After a weekend in which an estimated 350 flights were cancelled at key London airports, more departures are being grounded ahead of New Year’s Eve because of three days of fog in southeast England.
At London Gatwick, short-notice cancellations continued long into Sunday night, with easyJet in particular grounding dozens of flights as passengers waited in the terminals.
British Airways, Vueling and Wizz Air also left thousands of people stranded on Sunday.
Many of the passengers who made it back to Gatwick were severely delayed, with some easyJet, BA and Tui flights arriving four hours or more behind schedule.
Cancellations resumed early on Monday morning. So far 27 more flights have been grounded at Gatwick, affecting up to 5,000 passengers. The biggest airline at the Sussex airport, easyJet, has grounded 17 flights. Inbound services from Aberdeen, Inverness and Belfast City were axed.
Departures on easyJet to Nice, Venice, Murcia, Milan, Naples, Innsbruck and Rennes have also been cancelled.
Passengers were told: “We were affected by a three-day disruption caused by low-visibility weather conditions in London Gatwick.
“This has meant that air traffic control has had to limit the number of aircraft that can arrive and depart, which has sadly led to delays and cancellations today. The safety of you and our crew is our highest priority, and we thank you for your understanding.”
British Airways has grounded flights from Gatwick to Algiers, Jersey (two services), Seville and Verona.
At Heathrow, where at least 40 British Airways flights were cancelled on Sunday. BA has only grounded departures to Barcelona and Prague.
A British Airways spokesperson said: “We operate hundreds of flights every day without disruption, successfully getting tens of thousands of our customers to where they need to be.
“Like other airlines, we’ve had to make some small adjustments to our schedule today because of air traffic control restrictions across London airports due to adverse weather conditions.
“While the vast majority of our customers will be unaffected, we apologise for the inconvenience caused and our teams are working hard to help get their journeys back on track.”
Operations at London City, which saw proportionately the most diversions and cancellations, are now largely back on track with a few residual delays and cancellations.
The record delay on Sunday was a Ryanair lunchtime flight from Belfast International to London Stansted, which took off 12 hours late and landed at the Essex airport at 2.11am.
