A Condor jet missed the evening curfew at Munich Airport by a few seconds, and was therefore diverted to Frankfurt-Hahn some 375km away, where (presumably) there is no such curfew.
The passengers – seconds from landing where they needed to be – ended up with a 40 minute flight to an airport miles from home, and were then bussed to the real Frankfurt airport and caught a morning flight back to Munich.
Gesunder Menschenverstand existiert hier nicht.
That’s about 21 extra tonnes of CO2 added to the atmosphere completely unnecessarily.
These sort of things really do make you ask yourself: “What is the point?”.
It’s just like Sean Lock says:
I feel like I’ve turned up at an earthquake with a dustpan and brush.
And yes, this is Germany, so rules are rules, but honestly, we’re talking a few seconds here, not even a few minutes. Would anyone really have noticed? Well yes, of course, because you know that there is some Helmut who complains that the flights keep him awake each night, but then stays up each night anyway checking that the rules are adhered to (the rules allowing him to go to sleep at a normal hour).
And so he then stays up to listen to the planes that would have kept him awake if he’d gone to bed.
You know the type.
We all know the type.
The irony is that in having to abort the landing, the plane probably made more noise than if it had actually touched down. But don’t let’s allow that sort of sensible thought slip into this story.
The passengers who were so close to arriving where they needed to be, albeit ever so slightly later than they needed to be there, eventually flew back some 8 hours later. And, in a delicious twist of irony, they arrived back at Munich airport slightly after their original plane got there.
Everybody loses. Including the environment.