London airports hit by fog
14.01.09
Thousands of passengers have been fogbound after around 200 flights were cancelled at London's major airports, including Heathrow, Gatwick and London City Airport. Southampton Airport on the south coast was also affected.
Worst-hit was Heathrow where more than 130 inbound and outbound services were cancelled today. Dozens of other flights were delayed as NATS, the air traffic control service, reduced the flow rate into Heathrow from more than 40 planes an hour to only 28 to cope with the reduced viability. Many inbound flights were arriving an hour late.
Elsewhere 60 flights were cancelled at London City Airport, with only one flight operating normally this morning. At Gatwick 16 flights were scrapped, but dozens more services suffered severe delayed and some were diverted as the airports struggled to cope with the fog, which descended as temperatures dropped. At Southampton flights were delayed, diverted or cancelled because of 'pea soup-like conditions', with visibility reduced to just 200 hundred yards. Only Stansted and Luton emerged unscathed.
Airlines hit by the fog included British Airways, easyJet and bmi, with services to short-haul destinations cancelled. A BA spokesman said that they had cancelled flights to airports where they operated frequently, meaning that passengers could be put onto other services. bmi cancelled flights to Edinburgh, Belfast, Brussels, Amsterdam, Glasgow and Manchester.
A BAA spokesman used the fog delays to press the case for a third runway at Heathrow, insisting that the additional capacity would have minimised the misery suffered by passengers.
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