The Wait Continues...
19.04.10 Filed in: Travel
Complaining on a very high level: this is certainly a better alternative to thousands that are stuck in airports around the world:
Well, my hopes for a trip home today are doomed, this morning the German airspace was closed until at least 20:00h tonight, which means my flight due to arrive in Frankfurt at 18:40h is cancelled (once again).
I booked a flight to Linz on Wednesday morning, as the Austrians opened their airspace this morning - hopefully, it will remain open until then! Even if the German airspace opens up tomorrow, there will be chaos at the airport with everyone trying to get on the first plane(s) out. With my flight cancelled, it is open game with trying to get a seat.
This way, I have a very good chance of getting home late Wednesday evening - there is a decent train connection from Linz to Frankfurt airport (where my car is parked). Cross your fingers for me.
What is really annoying is that the airlines are not using simple and available methods of communicating with their customers. For every ticket I booked, I had to leave my email address - obviously, since they have to email me the receipt for the electronic ticket. You’d figure someone would implement a process that sent an email once the flight was officially cancelled, but no!
Even worse, the website of the various airlines and airports have information that is sometimes many hours old. For a while, I still had hopes that my flight to Frankfurt this afternoon on SunExpress might leave a couple of hours later to arrive not at 18:10h but at 20:10 or so (the airport was officially closed until 20:00h). The status page on the SunExpress website still has the flight as uncancelled, even though a check of the Frankfurt Airport arrivals info shows it as cancelled as of 11:00h.
The Frankfurt Airport website was down for hours on end today - both this morning and this afternoon:
Not using simple and cheap communications tools such as a website that takes just a couple of minutes to update is - in my opinion - unacceptable. I guess there is still a long way to really good customer service!
Well, my hopes for a trip home today are doomed, this morning the German airspace was closed until at least 20:00h tonight, which means my flight due to arrive in Frankfurt at 18:40h is cancelled (once again).
I booked a flight to Linz on Wednesday morning, as the Austrians opened their airspace this morning - hopefully, it will remain open until then! Even if the German airspace opens up tomorrow, there will be chaos at the airport with everyone trying to get on the first plane(s) out. With my flight cancelled, it is open game with trying to get a seat.
This way, I have a very good chance of getting home late Wednesday evening - there is a decent train connection from Linz to Frankfurt airport (where my car is parked). Cross your fingers for me.
What is really annoying is that the airlines are not using simple and available methods of communicating with their customers. For every ticket I booked, I had to leave my email address - obviously, since they have to email me the receipt for the electronic ticket. You’d figure someone would implement a process that sent an email once the flight was officially cancelled, but no!
Even worse, the website of the various airlines and airports have information that is sometimes many hours old. For a while, I still had hopes that my flight to Frankfurt this afternoon on SunExpress might leave a couple of hours later to arrive not at 18:10h but at 20:10 or so (the airport was officially closed until 20:00h). The status page on the SunExpress website still has the flight as uncancelled, even though a check of the Frankfurt Airport arrivals info shows it as cancelled as of 11:00h.
The Frankfurt Airport website was down for hours on end today - both this morning and this afternoon:
Not using simple and cheap communications tools such as a website that takes just a couple of minutes to update is - in my opinion - unacceptable. I guess there is still a long way to really good customer service!
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Disaster Strikes - the Cloud rolls in
16.04.10 Filed in: Travel
All sitting in a row - these are planes from companies like Pegasus Airlines and SunExpress, sitting like waiting ducks at Antalya airport.
If you don’t know what cloud I’m talking about, read the news. A little hint: it has to do with Iceland. Let me ask you this: can’t those guys control their volcanoes, or what? Just put a lid on it, folks!
I had planned on flying back from Istanbul yesterday (Friday), but that wasn’t meant to be. As I watched all the airports in Germany close their gates (on the web), I recklessly booked a flight to Zürich - but that was closed in the night to Saturday.
This morning, I got up at 5:00AM, saw the situation go red and booked a flight from Istanbul to Antalya and then from there on to Frankfurt, since it was one of the few flights that hadn’t been cancelled.
Just before I left Istanbul, the Antalya-Frankfurt connection was annulled (what a horrible word) and I wasn’t sure what I was going to do... the joker Antalya, that looked so bright just that morning, might be a nightmare with fewer flights going out from there than from Istanbul.
But as it turns out, I was able to re-book the flight to an early-morning (6:00 AM!) one to Stuttgart, due to arrive tomorrow (Sunday) at 8:35AM.
This evening, German Flight Control had set the null-window to 8:00AM, so I stand a chance that I’ll get home tomorrow.
If that doesn’t work out, it looks like I’ll be stuck here until Tuesday, as all the remaining flights (that might not go after all) are filled up.
Really annoying was the hotel Turkish Airlines put me up for the night in: some shoddy city job in Antalya (Cilur?) - what a dump! Luckily, I had reserved a nicer hotel (all-inclusive for 68€/night) “just in case” before flying out of Istanbul - and that is where I went.
It is the Lara Beach Hotel in - you guessed it - Lara, just east of Antalya.
Cross your fingers for me!
If you don’t know what cloud I’m talking about, read the news. A little hint: it has to do with Iceland. Let me ask you this: can’t those guys control their volcanoes, or what? Just put a lid on it, folks!
I had planned on flying back from Istanbul yesterday (Friday), but that wasn’t meant to be. As I watched all the airports in Germany close their gates (on the web), I recklessly booked a flight to Zürich - but that was closed in the night to Saturday.
This morning, I got up at 5:00AM, saw the situation go red and booked a flight from Istanbul to Antalya and then from there on to Frankfurt, since it was one of the few flights that hadn’t been cancelled.
Just before I left Istanbul, the Antalya-Frankfurt connection was annulled (what a horrible word) and I wasn’t sure what I was going to do... the joker Antalya, that looked so bright just that morning, might be a nightmare with fewer flights going out from there than from Istanbul.
But as it turns out, I was able to re-book the flight to an early-morning (6:00 AM!) one to Stuttgart, due to arrive tomorrow (Sunday) at 8:35AM.
This evening, German Flight Control had set the null-window to 8:00AM, so I stand a chance that I’ll get home tomorrow.
If that doesn’t work out, it looks like I’ll be stuck here until Tuesday, as all the remaining flights (that might not go after all) are filled up.
Really annoying was the hotel Turkish Airlines put me up for the night in: some shoddy city job in Antalya (Cilur?) - what a dump! Luckily, I had reserved a nicer hotel (all-inclusive for 68€/night) “just in case” before flying out of Istanbul - and that is where I went.
It is the Lara Beach Hotel in - you guessed it - Lara, just east of Antalya.
Cross your fingers for me!
And now, for something completely different...
12.10.09 Filed in: Opinion
Experiencing CeBIT Eurasia (Oct. 7-11) at Istanbul’s Bilişim conference center was quite interesting - as well as productive.
We exhibited with our Partner in Turkey, Trios A.S. at the Germany booth.
I’m a seasoned exhibition goer, both as an exhibitor as well as a visitor. I’ve been to many trade fairs in Germany, I’ve been to CES in Las Vegas. Heck, I’ve been doing CeBIT in Germany - with very few exceptions - every year since 1992.
Especially as an exhibitor, you tend to get a detailed view of the trade fair that a visitor never gets: setting up and tearing down. This is always fascinating to me, as you rarely get to see such order generated out of chaos within a very short period of time. Anyone that has been part of the setting-up process at the world’s largest trade fair, CeBIT in Hannover, Germany, knows this.
Unfortunately, trade fairs like CeBIT and DMS are becoming more and more of a “drag” to exhibitors, at least the ones in the ECM market. The reason for this is dwindling numbers of visitors and exhibition concepts so far removed from reality that it hurts.
CeBIT Eurasia in Istanbul was a real eye-opener for me, in that it took me back to the good days of CeBIT: here, many visitors are seeing technologies and solutions “live” for the first time, with the associated buzz. Hallways are packed, booths are swamped.
The whole thing has a touch of “wild west”, but in a good sense: where organisation of most aspects of an event are hugely overdone in Germany (have you ever filled out the forms required to get even a tiny booth at CeBIT?), here things are “self-organising”. Sure, if you need something specific (such as ADSL access), you get the “pass around”.
People seemed to be even more specialized than usual: The cleaning people passing by our booth weren’t able to lend us a cleaning rag for a minute to wipe our table off, as they weren’t instructed to do so...
But in the end, you get what you came for: new contacts and business leads.
Since business in Turkey is much more relationship-based than in Germany, CeBIT Eurasia is a good first step towards building business here in the region!
We exhibited with our Partner in Turkey, Trios A.S. at the Germany booth.
I’m a seasoned exhibition goer, both as an exhibitor as well as a visitor. I’ve been to many trade fairs in Germany, I’ve been to CES in Las Vegas. Heck, I’ve been doing CeBIT in Germany - with very few exceptions - every year since 1992.
Especially as an exhibitor, you tend to get a detailed view of the trade fair that a visitor never gets: setting up and tearing down. This is always fascinating to me, as you rarely get to see such order generated out of chaos within a very short period of time. Anyone that has been part of the setting-up process at the world’s largest trade fair, CeBIT in Hannover, Germany, knows this.
Unfortunately, trade fairs like CeBIT and DMS are becoming more and more of a “drag” to exhibitors, at least the ones in the ECM market. The reason for this is dwindling numbers of visitors and exhibition concepts so far removed from reality that it hurts.
CeBIT Eurasia in Istanbul was a real eye-opener for me, in that it took me back to the good days of CeBIT: here, many visitors are seeing technologies and solutions “live” for the first time, with the associated buzz. Hallways are packed, booths are swamped.
The whole thing has a touch of “wild west”, but in a good sense: where organisation of most aspects of an event are hugely overdone in Germany (have you ever filled out the forms required to get even a tiny booth at CeBIT?), here things are “self-organising”. Sure, if you need something specific (such as ADSL access), you get the “pass around”.
People seemed to be even more specialized than usual: The cleaning people passing by our booth weren’t able to lend us a cleaning rag for a minute to wipe our table off, as they weren’t instructed to do so...
But in the end, you get what you came for: new contacts and business leads.
Since business in Turkey is much more relationship-based than in Germany, CeBIT Eurasia is a good first step towards building business here in the region!