Flight disruptions at UK airports

Some airports in Ireland are also affected.

The official position as at 2100 is that Gatwick should be about to accept arrivals, Heathrow is closed to all arrivals until 0300 Wednesday, and Stansted hopes to re-open to arrivals at 2200.

London arrivals have been diverted to other airports across the UK and Europe (including Paris, Frankfurt and Amsterdam). Departures are slowly starting up from all airports, some many hours late.

It is hoped to restore full service on Wednesday, although clearly aircraft and crews are out of position, so it may well take longer.

To some extent this has affected pretty much every commercial airport across the UK, including the Channel Isles.

A little vignette from this week.

Among those affected were the Isle of Skye Youth Pipe Band. They had been to Italy to take part in the Barga Scottish Festival (maybe one to note for those planning travels to Italy).

Their flight home to Glasgow on Wednesday was cancelled, and this extraordinary circumstance was not covered by EU261. They therefore had to pay for 2 extra nights stay in Barga before finally flying home to Manchester 48 hours or so late.

Their travel to and from Glasgow had been provided free of charge by Stagecoach buses at Portree, and they kept the return vehicle and driver on standby at Glasgow as long as possible.
Ultimately Stagecoach paid for another Glasgow coach company to travel down to Manchester to pick the group up on Friday evening. Overnight they were transferred at Hamilton services (Glasgow) to another vehicle provided by Shiel Buses and at 6am this morning transferred again at Fort William to the originally booked double decker Stagecoach vehicle and driver.

Quite the adventure for these school children, and I guess a worry for all their parents.

The Band now have a Just Giving page for the out of pocket expenses incurred while waiting in Italy.