Snow disrupting UK flights again

Up to 11 flights had to be diverted from Manchester to Liverpool’s John Lennon Airport last night as snow forced one of their runways to be closed. Around 1,000 passengers were affected on flights from across Europe and had to be bused back over to Manchester Airport as workers tried desperately to clear the closed the runway. The freak storm affected Easyjet, Finn Air and Thompson flights among a few others.

This is the first major disruption since the heavy snowfalls last month that brought then UK to a standstill. Airports including Gatwick, Heathrow, Luton and some Scottish airports had to be closed in January when wintry conditions made it unsafe for flights to take-off or land. It caused travel chaos for thousands as hopeful travellers tried to escape the arctic conditions that swept Britain.

A spokesman for Manchester Airport said they suspended flights just after 16:00 yesterday as the snow fell. They had to wait for a break before they could attempt a clean up of the runway. Liverpool also had its fair share of snowfall yesterday, but not enough to force flights to be diverted luckily. Flights were only diverted from Manchester for just over an hour and a half and passengers that were hoping for information on the diverted planes were instructed to phone a premium rate telephone number, which apparently could not give any more information than the airport’s website.

There were no other reports of airports diverting traffic due to weather across the UK yesterday. Hopefully operations will be back to normal today and the small backlog of flights will be quickly filtered through.