Failure to check NOTAMs

Another thing that really annoys me, its when one of my ops guys fails to read the NOTAMs for a departure, destination or diversion airfield. 9 out of 10 times this doesn't affect the flights for the day, however, I walked into the office this morning to a commercial headache.

We had a paying client who had booked a flight from Cherbourg to London at 1000 UTC, he had arrived at the FBO expecting to be able to walk straight onto the aircraft. When he and the crew went to board the aircraft, they were told by the handling agents that they would not be able to fly until 1100 UTC due to runway closure. It then transpired that the runway closure had been posted in the Airfield's NOTAMs 5 days before.

So then we had to talk to the client's broker to explain that we had missed a NOTAM during the planning process, and his client would be delayed by at least 1 hour. Understandably, both the broker and client were very unhappy and expected a partial refund. 

The reason for the runway closure? BBC Top Gear had booked the airport to film some footage for the new series.

This goes to show how closely you need to pay attention to the little details when planning or booking a flight for a paying customer, especially posted airport or airspace notices and NOTAMs. Like I mentioned earlier, you can get away with not paying attention to these 9 out of 10 times, but when you get caught out that one time, it causes a major financial and operational pain in the arse...