Airlines and operators face a fallout from severe weather disruption that closed runways at multiple UK airports over the weekend.
Flights were cancelled or delayed at Birmingham, Bristol, Leeds Bradford, Liverpool, Manchester and Newcastle airports with many inbound diversions early on Sunday morning.
More than 30 flights due to depart from Manchester were cancelled on Sunday morning, while others unable to land were diverted to other airports.
Manchester airport had to temporarily shut its runways again early this morning (Monday) to enable heavy snow to be cleared.
Posting on X, the airport said: “Our runways are now open but, as a result of the earlier closure, some departures and arrivals may still experience delays.”
Leeds Bradford airport said in a 5am update: “Our teams have been working overnight to clear the runway. Most of last night’s arrivals were diverted, our airliner partners need to reposition aircraft back to LBA before resuming today’s flight schedule. Disruption to today’s flights is expected.”
Snow, fog and heavy rain overnight on Saturday across various parts of the UK led to runway closures.
Jet2 said it had made the “difficult decision” to delay 19 inbound and 12 departing flights due on Sunday to today (Monday). These included services to and from Leeds/Bradford, Liverpool, Manchester, East Midlands and Glasgow covering destinations including the Canary Islands, Faro, Alicante, Geneva, Paris and Prague.
Jet2 earlier warned of flight delays in some parts of the UK due to the temporary closure of many airports but insisted it planned to operate all services.
Aviation analytics firm Cirium estimated that 152 flights were cancelled departing UK airports – 6% of all scheduled departures – on Sunday.
A further 136 arriving flights were also cancelled – 5% of scheduled arrivals.
The worst affected airports were Manchester airport (33 departures cancelled, 27 arrivals cancelled); Heathrow (20 departures cancelled, 18 arrivals cancelled); Leeds Bradford (15 departures cancelled, 10 arrivals cancelled), Gatwick (12 departures cancelled, 9 arrivals cancelled) and Liverpool (10 departures cancelled, 10 arrivals cancelled).
Runways began to reopen by midday on Sunday as snow was cleared but many aircraft were left out of position, including some inbound transatlantic services diverted to Shannon and Dublin.
A number of EasyJet, Ryanair and Tui Airways flights faced long delays to departures from Bristol airport on Sunday morning.
Ryanair warned of potential disruption to flights to and from the UK today (Monday) due to snow and ice.
“We regret any inconvenience caused to passengers by these weather conditions, which are outside of Ryanair’s control and affect all airlines operating to/from the UK on 6 January,” the carrier said.
This came as the Met Office issued an amber weather warning for snow in southern parts of northern England to run into this morning.
Meanwhile, forecasters have warned that a giant winter storm could bring the heaviest snowfall and coldest temperatures to the US in more than a decade.
The storm, which started in the centre of the country, is set to move east in the next couple of days with 30 states under weather alerts, according to the US National Weather Service.
American Airlines, Delta, Southwest and United are waiving change fees for passengers because of flight disruption. Thousands of flights have been cancelled or delayed.