London airports weather chaos - news
 

Ok what is happening? Sounds a nightmare - any reports from on the ground? (or in the air?)


Heathrow Airport has had to shut one of its two runways and says it will take around two hours to reopen it. There are "significant" delays and cancellations.
Gatwick and Stansted airports are open, although fewer aircraft are able to take off. Twenty three flights had to be cancelled and 18 diverted to other airports after Gatwick closed its runway for two hours on Sunday evening.

BBC NEWS | UK | Heavy snow envelops much of UK

London City closed and runway closures stansted, gatwick and heathrow (some temporary while they snow clear BBC news states)

Worst snow for 6 years predicted..

Flash warnings of severe or extreme weather
Met Office: London & South East England: severe weather warnings

Very Heavy Snowfall

Heavy snow showers from overnight will continue through this morning's rush hour with total accumulations of 10 to 20cm likely to bring widespread disruption to transport networks.

Issued at: 0419 Mon 2 Feb

London busses withdrawn..

Snow halts London bus services | UK | Reuters

LONDON (Reuters) - Heavy snow forced London's bus operators to halt all bus services on Monday morning, Transport for London said, while the operators of Gatwick airport said flights could be delayed or cancelled.

Maybe we should get the Italians in to clear the snow? They seem to cope a lot better with far more of it...:}

Radio just reported that LHR is closed...

British snow for British workers !!!!

this thread was moved from rumours and news.

most of london's airports shut is not news for pilots then it seems, and does not affect them (aka the rules for posting in rumours in news) :ugh:

So can someone explain again to me how LHR does not need a third runway, or LGW a second? Operations could proceed normally with one runway being maintained or swept, and LGW could survive too. Instead, the financial business centre of the world (just) is brought into total chaos because of wooly headed greens! We really deserve to lose it to Europe now.

Wouldn't the third runway be covered in the same amount of snow, Rainboe? So wouldn't they still have to close it to allow it to be cleaned? It's going to be the same problem, I'm afraid, so the place would still have to close until at least one runway is cleared and then we have to think of getting aircraft from whatever runway is open to the terminals, and that brings in other issues with a third runway due to the extra taxiways if they are linking the third one to the main airport complex (honestly can't remember it it is going to be "stand alone" or connected to the rest of the place)

I'm currently waiting at MUC to fly to London. Hell of a day for it.

Was booked with LH to fly to LCY leaving at 6.40, that was cancelled, re-booked to LHR leaving at 7.30-ish, was delayed for ages then got cancelled. Next couple cancelled too. Currently booked mid-afternoon to LHR (still with LH...)

Anyone care to speculate whether LCY or LHR will re-open first? Should I get myself re-booked to LCY instead of LHR? :-)

Anybody's guess... Manchester's still open, and Virgin Trains are still running Manchester to London Euston...

According to Rumours & News thread, one runway at LHR is now open and they are landing on it

If the airport management cannot keep the existing runways open, how could they cope with more?

I don't seem to remember Zuerich closing ever or Prague and those airports get some pretty big falls.

The problem is they've been clearing the runways since the snow started to fall yesterday afternoon, but they're running out of space to put all the shifted snow.

Plus, at Heathrow they're trying to shift a place that slid off the taxiway...

The phrase 'pre defined contingency plan' comes to mind for some strange reason. :ugh:

Not exactly 3m of snow, is it?

We don't have snow at this level very often. I believe this is the worst fall for 18 years. In all fairness to airports, it is surely unwise to invest in millions of pounds of machinery to sit there idly at all major British Airports for the odd heavy snowfall every few years. Mind you, if passengers were prepared to pay more for their tickets,. then that would pay for the equipment to stand redundant for most of the time??? As soon as we have snow, people start saying 'but we don't have problems at Geneva, Zurich etc.,' They have heavy snow every year, and consequently are geared up for it. We aren't and don't really need to be.

Ah it annoys the hell out of me when I fly to places like JFK, BOS, ORD, YYZ, YVR, SVO and a bundle of other places which experience "severe ahem" snowfalls on a regular annual basis far worse then anything being experienced in the UK yet they pretty much manage to keep their airports ticking over with minor delays! London gets a moderate flurry and it shuts down and goes into crises mode!

LHR has an excellent fleet of snow clearance vehicles, why cant they seem to use them correctly? Send the drivers over to YYZ for a few weeks if they must.

Ahwell, I shouldnt really complain as I have been told to stay at home today and not attempt to travel to LHR....Just aswell cos Im in DUB and dont think I could have made it to work! LOL!

ApaddyinUK.
It's a fact of life that other outside a scenario know how to run things better.. Perhaps you could suggest ways in which Heathrow could improve in this respect. I don't suppose that they were sitting there with their minds in neutral and their thumbs up their backsides, or do you think that is the case?. I am sure they were doing their best, but being disrupted is not something the Brits tolerate very easily.

Well, if they ran out of space to dump the snow, which is not exactly an impossible scenario to think of in a contingency planning session when the pressure is off, how would you describe it?

As to what could be done, maybe some effective contingency planning for dealing with large volumes of snow would be a good start?