An estimated 15,000 passengers have been hit by a third day of flight cancellations by the UK’s biggest airlines. British Airways and easyJet blame the disruption on the storms that began on Sunday and caused chaos on Monday.
BA has grounded at least 60 flights to and from its main base, London Heathrow. Of these, 13 were the inbound legs of departures that were cancelled on Monday evening.
The airline faced a 90-minute halt on departing flights due to the presence of thunderstorms. Later in the evening, some arriving flights were diverted from Heathrow to Gatwick.
With British Airways aircraft and crew out of position, dozens more flights from Heathrow are cancelled on Tuesday – including three departures to each of Glasgow and Milan Malpensa.
The only other cancellations at present at Heathrow are SAS services to Copenhagen and Oslo.
A BA spokesperson said: “Like other airlines, we were affected by the adverse weather conditions across the UK and Europe yesterday. Unfortunately, due to a knock-on effect, we have had to adjust our schedule today.
“We’ve apologised to customers for the inconvenience caused, and our teams have been working hard to get them on their way as quickly as possible.”
Across at Gatwick, easyJet has grounded a further five arrivals and departures. On Sunday and Monday Britain’s biggest budget airline cancelled more than 100 services at its main base.
A further 21 flights have been cancelled at other UK airports – including two of the three Tuesday flights from Belfast International to London Stansted. A spokesperson for the carrier said: “easyJet is operating 1,700 flights today with a small proportion of flights scheduled for today unable to operate – due to a combination of aircraft being out of base following further thunderstorm activity resulting in ATC [air-traffic control] restrictions across Europe yesterday and some aircraft technical issues.
“We are doing all possible to minimise the impact on our customers, providing those on cancelled flights with options to rebook or receive a refund as well as hotel accommodation and meals where required and advise any passengers who sourced their own that they will be reimbursed.
“The safety and wellbeing of customers and crew is easyJet’s highest priority and while this is outside of our control, we would like to apologise to customers for the inconvenience caused.”
Disruption also affected Manchester on Monday evening, with four flights diverted: Ryanair to Liverpool and Leeds Bradford, plus easyJet and Tui to Newcastle.
Some arrivals were hours late: a Ryanair flight from Lisbon, due in before midnight on Monday, touched down at 3.02am.
