FR Liverpool

[Jamp]

I only have a second hand story, but does anyone know what was going on at LPL on Tuesday late afternoon?

My old man was due in on FR from Alicante but while lining up over the Wirral, at what he reckoned to be 2000ft, they pulled away and headed north to land in Blackpool. Announcement cited storms over LPL, but my dad (who's a paraglider and sailor) reckoned it looked fine. They never disembarked but sat on the apron for a while, waiting for clearance back to LPL and refueling according to the pilot. They started up, pushed back and waited ages, eventually taxied to the runway, lined up(!) and waited over 5 minutes! They moved off the runway and back to the apron while something landed, then finally taxied back to the runway and after over half an hour of messing around with engines running, were off to LPL.

At LPL there were next to no aircraft on the ground, so what had been going on? It sounds like a strange sequence of events and both my dad and the 3x weekly LPL flyer sat next to him thought it was quite suspicious. Anyone know what was happening? Genuine weather or something else?

[Mr A Tis]

Yep there was significant CB activity in that area for a while, causing major disruption to Liverpool & Manchester inbounds & outbounds. Aircraft were going all over the place to avoid these cells. Inbounds to Manchester from the south were ending up over the lake district getting around the CBs.
The delay at Blackpool was because the aircraft couldn't be released by radar due to complexity of the traffic situation at the time. Outbounds from Liverpool to Belfast were heading 20 miles south before being able to turn North West.
A pretty dire day for weather, all handled very well by pilots & ATC IMHO

[Jamp]

Thanks for the info.