In January a few years back I travelled in and out of Boston, Denver & St Louis airports and they operated perfectly OK - sitting at the gates you could see the teams of men going from plane to plane spraying with de-icer. I guess they didn't sit waiting for the Health & Safety man as 30 tonnes of snow built up.Originally Posted by Win2Win
Newcastle was open as they had very little snow..... Heathrow has to shift 1000 tons of it. More than 30 per each plane parking bay, and do you know how many they have and how careful it has to be done around a plane? Plus you can't use salt at an airport, the planes would eventually fall apart! One plane had already skidded on the runway, so it was closed for safety reason. You'll find some other countries are pretty much shutdown in the EU, Denmark is at a standstill, a lot of airports in Holland have been closed, you can't clear an airport of snow when it is still falling
..... you don't want to be returning from Manila only to land at heathrow, skid off the runway and die in a fireball
.... on top of that it is dangerous to travel to the airport in such weather, and all safety issues have to be taken into account.
I wonder if Health & Safety has reached Russia and they shut Moscow airport for 3 months of the year. Its a shame BAA aren't as quick putting out the snow ploughs and de-icers as they are getting the PR Man in front of the cameras.
Last night the Northern runway was open yet Heathrow airport was closed, a couple of years ago they spent long periods running on a single runway whilst re-surfacing the other bit by bit - that was with a full flight schedule not the few planes able to fly yesterday.
