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Heavy snow in france

Heavy snow in france

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Started by Snapzzz in Snow Forecasts and Snow Reports - 10 Replies

J2Ski

Snapzzz
reply to 'Heavy snow in france' posted Jan-2012

Tony_H wrote:
Snapzzz wrote:Well, our plane took off only a third full. Many people were stuck in resort and unable to get down of their mountain.
Not sure how much fun their NYE will be.
Crikey. Thats made a massive problem for the tour ops in terms of repatriating their passengers. Charter flights usually wait until the majority are on board before leaving people behind.
Must have been serious to get that many stuck.
Luckily ADH is only 50 odd bends and then decent roads in the valley to Grenoble.


Was a big problem for us too as we lucked out and had to wait for the stragglers.
Im guessing that as we were flying to East midlands this would be the best option to delay and pick up the delayed passengers. Because e.Mids is in the middle of the country and easiest to bus everyone out of.
We watched Bristol, gatwick, leeds/bradford/edinburgh and birmingham all leave minus some passengers....we had to wait for them...except they never came. so we left without them too.

Certainly was a quiet flight apart from the annoying kid in front of me!
Skied: Arinsal, La Plagne, Alpe D'huez, Flaine, Les Arcs, Morzine, Les Gets, Avoriaz, Sauze, Courchevel, Val Thorens

Edited 1 time. Last update at 01-Jan-2012

Lee.nuts
reply to 'Heavy snow in france' posted Jan-2012

we ended up missing our flight from Grenoble to Gatwick on Sat afternoon.
Apparently our first transfer bus got stuck and our second didn't bother to use snow chains to get up so was not only 2 hours late, we had to dig it out when it stopped, wheel our own luggage a quarter of a mile into the village and watch the bus slide into a local snowchained ski bus (whose driver put ours in his place!!)
The journey down was very hairy, with the bus loosing one snowchain at one point. The bus company obviously only employ clowns but didn't see the words Gerry Cottle in brackets after its real name, Savioe Travel.
SkiBeat mentioned it was a chartered flight, so it would wait. But it didn't for very long and besides knowing this, they only told us just before we arrived at the airport, an hour after its departure.
The only offer we had was a flight to Manchester leaving in 30 mins and they were "trying" to arrange a coach transfer to Gatwick. No time to decide whether to book onto an EasyJet flight to Gatwick, but then again that would have cost £360 for the four of us and we had no guarantee of getting a remaining seat.
We took the Manchester flight, which took off 2 hours late as it continued to wait for our other passengers (shame the original flight didn't wait for that long, we would have made it!!)
Got into Manchester at about 9.30pm and the bus got us to Gatwick at around 1.30am to collect car and the head back up to Herts for about 3am!

I only have 2 gripes as I think the weather was bad enough to create some serious problems (including an avalanche that delayed one bus of passengers)
That is contracting a local coach company who did not even use, or know how to use snow chains. I believe we could have had made our flight if it wasn't for this (especially as the roads deteroriated in those wasted 2-3 hours).
The second is SkiBeats lack of communication and opt to play the numbers game with passengers (I was fortunate to be on the Manchester flight, but presumabley later coaches would have been dropped at the airport with no way home (and Grenoble is not a large airport!!)
I had a fantastic time in one of their catered chalet, but these two points will mean I will question whether this company is worth the premium!

Tony_H
reply to 'Heavy snow in france' posted Jan-2012

lee.nuts wrote:we ended up missing our flight from Grenoble to Gatwick on Sat afternoon.
Apparently our first transfer bus got stuck and our second didn't bother to use snow chains to get up so was not only 2 hours late, we had to dig it out when it stopped, wheel our own luggage a quarter of a mile into the village and watch the bus slide into a local snowchained ski bus (whose driver put ours in his place!!)
The journey down was very hairy, with the bus loosing one snowchain at one point. The bus company obviously only employ clowns but didn't see the words Gerry Cottle in brackets after its real name, Savioe Travel.
SkiBeat mentioned it was a chartered flight, so it would wait. But it didn't for very long and besides knowing this, they only told us just before we arrived at the airport, an hour after its departure.
The only offer we had was a flight to Manchester leaving in 30 mins and they were "trying" to arrange a coach transfer to Gatwick. No time to decide whether to book onto an EasyJet flight to Gatwick, but then again that would have cost £360 for the four of us and we had no guarantee of getting a remaining seat.
We took the Manchester flight, which took off 2 hours late as it continued to wait for our other passengers (shame the original flight didn't wait for that long, we would have made it!!)
Got into Manchester at about 9.30pm and the bus got us to Gatwick at around 1.30am to collect car and the head back up to Herts for about 3am!

I only have 2 gripes as I think the weather was bad enough to create some serious problems (including an avalanche that delayed one bus of passengers)
That is contracting a local coach company who did not even use, or know how to use snow chains. I believe we could have had made our flight if it wasn't for this (especially as the roads deteroriated in those wasted 2-3 hours).
The second is SkiBeats lack of communication and opt to play the numbers game with passengers (I was fortunate to be on the Manchester flight, but presumabley later coaches would have been dropped at the airport with no way home (and Grenoble is not a large airport!!)
I had a fantastic time in one of their catered chalet, but these two points will mean I will question whether this company is worth the premium!


We had a similar experience on the way OUT to ADH 2 seasons ago, far too much snow and Grenoble airport closed so we ended up in Geneva. No buses to transfer, no reps about, no communication and worse still no luggage as it had been deliberately left at Gatwick so we could get out quick after a lengthy delay. This was Ski France who did try hard to apologise but its easy just to blame the weather and say "nothing we can do".

The business of snow chains on the buses is seriously worrying as I saw 2 buses go off the road between Val Thorens and Les Menuires a few years back as they tried to get off the mountain having dropped people off. Our bus was the last one off that evening, in did have chains, but the driver was slightly mental smoking in one hand, mobile phone in the other, trundling down the snow covered road (and thats one Mother of a narrow and steep road) until he came across the 2 buses which had gone off the road. Somehow managed to get through the gap and deliver us to meet our connection.
www  New and improved me

Topic last updated on 02-January-2012 at 14:09