A story of systemic meltdown
*** CAUTION: Long Post. Not Funny ***
I rarely write posts about personal matters on this blog but I think what happened with me on 6th Jan deserves a blog post…
Those of you who live and/or have visited the “developed world” know that it is rare to come across instances of complete meltdown in such a “system”.
Yet, when they do happen, the failure can be “spectacular”. I have always been fascinated by what causes such breakdowns and how can they be averted. Yesterday, I got a glimpse of one. Here is what happened in a series of time-shots…
Around 4pm at home in London: Check flight status online. BA shows a curious departure time 21:52 (too precise for my comfort). Does not look bad though…Only 27 mins late (scheduled time: 21:25). Check the trains running into Heathrow. Minor delays. Decide to leave at 5pm to allow plenty of time to get to the airport. My guess is it’ll take 2 hours today. Still snowing outside
~ 5pm @ home: Say goodbye to my little one, put my bags in the boot; Wife notices the snow turning into black ice on the roads…we both thank God that we have a 4×4.
Just before 7pm @ Heathrow Terminal 5: Get a txt message from BAA confirming flight is on time. This is looking good! Airport is crowded but not unusual…Check in my bags. Ask the guy at check-in if flight is still on time…He gives me a quizzical answer: “Not sure but should be…still some of time to go…”
@ 7.20pm: Pass through security. Curiously deserted. Don’t give it much of a thought though…thinking that the security guys must have finally got their act together.
Image courtesy: Sky news
Around 8.10pm: See a small group of semi-agitated passengers wondering where the BA staff is. Minutes later a BA staff arrives followed by at least 20 other passengers. I hear sounds of “Mumbai flight…cancelled”. Shut down my laptop. BA lady confirms flight is indeed cancelled. Guides us towards baggage reclaim (on arrivals floor – this is below Departures floor in Terminal 5) and merely tells everyone to “collect your baggage and go to Zone E in Departure to rebook”. Sounds simple…I am mildly annoyed but glad that they told us before we boarded. But things are about to get worse.
Around 8.15pm: Walk down the stairs to reach baggage reclaim area and find myself right in the middle of a sea of passengers (just mildly better than what you see on crowded railway stations in India). There is utter confusion and long, winding queues to pass through immigration control (since we are technically re-entering UK). I am feeling pretty *smart* as I sail through IRIS control (well not quite but you get the picture)
Around 8.22pm: Walking down the stairs to baggage reclaim…this is a familiar staircase for me. But I am completely unprepared for the sight that is about to greet me.
Around 8.30pm: The baggage reclaim area is in complete chaos. Half the belts are not working; The other half are packed to the brim with bags. The sign indicators have failed. There are far more people than the hall can handle…You cannot reach the belt unless you are prepared to use some DTC Bus techniques (for the uninitiated, these are techniques popular in the last 80s, early 90s to get on a crowded DTC bus that stops only for 2mins). Worse, there are at least a couple hundred unclaimed bags strewn around the floor from all around the world. The customer services counter in the baggage area has a 50-mtrs long queue. The BA staff are a mix of clueless, helpful (but unaware), calm and hassled.
One of the clever ones tells me to exit the hall – without my baggage – go to “Zone E” to rebook my ticket and come back to collect my bag. Sounds sensible. I am feeling hopeful once again…hopeful that I can rebook for tomorrow night…and hopeful that the “hi-tech” system will somehow unite my bag with me on the flight tomorrow.
~ 8.50pm: Exit customs to go to Departures; This is again 2 floors up…Reach “Zone E” where the queue for “reboooking” is easily 100+ people and only two counter-staff to handle them. It is beginning to look like a nightmare. It is getting very cold now and staff around me are getting blankets and mats for those who are stranded. The fresh supply runs out within minutes. I try and “analyse” the re-booking queue. Even at 2mins per passenger, this will easily take 200mins/ 3 hours.
Decide that a sanity check with the guy manning the queue would be worth it.
I ask him if it is worth joining the tail now.
He asks: “Are you planning to stay here tonite?”
I say, “No! whatever gave you the idea?”
He advises, “Don’t waste your time…rebook online or use the phone number – oh but the lines will be jammed…and the site is busy too…”
What do I do?
“Take your bags and go home and come back or call tomorrow“, he says.
It is now around 9.30pm.
I (foolishly) call home and ask my daughter to see if she can “beat the system” by logging on to the BA site to change my booking online! Dumb idea. She calls back to say “No luck” and asks me not to waste her time.
9.40pm: I force myself to remain calm…(breathe deeply, think of nature, the nice times, sunny places…etc). Sunny places reminds me of Mumbai where I am (still) hoping to be on Friday…
But some twisted neural connection pushes the phrase “Spirit of Mumbai” in my head. I get stressed and angry all over again.
~ 10pm: Decide that the most prudent course of action would be to abandon any attempt at re-booking; focus on getting my bag out and go home to sleep (I am now tired, cold, angry, hungry and stressed – yet magically calm on surface – at least thats what I feel). Call my wife to tell her of the change of plan. She tells me she can hear the “anger and stress” in my voice …asks me stay calm and come home. I tell her not without my bag.
Around 10.10pm: Finally find the “somewhat hidden” way to get back into the arrivals hall. Turns out it is the “Staff Entrance” – and they only allow one person at a time…and they are now really tired with all these people quueing to get in the arrivals hall…Not looking good at all.
I hear some horror stories…a father who us desperately trying to get in touch with his wife who is inside the hall (he is outside; neither of them have any mobile phones); A lady whose two children are inside the hall and who had come outside to re-book (like me – probably told by the same clever staffer) and so on…
Around 10.30pm: This is not working…I decide to wait another 30mins. The queue is moving but it is painfully slow. I am trying to reconcile myself to going home without the bag…But I realise that unless I have filed a “missing bag” report, I am not going to get anything back…
~ 11pm: An angel descends – a helpful BA staffer with sheafs of the magical yellow-form (the missing baggage form). I hastily fill it in and give it to her, making sure she has seen it and decide to abandon my place in the queue…In all the melee, the soft keys on the phone somehow manage to call my home number…and an anxious wife wondering whats going on…It is only when she says HELLO very loudly 3-4 times that I figure out something is wrong…
11.30pm: Wife pacified. I manage to get on a train home…She bravely offers to come and pick me up from the station. Shamefully, I don’t refuse (well, I have an excuse – I am not dressed for snow – having neatly packed my overcoat in my bag before checking it in).
Past midnight: Finally get home…and to a hot cup of tea…(but minus the bag)…Too exhausted and annoyed to think straight. Wife counsels I should get some sleep instead of trying to find “smart” ways of logging on to BA.com to re-book my flight.
I think she has a point.
***
7th Jan, around 6pm: I am annoyed with all this and still a bit angry…but the saddest thing is not the cancelled flight – or my still missing bag. It is the crumbling of a small dream. This morning, we formally decided to postpone the Hope Summit to another day. I am optimistic that we will have it soon.
As I said before, systemic failure is a fascinating thing to watch – as long as one is not personally involved.
The more important question is what aggravates such situations and what can be done to avoid complete meltdowns. Some thoughts on that tomorrow/ early next week (update: Part 2 here). In the meantime, do share your comments.
***
P.S. Heathrow airport is apparently on twitter but the updates stopped at around 9pm yesterday as the chaos was unfolding in front of me…
And in case you are wondering, the cold wave did not come suddenly..
Shantanu,
Awful to read about your ordeal but for many of us in India, such experiences are not out of the ordinary – the developed world has spoils us!! Jokes aside, hope you managed to recover your bag, your hopes (!) and your calm.
With regard to your question on systemic failures, may I suggest a wonderful book Six Degrees: The science of a connected Age (it is not about social networking) by Duncan Watts (though he’s a principal research scientist with Yahoo Research)? I think you will find it very interesting.
All the best and happy travels in future. Keep the Hope alive!
Sanjay
Thriving in chaotic conditions gives an edge to people of developing / underdeveloped countries over the developed ones. They are resilient and determind, far more prepared to tackle unexpected, can still smile in such condition .
Such occurences help us become humble, more sensitive and more human .
Let the thought of coming to india for the summit give you the much needed warmth in cold UK.
I’m sad to hear about the Hope Summit being postponed but I’m also amused as heck.
Having grown up in the UK, I always roll my eyes when I hear people in India talk about how great everything is in the west. Yes, there are lots of good things about the west and most of the time those things work very well. But sometimes they don’t work and then it’s a nightmare.
Just a couple of years ago there was a power outage in my home in the USA. We couldn’t do anything. We couldn’t cook since our stove is electric. We couldn’t read since there wasn’t enough light from the candles to not strain our eyes. We couldn’t watch tv or listen to the radio or sit on the computer. We couldn’t clean since the dishwasher or vacuum wouldn’t work without power. And I couldn’t work on my laptop once my battery ran out. It was like being in a third world country. And the power stayed out for over twelves hours. Can you believe it? In some places they didn’t get back internet connection for four days which was appalling to me.
By contrast, in India if the power goes people can still cook and they can still clean and they can still talk to each other. They are not entirely dependent on electricity to live their lives. It’s much more sensible.
Jai
@ Sanjay: Bags still missing but I have regained my hope and my calm! Thanks.
Will check out the book you have mentioned.
***
@ Deepak: Very true: Such occurences help us become humble, more sensitive and more human
***
@ Jai: I think “developing societies” (and by extension, systems) are much more resilient having less inter-dependencies and less connectedness…Of course you do have failures but as you have so nicely pointed out, there is a difference between a failure and a disaster!
***
By the way, it could have been worse:
Take the case of Kalkajibased Ananya Banerjee. The 18-year-old engineering student was booked to travel on Bhubaneswar Rajdhani at 5.20pm last Saturday to Jamshedpur. ‘‘ At 3am on Sunday , we found that the train had been cancelled.
Somehow, we managed to get an airline ticket for Kolkata at 2.30pm on Sunday. This flight was also cancelled due to a huge backlog of flights,’’ she said.
With no seat available on any Kolkata-bound flight that day, she finally went to Mumbai and from there she flew to Kolkata from where she travelled to Jamshedpur.
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By contrast, in India if the power goes people can still cook and they can still clean and they can still talk to each other.
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Jai, I wasn’t aware that one cannot do that during a power outage in the US. 🙂
/tongue-in-cheek
Shantanu, must’ve been a frustrating experience for you, and hope you reach the Hope Summit. Would video conferencing (though not the same) help for the time you’re stuck in UK?
I guess there are higher expectations (wrt systems and their working) while living in the west, so it’s great when the system works like it is supposed to 99 times, but the other side of that coin is your experience when the system doesn’t work that one time.
Shantanu,
Sad to hear that you had to postpone the summit.
But on the other side, such incidents make me feel better that such systemic failures are not just unique to India. In fact, at times I feel that considering the extra challenges that India faces largely due to the huge indian population and consequently huge stress on indian systems (transport, administrative etc.), it is unfair to expect the indian systems to work at par with their western counterparts.
Most systems in west work well largely because they are just not stressed enough. They are infact just not designed to handle that extra load in those extreme one-off cases, like the one you faced at Heathrow. Increase the load on the western systems only for a single day to near-indian levels and the system fails more spectacularly than Indian system ever would/does.
This reminds me of a particular experience in Germany that I had in summer 2006. That was the Love parade day in Berlin and I was going from my town Kaiserslautern (south-west Germany) all the way to Berlin for the love parade using the german local train system.
Now I must add beforehand that normally the german train system is the best public transportation system that I have seen anywhere in the world so far. Trains are never late, not even by 2 minutes. And in case of connecting trains, the automated system is such that it even estimates the walking time required to go from one platform to another and even if there is a 2 minute time gap between two trains, one can be sure of never missing the connection. And, needless to say, the stations and trains are immaculately clean !
Except, of course, on the love parade day when the train system totally collapsed. That day I was amazed to see trains consistently got cancelled or were running late. Not only this, just like indian general class compartments, people were actually traveling while sitting crouched on the top luggage shelves. In front of me, one German even broke one of the glass window panes of the moving train and just threw it outside!
Toilets got choked and were overflowing even upto outside of the toilet onto the seating area. And, believe it or not, I actually saw whites openly urinating on the platform tracks. 4-6 in a row !!! (One gratifying experience of my life, I should say! 🙂 )
And this was only because the rail system could not cope with the increased traffic moving towards berlin all at the same time.
Made me look at india’s systemic shortcomings in perspective.
@ Kaffir: I did consider video-conferencing but given that the key objective of the meeting was to establish personal realtionships and trust, it may not have worked…We are considering rescheduling within the next 3 months.
You are totally right re. “higher expectations (wrt systems and their working) while living in the west” I think I have become spoilt!
***
@ Harshit: Thanks for sharing your experience…Your story reminded me of a wonderful article I read a while ago about the management of Maha Kumbh – the largest gathering on earth. I should dig that up ..It was one of the series in a book titled, “Ideas That Work” (if I remember correctly). Has anyone else come across the book/article?
By the way, I agree with you that “considering the extra challenges that India faces largely due to the huge indian population and consequently huge stress on indian systems (transport, administrative etc.), it is unfair to expect the indian systems to work at par with their western counterparts.”
And you are spot on: “Most systems in west work well largely because they are just not stressed enough.”
***
All: Some basic ideas (to manage such situations) in Part 2 here. Pl share your thoughts.
Kafir,
I was being tongue-in-cheek when I wrote that people in India can still talk to each other in a power outage.
In the USA being social is only possible if you have a well ordered calendar. People make appointments to see their friends months in advance and are just too busy at any other times to visit each other.
And what with technology being so much a part of our lives, it really does seem like people don’t talk to each other anymore. They phone or email or text but they don’t sit down face to face and talk. That would take too much time, you see.
So when there’s a power outage and people can’t email or watch tv or use the phone then it is awkward having to talk to each other. Especially having to talk to the people they live it. Western people aren’t used to it.
Jai
Jai, I was pulling your leg, yaar. 🙂