Thousands stranded for New Year as flight schedules are wrecked

Heathrow, Gatwick and London City airports are worst affected by fog

Planes have had to deal with heavy fog when seeking to land or take-off at Heathrow (Justin Tallis/AFP/Getty )

Tens of thousands of airline passengers are starting the New Year a long way from where they hoped to be due to heavy fog in south-east England, which led to dozens of flight cancellations.

Heathrow, London City and Gatwick were the worst-affected airports.

British Airways cancelled more than 60 flights to and from the three airports, including services to and from Rome, Munich and Istanbul.

A statement on the airline’s website said: “For safety reasons air traffic control has to allow greater space between landing aircraft in fog or during periods of low visibility, and this will mean a reduced number of aircraft being allowed to land each hour.

“We are sorry for the difficulties caused by the poor weather and will do all we can to minimise the effect it has on our operations.”

The airline told passengers: “We are working to minimise the disruption to our customers where possible. We understand that many of our customers are travelling specifically for the New Year and are sorry for the inconvenience caused.”

Many flights operated late, with delays of five hours or more on flights to Heathrow from Melbourne, Islamabad and Dubai, and from Malaga and Paris to Southampton.

People whose flights are cancelled go to the back of the queue for seats on subsequent services which are operating. No cash compensation is payable, because the cause is beyond the control of the airlines.

In addition to passengers whose flights were cancelled, many travellers missed connections at Heathrow — the UK’s leading hub airport. Michael Ashcroft from Liverpool was on a heavily delayed BA flight from Manchester on Friday which arrived five minutes after his connecting service on Virgin Atlantic to Johannesburg departed.

“The airlines are blaming each other and saying they’re not responsible for sorting out another flight,” he told The Independent.

Sonja, a passenger from Sweden, said she had missed her transatlantic connection by a matter of minutes after her inbound flight from Stockholm touched down three hours late: “I spent seven hours waiting in line yesterday, and finally got a seat on the 11.15 flight this morning.”

At London City airport, all but 10 of the 34 scheduled departures were cancelled, with Alitalia, Swiss and CityJet grounding services. Several arriving flights were diverted to Stansted and Southend.