As the news coverage has died down here in the US, most people have probably forgotten about the plight of London-bound travelers. But last night as I sat in LAX’s Encounter restaurant (that big spider-looking thing), I saw Virgin’s 520p Heathrow departure head to the runway after its 850p departure, which itself was at least a half hour late.
That reminded me to look into this a little more today.
Sure ’nuff, things aren’t back to normal just yet, but they’re getting better. ATW Online tells us that yesterday, BA operated about 90% of flights from Heathrow. Today, they’ll operate their first full schedule of long haul flight since last week. There will only be a handful of short haul cancellations. Gatwick, meanwhile, should be up and running fairly well.
To put it in perspective, this BBC article notes that BA has cancelled 1,300 flights in the last week, 1,000 of those at Heathrow alone. And now there are over 20,000 bags that have been temporarily lost at Heathrow. That is a major inconvenience to put it mildly. As you can imagine, BA has requested to be paid for having to take such a hit to its operations. I wouldn’t be surprised to see other airlines follow suit.
If you’re waiting for your bag, keep waiting. That’s not going to be easy to clear that backlog.
If you’re flying out of Heathrow, continue to get there early. Your flights will go now, but you’ll still have a long wait ahead.
