Snow Joke - Airport Operators Face Criticism for Response to the Big Freeze
Cheap flights airline Jet2.com and the British Air Transport Association (BATA) stuck up for beleaguered airport bosses yesterday after the extreme snow and ice afflicting much of the UK caused hundreds of services to be cancelled.
London's Heathrow Airport was particularly badly affected, with British Airways being forced to cancel all of its cheap flights to Europe and other short-haul destinations. Airport staff struggled to keep Heathrow's remaining runway open after the other was closed by ice.
The Association of Independent Tour Operators (AITO) responded angrily to the situation, castigating the airport authorities' preparations as "nothing short of a scandal". AITO aviation committee chairman John Tangney said: "In 2010 it cannot be beyond the means of so-called world-class airports like Heathrow to have contingency plans in place to cope with snowfalls."
However, airline representatives insisted that disruption was almost inevitable given that the winter weather conditions had been the worst in the aviation sector's history. They also pointed out that major European hubs such as Schiphol and Charles de Gaulle airports in Amsterdam and Paris had also been forced to cancel hundreds of cheap flights due to the snow.
BATA chief executive Simon Buck said: "The Met Office has described this as the most severe winter for about 100 years and the aviation industry has only been around for about 100 years so it's reasonable to expect there will be some disruption to aviation when airport operators are geared up for normal winters. This is not a normal winter."
Cheap fares carrier Jet2.com passenger sales director Phil Ward added that the challenges airlines and airports alike were facing were huge – although he stressed that Jet2.com's cheap flights from Gatwick and its northern hubs were operating a near-normal service.
General Travel News posted by 
on 22 December 2010
cheap flights, cheap flights to Europe, cheap fares
http://www.ttglive.com/c/portal/layout?p_l_id=3208370&CMPI_SHARED_articleId=4476783&CMPI_SHARED_ImageArticleId=4476783&CMPI_SHARED_articleIdRelated=4476783&CMPI_SHARED_ToolsArticleId=4476783&CMPI_SHARED_CommentArticleId=4476783&articleTitle=Airlines%20defend%20airport%20operators%20over%20snow%20chaos
http://www.travelmole.com/stories/1145662.php
False
True
