Tens of thousands of airline passengers are likely to start the New Year some distance from where they hoped to be due to heavy fog in South-East England and hundreds of flight cancellations.
Friday’s schedules at Heathrow, Stansted and Gatwick were seriously affected, with around 200 flights cancelled — predominantly by British Airways, easyJet and Ryanair.
While the visibility has improved and schedules are near-normal at Stansted and Gatwick, passengers using Heathrow and London City are experiencing another day of widespread cancellations.
British Airways has so far cancelled more than 50 flights to and from London’s airports, including more than 40 at Heathrow — with services to Barcelona, Rome and Istanbul among those grounded.
A statement on the airline’s website said: “For safety reasons Air Traffic Control has to allow greater space between landing aircraft in fog or during periods of low visibility, and this will mean a reduced number of aircraft being allowed to land each hour.
“We are sorry for the difficulties caused by the poor weather and will do all we can to minimise the effect it has on our operations.”
Planes were landing and taking off at Heathrow long after the airport normally closes, with departures and arrivals up to 1am. Even so, many aircraft and crew are out of position, which is impacting on schedules later today.
Passengers whose flights are cancelled go to the back of the queue for seats on subsequent services which are operating. Airlines are obliged to provide hotels and meals, but no cash compensation is payable.
In addition to passengers whose flights were cancelled, many travellers missed connections at Heathrow — the UK’s leading hub airport. Michael Ashcroft from Liverpool was on a heavily delayed BA flight from Manchester on Friday which arrived five minutes after his connecting service on Virgin Atlantic to Johannesburg departed.
“The airlines are blaming each other and saying they’re not responsible for sorting out another flight,” he told The Independent.
Sonja, a passenger from Sweden, said she had missed her transatlantic connection by a matter of minutes after her inbound flight from Stockholm touched down three hours late: “I spent seven hours waiting in line yesterday, and finally got a seat on the 11.15 flight this morning.”
Across the other side of the capital, at London City airport, flights to Dusseldorf and Belfast City took off, but every other departure is delayed or cancelled — with Flybe, Swiss and CityJet grounding services.
Several arriving flights have been diverted to Stansted and Southend.
