This morning I should have been accompanying my 94 year old father on the 7:55am flight from Wellington to New Plymouth. Given the numerous "weather bomb" warnings, I was convinced this flight would be cancelled, but on checking at regular intervals from 6am onwards, the Air NZ web site, mPass and the flight information phone number all said that the flight was scheduled to depart on time. I attempted to double check this by ringing reservations, but gave up after waiting 20 minutes and departed for the airport anyway.


Needless to say, on arriving at the airport, the flight had been cancelled. However mPass was still telling me that it was scheduled to leave on time. I would have thought that all of this information was feed from a single source, so that if the departures board was showing cancelled, then so should everything else. This is obviously not the case!


Organisations who attempt to streamline their operations through the use of technology (and in so doing remove our ability to interact with actual people) need to be committed to keeping information timely and up to date for it to be of any use whatsoever. Given the number of people who were at the airport, there were probably a large number who were also mislead as to the real state of flight departures.