Quote:
Originally Posted by
The Ancient Geek 
Many moons ago I was expecting to land at LHR after a long flight from JNB when the Nigel announced that LHR and LGW were both fogged in and he was diverting to London Prestwick (yes,thats what he called it). Hang around for 2 hours while they rounded up enough buses for a 743 load of people then 7 hours by road.
Some rather unpleasant scenes from the disgruntled masses and definitely not good
PR for BA.
I expect that in those days, BA still had some staff who could remember the outcome of an attempt to land at LHR below limits.
For the sake of clarity I was not suggesting that limits should have been busted, indeed I have always been a stickler for limits.
My point is that KLM should be congratulated on carrying enough fuel to avoid a diversion.
Regarding the historic Prestwick diversion it would probably have been a better idea to consider Cardiff or Birmingham, both within 2 hours of LHR by road or maybe Manchester at 3 hours. For some obscure reason BA have/had a propensity to dive for Prestwick as their preferred diversion at the cost of massive passenger inconvenience and in this case a total JNB-LHR journey time of just under 26 hours. Interestingly on that day SAA opted for Manchester, called ahead and had a fleet of buses waiting.