The operator of Munich International Airport has vowed to improve its emergency protocols after 600 passengers were left stranded overnight on planes last week when the airport closed during a snowstorm, and the bus drivers who could have gotten them back to the warm embrace of the terminal building went home.
The passengers were spread across six aircraft that were waiting to take off on the evening of February 19. Three of those planes belonged to Lufthansa, two from regional operator Air Dolomiti (which is also owned by Lufthansa), and one from Air Arabia.
As is common at Munich Airport, all six of these planes were scheduled to depart from what are often referred to in the aviation industry as ‘hard’ or ‘remote’ stands. In other words, they weren’t connected to the terminal building, and passengers were transported to the aircraft on special buses designed for use on an airport apron.
At the time, Munich had been hit by severe winter weather with snow and ice slowing down airfield operations. Aircraft de-icing was also taking longer than usual, stretching Munich’s daily schedule to its limits.
Unlike many airports, Munich has a strict nighttime curfew in which regularly scheduled flights are not permitted to take off or land. With the curfew fast approaching, however, passengers continued to be bused to their planes for departure.
The department responsible for ground operations wrongly assumed that all the flights would take off, but at 11:30 pm (just 30 minutes before the hard curfew came into effect), the airport extended the shifts of just two bus drivers, just in case things went wrong.
Along with a sole night duty bus driver, the entire airport, which is the second busiest in Germany, had just three drivers on duty, and two of those had to finish work at 2:30 am.
As the hard curfew came into effect, it soon dawned on many of the passengers that no one was coming to rescue them. Instead, they would be required to remain on the short-haul configured aircraft, with non-reclining slimline seats, no blankets, and no pillows for the entire night.
“With the knowledge we have today, we should, of course, have scheduled more bus drivers,” the airport admitted on Friday, following an investigation into what went so horribly wrong last week.
The report concluded that there wasn’t one single mistake that left the 600 passengers stranded overnight, but a litany of smaller errors, which was compounded by the fact that everyone involved in the ground operation thought someone else was taking charge of the situation.
Heiko Reitz, Lufthansa’s manager for its Munich hub, also admitted that the airline had made mistakes, saying that it had now developed new protocols with Munich Airport to avoid a repeat incident in the future.
Munich Airport described the situation as “operationally challenging” but dismissed concerns that safety had been jeopardised. Asked whether it had considered calling in the fire brigade to help rescue the stranded passengers, the airport said it never bothered to even alert them.
It turns out, however, that there were nearly 50 firefighters with the right training to drive the buses that could have rescued the passengers.
In the future, the airport will have an operational closing call before everyone is allowed to go home, while work to centralize the different airport ground departments is also in the works.
