Lanie L.
Yelp
Reason #1358 why Germany is better than America:
How they handled thousands of stranded passengers in the middle of the night.
Here's the backstory:
Kyle H. and I traveled from the US to London for a layover. What should have been just a few hours in between flights got continually delayed until we spent almost half a day in the UK. When we finally got onto our flight to Berlin, we were exhausted, but relieved. About halfway to Berlin, our pilot gets on the intercom to notify us that the Tegel Airport had discovered WWII era bombs and the entire airport was on shut down. W.T.F.?!
[And yes, apparently it is not surprising to find old bombs from a war that happened 70 years ago]
Anyway, the airport is shut down and we're in the air, so what do we do? We fly to Hannover instead.
So we fly into Hannover and land in the middle of the night. We are 3 hours drive from Berlin. What the eff do we do now? When we deboard the plane, we see that there are literally thousands of stranded passengers asking the same question. We even made friends with another American traveling for work and agreed to pitch in on a rental car if the airline can't find a solution for us.
But there was no need for Plan B. Hannover Airport, despite it being the middle of the night and receiving thousands more people than expected, was READY for us. They got on the intercom and started telling passengers from various flights to head to various ground transportation exits. To cut to the chase: within 45 minutes of landing in Hannover, we were on a charter bus with the rest of our flight driving to Berlin. They had a whole FLEET of buses and bus drivers ready to drive hundreds of stranded passengers to their final destination! We arrived in Berlin hours later than planned, but for the situation, it was the smoothest it could've went.
Now I ask my fellow Americans, have you heard of any American airline/airport doing that? If you have, please let me know the story because if this situation happened in America, the outcome would most likely be an unapologetic apology and a standby flight at the most inconvenient time the next day or so. (And don't even expect any compensation of any kind).
Major Kudos to Hannover Airport for being so prepared!