Applewood

If you look at the LHR Curfew thread, it has some footage of the torrential rain and wind here late this afternoon…….

alex67500

It's an operational nightmare even once you get there. We waited for an hour and a half for a stand, it was so bad they turned the engines off and let people wander round and visit de flight deck. We've now taxied to a stand behind the C concourse and we're still waiting for a bus. We landed 2 hours ago now. People are getting annoyed.

LCY8737

And looking at the radar there is more rain on the way.

Agent69

Currently in the Premier Inn Bath Road, waiting for a flight in the morning to Milan.

At the rear of PI there is a lake between the car park and the rear entrance which will probably have ducks swiming on it by the morning. Driving up the M3 at about 4:30pm and it was bucketing down. Only problem is that the weather at Malpensa when tomorrows flight lands is just as bad as Heathrow today.

LCY8737

Explanation from the captain just now: just after 4pm this afternoon heavy rain at LHR led to a suspension of departing traffic. Once weather cleared up staff shortages meant that the backlog could not be cleared up as quickly as it should have.

On the bright side: OPO - LHR is expecting strong tailwind.

Krisz

Well don�t worry folks just landed back to LGW. There is no gate to park so we parked somewhere. According to the captain only a single person working to allocating gates so there is a backlog and we are going to sit here for a while. This impacts EasyJet too.

LCY8737

Similar scenes at LHR: Landed and arrived at the gate, waiting 25 mins now. The company managing arrivals say they can't contact their team responsible for operating the jetty.

iDo

I was on the 16:05 BA912 to FRA, boarded to a slight delayed departure (~15 mins), sat on the stand until 17:20, then drove around the airport before returning to a stand to refuel at 20:00ish, let some people off. Closed doors and removed Jetty around 21:00, waiting around hour before flight cancelled just before 22:00. Took an hour for a jetty be attached, of plane at 23:00. 7 hours on board.

No Ubers around and taxi queue of just over an hour.

zedarmill

BA703 from VIE is now delayed from 20:55 last night to 14:05 today. Not sure why BA can't operate the flight back to LHR in the morning tho because the inbound aircraft had already arrived at VIE just after midnight. Well at least we are being put in an airport hotel with free buffet.

southlondonphil

Possibly because of minimum rest time requirement for the inbound crew before they can operate the return flight due to (almost?) timing out during the earlier delays.

LCY8737

End of the saga: Doors finally opened about 45 mins after arriving at the gate. New first for me: Arriving in a dark T3 and having the lights go on as I walked down the corridors, triggering motion sensors.

The drive from the airport was interesting: Still lots of flooding on the roads.

Sigwx

Yesterday was rather chaotic to put it mildly. Airborn holds became unusable and just getting to them a challenge in itself. ATC working wonders as per usual with London, too marks.

Arrivals heavily regulated, departures heavily reduced in certain directions at certain points in the day. Nothing south at one point. Nothing anywhere for a few moments.

the screen shots below give a flavour. You can see when the second front started to pass through as average start up delays (TSAT) go from 13 mins to 108 mins in under an hour. Joyous. And I got very wet indeed! Equally joyous.

AJA_

Sigwx I always enjoy reading your posts. The technical side to operations is anathema to me and it is interesting to read what goes on behind the scenes.

I was glad I wasn't flying anywhere near LHR yesterday, the weather was phenomenal at 5pm yesterday on the ground driving from Windsor back towards Staines, monsoon like in intensity with lightning and very strong winds. Bad enough on the ground, no idea what it must've been like up in the air. Interesting observing planes coming through it approaching LHR from Windsor then suddenly nothing as they were obviously avoiding landing. A pain for ATC and anyone affected by the subsequent delays but safety first so all credit to everyone involved in deciding which flights to cancel.

Concerto

Flying out from LCY later today (to DUS). Will let you know how things are once there.

Beaulieu

Flew into LHR last night on a 30 minute late shuttle yesterday afternoon arriving at around 1630. Had to wait for the stand guidance and jetty to be put onto the aircraft for a while (as ever) to be turned on and it started pelting it down hard enough that it was very audible on the aircraft fuselage. As we were disembarking the captain noted that departures were briefly suspended...

The approach however was rather boring, saw a fair few CBs but mostly a clear/dreary straight approach in with no holding. Was quite interesting watching the go arounds in the long stay car park while we were getting extremely wet walking to the car...!