Air Traffic Control Again

I once commuted between Nanjing and Beijing continuously for 15 months. At the beginning, 4 hours spent on the high speed train was acceptable. It was after 12 months or so when I stated to found it intolerable because of the noise and small space. So later I switched to flights for the trip because the duration in a small space was shortened for half and, most of all, much quieter.

My flight to Beijing was delayed again today and there was no information to the exact time when it was going to take off. Airline staff at the boarding gate seems very reluctant to tell any further information except that there was air traffic control on-going. I managed to get in contact with a friend in the civil aviation industry, and he told me that the flight was expected to be delayed for 4 hours because of air traffic control due to some reasons I cannot write down here.

I sat in the airport not knowing what to do to help except checking constantly on my phone, hoping to find more information about the flight. The flight app was still blaming the late arrival of the previous flight for the delay, yet the previous flight arrive less than 40 minutes late and it had been hours ago.

I could not help recalling the flight I had when I was visiting Europe in December 2013. My colleagues and I were visiting the Netherlands and Germany for purchase of equipment. The Airbus A340-300 of Lufthansa took off on time from Nanjing and arrived in Frankfurt in advance. After EU border clearance and security check, we arrived at the boarding gate of our connecting flight to Amsterdam only to find it had been delayed.

I asked Lufthansa staff at the boarding gate, and she told me with a very comforting voice that they were expecting a 30 minute delay because of thick fog at Budapest where the aircraft was supposed to fly back from. I was satisfied because they have provided an exact time about the delay and I could do nothing but sit and wait to help.

Later the plane with the flying crane logo arrived and passengers from Budapest got off orderly. Announcement was quickly made to comfort us that the flight would be delayed for 30 minutes because of the Budapest fog, and they were really sorry for that. Their engineers were busy preparing for the next flight so everyone could stay calm and take a bit more rest. They also hope passengers could have “a really quick boarding” so that they could take us to Amsterdam as soon as possible.

Soon the gate opened and we indeed had “a really quick boarding”.

When we landed at Amsterdam, Schiphol Airport was also in a mist. Yet we were indeed only 30 minutes late.