Hey all:
I have a 2 week vacation just after Christmas and am planning on visiting Britain and Italy for the first time. I read forecasters predicting that it will be really cold and snowy this winter. I remember a few years ago Heathrow and Gatwick had severe flight delays and cancellation and was wondering whether London's airports will be reliable and/or prepared if a snowstorm hits?
AS someone who has passed through Londons airports,stations etc. several times in bad weather,I'd say...no and no.
Still....a forecast is only that.The weather may be fine...its not an exact science (and even less so in the UK).Heavy snow at Christmas is not common in the London area.
And I wouldn't bank on Italy's airports being much better, just slightly less likely to have disruptive amounts of snow.
There's no airport in the world that can carry on undisrupted during a heavy snow event, or storm-force winds, or dense fog, etc, for that matter. Heathrow and Gatwick have now invested very substantially in snow clearance equipment so that they can clear their runway as fast as can be reasonably achieved. But despite that, the unusual difficulty they suffer in comparison to most of the world's airports is that their capacity is so fully occupied that it is very difficult to make up any significant loss of runway time without some flights being cancelled. Nevertheless disruptive weather events at Heathrow and Gatwick are pretty uncommon, rarely persist much longer than a couple of days, and even if one happens this winter it is unlikely to be exactly when you are travelling.
I read forecasters predicting that it will be really cold and snowy this winter.
Those forecasters are charlatans. No genuine meteorologist would make such a precise prediction. The best a true scientist could do would be to say something like, "There is currently a strong el Nino underway, which is unlikely to resolve before winter. In 70% of previous El Nino events, a broad, but varying, area of NW Europe has experienced a cold, snowy winter". I say "something like", because in fact El Nino has no predictive effect on European weather at all. But I don't rule out the possibility some other weather cycle is in operation that might have some small predictive consequence for NW European weather. Nevertheless, at this distance, it could only be a tendency, nowhere near a certainty, and the localisation of it both geographically and in time, would also be uncertain.
What charlatan forecasters do, as much reported in the popular press, is make such precise predictions, and trumpet "there, told you so" on the small number of occasions that by chance they are right, knowing that the many previous times they were wrong will be forgotten.
I recall in 2010 an overhead matrix sign on the M25 (Greater London's ring road that passes very close to all 5 terminals at LHR) reading 'Heathrow Airport - CLOSED'.
The TV and press had a field day, talking to everyone from passengers to government ministers, from vehicle drivers to runway clearance staff. It was, dare I say, hilarious at times. The world's busiest runways and international airport.. Closed.
The minister for snow, or whatever ludicrous title he had, said the usual: "Lessons have been learned, changes have been made, solutions are in place and opportunities were missed" Blah blah.
As 2012 approached: 'Heathrow Airport CLOSED.'
The only thing in life that's guaranteed is: Nothing lasts forever !
Forecasters or some journalists have been predicting it will be really cold and snowy for the last 3 winters on all occasions they have been pretty much wrong. I would go ahead and book everything of course freak weather could happen any where and i think the US eastern seaboard has been more affected than anyhwere over the last couple of years so i would be more concerned of the departure/arrival airport in the US. Than those in Europe.
Heathrow have invested a lot on snow clearing equipment, so it shouldn't happen that Heathrow at least is snowbound. You probably need to be more worried that TfL can't get the buses out of the bus garage or that the bus driver can get to bus garage in the first place.
Heathrow have invested a lot on snow clearing equipment, so it shouldn't happen that Heathrow at least is snowbound.
The airport will be closed while the snow is still falling. And even the best snow clearing equipment won't have cleared all the snow until some time after it has stopped falling. This is true even in Norway. The last time Heathrow was closed for snow, it was when they were already in possession of all this new equipment, which functioned just as intended.
As you can see, the criticisms of Heathrow last time it snowed - when they already had this equipment which performed to specification - were for not having agreed a cancellation plan with airlines in advance of the snow falling.
http://www.travelweekly.co.uk/articles/2013/01/22/42883/heathrow+and+ba+criticised+for+reaction+to+snow.html
You can understand their reluctance to have such a plan. Meteorologists cannot yet predict accurately how much snow will fall in a precise location. If Heathrow had agreed a cancellation plan, they could well have been criticised for over-reacting if in practice little snow had fallen.