It didn’t seem to matter where you were in the country during the week beginning the 2nd February. In what is being reported as the worst winter in two decades, people across the country were experiencing severe travel problems as a result of the unusually heavy snowfall.
And Heathrow Airport was no exception. Many people saw their travel plans go out the window as the snow started to come down, and on that particular Monday both runways at Heathrow were closed from about half past eight in the morning onwards.
There was little to do for passengers awaiting flights out of the airport except find a window and watch as the snow continued to come down. Many flights were cancelled and others were severely delayed. At one point it was revealed that eight hundred flights were cancelled, owing to the severe snowfall that affected the airport.
The snowfall also led to one plane actually sliding off the runway. Fortunately it landed safely, but while it was taxiing towards its final position the front wheel apparently slid on the build up of ice and snow. As a result the wheel ended up caught in an area of grass next to the runway. You can read more about the story by visiting this web page.
The problems caused by the snow were made worse by the rate at which it was coming down. It’s certainly true that Heathrow Airport isn’t a location that is used to a lot of snow. But some six centimetres came down on the Monday in question, and it was thick enough to cause problems with clearing the runways. For safety reasons no planes were allowed to continue to take off or land once the weather really set in. And in fact the plane that lost control of its front wheel was the last one to make it down onto the runway before they were closed.
Things did start to get back to something approaching normality later in the day however. One of the two runways reopened by the late afternoon, but even then the delays were inevitable. After some eight plus hours spent trying to get to grips with clearing the snow as fast as it was falling, things weren’t going to get back to normal that quickly.
It was harder for those who had already travelled to the airport to catch a flight out. With nothing else to do but wait, it can’t have been easy to watch everyone else milling around waiting for something to happen. The airport did advise those who had not yet left home to check for more information about their flight before leaving, so hopefully that prevented still more people piling into the area.
At the present time the worst of the snow and wintry weather seems to have dissipated. But as warnings about the worst winter in ages go on, is there still a chance that the horrendous situation could be repeated? Heathrow Airport is hoping the answer is no.