Thousands of airline passengers were stranded today after 200 flights in and out of London were cancelled or severely delayed by fog.
Travellers criticised the lack of warning as “not good enough” as 10 per cent of flights at Heathrow were hit and London City airport was brought to a standstill.
Airlines said they had attempted to contact passengers yesterday to warn them to stay away but many, including families returning from half-term breaks, were forced to endure long waits.
Trading was muted in the City as many executives struggled to return. “It’s pretty quiet this morning, but that’s hardly surprising since half the City hasn’t got to their desks yet because of the fog,” said one trader.
City airport was not expecting its first flight to depart until after 11am in what it said was one of the worst weather-affected days in recent memory. More than 50 inbound flights were cancelled and others were “delayed indefinitely”. An airport spokesman said airlines had advised passengers to stay away. “We’ve had a number of cancellations,” he added. “The fog is very much here.”
Olympic champion cyclist Sir Chris Hoy tweeted his anger at the “chaos” at Heathrow as he tried to catch a flight to Estoril, Portugal. “It’s like Planes, Trains & Automobiles today,” he tweeted. “Chaos at Heathrow, changed flight, jumped in cab to Gatwick, not much better here.”
At Heathrow, passengers complained about a lack of information and claimed long-haul flights were “jumping the queue” ahead of domestic connections.
Sky News presenter Eamonn Holmes was stuck in Belfast, unable to make it back to London to present the breakfast show because of the “pea-souper” conditions.
Nurse Barbara Lagoa, 23, travelled from Nottingham to Heathrow after working a night-shift to catch an 8am flight to Lisbon but was hit by delays.
“They should have told us earlier that there may be a problem,” she said. “We should have been alerted by a text — it is not good enough. Obviously the weather is no one’s fault but more information is needed.”
Daniel Finucane, 57, a software engineer from Hampstead, who was also travelling to Portugal, said: “It’s been a bit of a nightmare but there’s not a lot that could be done. More information would have been good though.”
Namita Khanna, 42, flew in to Heathrow from Delhi this morning to find that her onward flight to Dublin had been axed. The businesswoman, who was returning from a family holiday with her son Jay, 13, said: “There should have been more information. This has been very tiring.”
Today’s disruption came after fog forced the cancellation of 90 flights yesterday. Peter Oljanuk, 52, was delayed for five hours awaiting a flight to Manchester after returning from New York. “My daughter goes back to school today and she’s absolutely exhausted,” he said. “It’s just been a nightmare. I understand you can’t tell with fog and planes but British Airways just seemed to be insisting on getting long-distance flights and didn’t seem bothered about domestic flights.”
London Fog
Gavin Thurston, 53, a wildlife photo-grapher who has worked with David Attenborough, was stranded at Heathrow after an AirKenya flight to Nairobi was cancelled. He said: “We were supposed to fly at 7pm but by that time it was reported 50 flights out of Heathrow had been cancelled.”
BA flights from Heathrow to Milan, Glasgow, Aberdeen and Munich were axed. Long-haul flights to Chicago and New York were also hit. Heathrow normally handles about 1,300 flights a day but the airport said one in 10 had to be cancelled as the fog required there to be bigger gaps between aircraft.
The Met Office said visibility was reduced to 100m in places. It warned of more fog tomorrow morning. There were a handful of cancellations to BA and easyJet flights at Gatwick. Stansted and Luton reported some delays.
A girl of five may have been trapped beside her dead father “for some time” after their Ford Fiesta crashed into a tree in foggy conditions in Staffordshire, emergency crews admitted today.
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