Stormin Norman, I imagine the reason is that all the old experienced people have been pensioned off and their jobs taken by young whipper snappers who have never seen snow in their working lives and don't have the experience to know what works.
Profits came from retail, winters got warmer, the assumption was made this was the norm, forever.....management took a short term profits view and the old skills were lost as the focus shifted from operations to shopping. Now in fairness BAA are trying to turn back with a lot of money being invested into LHR but they're learning the hard way as they have to reinvent the wheel. The fact that Andrew Teacher is the public face of BAA in the worst crisis since well, April frankly, says a lot of how prepared they actually were.
Our ability as a nation to influence events at LHR is also less than it was as we sold off a strategic national asset to a Spanish firm drowning in debt.
Short term profit versus long term strategy. What good is sacking the Transport Secretary going to do? He won't know the job for another six months and bringing in someone else will push that learning curve further back. Our system is broken and we keep saying "Lessons have been learned" except the evidence suggests that often that is merely a platitude.
I'm not moaning as frankly we're all bang at it in the UK. We reap what we sow. All of us. Hands up who's got their pension sorted? *cough* Public sector put your hands down please!
* Having re-read that I am aware it's sounding a little bit Old Testament.