Travel + Snow = Problems

If you’ve been watching the news, much of the eastern seaboard has been blanketed with snow. Thousands of flights have been cancelled stranding who knows how many passengers.

Anyone traveling this time of year knows they take the risk of weather working against them. But at what point does the blame go from mother nature to the airports.

Last week, London’s Heathrow Airport, arguably one of the world’s busiest, was closed for days due to snow. With it being the week before Christmas, tens of thousands of travelers were stranded—many of whom were just transiting through. EVen after the snow stopped falling it took three days to get back to normal. Many of the stranded never made it to their destination for Christmas.

Well, you say, nothing they could do, it was all that snow. Or was it?

London’s other four airports also closed for a short while but re-opened and got up to full speed while Heathrow was still shut. 

Why?

That’s the question the British Government is asking. So much so, they are thinking of enacting legislation that would “give the regulator the power to fine an airport where it does let passengers down and doesn’t prepare properly for severe weather conditions.”

BAA, the operator of Heathrow, said they would welcome legislation that would “improve the experience of passengers.”

The company also said they are launching their own investigation into what happened. In response to the claims they did not have enough equipment is spending $15 million on new snow ploughs.

One consolation, BAA CEO Colin Matthews said that in light of what happened at Heathrow last week he would not take his nearly $1 million dollar bonus this year. 

BAA is a Spanish owned company. It owns six airports in the UK and the Heathrow Express train.