Fog causes festive travel chaos in UK by Liam Dutton
Thick fog is continuing to cause travel chaos among those of us looking forward to spending Christmas abroad. Over the past few days, thousands of passengers have experienced severe delays or cancellations of flights at numerous UK airports.
Heathrow, one of the world’s busiest airports, was hit hard again on Thursday, with 350 flights cancelled – a 40% reduction in normal services.
With the fog set to remain through most of Friday as well, British Airways has already made the decision to cancel all domestic flights to and from Heathrow.
The main problem resulting from the fog has been the capacity of the airspace around the airports. With visibility heavily reduced, it has meant that the distance between aircraft on approach to runways has been doubled. This lessens capacity, and inevitably leads to delays or cancellations.
Road and rail transport has generally been running without too many problems. However, with lots of people travelling to see friends and family over the festive period, the road and rail network is very busy.
Road-side rescue organisations have reported more call outs than normal, as a result of people opting to travel by road after their domestic flights were cancelled.
With high pressure set to remain across the UK throughout the festive period, fog is likely to hinder travel plans further in the next few days.
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