WRITE A STORY ON You recently had to spend some time at the airport as your flight was delayed for a few hours.
Describe what you saw, felt and thought as you went through the experience.
Answers
Answer:
Since the 80’s, air passenger traffic has grown from half a billion to well over three billion passengers a year.
That is a lot of airplanes in the skies carrying a lot of people at any given point. And most of this traffic is concentrated around just a handful of hubs, such as London, Paris and New York.
Longer flights also come with more restrictions and regulations, with airlines often changing their routes at the last minute due to weather and jet streams. The latter gets even more complicated because of airlines’ effort to be cost effective and optimize their fuel efficiency.
Infrastructure is another issue:
Certain areas of the world do not get the same radar coverage as Europe or the United States, for example. This forces air traffic regulators to require larger periods of time between take offs and landings to ensure safety, which easily turns into a chain reaction if one or more flights are delayed.
In case you’re wondering, when your flight was delayed or cancelled due to air traffic restrictions, you are not eligible to compensation, since the decision has to be respected by the airline. It’s part of the extraordinary circumstances clause under EC261/2004 Regulation, which exonerates them from liability.
Explanation: