Flights hit by fog
14.01.09
Thousands of passengers were hit today as London airports were fogbound and around 200 flights were cancelled at Heathrow, Gatwick and London City Airport. Southampton Airport on the south coast was also affected by the 'pea soup' like conditions.
Worst-hit was Heathrow where more than 130 inbound and outbound flights were cancelled. Dozens of other flights were delayed as NATS, the air traffic control service, reduced the flow rate into Heathrow from more than 40 planes an hour to only 28 to cope with the reduced viability. Inbound flights were arriving up to an hour late.
Elsewhere 60 flights were cancelled at London City Airport, with only one flight operating normally this morning as the airport struggled to cope with the fog, which descended as temperatures dropped. At Gatwick 16 flights were axed, but dozens more services suffered severe delayed and some were diverted. At Southampton flights were delayed, diverted or cancelled because of 'pea soup-like conditions', with visibility reduced to just 200 hundred yards. Only Stansted and Luton emerged unscathed.
Airlines hit by the fog included British Airways, easyJet and bmi, although only services to short-haul destinations were cancelled. A BA spokesman said that they cancelled flights to airports where they operated frequently, meaning that passengers could be put onto other services. bmi cancelled flights to Edinburgh, Belfast, Brussels, Amsterdam, Glasgow and Manchester.
A BAA spokesman said that the fog delays were a reason that the case for a third runway at Heathrow was strong, insisting that the additional capacity would have minimised the misery suffered by passengers.
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