Originally Posted by
slayers_88
the pilot told us the only available take-off slot they were given was 1:20 and were going to try to improve it. Some minutes later they said the flight had to be cancelled as they could not bring the slot forward, as the airport was busy due to the "weather" (I have a picture from the plane where you can see it wasn't even raining...).
There were very significant storms right across the south east of the UK that afternoon and evening which led to very significant reductions in ATC capacity that evening. Pretty much every airport in the south of the UK had significant delays throughout that evening. I suffered a two hour delay out of LHR, and a friend of mine was trying to fly from STN that evening too and suffered a 3 hr delay.
Whilst FR is not always a great airline, on this occasion the weather and ATC delays are not made up.