Update on Sunday 18 April – 15h Riga Time

I was at Riga Airport again this morning because, guess what?, my rebooked flight has been cancelled again. I want to underline how Air Baltic people are professional and nice. The situation, in terms of mess, has positively evolved: line was only 45 minutes long. There is an Air Baltic lady scanning the line, asking people why they came and discarding those for whom she can provide information or for whom the waiting is useless: if their flight is not cancelled yet, for example. There is a water fountain and glasses. Two little touches that change a lot the feeling: you are taking care of. Kiddos to Air Baltic then.

There were few people in the airport. It didn’t look like many, if any, passengers had slept here. Most anguished people I met and talked with were a Chinese couple and a Canadian group. They feel far far far away from home, for sure. I advised the Canadians to head for Spain and catch a plane to Mexico. At least, you’ll be on the right continent. We all laughed at the weirdness of the proposal. They said they’ll wait for Amsterdam airport to re-open.

On my personal front, I dropped the idea of flying this week. A very good friend of mine left Brussels this morning to pick me up by car. We’ll ride back together from Tuesday morning and I should be back with my family on Wednesday night. I feel lucky to have such a friend. Maybe my current analysis of the situation will turn wrong. At the time of writing, I don’t see why flights would start again tomorrow. Of course, I’ve read about the tests they did with empty airplanes and I wouldn’t like to be the civil servant nor the Head of State who would say: OK, let’s allow everyone to fly through this harmless cloud of ashes. Tell them about responsibilities.

Anyway, the best Air Baltic could offer was a seat on Tuesday night. One more day in a car won’t make any difference. The real difference is purely psychologic. I have a plan. I can now stop triple checking all BBC and news website every five minutes. By the way, if you think our EP website is complicated, try this one.  But their use of Twitter is really great. Exactly how an institution or an administration should do – check their time-line.

Good luck to all people under the cloud. I hope my next post will be written and published from Brussels ;-)

Original post:

I am writing this almost live from my favorite Café in Riga. I am stuck in the city for three more days than expected (at the time of writing) because of a certain icelandic ash cloud. Report from a lucky refugee.

NB: if you are trapped in an aiport, check your passengers rights here.

I was sent to Riga for a conference about social media. Initial plan was to stay two nights and come back on Friday morning to Brussels. On Thursday morning, before heading to the conference, I watched the volcano eruption on BBC World. My Twitter time line started to show signs of cancelled flights in the U.K. I didn’t think it could concern me. That shows how bad I am when it comes to stratospheric thinking.

By the end of the afternoon, the Belgium sky was closed. Then the Northern French airports. All flights from Riga to Brussels were cancelled too – but only Thursday’s ones. At 20h00, I did two smart things. I booked two more nights in my hotel and I went to the airport to evaluate my chances of flying the next morning. In the taxi ride, I checked Internet news: they announced the closure of Riga Airport until Friday 18h00. Once there, the airport staff didn’t know. They told me not to bother queuing at Air Baltic desk since my 6 o’clock flight was not officially cancelled yet. I showed them my cell phone where they could read it was.

Virtual world lost even when it was right.

At 20h30, the line looked like a four hours time of waiting. The atmosphere was tense. Some of the angry passengers could soon turn their back to civilization to jump on good old cannibalism, I thought. It’s amazing the variety of weapons one can craft from a suitcase and a cellphone, mind you.

Back to my hotel, I packed and had dinner. At 23h00, I decided to go back to the airport. My strategy was that I’d better queue for two hours now then getting up at 5h00 in the morning. Once at the airport – where the news of Friday’s closure has turned official IRL, the queue had barely reduced. Maybe by a quarter. I took my place in the line. Ahead of me, a Finnish couple back from Paris had just finished three hours of waiting in another line. They were distressed – in their own quiet Finnish way. All ferries and buses to Finland were full, they told me. They left the line 15 minutes after. “We’ll try another solution” the husband said. As a fine connoisseur of the Finnish “sissu” (heroic courage but also stubbornness), I suspect they’re walking their way to Tallinn.

My new neighbors were two American teachers. They were in transit to Israel when their flight was cancelled. They had no news of their students, who were transiting via Vienna. I checked on the net: Vienna airport had not closed yet, so their pupils might well be on their way to the Promised Land. They didn’t know if they should be more worried having their students in Israel or in Austria. They asked me in which country was the closest train station. They were considering heading South, with a blurred concept on which actual South that would be. The South to Austria? The South to Caucasian Sea? I found interesting that their second major concern (after the sake of their students) was the impact on the economy. And immediately after, they narrated where they were on 9/11. How flights were cancelled. How they were crying and surviving in business class lounges. I told them that on 9/11, I was in a pizzeria in Paris – everyone remembers where they were, don’t they?

See the cloud? I am under it. (c) BBC

After one hour of queuing, I barely had progressed. After 30 minutes more, maybe two groups of people had made their way to the desk, far, far, far away, in another galaxy from where I was standing. There were families, foreigners, crying babies. The tension was less palpable. It was more the sense of extreme tiredness, anguish about the close future.

I couldn’t help my brain analyzing the situation as the professional coordinator I am. You see, dealing with mess is mostly what I am paid for. I am good at it, possibly because I am psycho-rigid. All around me was a raw, pure, huge mess. It was like a fountain of crack for a wanna be pop-star. And my coordinative brains suggested this for all people working in airport when a crisis like this happens.

1. Stand-up and talk. People were distressed, in an alien land, and they were given very little information. You need someone to speak out loud and tell them. What’s going on. How long it’s gonna take and why. Because all airports are closing. Because we need to rebook you and you are hell of a lot of people. Because we are booking hotels rooms for you. People crave for information.
2. Organize a quick and dirty system of tickets with numbers. So that people don’t stand. So that family can be together, babies can be taken care of. People would be less tired and less upset. Lonely traveler wouldn’t turn paranoiac, holding their luggages and anxious to go to the bathroom and not daring to do so, in fear of losing their place in the line. Take post-it, write a number on them, give the number to people. Have the standing speaker to explain the rules. Every ten minutes if needed. Bring some authority and order. Your desk staff and the travelers would feel relieved.
3. Bring water and food. Don’t tell me there is not an emergency budget. Give those four hours stand buyers some comfort.
4. Open the free Wi-Fi. People wanted to check on news. They wanted to send e-mails, possibly to Skype with their family. To try rebooking online. It doesn’t make sense not to have free Wi-Fi in public space but it’s more than an absurd nightmare in times like this.
5. While we are on the online subject: open an online hotline. It was impossible to do anything on Air Baltic website yesterday, neither to send e-mails to anyone (I did write to the online booking as instructed. I still wait for a reply). Come on, don’t tell me “major situation leading to cancellation of most of the flights” wasn’t in your website concept. There should be a system for this. That would allow people to rebook themselves – reducing your lines.
6. Watch E.R. TV Show. There was once one instance when the Emergency room was full of injured and sick people. The waiting took ages, because of the paper work needed by American Health insurance. The heroes, leaded by Carter, decided to do their real work: to act as doctor. And they started to give consultations in the waiting room, one patient after the other, quickly and more effectively – but with no red tape. In an event like the ash cloud, everyone should act the same. Forget about the paper work, the frustrating waiting for delivering vouchers. Call the hotels you have deals with, set-up a procedure on the fly – like people with numbered post-it won’t pay, send us the post-its later.

I decided to go back to the hotel and get some sleep.

At 5h30, I was back there. If I was on Foursquare, I’d have been elected Mayor of Riga Airport, believe me. The waiting took me 40 minutes. Air Baltic people were nice and professional. I was lucky: I had my hotel booked earlier (all the hotels were full they told me), I could wait until Sunday.

I know very well and like very much Riga. I’d prefer to be with my family, of course, but there are far worse place to be stuck in than Latvia’s capital. I have my bars, my restaurants, I know the city and I have some friends around. I will certainly spend most of my time writing, taking advantage of this unexpected free time alone from a very demanding baby to put on paper some ideas. Some of our colleagues are in Khartoum, Sudan, out of cash because there is no plastic money there… I will have a thought for all travelers who are in worse situations.

And I cross my fingers for my Sunday flight.