22/04/2010
NEWS STORY
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In an e-mail to Pitpass editor Chris Balfe, Bob Constanduros reveals that a lot of the inhabitants of Planet Paddock are still stranded in Shanghai. Bob has given us permission to publish the e-mail in full.
Hi Chris,
You might think from the news that all is well and hunky dory in the world of air travel, now that the skies above Europe are open for business again. Well mate, let me tell you, it aint!
By my reckoning, there are well over 350 F1 people still stranded out here in Shanghai, costing their employers at least £100 per day and that's not including the flight home. To be honest, they are mainly people who should be heading for Britain on either BA or Virgin - and they include the Virgin F1 team.
I'm one of them - although by my own admission, if I'd got off my butt and shelled out the odd thousand quid here or there I might be home now, albeit by tortuous means. Those that are home either lucked into the first half empty BA flight that left here on Tuesday night or went via Dubai, where Emirates had the extra capacity to lay on flights to relieve the backlog. Flights snuck into Nice on Monday and Tuesday and those who were on them, which included a lot of Grand Prix drivers enjoying the delights of economy class, then had to make their way home, usually by car, coach or train - the latter two overcrowded.
But it's that extra capacity that BA and Virgin just don't have. Virgin were very efficient at telling me by e-mail and text that my flight was cancelled on Saturday. They even phoned me on Sunday to tell me that I had a booking on May 4, 15 days later. Since then, things have gone very quiet. The regular bookings are being honoured for the flights leaving at the moment, and there's a backlog to clear if there's any extra space. That backlog starts with the 300-odd people whose flights were cancelled on the first day of the crisis.
I booked my flight via Travel Places, Formula One's very efficient travel company which looks after the majority of the UK-based teams plus others like Formula One Management and Bridgestone, and odds and sods like me. I think most of us were booked back via BA and Virgin and we're all in the same boat. Travel Places have Nick and Marie out here, and the staff back in UK working to get us home, and I think they have given up on our regular airlines because a charter looks on the cards today or tomorrow. It's not cheap though, and will be costing those in the back some £1500.
All the UK-based teams apart from Lotus are seeking space on that charter. Tony Fernandes of Lotus owns AirAsia, of course, and got his guys plus Cosworth and some journos out on a flight to their Kuala Lumpur hub fairly rapidly and wanted to be the first flight into Stansted (ugh) when it re-opened, although I can imagine Ryanair sending up a plane specifically to bring it straight back down to claim that accolade in the kind of cheap publicity stunt they specialise in. I'm sure AirAsia's flight landed days ago, so that was probably a good move.
There are others scattered all over the place. Some colleagues went to Delhi today, with an onward business class booking, so they will jump ahead of all the poor souls camping out there in considerable heat. Another colleague, due to be running in the London Marathon this weekend, has gone to Vietnam to see his brother. Elsewhere there's a guy in New York intending to fly to Portugal today, hire a very expensive car, drive the length of that country and then take a ferry to Portsmouth. Kevin Eason, of the Times, is getting married this weekend. Not sure where he is.
But the rest of us are still here. It's not even nice weather: misty and often wet. I'm holed up in a fairly cheap hotel, but there are several teams staying at the Hilton round the corner. BBC World keeps us up to date with what's going on, but we know that flights are now OK, it's just passengers who aren't, and specifically those whose flights were cancelled.
The first thing us media folk had to do was to get our visas extended, something which the press office at the circuit were fairly efficient at doing. About 40 of us turned up at the allotted hour at some grand government building, where we were helped by three staff from the press office. Frankly, it wasn't badly handled from the Chinese side; it was the throng of Europeans who were making things seem faintly chaotic. In the end, about ten Finns (including ex-GP driver and now TV pundit JJ Lehto) and Brits actually got their visas extended but had to go back the next day to collect their passports, when the £16 process actually took a couple of minutes.
Since then we've done a bit of sight-seeing, shopping maybe, a bit of work, I've done my VAT return. We're on the internet, we've got beer (but at £4 a pint, Chris, you'd hate it), I like oriental food (as you know) and there's a Starbucks and a Tesco round the corner (no kidding!).
But we all want to go home! There's only so much of this we can take and it must be costing Bernie a fortune to keep his FOM TV guys out here. I was told that there were 300 of them. McLaren, Mercedes, Red Bull, Williams, Renault, Force India, Virgin and Bridgestone are also here, although Red Bull might have jumped on a China Airlines flight this morning, which seemed to have capacity for their 40 guys at £1k a pop.
Meanwhile, our charter is here, apparently, but there's a problem with landing and take-off, so just as we thought we might leave today, it looks like tomorrow. Bernie's been trying to pull strings, apparently, but so far without success. The situation changes, so while I'm expecting to be on the charter, I might be on anything else! Talk to you soon - perhaps.
Bob
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Although Bob informs us that BBC World keeps him and his colleagues informed, we thought he'd want to know some of the major news stories from back home, such as the fact that Tottenham have seriously dented the league aspirations of both Arsenal and Chelsea.
Despite his slick performance on the first Leaders' Debate, it looks like its all unraveling for Nick Clegg and the Lib Dems while the latest unemployment figures, at 2.5m, the highest for 15 years, are hopefully the final nail in Nu Liebour's coffin. Incidentally, the first episode of Britain's Got Talent attracted almost double the viewers that the Leaders' Debate pulled in - the great unwashed appear to have their priorities right.
Other than the Volcanic ash crisis and the election, the news is dominated by the same old things that, with every day that passes, demonstrate that Bernie Ecclestone's prediction of Britain becoming a Third World nation was bang on the money, only much quicker than expected.
Tomorrow (Friday) is St George's Day, and also the birthday of William Shakespeare, the Pitpass team will raise a glass of ale to both… and another on Saturday when Tottenham beat Manchester United, though we might roll over in order to further damage Chelsea.
p.s. Even though they might be stranded all over the globe, the British media is still finding ways to stick it to Michael Schumacher, though Bernie insists that Schumi will start winning soon.