Heathrow and Gatwick flight cancellations leave ‘40,000 stranded’ after thunderstorms
Severe thunderstorms have caused chaos at Britain’s busiest airports, delaying more than 900 flights and forcing dozens of cancellations.
Severe thunderstorms have caused chaos at Britain’s busiest airports, delaying more than 900 flights and forcing dozens of cancellations.
More than 474 flights at London Heathrow and 439 at Gatwick were delayed, with some disruptions lasting for up to 11 hours, according to flight tracking data.
One British Airways service from Santiago, Chile, scheduled to arrive at Heathrow at 10am on Saturday (BST), was not expected to land until 9pm.
More than 200 flights on BA have already been cancelled to and from Heathrow, and on easyJet to and from Gatwick.
Heathrow’s online departure board showed several flights to European destinations cancelled on Sunday morning, including British Airways planes to Milan, Rome and Florence.
Travel expert Simon Calder reports that in total, some 40,000 passengers have had flights cancelled this weekend.
Passengers have been advised to monitor flight status online before leaving for the airport.
In the holiday resort of Dalaman, Turkey, a British man said his easyJet flight was cancelled as he made his way to the airport at 10pm on Saturday.
Over 11 hours later, he said he had ‘absolutely no communication’ from the airline about a rescheduled flight.
‘Due to thunderstorms in the south of the UK which restricted the number of arrivals and departures yesterday, like other airlines we experienced some disruption to our flying programme and had to pre-emptively cancel some flights to and from Gatwick.
‘We did all possible to minimise the impact of the weather disruption for our customers and notified passengers with their options to rebook or receive a refund and provided hotel accommodation and meals where required.
‘The safety and wellbeing of customers and crew is easyJet’s highest priority and while this was outside of our control, we are sorry for the inconvenience caused.’