Rainy Season Disrupting Flights

[PeterRS]

In all my visitis to Taipei, I have never had a problem with flight times - until yesterday afternoon. Returning to Bangkok there were a lot of clouds and we had been advised in  advance that it was raining at BKK. On several occasions an aircraft I was on from other destinations has had to circle for up to 30 minutes, usually around the Pattaya area while waiting for a rain storm to pass over BKK. Throughout my career and a vast number of flights, though, I have perhaps surprisingly only rarely experienced aborted landings for one reason or another. Yesterday the China Airlines flight had two goes at landing and both were aborted. So we had to fly up to Chiang Mai and sit there on the tarmac for an hour for refuelling before we could spend another hour flying back to BKK. By then the storms had passed and landing was easy. We were, though, four hours late.

Several passengers were understandably very concerned about their connecting flights. Arriving at 20:05 instead of 16:05 most had missed theirs and I expect one or two might have had to wait overnight. As the rainy seaosn gears up, members who might be connecting at BKK might bear in mind the possibility of rain delays when making flight bookings.