Unusual reason for late departure.

[TvrTone]

I and about 100 other passengers were sat on our 06.15AM KLM City Hopper flight to Schipol from Norwich last Friday, when the Captain informed us that we were unable to depart as the Duty Air Traffic Controller was sick and although the Deputy was on duty he was not qualified to operate in the dark! The Captain had consulted his manuals and spoken to KLM, but there was little he could do. As a result we had to wait 50 minutes for first light before we finally departed. As we had a connecting flight from Schipol, it was a bit of a rush. I wonder were we would stand financially if we had missed the connection? I will certainly be asking for a refund of my £10.00 Airport Development Tax. Or at least suggest they use it to fully train a 2nd Air Traffic Controller.

Tony

[LotusOmega375D]

There's me thinking that they sat in darkened rooms watching banks of computer screens, when in fact they're just standing in the control tower keeping a look-out with a pair of binoculars.

[Ross1988]

You are correct on both accounts. They have them in the towers to control taxiing etc, and then in the darkened rooms to control airspace corridors.

[daved]

My flight to Belfast was delayed 30 minutes on Sunday evening as the pilot couldn't be certain how much fuel we had. The tanker had delivered fuel as expected, but for whatever reason the pilot didn't know if he'd deliverd enough fuel. He could manually check the fuel level but this wasn't working so we had to wait for it to be fixed before the pilot could check and give himself the ok.