Greek air traffic control strike and extreme weather result in dozens of flight cancellations

Greek airports will be no-fly zones between 10am and 1pm local time due to a general strike

For a fourth day, airline passengers face widespread disruption on flights to and from the UK. Thousands of travellers will be grounded by a combination of Tuesday’s disruption, continuing unfavourable weather and a general strike in Greece.

Dozens of flights to Greece have been cancelled due to industrial action. Greek airports will be no-fly zones between 10am and 1pm local time.

Air-traffic controllers are stopping work as part of a general strike called by the Greek civil servants’ trade union.

Round-trips from Gatwick to Athens, Corfu, Preveza, Rhodes, Thessaloniki and Zakinthos have been cancelled by easyJet, which has also grounded services from Bristol to Corfu and Manchester to Thessaloniki.

Anyone reaching Greece will find surface transport severely disrupted, with no rail or Metro services from Athens airport into the city. Ferries are likely to stay in port because of a 24-hour strike by members of the Pan-Hellenic Seamen’s Federation.

The national rail network has also been shut down.

Here in the UK, Eurocontrol is warning: “All London airports are affected by low visibility.”

British Airways has cancelled a further 20 flights, mostly to and from Heathrow, mainly to destinations including Berlin, Copenhagen and Milan.

Heathrow Airport was busy after midnight with delayed flights taking off and landing, including one BA arrival from Madrid touching down after 1am — just three-and-a-half hours before the first overnight arrivals from Hong Kong and Singapore.

Eurowings has cancelled flights from Heathrow to Dusseldorf and Hamburg.

Passengers on easyJet due to arrive at Gatwick from Amsterdam in mid-evening touched down five hours late in the early hours of Wednesday morning, while a TUI flight from Antalya arrived six hours late at 5am.

Sue Davidson tweeted from East Sussex: “We had a couple of Gatwick arrivals at 1am flying in over Sussex, plus a quite extraordinary bit of circling over Eastbourne.”

On Wednesday, easyJet has cancelled flights from Gatwick to Amsterdam and Inverness.

At Luton, Wizz Air’s flight from Chisinau in Moldova is expected to arrive at lunchtime, 14 hours behind schedule.

From Stansted, easyJet cancelled a flight to Naples and back, saying: “This is due to a high volume of disruption we experienced yesterday.” Ryanair grounded a departure to Bremen.

London City Airport is warning: “Due to the adverse weather conditions, your journey may be affected.” Multiple flights from Amsterdam to the Docklands airport on KLM and British Airways have been cancelled, while BA has cancelled an arrival from Edinburgh.

Amsterdam flights to and from Birmingham, Bristol, Cardiff, Leeds Bradford, Newcastle and Norwich have been cancelled because of poor weather at the Dutch airport.

In the UK, train services on the West Coast main line in Staffordshire are being severely disrupted as a result of cable theft.