From a terminal working base perspective of myself.
‘Stansted Airport’ closed the runway for a period to clear the snow. This was delayed due to the heavy snow fall, making the clousure longer than planned.
‘Ryanair’ cancelled the flights to try to eliminate heavy flight delays. The problem lies here mainly as ‘Swissport’ didn’t have the staff levels to cope with the high demand of rebooking and enquiries due the cancellation. Added to that extra staff levels struggled to get to the airport as public transport was in havoc and the roads where not being cleared.
Unfortunately this has given ‘Stansted Airport’ and ‘MAG’ a bit of a backlash in the press and on here. If you where in the the terminal, ‘MAG’ representatives where trying to help where they could, but again staffing levels get stretched in these situations and normal duties have to still be carried out.
This was not helped by a fire alarm for the airport to deal with as well.
If anyone disagree’s with these point fair enough. But this is how I saw things from working at the airport.