Airlines and airports are dealing with the consequences of severe weather that closed runways at many UK airports at the weekend.
Flights were cancelled or delayed at Birmingham, Bristol, Leeds Bradford, Liverpool, Manchester and Newcastle airports, with many inbound flights diverted early on Sunday morning.
More than 30 flights due to depart from Manchester were cancelled on Sunday morning, while others unable to land were diverted to other airports.
Manchester Airport was forced to temporarily close its runways again early Monday morning to allow heavy snow to be cleared.
In a post on X, the airport said: “Manchester Airport is one of the largest airports in the country: “The runways are now open but, as a result of the earlier closure, some departures and arrivals may still experience delays.”
Leeds Bradford Airport said in an update at 5am: “Our teams worked overnight to clear the runway. Most of last night’s arrivals were diverted, our airline partners need to reposition aircraft back to LBA before resuming today’s flight schedule. Disruptions to today’s flights are expected.”
Jet2 said it had taken the “difficult decision” to delay 19 inbound flights and 12 outbound flights that were due to take place on Sunday to yesterday Monday. These included services to and from Leeds/Bradford, Liverpool, Manchester, Manchester, East Midlands and Glasgow covering destinations such as the Canary Islands, Faro, Alicante, Geneva, Paris and Prague. It had earlier warned of flight delays in some parts of the UK due to the temporary closure of several airports, but insisted it intended to operate all routes.
Aviation analytics firm Cirium estimated that 152 flights departing from UK airports were cancelled on Sunday, 6% of all scheduled departures. A further 136 arriving flights were also cancelled – 5% of all scheduled arrivals. The most affected airports were Manchester airport (33 departures cancelled, 27 arrivals cancelled), Heathrow (20 departures cancelled, 18 arrivals cancelled), Leeds Bradford (15 departures cancelled, 10 arrivals cancelled), Gatwick (12 departures cancelled, 9 arrivals cancelled) and Liverpool (10 departures cancelled, 10 arrivals cancelled).
Runways began to reopen from midday on Sunday as the snow cleared, but many aircraft were out of position, including some inbound transatlantic routes diverted to Shannon and Dublin.
Many EasyJet, Ryanair and Tui Airways flights experienced long delays to their departures from Bristol Airport on Sunday morning. Ryanair warned of possible disruption to flights to and from the UK on Monday due to snow and ice. “We regret any inconvenience caused to passengers by these weather conditions, which are beyond Ryanair’s control and affect all airlines operating flights to/from the UK on 6 January,” the carrier said. This comes as the Met Office issued a yellow warning for snow in the southern parts of northern England that will last until this morning.
Meanwhile, meteorologists have warned that a giant winter storm could bring the heaviest snowfall and lowest temperatures to the US in more than a decade. The storm, which started in the centre of the country, is set to move east over the next two days, with 30 states on a weather alert, according to the US National Weather Service. American Airlines, Delta, Southwest and United are waiving flight change fees for passengers due to the flight disruption. Thousands of flights have been cancelled or delayed.
