Thousands of travellers could be stranded for new year as more flights are cancelled
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‘Where’s the planning and preparation? It’s thrown the UK aviation industry into chaos,’ said easyJet passenger Ewan Somerville, stranded at Edinburgh airport. Fog at the UK’s busiest airports is jeopardising the plans of tens of thousands of passengers. An estimated 20,000 people have had their flights cancelled to and from London airports on Sunday, adding to the frustrated hordes whose planes were grounded on Friday and Saturday.
At least 70 flights to and from Gatwick were cancelled on Sunday, along with more than 50 at Heathrow. Others were heavily delayed or diverted. Gatwick and Heathrow are respectively the busiest single-runway airport and two-runway airport in the world.
Flights from London Gatwick to Edinburgh on Sunday reveal how schedules unravelled. The first easyJet departure to the Scottish capital left on time at 8am. The next, at 12.55pm, was an hour late. The third and fourth were four hours and two hours late respectively. And the fifth and sixth were cancelled at short notice.
One passenger at Edinburgh, Ewan Somerville, has been waiting to fly to Gatwick since 8pm on Saturday. “The delay was creeping up until it finally cancelled,” he said. “There’s nobody to speak to at easyJet if you’re not at the airport. So I trekked out to the airport. It was chaos. Eventually they organised a hotel.
