Snow adds to Terminal 5 misery

The misery continued for passengers at London Heathrow’s Terminal 5 tonight after British Airways were today forced to cancel 126 flights, the majority due to snow.

BA began the day with 12 flights – six in, six out – scrapped from its schedule because of a technical fault with airport operator BAA’s automated baggage system, which arose on Saturday.

By mid-morning, BAA announced that engineers, who worked through the night, had managed to fix the fault.

But by that stage, a new and far less controllable problem had begun to play havoc with BA’s flight schedule – the weather.

At 10am there were 50 snow-related cancellations for BA but by 3pm this had increased to 114 – 57 return flights – bringing the total number for today to 126.

An airline spokeswoman said tonight: “The plan for tomorrow is to be at full strength, depending on the weather.

“There may be a knock-on impact on tomorrow’s flight schedule caused by today’s cancellations because of snow.

“The snow has been affecting all airlines and we are asking customers to keep checking ba.com.

“BAA’s baggage problem is now resolved and we will continue to monitor that.”

The lower frequency weekend schedule was supposed to give the airport operators some leeway in preparing to run a full weekday service for the first time tomorrow.

Yesterday was meant to have been the day BA returned to normal operations at Terminal 5 following its shambolic opening more than a week ago.

It was not to be. Within hours, BAA’a baggage system began to cough and splutter, ruining BA’s plans.

BAA said the software problem was affecting the baggage reconciliation system, which ensures passengers’ bags are only loaded on to planes which they are travelling on.

Alison Foulkes, 63, and her friend Jackie Spires, 67, both from Plymouth in Devon, had their 2.45pm flight to Vienna cancelled but they managed to get another one at 6.10pm yesterday.

Ms Foulkes said while stranded at T5: “It has been irritating. We thought for a moment that, having booked accommodation in Vienna, we were going to have to stay the night at Heathrow, but in the end we are going to get there.”

The technical problems alone over the last few days are estimated to have cost BA up to £16m (€20.2m).

There will be an additional bill for those caused by the snow.

Announcing at 11.20am today that BAA had fixed its baggage system, a spokeswoman for the operator said: “The principal challenge for Heathrow this morning is the snow and ice around the airport. We have well-rehearsed procedures in place to deal with this weather and all areas of the airport have been extensively de-iced and treated. This important work will go on as the day progresses, to maintain a safe airport for passengers and staff.”

Early this morning, BAA had to shut both of Heathrow’s runways, one after the other for 20 minutes each, so they could be de-iced.

A spokeswoman for NATS (National Air traffic Service) explained that when only one runway is available for use at Heathrow, aircraft have to have 12-miles gaps between them, rather than the usual three.

Planes also had to be de-iced before they took to the skies.