• Hundreds of flights canceled in UK, Paris due to snow

    By Rhys Jones, Reuters

    LONDON -- London's Heathrow Airport canceled a fifth of flights and airlines scrapped 40 percent of flights to Paris' main airports as snow continued to blanket parts of Europe, with more forecast.

    Air France predicted more cancellations on a similar scale for Monday.

    Heathrow Ltd, which is owned by Spain's Ferrovial, said the reduced schedule -- amounting to about 250 fewer flights -- would help it cope with the expected snowfall without making further cancellations.


    As snow continued to fall through Sunday, the airport operator said Monday's flight schedule would be cut by 10 percent. That number could rise, depending on conditions at other European airports, Heathrow said.

    The Paris airport operator, ADP, said airlines scrapped 40 percent of flights into and out of the two main airports on the outskirts of Paris, Charles de Gaulle and Orly, primarily reducing short-haul services. 

    London's smaller Stansted and Gatwick airports said they were operating as normal on Sunday morning but that delays and some flight cancellations were likely. 

    Weather forecaster the British Met Office said snow was likely to continue into Monday. As much as eight centimeters was expected in southeast England on Sunday, it said.

    On average, some 1,300 flights leave Heathrow daily. The airport, Europe's busiest, operates at close to full capacity after Britain's coalition government blocked development of a third runway in 2010. 

    Heathrow has spent 36 million pounds ($57 million) on upgrading its winter weather equipment since 2010 -- a year that saw it face heavy criticism after it almost shut down when snow hit just before Christmas. It now has 130 snow-clearing vehicles. 

    More than 400 flights were canceled on Friday, while on Saturday 111 flights, most of them operated by IAG's British Airways, were canceled and hundreds of passengers spent the night in Heathrow's terminals. 

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    BA said there had been a knock-on effect because many of its planes were in the wrong place after Friday's snow.

    "Like other airlines at Heathrow we have complied with a request to reduce our schedule by 20 percent on Sunday and we continue to work with Heathrow Airport to help keep the airport running as smoothly as possible," BA said in a statement. 

    "We are doing everything we can to help customers whose flights have been disrupted by severe weather."

    PhotoBlog: Hundreds of flights canceled at Heathrow due to snow

    Services by Air France-KLM, Ireland's Aer Lingus and Germany's Lufthansa have also been affected. 

    France's SNCF railway company announced delays of up to 40 minutes on many lines as drivers were ordered to reduce speed as a safety measure. 

    Local media said some 25,000 homes lost power in southwestern France. 

    ($1 = 0.6304 British pounds)

    Additional reporting by Rosalba O'Brien in London, and Brian Love and Gerard Bon in Paris.

  • Heathrow chaos: Travelers spend more time in line than in the air

    By NBC News, msnbc.com staff and news services

    LONDON -- Welcome to London's Heathrow Airport -- where waiting to clear immigration can take longer than your international flight.

    Some visitors have recently reported waits of more than two hours, triggering front-page headlines as Britain prepares to host the Summer Olympics from July 27 until August 12.


    NBC News' Theresa Cook captured these scenes on her cellphone after arriving at Terminal 5 on a flight from Amsterdam on Monday night.

    "We made it to the back of the line at 9:10 p.m. (4:10 p.m. ET) ... and finally reached the border agent's desk at 10:33 p.m.," she said. "Our flight from Amsterdam Schiphol to Heathrow was scheduled to take 55 minutes, but we made good time and landed early. That means we spent almost twice as much time getting through U.K. border control as we did in the air."

    The disruption has been blamed on the reintroduction of full passport checks for all arriving passengers, following political embarrassment that checks by the U.K.'s border agency had been relaxed, apparently without the knowledge of the government. 

    Heathrow feels the heat as Olympics approach

    'Very apologetic'
    Cook said the immigration officer who checked her passport said that he had been sent from the English Channel port of Dover to help.

    "He admitted they don't have enough staff, was very apologetic for the wait and said: 'We're trying our best but clearly it's not good enough'."

    Uh-oh Heathrow! Long lines, waits hit travelers ahead of Olympics

    London Mayor Boris Johnson last month warned the delays were giving "a terrible impression of the U.K." and demanded action.

    Heathrow typically handles an average of 190,000 arriving and departing passengers each day, but is braced for a major influx during the Olympics.

    At London's Heathrow Airport, the corporate slogan is "Making Every Journey Better". An experienced Border Agency immigration worker says waits of up to three hours have left staff facing public order problems. Channel 4 Europe's Andy Davies reports.

     

    BAA, the Spanish-owned company that operates Heathrow and five other U.K airports, is among those furious at the waiting times. The firm has accused Britain's border agency of not providing enough staff to conduct the necessary passport and visa checks, causing the delays and demanded Britain's interior ministry, the Home Office, takes action.  

    NBC News' Theresa Cook, msnbc.com staff, Reuters and The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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  • Uh-oh Heathrow! Long lines, waits hit travelers months ahead of Olympics

    At London's Heathrow Airport, the corporate slogan is "Making Every Journey Better". An experienced Border Agency immigration worker says waits of up to three hours have left staff facing public order problems. Channel 4 Europe's Andy Davies reports.

    By Stephanie Gosk, NBC News

    There is a very big problem at London's Heathrow Airport. Planes land but it sometimes takes hours of waiting in line before travelers are let in. 


    On April 22, I arrived from New York City to complete chaos. It was a Sunday morning at around 6:30 a.m. and I was tired after a seven-hour flight.

    A crush of humanity greeted me in the immigration hall. Lines didn't just wind around, they stretched back outside the waiting area down into unknown, never-before-seen corridors. Travelers wore looks of shock, horror and fury depending on how much time they had already logged waiting. 

     

    There were people who had traveled long distances, already exhausting their patience during the journey, and others who had traveled just a short distance — Heathrow is less than a three-hour flight from Madrid, Paris, Frankfurt and other major European cities. Most of the latter group would end up spending more time in line as they did on a plane.

    Long immigration lines are often a part of international travel, but rarely, if ever, like this. In the last several months, the system at Heathrow, with alarming regularity, has come undone. 

    The problem is so grave that London’s mayor, the outspoken Boris Johnson, on Sunday wrote a letter to Theresa May, the secretary of the Home Office, the UK’s equivalent to the Department of Homeland Security.

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    He did not mince his words. “It is quite clear that because of problems at the UK Border, London and the UK’s reputation as a welcoming city in which to do business or travel are at stake," Johnson said, according to the copy of the letter given to NBC News. 

    Hanging over the debate is the London 2012 Olympics. If Heathrow is having a hard time coping with run-of-the-mill travel numbers — more than 69 million people moved through the airport in 2011 — what will officials do when a large portion of the estimated millions of people expected to descend on the city try to cram themselves through ahead of the Games?

    UK border patrol says British citizens as well those from the European Union have a target waiting time of 25 minutes and foreign nationals will wait 45 minutes. But over the last few months there have been numerous delays well over those targets.

    Over the weekend the head of UK's Border Force, Brian Moore, responded to complaints and seemed to dismiss the severity of the problem.

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    "Despite what you are hearing for the moment we are doing a really, really good job at achieving [target waiting times]. We don’t always get it right and occasionally there are disruptions to passengers for lots of reasons,” he said on British television. 

    For example, Moore said unpredictable “flight bunching” sometimes causes a deluge of passengers. At other times people “aren’t presented to the right immigration desk.”

    However, in Monday's Daily Telegraph, there were reports that the Home Office was actively trying to cover up the problem.  Marc Owen, director of the UK Border Agency, contacted BAA, the company that operates Heathrow, and instructed them not to hand out leaflets directing complaints to the Border Agency, the Telegraph reported.

    “The leaflet is not all right with us.  It is both inflammatory and likely to increase tensions in our arrival halls,” the newspaper quoted him as saying. 

    BAA's press office declined to comment on the leaflets, but they did say this in a statement: “Immigration is a matter for the home office. Immigration waiting times during peak periods at Heathrow recently have been unacceptable.” The press agent then offered to give me the Home Office’s number — just in case I needed it.

    In three months the world descends upon this city for the 2012 Summer Olympics. The Border Agency insists that staffing will be increased to handle the millions of people visiting the UK during that time.  Hopefully, it works. 

    London’s image is on the line. It would be a real shame if it was tarnished before anyone even got through the door.

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