Anyone remember last year's fiasco when Gatwick's snowplough's door locks were frozen solid
bealine,
Well! I've just got to bite! Our snowploughs don't have any door locks! We done pretty good at LGW considering last year, if you mean the 28/29 Jan ice storm.
Anyhow, back to this year, both BA and us reacted to the same forecast and got caught out. I waited all night for the temp to fall below zero bearing in mind the whole airfield was completely soaked and bottled out at 0400 and put down 18,000 lit of ant-icing fluid as the forecast said -2C. In the event it never went below +0.5C. If we hadn't treated and the temp had fallen another degree, we'd have been closed big-time so it's a small enough price to pay I guess. Ho hum, better safe than sorry.
Of course at those temps BA were doing a/c ant-icing anyway so it was probably best to make sure you were going to offer a reliable service to the number of flights you know you can cope with, rather than take a chance and screw up the whole programme.
So, it's 0130 Sat am, temp just fallen below zero, waiting for the front from the North, Met lady doesn't know if it's going to reach us before the temp goes up again or not. To ant-ice or not ant-ice, that is the question! Heads you win, tails I lose...
Cheers,
TheOddOne