Great Western Coffee Shop

Quote:
Do they suggest all doors are open and we let the passengers onto the track?

Why not? if people are stupid enough to do so then they deserve to be run over! Small children shoud be supervised.

I have a brain, I would appreciate it if the "heath and safety" talibans could acknowledge this fact!

If the energy and commitment  that went into complaining /moaning about FGW and Organising Fare strikes was channelled into Supporting Andrew Haines vision we might start getting somewhere.
Insted of sitting back and letting other areas put forward a case for more funding /better services

Can't understand what the fool is on about when he compairs the train company with the bus company. They have the same parent company and contribute to the profits to that same parent company but are run as complete seperate buinesses.

That I suppose is the trouble with the " FIRSTGROUP" bashers from around this part, they don't what their on about!

Passengers on First Great Western are used to hearing the word "sorry" from Andrew Haines. The boss of Britain's least popular rail franchise sometimes gets an earthier reply from the most disgruntled customers on the rail network, especially when he is stranded with them on the 6.30pm from Paddington to Weston-super-Mare.

"Last night on the train we were stuck for 30 minutes and I had to listen to another customer's language, which probably even the Guardian would not print. Plenty of use of the c word."

Oaths have been muttered up and down the London-to-Cardiff line over the past year as FGW struggles with overcrowding, passenger protests and endemic tardiness. Last month it was voted the UK's worst rail service, hence its inevitable rechristening as "Worst Late Western", and the situation must be bad when the man who presided over the first run on a high street bank in more than a century, chancellor Alistair Darling, urges managers to "get a grip".

Haines was drafted in as chief operating officer of FGW by its parent, FirstGroup, five months ago and is working a six-day week as he toils over the franchise, alongside executing his responsibilities for four other rail services as the head of FirstGroup's rail division. He is affable, but does not exude sunny optimism about the franchise. This is in contrast with his predecessor, Alison Forster, who told the Guardian last year that "it will be a very different place in a year's time", adding that "it will be seen as one of the best operations in the UK rather than one of the worst".

Sat in a boardroom at FGW's Paddington station office, the 43-year-old Welshman mutters about finding the most diplomatic response to an impossible pledge. He outlines a turnaround plan measured in inches rather than leaps, starting with a lowering of the sights.

"Alison was clearly setting out an aspiration that, with the benefit of hindsight, was probably too ambitious and not realistic. There are big issues to tackle and we are absolutely on the right ground to do that now. But I will not promise that it will be top of the league next year. It will not be. My experience of business transformation is that it does not happen overnight."

Haines insists that the cussing customer on the Weston-super-Mare service is not representative of most passengers. Rail users angered at being shoehorned on to trains have registered their concerns: two fare strikes in the past year have made their point and FGW allowed hundreds of passengers with protest tickets, most of whom were season ticket holders anyway, to board trains. Haines finds the abusive stuff harder to take.

"You feel physically sick. I didn't feel I could do anything for that customer," he says, referring to the fact that their train was being held up by a service from another franchise. But Haines is not expecting a consoling pat on the back. Perhaps a little less ripe language would be appreciated, but FGW will lose the franchise if excuses continue to outweigh improvements.

Haines has prostrated himself since taking over. Stations on the FGW routes have been adorned with posters carrying apologies from the FGW boss and his team and passenger compensation has been doubled - 10% off their season tickets. Some of the excuses are sounding tired, no matter how impressive the promises attached to them, particularly the repeated references to the ^200m investment in train and station refurbishments that are part of the 10-year franchise. The ^200m investment was announced when FirstGroup renewed the franchise two years ago and many passengers argue it has not worked.

Anthony Smith, chief executive of commuter watchdog Passenger Focus, says Haines, a lifelong railway man who joined British Rail as a graduate manager in 1985, has the pedigree to turn around FGW. "He is universally trusted and respected throughout the industry. There is relief that he has arrived but it is a pity he has not arrived earlier." Smith adds that the ^200m programme has been crushingly ambitious, combining the overhaul of 53 high-speed train sets with a ^1.1bn government payment schedule that imposes hefty fare increases on fed-up customers.

"The task is huge, absolutely huge," Smith says. "The scale of the ambition was correct, but given the size of the task it had to be done quickly in order to get a return. First Great Western did everything very quickly at once. The company came badly unstuck, doing things too quickly on top of very shaky infrastructure, old track and old signals."

So, has FGW committed a fatal misjudgment in promising a miraculous performance? "I fundamentally disagree with Anthony Smith," says Haines. "But I can understand why he says that because our delivery has not been strong. If we are not ambitious someone else will win the franchise."

Smith insists that the sums don't add up. FGW has charged the highest fare increases in the UK over the past decade, but the ^1.1bn contract with the Department for Transport, which defines timetables and carriage numbers as well as demanding a lofty premium, is constraining the company's ability to fix its problems.

"Everyone recognises that it was a bad deal," Smith says. "Is the investment enough or does more money need to go in from First Great Western, the government or a partnership? We are getting to halfway through the franchise and it's a question of who is going to blink first."

There is not much of a staring contest to be had when government railway policy states that annual public subsidy across the network will fall from ^4.5bn to ^3bn from 2009, while the farepayers' contribution will nearly double to ^9bn. Haines says FGW will put more money in over and above the ^200m, but won't say how much or where it will be invested, although FGW is hunting down more rolling stock. He adds that the "vast majority" of FGW's profits, which represent around a third of the rail division's ^109m annual surplus, is being reinvested in the franchise. Haines won't reveal explicit figures, but one financial certainty in all of this is that fares will continue to rise above inflation into the next decade.

"We are all big boys and we decided to bid for the franchise. The government wanted to rebalance the contribution by taxpayers and we accepted that. Will there be some passenger pain? Yes."

More Trains Less Strain, the passenger group that called the fare strikes, believes the service has improved since the dark days of 2007, when FGW fumbled the introduction of a new timetable and failed to put enough carriages on. But punctuality - more than a quarter of all peaktime FGW trains arrive late - and high fares still annoy.

"It is good that Andrew Haines is there," says More Trains Less Strain's Peter Andrews. "We are pleased that he is a railway man, but until we get a franchise that is punctual, affordable and reliable, we will keep on rebelling. At the moment we are seeing none of those things."

Haines is exasperated at the group's plucky appropriation of the dark arts: "I agree to meet them and they put out a press release saying I'm 'rattled'," he says, before admitting that the company has become disconnected from its customers.

Network Rail has also driven a considerable wedge between Haines and the farepayers. The owner of Britain's rail infrastructure is responsible for maintaining a great western route whose track dates from the 1970s and whose signalling systems are a decade older. Half the delays on the consistently shoddy Oxford-to-Paddington section are due to Network Rail problems. The replacement of Forster was accompanied by a new route manager at Network Rail, confirmation that both companies had got it wrong since 2006. Haines says the relationship is much better and incremental improvements are being made all over the route, which covers the West Country down to Penzance as well as the Cardiff and Oxford routes. However, he won't put the boot into Network Rail. "Would it make the customers feel any better?" And he accepts that FGW got a lot wrong .

"First Great Western underestimated the scale of the challenge. It underestimated the strength of passenger feeling ... be it timetable changes, be it fare rises, be it service levels. It was a complex task, integrating three franchises into one, re-engineering and refurbishing a high-speed train fleet in three years."

Government sources say FGW's performance is "under a microscope", which threatens the corporate and personal humiliation of FirstGroup being stripped of the franchise. Haines says he is a turnaround specialist who restored South West Trains from a much criticised business to an award-winning franchise within years. A former British Rail colleague, Virgin Trains' chief operating officer, Chris Gibbs, says: "Passengers should know that Andrew will be leaving no stone unturned in the quest for better performance on First Great Western, and should not doubt his sheer energy and personal commitment." That reputation faces its biggest test with this franchise.

"Is it a tough job? Yes," says Haines. "Do I have phenomenal support from the top of the group? Absolutely. Our customers can be mightily unhappy and I cannot say my wife is happy either with the time I have been spending on it. But I don't feel browbeaten."

[quote="Guardian.co.uk]
Smith insists that the sums don't add up. FGW has charged the highest fare increases in the UK over the past decade, but the ^1.1bn contract with the Department for Transport, which defines timetables and carriage numbers as well as demanding a lofty premium, is constraining the company's ability to fix its problems.

Similar article link.
http://www.rmtbristol.org.uk/2008/02/boss_of_worst_rail_service_itl.html#more

Gosh thats quite a selection of articles from around the region that the RMT have put together from the last few days.

Finally, what has been the biggest thing you feel Andrew and his team have done...

From my perspective, when I ask a question, I get a prompt answer from the person responsible for the matter concerned.

That didnt use to be the case.

We finished the period with a PPM of 91.2%.

FGWs target PPM is 86.2%.

Things are improving day-by-day.

Although this weeks PPM will be shot (through no fault of FGW!!) because of yesterday evenings rush-hour Severn Tunnel farce.

I think Andrew Haines has done a marvellous job.. I've gone from arriving in Paddington late (sometimes very late) practically every single day, to arriving on time nearly all the time.. The timetable is also a lot better than it was when FGW first changed it..  Although there are still a couple of gaps in the timetable for Maidenhead, I'd much rather it is left as it is as we know that it works!!  :)

Jo, I agree with you over the vast majority of the area.

Just one service that he has NOT yet sorted out - the TransWilts - which connects the five largest towns in Wiltshire with a service that remains not fit for purpose (if you believe that the purpose is carrying passengers when they want to travel rather than meeting the DfT's daft specification).

2 years on, and a service that had been growing dramatically and where the trains were "nesting" (Nearly Every Seat Taken) in the peaks remains reduced to a "marginal time only" service - marginal time being the provision of trains when they're not needed on other lines (and, frankly, there's not much call for them in Wiltshire either).

Pilning too still remains 80% cut (a fifth of its former train service) but it's a small village compared to the TransWilts towns of Swindon, Chippenham, Melksham, Trowbridge, Westbury, Warminster and Salisbury ... which are set to grow 50% in the next 20 years and goodness only knows how the roads will cope.  I flew back into Heathrow on Friday, and found myself using National Express (actually a First group coach with every seat taken, heaters jammed on, windows sealed, no aircon!) to Chippenham and a Taxi - pretty horrid after an 8 hour flight.  We know that in these parts at least, between 8 and 10 people will use the train for every ione who uses the bus.

So - congratulations so far Andrew.   You've shown us what you can do in so many places - now please do it for us in Wiltshire where we have the area that's projected to grow the fastest in the whole South West

Oops.. Yes sorry I did mean to write he'd done a marvellous job for Maidenhead to Paddington, as that is the only experience of FGW I have.. I do hope he'll improve the TransWilts service significantly too...

First ScotRail managing director Mary Grant has become acting MD of FirstGroup^s UK rail division due to the ill health of Andrew Haines.

Mr Haines is also chief executive officer of First Great Western, taking over from Alison Forster in September last year at a time when the franchise was beset by performance problems.

During the temporary situation the day-to-day running of FGW has been taken over by acting managing director Mark Hopwood, the performance director for FGW who joined the company after being MD of London Lines.

Steve Montgomery, director of operations and safety for ScotRail, has assumed the position of acting managing director.

Mary Grant has been MD of ScotRail for four years, during which she has won a number of major rail and Scottish business awards.

A spokeswoman for FGW said: ^Andrew is on sick leave at the moment so there have been some changes for the time being.^

if rumour is to be believed then mr haines has had a nervous breakdown and is not going to be returning to FGW,the same source also said his replacement is from scotrail although i cannot remember her name.

as i said just depot rumour so watch this space i suppose

Indeed. Huge improvements in the year or so he was in charge. Can't help but think he's left before fully completing the transformation though, and wonder whether his recent sickness has caused this decision as it does seem a bit odd?

Still, it was always the intention to hand over the reins to Mark Hopwood, who's no stranger to being top-dog having performed similar roles at c2c amongst others. Mark's a clever chap - having worked quite closely with him during his early career at Thames Trains in the mid-90's, I can certainly vouch for his determination and abilities. It will be a testing time for him though as filling Andrew's boots will be no mean feat.

Mr Haines said his departure was a personal decision.

"We have made real progress in service delivery at First Great Western and I am confident that the team in place there will continue to make further improvements," he said.

"Having effectively performed two parallel, demanding roles now for some time, I have decided to take some time away from work to consider the best direction for my future career.

"This is entirely my own decision and I am grateful for the support and encouragement of the First Group board during my time with the company."

Ollie doesn't like this kind of speculation about somebodies well being, I just don't think it's appropriate to put rumours on a public forum like this,

Though it kind of tells us what we all thought about the reasons for his departure having less to do with his health and more to do with whether his face still fitted.

...It's a shame the Evening Standard looks intent on making him look bad by saying he was in charge of FGW when it got the name Worst Great Western, despite the fact it was known as that before he came in...

As far as I am concerned Andrew Haines is a genuinely nice person, he did good things for First..

RAF Typhoon training halted as ash found in engines

Training flights on RAF Typhoons in Lincolnshire have been suspended after ash deposits were found in the engines of four aircraft.
The fleet is being checked at its base in Coningsby, Lincolnshire.
An RAF spokesman said the Typhoons were "very high performance jets" so staff were "just being extra cautious".
According to the BBC's Richard Scott, the Civil Aviation Authority has pointed out that military planes fly much faster and suck in far more air than their civilian counterparts.
It says the work done with manufacturers to clear the UK for flying again did not factor in military jets, which are "a whole different world".
The CAA also says conclusions should not be drawn from the RAF's statement about the air-worthiness of civilian aircraft.
It adds that the all-clear for civilian aircraft to return to the skies still stands and there have been no reports of any ash damage.
Almost all flights across Europe are expected to go ahead on Thursday.

As someone caught at the sharp end of this, I would have much rather endured what we did for 5 days than be put at risk (probably without even being told about the risk) if the aviation industry had kept on flying.

From the BBC (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/8637978.stm):

Most civil engines are totally different to military types. Civil engines tend to be high-bypass ratio engines, this means that much of the air (and ash) doesn't actually go through the really hot bit of the engine.
So comparing military high performance jets with civil airliners is really a bit of a joke !!

So blame ice ;)

Falling ice damages roof of Bristol house

A lump of ice has left a football-sized hole in the roof of a Bristol house after it fell from the sky.
The Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) said it was likely the ice came from water leaking from an aircraft.
It is not the first time ice falling from the sky has damaged property in Bristol.
The roof and guttering of a house four miles away in Downend were damaged in July last year. And the same month a lump of falling ice fell just feet from a man sitting in Stoke Park, near the M32. Similar incidents have happened in Stoke Bishop and Staple Hill.
A spokesman for the CAA said: "We get 20 to 30 of these incidents reported to us a year in the whole of the UK. It's quite rare when you consider there are 3 million movements in UK airspace a year."
He said water leaking from an aircraft turns to ice at high altitudes which falls off as the plane descends into warmer air.
"If the person it happens to has an accurate time of when it happened we will check the air traffic control radar to see what aircraft were in the area, otherwise it's a wild goose chase," the spokesman said.
"There will probably be a handful of aircraft in an area at any time, but we can write to the operators asking them to check their aircraft."
Even if the aircraft is found, any damage caused by the ice will need to be paid for by the home owner's household insurance.

Erm, isn't that the point? The way I read the article, the CAA is saying that you should not compare military and civil jets in this context, and that the ash deposits in military aircraft are therefore not indicative of a risk to civil airliners...

Falling ice damages roof of Bristol house

....."If the person it happens to has an accurate time of when it happened we will check the air traffic control radar to see what aircraft were in the area, otherwise it's a wild goose chase," the spokesman said......

RAF Typhoon jets back in skies after ash concerns

Typhoon jet flights from an RAF base in Lincolnshire have resumed after training flights were suspended.
The fleet was grounded after volcanic ash deposits were found in the engines of four aircraft.
The Ministry of Defence said that all 11 planes were checked and no problems were reported.
The first Typhoon to take to the air, from the home base at RAF Coningsby since the grounding was the display aircraft, at 0800 BST on Friday.

Volcano ash flight ban 'might have ended sooner'

The suspension of UK flights after the volcanic eruption in Iceland might have ended sooner, the BBC has been told.
Flights resumed when manufacturers gave assurances six days after the eruption, which disrupted the plans of hundreds of thousands of people last month.
If airline engine manufacturers had specified a safe level of ash earlier, the Civil Aviation Authority says it could have reopened the skies earlier.
All aircraft engine makers contacted by the BBC declined to comment.
Ash from Iceland's Eyjafjallajokull volcano triggered a shutdown of European airspace, paralysing many airports and stranding hundreds of thousands of tourists and business travellers.
The flight ban was imposed because ash can turn to molten glass in the high temperatures of an aircraft's turbine and cripple the engine.
CAA chief executive Andrew Haines told Radio 4's The Report: "The critical path for this decision was the time it took for the manufacturers to satisfy themselves on the safe level of contamination. How long does it take for a manufacturer who has declined to determine something for many years to actually say, 'Given the evidence we've now got, we're happy to nail our colours to the mast and say that these are safe levels of contamination that don't present a hazard.'"
He said: "I suspect that manufacturers knew much of this, that they knew there was an acceptable level of safety but what hadn't happened is that they were prepared to underwrite that and validate it."
Mr Haines continued: "I suspect that a lot of these things come down to a combination of commercial and safety pressures and actually there are levels of contamination which might impact on the life of the engine without impacting on its safety. But that's only a speculation on my part.... I'm just grateful that they came to the table and worked very hard to get it resolved. If we'd had the assurances from manufacturers that we have now at the start of this crisis, the response would have been different."
Ongoing discussions about the safe level of volcanic ash to fly in had already been taking place between air regulators and the air industry, according to Richard Deakin, chief executive of the National Air Traffic Control Services (NATS). "There had been a meeting of the volcanic ash advisory group with aero engine manufacturers in March of this year, so literally a few weeks before events unfolded," he said.
The question of what might be a safe level has been widely discussed across the industry for many years.
In 1982 a BA jumbo jet flew right into a plume of ash from an Indonesian volcano and all four engines stalled, although they were eventually restarted.
The normal procedure when planes encounter ash is to fly round it, meaning that manufacturers have not had to specify "safe" levels. But the size and location of the ash cloud produced by Eyjafjallajokull, meant it was impossible to fly round it.
The government has also been criticised for its lack of leadership in the crisis.
Tim Jeans, managing director of Monarch Airlines, told The Report: "The government was not in control and I hope it will never pretend otherwise. There was no leadership demonstrated, nor has there been other than they understood there was a potential political problem brewing."
A Department for Transport spokesperson responded: "The government assumed clear and decisive control over events from the early stages of the ash crisis - it is wrong to suggest otherwise. The decision to restrict airspace was made in line with long-standing international guidelines and information from aircraft manufacturers that any volcanic ash could pose a danger to aircraft. The whole of Europe was in the same position, acting according to the same aviation safety rules."
The Report will be broadcast on BBC Radio 4, on Monday 3 May at 2030 BST. You can listen again via the BBC iPlayer or download the podcast.

Airline watchdog says industry must take share of blame for ash crisis

CAA chief executive Andrew Haines says commercial pressures and over-cautious international rules led to shutdown of UK airspace

If it is any consolation to Andrew Haines at least he is used to being blamed for everything. The chief executive of the Civil Aviation Authority was shoved back in the spotlight recently as "The Man Who Shut the Skies" or, more prosaically, as the head of Britain's air watchdog who presided over the closure of UK airspace for six days last month on safety grounds following the eruption of the Eyjafjallaj^kull volcano in Iceland.

Haines has been here before: he was the boss of First Great Western, the London-to-Wales rail franchise, when it was re-christened Worst Great Western throughout 2007 and 2008. Back then he could at least rely on the tacit support of the government, which declined to strip the contract from FGW's owner, FirstGroup, despite a passenger revolt caused by overcrowding and repeated service cancellations.

This time around, no one appeared to lend moral support as hundreds of thousands of stranded passengers waited for the CAA to rewrite years-old safety guidelines in an unprecedented 96-hour rush of tests and consultations.

Willie Walsh, the British Airways chief executive, said the prolonged ban was "scandalous", while Lord Adonis, then transport secretary, said safety regulators had been "too cautious". Under the new guidelines for flying through ash clouds, large areas of Europe that were no-go zones for nearly a week suddenly became safe for commercial aircraft. Having lost an estimated ^2.1bn, the aviation industry is screaming accusations of incompetence and demanding compensation.

Haines, who joined the CAA last year, admits the FGW experience helped when he picked up the Evening Standard the day after the ban was lifted ^ 21 April ^ and read the claim that he had personally shut down Britain's airports for nearly a week. "I think second time around is never quite as bad," he says. "But when you have had two or three hours' sleep per night for six days and it's your birthday, and you have bust a gut to do the right thing ... "

Former colleagues of the 46-year-old Welshman testify to his calmness under pressure and pragmatism. He immediately disowned a pledge from his FGW predecessor to turn the franchise from the worst into the best-performing rail service in Britain because "business transformation does not happen overnight". Two years on, FGW now beats the national average for train punctuality.
A former FirstGroup colleague describes Haines as a "relaxed and informal" executive who threw himself into rescuing FGW. "He worked incredibly long days to turn it around. He is level-headed and calm, so he always makes decisions based on evidence. We never saw him lose it," said the ex-colleague.

Haines's response to the latest furore is one of mild incredulity. Sitting in his office at the CAA's central London headquarters, he says that the industry he regulates should take more responsibility for what happened. "To blame the regulator is a fantastic piece of buck-passing." And as for Walsh, a fellow straight-talker: "He said it was his personal belief [that airspace should not have been shut]. You cannot establish safety rules on people's personal beliefs." However, Adonis's comments were more supportive than they first appeared, adds Haines. "He was saying that international regulations were over-cautious and I agree."

At this point Haines produces the piece of yellow paper that stranded thousands of Britons in Mumbai and other airports around the globe. It is the safety guideline for flying through volcanic ash, as set down by the International Civil Aviation Organisation, a branch of the United Nations that sets global aviation standards. The smoke plume from the volcano contained a mixture of glass and rock that, if sucked into engines, had the potential to melt inside their turbines, stall passenger jets and plunge them into the ground. So when an ash cloud drifts across northern Europe, what should airlines do? The CAA and its European co-regulators turned to the ICAO guidelines, which stated, in capital letters just to emphasise things: "AVOID AVOID AVOID." Those three words are the reason why Europe was shut for six days ^ if there is the slightest presence of ash in the skies, airspace must be shut.

"That guidance had been in place for a number of years and we had to rapidly come up with a safe level of ash contamination," he says. The new guidelines, which permit flying in all but the most contaminated air corridors, were drawn up after aircraft manufacturers and engine maker Rolls-Royce were persuaded to conduct a series of tests, because it was their original guidance that created the blanket "AVOID" rule.

Haines says: "In truth there were commercial issues wrapped up with safety issues. We know that at extreme levels, ash contamination has been a serious safety issue. We know that the levels of contamination we faced were a long way from those levels of contamination. I can only speculate why airlines and manufacturers were unable to find the right levels." Some observers believe there was concern over liabilities for engine and aircraft damage, a theory underlined by industry papers that showed airlines were reluctant to contribute to discussions about setting new guidelines for flying through ash clouds as recently as two years ago.
Despite Haines's clear inference that the airspace closures were largely a crisis of the aviation industry's own making, he singles out one industry player for praise. "Rolls-Royce were fantastic. When they saw the issue they came to the fore. Without them we would not have got much of a resolution."

There is some sympathy for airlines that face multimillion-pound accommodation and food costs under the EU261 guideline that orders carriers to look after customers whose flights are delayed or cancelled. (As well as presiding over safety, and setting landing fees at London's main airports, the CAA oversees the implementation of the guideline.) The EU framework did not anticipate a geological phenomenon and has saddled the industry with a hefty bill. Even Ryanair, always keen to duck a cost when it can, has grudgingly acknowledged that it will have to pay up.

The EU is reviewing the rule and Haines is sympathetic to industry concerns because it forces an airline, which might have been paid ^50 for a return fare, to pay hundreds of pounds in hotel costs. "It is so clearly out of kilter when you compare the cost to the operator with the benefit to the consumer. That makes it very difficult to enforce."

Haines adds that unifying European air traffic control is "not a panacea" because the new ash guidelines were drawn up by the CAA, not a pan-European regulator. Indeed, if anything rankles with Haines it is that the CAA has not been given enough credit for pushing through a new safety regime in a number of days. He welcomes calls for an inquiry, but with the view to bolstering the new safety set-up because the ash crisis is far from over. Within days of the interview the volcano spits a huge cloud into the middle of the Atlantic again causing hundreds of cancellations.

Asked how he coped with the responsibility of getting thousands of Britons back to their homes, he says: "It genuinely didn't feel like stress. It felt like there was a problem here and there was no easy solution to it, but I had the conviction that we were trying to do the right thing. I didn't break down in tears or tear my hair out, or throw anything at people." Perhaps the stress of FGW was worth it after all, but buck-passers beware..

The CV

Age 46
Education Cyfarthfa high school, Merthyr Tydfil; King's College London; Kingston University.

Career

1985 British Rail graduate manager. 1994 Joined Railtrack as an account manager in London and the south-east. 1997 Joined South West Trains as general manager, becoming operations director in 1999 and then managing director in 2000.

July 2005 Joined FirstGroup as managing director, UK rail division.

2009 Joined Civil Aviation Authority as chief executive.

Interests Architecture, film, literature and gardening.

Family Married to Caroline with two children, Alexandra and William.

Engine makers 'may have ended ash flight ban sooner'

Some engine manufacturers blocked an early lifting of the volcanic ash flying ban, the BBC has learned.

An e-mail given to the BBC as a result of a Freedom of Information Request shows that some manufacturers saw "nothing to gain" from lifting the ban.

The BBC has also been told that Air France KLM will now fully compensate stranded travellers. The airline had previously refused to do so, but will now comply with its obligations under EU law.

It was six months ago that volcanic ash sent the UK back in time. The eruption of the Icelandic volcano, Eyjafjallajoekull, caused UK airspace to be shut down for six days.

The regulator, the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) estimates about 33,000 flights were cancelled. The advice for airlines and aviation authorities at the time for ash was to "avoid, avoid, avoid". There were no rules set as to what level of ash was safe to fly through.

This policy worked in other parts of the world where planes could simply fly around the affected airspace, but caused severe problems for the UK, where airspace is much more congested.

Crucial to lifting the flying ban was getting agreement with engine manufacturers as to what their engines could safely tolerate. Ash can melt inside jet engines, clog the turbine blades and cause the engine to stall.

And an e-mail given to the BBC as a result of a Freedom of Information Request says: "Engine manufacturers met last night in the USA and declined to accept that their products could operate... We believe that a number of manufacturers... were supportive of the position but others saw 'nothing to gain'."

The e-mail goes on to say that if engine manufacturers had accepted the deal, all airspace could be opened.

"It did take time to get them [engine manufacturers] to understand why the particular circumstances facing Europe were unprecedented and why we needed movement from them," said the chief executive of the CAA, Andrew Haines.

However, six months on, airlines still believe the regulator could have done better. They argue the CAA should have given them more freedom to decide whether it was safe to fly, using their own experiences and judgement.

"It just became increasingly frustrating as the days went on," said Steve Ridgway, the chief executive of Virgin Atlantic. His airline lost ^30m in the crisis and saw 43,000 customers stranded. "We started to just not believe the data that was coming out of the Met Office. Airlines were putting up aircraft on test flights... they weren't finding any ash. And it was that speed of response which became so frustrating."

The CAA though argues it had to put safety first and could not lift the ban until it had agreement with engine manufacturers.

"What no airline was able to do was present us with data from their engine manufacturers - who are the experts here - which said it's safe to fly in these conditions," said Andrew Haines. "If someone had been able to do that then we wouldn't have had this issue. But not a single airline was able to do that right the way across Europe."

There is some good news for travellers though.

One airline - the giant Air France / KLM - had been refusing to comply with its obligations under EU law to reimburse passengers for reasonable costs incurred whilst stranded.

But the CAA has told the BBC that it has just secured agreement from the airline to pay out in full.