You've travelled hours from San Francisco (or Beijing) made a connection in England's famous capital and begun your flight to England's biggest and one of its most well known counties. It's May and you have looked forward to your brief visit for months.
You hold in the air above Leeds Bradford Airport and then have to divert back to London two hours after you set off. Exhausted now. Is this passenger encouraged to visit Yorkshire again?
Not a very good advert for Yorkshire. It is simply not good enough and in real terms there is absolutely no reason for it. I wont shut up about it until something is done about it. This is my right as a citizen of England and Yorkshire. Perhaps I care more about West Yorkshire than you do Paul? Civil aviation in Yorkshire is the joke of Europe.
You can't blame LBIA for that. Sure, it's altitude and location do cause a higher frequency of weather related diversions/cancellations, however, not on this occasion.
That particular flight arrived at the LBIA hold with over 70 mins of holding fuel available. How long did he hold for, roughly 45 minutes? Whilst other aircraft were landing, he then set off back to LHR. Why? Why not MAN, LPL, NCL, MME or another Yorkshire airport - DSA? Why wouldn't they divert into DSA and set you off on a quick coach journey to LBIA? On top of that, why would they return to LHR, which was suffering from long delays due to heavy winds?
British Airways wanted their aircraft back in LHR as soon as possible, due to the aforementioned delays. BA had already cancelled flights for later on in the day. One of these cancelled flights was the early afternoon LHR-LBA rotation. So not only have they not taken you anywhere, they've cancelled the next flight to your destination.
Less than 10 minutes after the BA decided to return to Heathrow, visibility was up to 3000. BA's indecisiveness and preferential routing are what caused yesterdays delays and cancellations. Not LBIA. So don't try and use their mistakes as a discredit to LBIA, or Yorkshire.