t EU regulations require airlines to provide hotels and meals regardless of the reason for the delay? They have to pay compensation if it their fault, but I thought the hotels and meals applied to every cancellation.
I had a similar situation last year during the floods in Mumbai where my wife and 6 month old daughter spent the night at the airport waiting for a Lufthansa flight – at a very nice lounge luckily due to business class/Star Gold status (wonder why they checked us in in the first place) – that was diverted to another city. After 8 hours overnight at the airport, they abruptly decided to kick everyone out of the airport to flooded roads with no transportation even for business class and Star Gold. Smart! There were super long lines and I finally just started calling random area hotels to see the biggest SUVs/vans they could send with a bunch of people to help us. I was done putting my faith in Lufthansa. Got to the hotel and grabbed one of the last rooms. Got reimbursed for everything using my CSR. BTW, it took 3 more days and 3 more cancelled flights to get back Stateside. Lufthansa is not the best when it comes to customer service during moments of crisis.