Tricky Travel to Kraków

Last week I went to Kraków in Poland for the HiPEAC conference. Turned into one of the more dramatic-ish trips I have been on. To get to Kraków I had to go via Copenhagen, taking an early flight out of Stockholm. Maybe the choice of that early flight was not such a good idea given the properties of the airport in Kraków…

Starting out from Arlanda, there was no issue getting to Copenhagen. Despite cold and snow, Arlanda works flawlessly. But it got more exciting on the next leg.

Go-Around!

Flying towards Kraków, the weather was very nice at flying altitude, but the whole continent underneath us was covered in clouds. As we got closer to Kraków, the flight crew announced that the weather was “marginal” at the destination and that we might have to consider diverting to the secondary airport in Katowice. Still, they would give landing a try.

Turns out that the airport has limited instrument landing system (ILS) support. Too avoid any issues using it, we passengers were told to actually turn off our phones. Not just flight mode, but actual total power-down. The flight attendants checked that this did indeed happen. I have never seen that before!

With phones off and no easy to way to document it, so no photos, we dived into the fog to try to land. We finally came out of the clouds and saw the ground at a very low level. I am no pilot, but maybe 100 meters? At that point the flight crew determined that this was not sufficient for a safe landing and announced a “go around”, applying full engine power and pitching up sharply to quickly climb. That was another first for me.

An Embraer 195 is not exactly a fighter yet but lightly loaded and with full power it still came zooming out of the clouds and back into the sunshine.

Diversion

After that, we circled the airport for about one hour, hoping that conditions on the ground would improve. Looking out over the cloud landscape it was now clear just how low the clouds were. You could see some radio or television towers poking out, and how there was a ring of low mountains surrounding a bowl of clouds – somewhere in which was our destination.

Eventually, it was clear that landing in Kraków would not be possible. The flight crew instead diverted to the secondary airport, Katowice.

Katowice, despite being just some 60 kilometers away, had brilliant sunny weather. Landing was easy. Retrieving our luggage took a while, but after that nothing happened. Eventually it was clear that we should wait for a bus to take us to our final destination.

Waiting for that bus took about an hour and a half. It was not entirely easy to understand what was going on, as there were lots of calls about buses for various diverted flights from other airlines. But in the end, we did get onto a bus to Kraków airport.

Driving to Kraków we saw just how bad the weather was… really bad visibility. I can understand why you would not land in such circumstances. Eventually, we arrived at Kraków airport roughly four hours late. Not too bad, actually. Could have been worse.

At this point it is probably worth pointing out that the flight crew and cabin crew handled the situation very calmly and professionally. Turning off all phones is unusual and potentially worrying. Clearly explaining why and regularly updating us on the overall situation helped calm nerves (or at least mine). It was more unusual than scary.

Not Just Us

It was not just my flight that got hit by diversions that day. Looking at the Kraków arrivals list, it seems about every second flight or so was diverted. Most of them went to Katowice, but some went to Warsaw and Frankfurt. I also met some people who talked about flights cancelled at the origin airport.

I took some screen captures of the arrivals board while waiting for the bus:

Heading Home

Given this experience, I was a bit worried for my trip home, as that was essentially the return trip of my flight to Kraków. If that plane got diverted, I don’t think they would put the passengers on a bus to Katowice exactly…

Fortunately, that did not happen.

But the flight got delayed anyway due to de-icing congestion in Copenhagen, leading to the flight arriving quite late in Kraków. On our way out of Kraków, we got delayed waiting for the de-icing.

Eventually, the flight was so delayed that I missed my connection in Copenhagen. Fortunately, SAS had another flight to Arlanda just one hour later. But then that flight had problems with late turn-around at a previous airport, and we left Copenhagen another hour late. In the end, I got home “only” two and half hours late. Not too bad, considering what happened on the way down.

A Known Problem

The issues with Kraków airport are apparently well known, but at least it should only be a problem in the winter. Afternoon flights seem to be recommended for winter-time travel to Kraków.

To me the logical solution would be to just create a single new larger airport between Katowice and Kraków. These are areas with huge populations, to be honest, and would be well served by a larger and better situated airport.