Icy weather shuts Gatwick runway
 

As per the BBC

BBC NEWS | England | Sussex | Icy weather shuts Gatwick runway

I'm no longer in the airline trade but I find it some what surprising that it took so long to de-ice the airport.

What on earth are the BAA going to do when it snows, and why were they not prepared?

How odd. On Tuesday my flight to Gatwick carried out a MA followed by landing, on the taxi in, de icing spreaders were spraying the taxiways at @1600 ish....

Oh FFS. What next, Gatwck/Heathrow/Luton enforcing LVPs?

They are no quicker to clear the ice from their other airports either. I don't really have enough experience flying yet in order to be able to judge but I do sometimes wonder if we make more of the weather over here than other more snow prone countries. Bumped into a couple of Icelandic pilots who were laughing anyway.

Sounds like the Health & Safety culture at work again to me.

Wasn't snow.

Was ice.

"Sudden drop in temperature overnight..."

Whatever next.

Was snow, then ice.

We were told (whilst at divertion airport waiting for fuel) that it had more to do with the wrong de-icing fluid used, which then made it a lot worse. True? I don't know, it's just what our Captain told me when I was in the flight deck earlier.

Gg

Wrong kind of ......
 

So -
Wrong kind of snow
followed by wrong kind of ice,
followed by wrong kind of of airport operator.

Rather try that the wrong type of de-icing chemicals' was sprayed onto the runway surface that froze instantly, witch resulted in poor to no braking action, and finally resulted in the airport being closed for 4 hours while they were trying to melt the chemicals again.
:oh::oh:

Need more swine urine.....

Given that the BAA are constantly taking the piss, perhaps they could give some of it back and the problem would be solved :ok:

Nice picture of LHR in summer in that BBC story re LGW in winter....

Reports from other aerodromes:
Yakutsk, Russia: -45C, heavy snow, no delays
Novosibirsk, Siberia: -25C, heavy snow, no delays
Chicago, U.S.: -2C, no delays
Minneapolis, U.S.: -11C, scattered snow, minor delays
Detroit, U.S.: -2C, no delays
Winnipeg, Canada: -24 C, light snow, minor delays
Oslo, Norway: -5C, heavy snow, no delays
Helsinki, Finland: 1C, light snow, no delays
Salzburg, Austria: 0 C, light snow, no delays
Stockholm, Sweden: 2C, no snow, no delays
Copenhagen, Denmark: 2C, no snow, no delays

A Gatwick Airport spokesman said: 'Shortly before 6am we had snow flurries that had not been forecast.
'We are normally in close contact with the Met Office.
'The temperature plunged quite quickly and that had not been forecast so the de-icing programme had to respond to it rather than prepare for it.'
The spokesman insisted the airport was not seeking to blame the Met Office and added: 'These were extraordinary weather conditions.'
But that cut no ice with the Met Office.
A spokesman for the Met Office said Gatwick did not subscribe to its Open Runway service, which would have flagged up the adverse conditions.
'I don't know where they get their weather reports from but they don't subscribe to our service.:p

(actually, I don't think the terribly nice spokesman at the Met Office stuck his tongue out like that....)

Bristol, UK -2C No delays
Cardiff, UK -1C No delays
Birmingham, UK -2C No delays
Exeter, UK -2C No delays
Bournemouth, UK -1C No delays

Any excuse BAA, Other airports in the south of the uk were fine! :}:ouch:

Love the talk about the 'wrong type of de-icing chemicals'.

Surely a substance that doesn't de-ice things can't really be called a de-icing chemical, can it?

I think they just used warm water.

they ran out of their airfield ops building and mt department with a heated up kettle and waited until 8am for the nearest halfords to open and got a couple of window scrapers and then started clearing the ice!

on a serious note,i think you find what glamgirl has said is close to the mark,i was told that they did use the incorrect mix and also did not have enough vehicles to carry out the job in quick enough time!

just hope we dont get any snow,me may just about open in time then for the summer season!

cops and keystone come to mind!

Chilly start
 

I won't say which south coast airport just up the road from s/hampton last winter had it's only de-icer frozen up so it was usless, they had to pull the parked a/craft on the apron into the rising sun and turn them around B-B-Q fashion. I kid you not!! Nice one s/air.

Very funny, even Google has the answer to this problem. From time to time, it presents the banner with an ad of a de-icing fluid just at the right side of this topic. Seems the computer intelligence is able to make smarter decisions/choices than the airport staff out there. :E

Just shows the incompetence of those that pretend to be 'Airport' operatives....We all know what 'BAA' really stands for.