This is not an April Fool's joke

Written by Florian Guillemin and Arnaud Deltenre

1 April traditionally provides an opportunity to stimulate everyone's creativity when it comes to fake news. But reality sometimes surpasses fiction. On this St Hugh's Day, it's tempting to revisit some of these stories. often zany, sometimes dramatic, but all very real failures who have left their mark on the history of travel.

When air travel is in trouble

Air transport made in Germany is experiencing one turbulence after another. The fiasco of Berlin Brandenburg airport had already left its mark on people's minds, scattering pricing forecasts and construction deadlines like a jigsaw puzzle. Expected in 2011, the German hub will not be inaugurated until 2020. A total of 14 years of arduous labour instead of the 5 initially planned, at a cost that has soared from €2 billion to €7 billion. A situation that is all the more Ubuesque the absurdities that had to be done to save what could be saved despite the effects of time multiplied. Like the employees forced to regularly turn on the taps in a deserted hotel to maintain the water supply. Or the ghost train, running empty once a day to keep the air circulating... The incompetence of those in charge of the project even had the merit of inspiring two teasing Germans. They have dedicated a board game to the BER fiasco, in which participants have to spend as much public money as possible, with as little foresight as possible...

With such a fiasco, the reputation of German air transport was already in doubt. And to add further weight to the metaphor, Lufthansa has recently added its own contribution to the story. The engineers in charge of the Allegris project - the German carrier's new cabins - have pulled out all the stops to appeal to business travellers in front class. Perhaps a little too muchas revealed by aeroTelegraph last October: "the seats in the new Business Class and First Class are significantly heavier than their predecessors. And this can lead to a shift in the aircraft's centre of gravity and too much weight in the nose of the aircraft. To avoid this, after the installation of the first Allegris seats, an additional 700 kilograms of weight will have to be moved to the rear.". A slight aberration at a time when companies are hunting down the smallest superfluous kilo...

As if being overweight wasn't enough, the seats designed by Stelia Aerospace have inappropriate dimensions: "According to current plans, the aircraft will initially fly with a hybrid cabin, as aeroTelegraph has learned from several sources. The shape of the aircraft model, with its narrower upper deck, means that the seats will have to be specially adapted to the aircraft."Allegris, ma non troppo...

Rail not always on the right track...

Germany and its airline industry do not have a monopoly on blunders. In Spain and France, the railways know how to do it too. The year 2024 thus marks the 10th anniversary of a XXL meatballIn May 2014, the news was made public: the 341 TER trains ordered by SNCF would be too wide to fit between the platforms of all the stations in France.

The intention was laudable: to accommodate more passengers, with more space. But the problem is that RFF, now renamed SNCF Réseau, is said to have passed on the project to a third party. the wrong measures the railway company and the manufacturer. And the SNCF has not provided enough room for manoeuvre to deal with the shifting of the rails due to heat and vibrations. "As a result, almost 1,300 platforms will have to be planed at an estimated cost of €50 million."Europe 1 summed it up at the time. At the very least, the onerous blunder had the merit of stimulating the creativity of Internet users on social networks, where the number of more or less tasteful hijackings multiplied...

While the internal investigation commissioned by the minister at the time did not identify any major malfunctions in the railway system, a similar situation had far more brutal consequences on the other side of the Pyrenees... Last year, the Spanish railways were rocked by an erroneous order from Renfe. La Spanish railway company intended to renew its fleet of regional trains. But following a miscalculation, the gauge of the rolling stock did not allow it to pass through the tunnels... The error was identified by the subcontractor upstream of the manufacturing process. The logistical consequences were therefore limited to a delay in delivery. But the political consequences were such as to make all the players in the sector more meticulous in their calculations. The mistake cost the Secretary of State at the Ministry of Transport and the Chairman of Renfe their jobs...

But major blunders are nothing new. And they don't prevent you from becoming a legend in the world of travel. Such was the case with the luxury sleeper trains created in the United States by George Pullman. Along with the Belgian Georges Nagelmackers, Pullman was one of the first to believe in the development of night trains. sumptuous prototypeThe Pioneer, with bench seats that could be converted into berths and a toilet with running water. While comfort and refinement were the order of the day, one thing was not: the American rail network. It was impossible to use these rolling lounges, which were too big and too heavy.

But an illustrious passenger will change all that: Abraham Lincoln. Following his assassination on 15 April 1965, George Pullman offered his Pioneer wagon to transport his remains, with all the honours due to his rank, from Washington to Springfield, Illinois. Nothing was too good to celebrate the memory of the revered president: the 2,700 kilometres of track were adapted to the wagon's gauge for the occasion. What success stories are made of...

Can white elephants regain their colour?

This is the story of a rebirth, of a station in the middle of nowhere, in the heart of the Pyrenees mountains. Inaugurated with great fanfare by Alfonso XIII and Gaston Doumergue in 1928, Canfranc station, with its immense 240-metre façade, was intended to be a major crossing point between France and Spain. History has reduced it to a minor roleThis was due to the closure of the Somport tunnel by Franco in the run-up to the Second World War. Canfranc station is a typical example of these "white elephants", vast projects that have come to nothing, and almost no-one has passed through it since it was built. But there is not always cause for despair: it is now being revitalised as a luxury hotel by the Barcelo group, the Royal Hideaway Canfranc Estacion.

Alongside this station, which has long been without passengers, Spain has seen the emergence of another innovative concept, that of the the airport without passengersdespite costing over a billion euros to build. Intended to relieve congestion at the Madrid hub of Barajas due to its proximity to the capital - a relative proximity, given that it is more than 200 km to the south - Ciudad Real International airport will only have a short lifespan, just long enough to see a few flights from Air Nostrum, Ryanair and Vueling. Opened in 2009 and bankrupted in 2012, the airport never saw as many flights as it did during the pandemic, when it was converted into a temporary storage facility for the aircraft of numerous airlines.

Another high-potential tourism concept is that of the hotel without guests, in this case the Ryungyong in Pyongyang, despite being one of the largest in the world with its 330 m height and thousands of rooms. This pharaonic project was originally launched in Kim Il Sung's time and was intended to rival in size a project by the South Korean company SsangYong. This conglomerate from the neighbouring and hated country had the nerve to build the world's tallest hotel in Singapore when it opened in the 1980s, the Westin Stamford Singapore. The fall of the Berlin Wall, the economic crisis: the Ryungyong Hotel, which was to be the showcase for the north korean statetook several decades to complete. Is it really finished? In any case, its gigantic pyramid shape has at least found an occupation: hosting propaganda messages on its immense façade overlooking the whole of Pyongyang.

Reflecting overweening ambitions, 'white elephants' are legion in the history of tourism, from the neglect of Montreal's Mirabel airport, which has never managed to replace Dorval airport in the hearts of international travellers, to the second largest bus station in the world, the Tel Aviv Central Bus Station, badly located, badly built and abandoned in 2021, twenty years after its opening. And the list goes on and on, from airports that only see one or two flights a day, such as Nacala in north-east Mozambique, to Mattala Rajapaksa International Airport in Sri Lanka, which has been awarded the title of the world's least frequented airport.

Team building and seminars: but what good ideas...

How far can you go in motivating and uniting your teams? Several companies have learned this the hard way. In 2022, the Swiss company Goldbach, specialising in media and advertising, brought its sales staff together in an idyllic setting on the shores of Lake Zurich to reinvigorate the group in the wake of the pandemic. To enhance the reunion, an optional team-building activity was offered: walking barefoot over hot coals. According to the Tages Anzeiger who reported the events, to "overcoming your fearsbuilding self-confidence and overcoming personal limitations" . But not everyone is a fakir: as a result, more than a dozen people ended up in hospital.

Go further, go harder: what better way to test your managers' resistance to stress and bond your teams than with a fake hostage situation? As a major contributor to the Ig-Nobel Team Building PrizeThis chilling role-playing game actually took place in autumn 2005, at the instigation of the director of France Télévisions' advertising department at the time. With all the trappings of the real thing: handcuffs, balaclavas, ransom demands, all led by a fake commando led by a former member of the GIGN.

Panic attacks, shock, psychological after-effects: the participants had varying reactions to the initiative. The high point, if ever there was one, was the dismissal of one of the managers who had tried to escape from the kidnappers. During the debriefing, this attitude was described as " likely to endanger the lives of others ". More than a blurb in the Canard Enchaîné or an article in Mediapart, this team-building activity has even been given a novel title – Black framesby Pierre Lemaître - and then a series, Skids. And above all, a conviction, as the case went all the way to the Court of Cassation.

This is obviously not the only example of a company meeting gone wrong. Or even gone very, very wrong. To celebrate the 25th anniversary of the Vistex technology company last January, its directors had planned to make a grand entrance in front of 700 people at the Ramoji Film City complex in Hyderabad. Unfortunately, the cable from which the gondola was suspended broke, causing CEO Sanjay Shah to fall 5 metres to his death, almost instantly, while the company chairman was seriously injured.

A dramatic, fortuitous, unforeseeable accident. In a much less serious vein, there have been others that have been more cause for laughter than tears. Notably that of a seminar for Décathlon sales representatives, organised in the north of France in 2022, which went on until the early hours for a dozen or so revellers, huddled together in the kitchens of the reception room. A rubber mat lying around, some washing-up liquid to make soapy water, and off they went for a merry party. impromptu "windsurfing" competition. An annoying detail: the participants were dressed as Power Rangers. Rubber on rubber, rubbing: five people had to be hospitalised for genital burns. Fortunately, the injuries were minor.