Thursday, December 23, 2010

Snow Continues to Disrupt Air Travel before Christmas

A number of holiday travellers are stranded as heavy snow continue to disrupt flight movement across Britain with London Heathrow being the worst-affected.

The ongoing chaos at Heathrow airport, which began on Saturday and resulted in the cancellation of airport’s all incoming flights on Sunday, continues even today with thousands of holidaymakers left stranded.

Airport officials warned that it could be several days before the backlog of flights can be cleared and normal operations can resume.

The past few days has been really untoward for travellers who booked their flight tickets and were looking forward to spend some quality holiday time with their families. Passengers who were fortunate enough to land up with cheap tickets on flights in this busy period were extremely crestfallen.

With numerous flights being cancelled, London Heathrow has been inundated with stranded passengers who are extremely disappointed with the crisis handling capability of BAA.

Secretary of State for Transport, Philip Hammond promised an inquiry into the matter and acknowledged the public indignation as travel plans of thousands were ruined.

He told BBC Breakfast on Monday: "Once we have got through the problem, once we have got things moving again, then we will have to have that discussion and find out exactly what went wrong and, most importantly, what went wrong in handling passengers who were stranded.

"I think whilst people are obviously deeply upset about the inconvenience, particularly at this time of year, of having their travel plans disrupted, most of what I am hearing is a sense of outrage about the way they were then treated when they were stranded at Heathrow airport."

Airlines Grounded in UK and Europe

London Heathrow Airport has announced that it would continue to operate only 30% of flights until 0600 GMT on Wednesday in view of the ongoing conditions.

British Airways, the national airline of the United Kingdom, grounded 70 of 130 departures at Heathrow, and 89 of its 133 arrivals. The airline expects more cancellations from London's Heathrow airport.

"Severe weather continues to cause significant disruption to our operation and will do so in the run up to Christmas," the airline said in a statement released on Tuesday.

"BAA has confirmed a limited schedule of flights to and from the airport, at least until 06.00 on Wednesday 22 December," British Airways said. "We have adjusted our schedule to fit with the capacity of the airport for both flight departures and arrivals."

Ryanair, the budget airline popular for cheap tickets that operates out of Stansted Airport in England was also reported to have grounded flights at the airport on Saturday. Stansted, has been reported to be operating normally and is being used to ease off traffic at Heathrow.

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