Fog Closes Heathrow for 2 Days!
 

See that Heathrow has cancelled all flights yesterday and today due to fog.

How bad is this fog - is it all over London or just near Heathrow?

Never heard of this happening for such a long period of cancellations. Apparently Heathrow is a complete zoo right now.

Holy Moses. Sounds worse than the problems being caused by the snow in Denver.

We woke up to fog this morning, but it seemed to clear pretty quickly, certainly at ground level.

"See that Heathrow has cancelled all flights yesterday and today due to fog.
"

Wherever you got that from, stop reading it. If it's a paper you're paying for, sue them for your money back.

Heathrow's been operating pretty much all of the past two days. It's been heavily slowed, so they're roughly halving the number of flights using the place. So BA have cancelled lots of short-hauls, since their

"See that Heathrow has cancelled all flights yesterday and today due to fog.
"

Wherever you got that from, stop reading it. If it's a paper you're paying for, sue them for your money back.

Heathrow's been operating pretty much all of the past two days.

It's been heavily slowed, so they're roughly halving the number of flights using the place. BA have cancelled lots of short-hauls, since their
revenue per takeoff is less.

Why? Well, the Thames Valley can get foggy, but today's and yesterday's don't look too unusual. And BA used to boast about how all their planes had Cat III equipment so they could land in fog. Heathrow has sometimes closed - usually November's the riskiest time, but all this global warming is shoving everything back a month a so.

None of which satisfactorily explains what's going on. My guess is that the Ozzies and Irish who've been running BA into the ground for the past five years have quietly sold the Cat III stuff to someone else, and the Spaniards who've taken Heathrow over have introduced siestas.

Why Heathrow affected more? Bloomberg News article:

<The air separation distance set for flights using Heathrow in good weather is 3 miles (4.8 kilometers), NATS's Wright said today. Air traffic controllers double that distance to 6 miles during poor visibility to ensure safe maneuvering of planes.

Heathrow is the worst affected airport during low- visibility weather in southeast England because its two runways normally provide capacity for a shorter air-separation distance than at other airfields, Wright said.

Today's cancellations shows that ``we need to get more capacity into the system,'' BAA's Bonfield said. Heathrow is scheduled to open a fifth terminal in 2008, and wants to build a third runway.>

Bob,

It's desperate here. Please send money!

Have bought several cases of SPAM and am sending on next BA flight to Heathrow. Would send money but with the current exchange rate it wouldn't buy much booze.

...and you will need lots of booze to be able to stomach the Spam!

Send spam and women!

As for money - every little helps. Just £50 can keep a fog-bound advertising executive in cocaine for an evening.

Just £100 can provide a meal for a fog bound adult at Gordon Ramseys

A mere £1000 can provide a couple with a mini-break in a spa hotel, to allow them to escape the horror for a few days.

£500,000 can provide adaquate shelter for a batchelor in a central london area.

Really, no gift is too small.

Please send what you can and send it now.

I'll send you all some Guinness immmediately. As for the donation of a half million pound flat, that might take awhile.

Things got hairy enough at my own (relatively) small airport last year when they had to temporarily shut down the ILS Cat II on the main runway while repaving work went on. With only the Cat I secondary runway in operation, things got verrrry slow, especially as this was June and our Junes can get a tad foggy.

Even with traffic only slowed, I'd hate to be an air traffic controller at LHR right now, and still less a passenger.

"Today's cancellations shows that ``we need to get more capacity into the system,'' BAA's Bonfield said."

Funny he said that. Just as the campaign to stop the destruction likely to be caused by T6 and the third runway gets started.

There's something here that doesn't compute. Heathrow didn't use to get this kind of chaos in fog, and they've not materially increased the number of landings in the past decade.

There may be a reasonably benign explanation: traffic may be more restricted now than a decade ago because of greater safety concerns. In which case it'd be nice if someone admitted it.

Or it's BAA's way of showing why they need approval to tear down Harmondsworth.

<Please send what you can and send it now>

My sincere hope that the suffering will soon end.

sent...ask for no more than that, we need every pence to send more troops to Iraq. Busted and broke...morally and financially... sincerely, US of A

I will be in London for a week in February - if the SPAM runs out i'll give you some more.

It has been bleedin' foggy down here by the Thames today. I've been hearing the cargo ships sounding foghorns every 30 seconds or so and I've not heard that before so it must be bad.

I hope that everyone trying to get home for Christmas gets there ok. Good luck to all.

Funny, I got an email from a friend who flew into Heathrow this morning from Miami. No problem. Guess the pilot wasn't told about the fog and the airport closing?

Probably the a/c equipped for zero-zero landing (Category III) are operating normally, and the rest are sitting on the ground.

So it's not the airport that's inoperative - it's some of the planes.

Look, enough of this fol-der-rol. People here are suffering from a lack of goose fat* and caviar. The situation is desperate.

Send money now!

*this is true - nigella used it in one of her recipes - now we've run out.

I'll try to get Bono to organize a Concert for Heathrow. Maybe YoYo Ono can do her part - but now that her chauffeur has stolen all her money don't expect must.

Maybe all those school groups singing Christmas caroles at practically every train station can give part of their booty to Heathrow refugees.

Most of the problem is with ground handling - bit dodgy trying to get around an airport with a big aircraft in low visibility conditions.

The other problem is that normally Heathrow runs at 98% capacity and so hasn't much slack in the system to cater for flights taking off / landing at a slower rate than normal

Neo Patrick, the airport wasn't closed. It just wasn't running at full capacity so many flights were cancelled.