The last significant amount of snow at LHR fell yesterday afternoon, 18 December. The airport at this moment is only allowing limited departures and not accepting arrivals at all. It will not be fully operational until tomorrow morning, 20 December. That's 36 hours to deal with 3 inches of snow and to de-ice the ramps. Certainly there was more snow than usual, but it was hardly the Apocalypse, and icy ramps occur in London every winter. If the BAA was an airport operator then 'Third World response' would be a fair description, but as it's actually a retailer which has to suffer the inconvenience of operating an airport as a sideline then I guess it's response has been fairly good.