I was flying back from a client meeting a couple of days ago and had to make a mad dash to the airport to catch the last flight home (nearly killed me). I needn’t have rushed, the airport had suffered a complete computer failure: no baggage handling; no check in; since the planes were still taking off we were keeping our fingers’ crossed that air traffic control had a separate power source.

Finally, even the electronic departure boards failed. So now we had no idea when our planes might take off or even where from. Luckily white boards and felt tips never shut down unexpectedly. So we all gathered around the board in a very polite, no pushing, stiff upper lip British way and checked out the latest handwritten updates.

My flight eventually took off two and a half hours late. But the evening did have a couple of highlights: I met an old client of mine so the time flew by (even if the planes didn’t). Then before take off our captain played a blinder. Taking the mike in the cabin he explained “I normally do the hello’s from the cockpit but since it’s all been such a ruddy disaster I thought I’d come out here to address you all personally. The whole airport is affected….every airline is delayed… we’re just flown back from Nice and this crew is supposed to be going home ourselves now, but we’re all mucking in to get everyone home”.
He got a huge round of applause. The best example of P.R. I’ve seen in ages.