Heavy snow fell across and on the continent last night and today which is causing severe problems for tens of thousands of travellers.
With hundreds of flights cancelled, diverted or heavily delayed, the worst affected are airline passengers. Every British Airways departure from Heathrow since 7.40am has been delayed or grounded as a result of the weather and as so many gates are occupied by aircraft which have not been able to depart, passengers on arriving aircraft are having to wait some hours to disembark.
So far, British Airways have cancelled more than 80 flights to and from Heathrow including the BA065 10.05 flight to Nairobi.
#UKsnow #chaos at #Heathrow – falling #snow leaves dozens planes waiting for gates – been waiting over 2 hours – our pilot says neither Heathrow nor BA talking to him – no idea how long to wait – adds while we have been stuck 20 to 30 additional planes landed behind us pic.twitter.com/BrDkE6rKW2
— Nic Robertson (@NicRobertsonCNN) December 10, 2017
In a statement, BA told passengers not to go to the airport unless you have a confirmed booking on a flight that is operating, and said: “For safety reasons, Heathrow Airport and the National Air Traffic Services (NATS) have had to reduce the number of aircraft that can land each hour. This is leading to disruption for airlines.
“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.”
LHR-DBX. Already two hours delayed, and just been told we’ve got a significant wait for the de-icer.
No one is complaining… looking out the window that seems a perfectly good idea. #Heathrow #MiniBlizzard pic.twitter.com/RT7PS2nSVV
— James Gurden (@jgurden) December 10, 2017
Other airlines including Lufthansa, Brussels Airlines and Swiss have cancelled services from their hubs to Heathrow and back.
