Most of the news articles that I’ve come across say it was two blankets each. I wouldn’t be surprised if the “no blankets” claim might belong in the same category as the twitter pic of Goose Bay in deep snow.
Air traffic controllers suggested diverting to Iqaluit, but the pilots were having none of it.
[self-satisfied smirk]
I’ve read three reports, including CNN, all saying - no blankets. It was the reason the all complained so bitterly about not having there luggage, from what I read.
The CBC interview of the mayor on As It Happens was amusing.
“We provided them 200 rooms,” said Lieut. Olivier Gallant, the base’s media officer. “We also arranged for them to have food service, transportation, communications and long distance telephone service so they could phone their families around the world.”
They have a great mess hall at 5 Wing and cooks made sure there was a choice of three hot meals to choose from to meet the health and religious needs of the passengers. Snacks and beverages were provided in their rooms.
“We did our best to support the passengers and make them comfortable,” said Gallant.
No thank you required.
Gallant acknowledged there were some issues with heat in just a few of the rooms and said they did their best to make repairs and other arrangements.
Sounds to me like the airline did the best they could under the circumstances. Everybody lived and eventually got where they were going. I’d rather live in a barracks overnight than have my family go through a funeral.
5 Wing public affairs officer Olivier Gallant said Monday that officials at the base did the best job they could to accommodate the passengers with virtually no notice.
“We got the call from Goose Bay Airport Corporation around midnight on Friday, requesting support for about 200 passengers and crew,” said Gallant.
That evening, United Airlines flight 958 had to make an emergency landing at Goose Bay Airport after a maintenance issue was reported.
The flight originated from Chicago and was destined for London, England.
Some passengers quickly took to social media, notably Twitter, complaining of being put up in a barracks with “no heat” and with just “two blankets.”
Passenger Simon Millward told the DailyMail.com — an online U.K.-based paper — that, “We’ve literally been dumped in the middle of nowhere.”
According the same article, others said United Airlines had no communication with the passengers for an extended period.
Gallant said 5 Wing provided 200 rooms at one of the barracks; landlines for long-distance calls for those who did not have cellphones; transportation to and from the airport; and breakfast and lunch at the mess hall on Saturday.
Gallant acknowledged there were heating issues with some of the rooms.
“We did our best to accommodate the affected passengers, but weren’t able to fix the heating problem prior to their departure on Saturday. But they had beds and blankets.”
Gallant said flights are diverted to Goose Bay fairly regularly.
“We did our best on quick notice,” he said.
“These happen quite often; I think the difference here is the amount of media attention it’s gained.”
Goose Bay Airport Corporation General Manager, Goronwy Price, said he hasn’t read all of the international media reports about the diverted United Airlines flight yet.
But he sees the publicity as an opportunity to show the “safety net” that Goose Bay provides for airplanes that are headed across the Atlantic Ocean.
“I haven’t read all of (the news reports),” he said.
“From what I have heard…one or two were disgruntled about the accommodations and how much time they were stuck here.
“You can’t control the PR (but) it let everyone know we’re here for diversions,” he added with a chuckle.
Price said he was at the departure gate on Saturday when the United Airlines passengers boarded to continue their delayed flight to London. From what he could see, most of the passengers seemed content with their emergency accommodations.
“I would say at least 90 per cent were glad they were safe and grateful of the services they received (from 5 Wing Goose Bay).”
Sounds like a tempest in a teapot.
What is their justification for them NOT putting them up in one of the 5 hotels or two B&B’s, In Goose Bay?
We’re it all that was available, I’d have no issue. But it wasn’t, in fact. But it WAS cheaper, for the airline.
And is Goose Bay unable to unload luggage? I doubt that very much. Again, easier and a money /time saver, for the airline.
I’m most curious what will happen for passengers that had ongoing connections they missed, where they may have purchased no refundable tickets. Are they just out the money? Stuck? Or will the airline hook them up? Reimburse them months from now?
Take a short drive NE to St. Mary’s (a nice town near you of similar population to Goose Bay + Happy Valley), and try to find immediate accommodations for a couple of hundred people. Ain’t gonna happen.
I found a vid that includes a room in the barracks.
“he and his wife were forced to share a single bed”
Now that’s what I call roughing it – having to sleep with your spouse. The horror, the horror!
Next time, leave Canada out of it. Just let them sit in the plane until it is fixed or another plane fetches them.
In all fairness I haven’t shared a single bed with an SO since college. We a least had a full bed!
But, it beats sleeping on the airport chair, which I’ve done when a flight was cancelled.
Five motels, times 20 rooms each, that’s 100 rooms. Airlines always double people up anyway, 200 spots. Yes, the rooms won’t all be empty, I realize. But a handful of volunteers would gladly go to the barracks, just for giggles, I’d bet. And most motels have a few extra beds around. There is no reason these people could not have been accommodated, I think.
I’m not seeing any reason the crew couldn’t go to the barracks. Got beds, get sleep, got food, where’s the problem? It’s good enough for airforce pilots surely!
So there you have it. A true emergency. Landing at the earliest opportunity. Local public off-site accommodations not available. Basic on-site accommodations available but some are substandard. In and out in less than 24 hours.
Offsite? As in ‘in town’?
Not seeing anything about those 7 motels/B&B’s not having any available accommodations. Got anything besides your own conjecture?
The motels are located less than ten minutes from the airfield, by the way!
Cookie-cutter aceplace thread: come for the outrage, stay for the backpedaling.
Jesus Christ these people would complain if we hung them with a new rope.
Nope, as with you, just conjecture. Mine is based on what I hear from my neighbour and a few clients who frequently stop over in Goose Bay en route to a hydro project and a mining project in the region, on what I hear from a couple of my clients who own motels in similar sized communities in Northern Ontario as well as from two other clients who rent out serviced houses on a per deim basis to individuals and work crews up here in the boonies, on my own experiences in having difficulty in finding accommodation and in observing people seeking accommodation being turned away in similar sized communities during resource booms similar to what is going on in Labrador, and on my staying in such places every couple of weeks.
What is your experience, direct or indirect, with finding accommodations in small transportation hub towns in a resource boom region?
More to the point, what should a carrier do? Arrange for accommodation and meals, with a minimum of complication so as to get passengers settled as soon as possible and have them ready to depart once the departure time is known.
Which better meets these objectives? An on-site facility fully equipped and staffed to provide all of the above, or a combination of off-site facilities which collectively can not meet the demand for beds and will further delay departure as people are collected the next day? The decision is a bit of a no brainer – go with one-stop shopping.
There was no indication that the heat in some of the rooms would not work. Heating failure could just as easily have happened at the motels (as has happened to me more than once), so faulting the accommodation decision on something which could not be foreseen makes no sense.
The solution to a few rooms being chilly would be to either move to another room, or ask for more blankets, so the gripes of passengers complaining of freezing all night are no more than exaggerations of what was really just an inconvenience added to what had already been a seriously scary flight.
Try looking at it from another direction. Had the people been distributed about the community (motels, motel trailers, crew houses, B&Bs, and friendly folks with an extra bedroom), there would have been more confusion and longer delays before settling in, greater difficulty feeding everyone, greater difficulty keeping track of everyone, and greater difficulty collecting everyone the next day. That would have led to complaints as to why the hell couldn’t they hadn’t been allowed to simply use the barracks.
Agreed. Keeping 200 people together as a group so they can all be easily taken back to the plane when it was ready to go sounds a lot more efficient.