Teething Problems As Hundreds of flight delays hit Heathrow
Hundreds of flights were delayed at Heathrow two days after a new system went live to ‘cut delays caused by strong winds’. The delays affected 287 flights taking off from Heathrow on Sunday and 288 flights arriving at the London airport, according the flight data website Flight Aware.
The new system, Time Based Separation (TBS), went live on Friday and was described as a ‘world first’.
Hopefully this turbulent weather will soon settle down. The MET Office website is currently indicating the winds will have eased by mid-week so fingers crossed all of you flying out from Heathrow for an Easter break will not experience delays. It never hurts however to make sure you are prepared for a flight delay, especially if travelling with young children. What will keep them entertained (a good old fashioned game of eye-spy and a go on my smart phone games normally gets me out of jail!), what about meal-times? – a hungry child is rarely fun to travel with so it’s best to ensure you always have snacks/ sweeties to hand (and that goes for keeping my husband happy too!). Make sure you don’t pack anything too critical in the hold luggage in case (excuse the pun) it gets lost or delayed etc. (For example your child’s favourite teddy).
An easy quick win to get your trip off to a good start is to park your car at the airport with minimum hassle and time. Meet & Greet parking at Heathrow is the first choice on this front. The result is that you can beat the queues and hopefully means that your party gets seats together if you haven’t pre-booked.
With meet and greet Heathrow parking you are met outside the terminal by a VIP driver who then takes your car away to be securely parked in the off-site car-park which has Park Mark accreditation. On date of return, providing you follow the simple instructions in the booking paperwork, your car will be brought to you outside the terminal ready to drive home. 7 days VIP Budget Meet & Greet Heathrow parking starts from just £47.95.
Source:
http://www.vipheathrow.co.uk/index.php/our-services/heathrow-meet-and-greet-parking
FYI: More About The Heathrow Delays:
A spokesman for Heathrow Airport said: “There were delays at Heathrow yesterday due to very high winds. “We had no cancellations (out of the approximately 1300 scheduled flights) so although we are running at 98% capacity the airport coped well with the weather disruption.”Of course we are sorry for those passengers who were delayed yesterday.”
A spokesman for NATS said: “The tool is obviously new so it will take some time for us to be getting the absolute most out of it.
“We are currently in a period of Limited Operational Service to refine our processes and ensure everything is working as expected. We then plan to go fully live on 1 May, although further refinements will probably be made over the course of the year.”
Source: http://www.travelmole.com/news_feature.php?c=setreg®ion=2&m_id=bmY!m_rd&w_id=10749&news_id=2016067
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