Airlines including easyJet and Ryanair have responded with action to the closure of Heathrow Airport today, as diversions occur and disruption is expected into the weekend
As Heathrow Airport remains closed, other airlines including easyJet and Ryanair are responding to the disruption.
Whilst some airlines such as easyJet and Ryanair do not travel to and from London Heathrow Airport, the added disruption to the aviation sector due to the airport’s closure has pushed them to step in and offer support to travellers. As many people look for ways to still go on or return from their holiday, budget airlines have introduced measures to limit disruption.
A spokesperson from easyJet told the Mirror: “EasyJet is putting larger aircraft on key routes today and over the weekend to provide additional seats to help customers affected by the Heathrow closure travel today. A number of key routes between the UK and Milan, Amsterdam, Edinburgh, Paris, Munich and Madrid will have 186 seat A320 aircraft operating instead of the smaller 156 A319 aircraft. easyJet does not operate to or from Heathrow and so our flights are all operating as normal.”
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Ryanair has also responded to the disruption by adding eight ‘rescue flights’ between Dublin and London Stansted, with four today and a further four tomorrow, which are now available to be booked.
However, some airlines, such as Aegean, are experiencing fully booked flights. A number of Scots remain stranded in Athens following a Nations League match between Scotland and Greece and the Greek airline has limited flight options available. The airline currently has no availability left today for flights heading to any London airport. For tomorrow, the airline has seven flights scheduled all to London Heathrow. However, only one has seats available for a staggering £739 each, despite flights normally costing around £80.
Those wanting to head to Athens, there are four flights remaining today with the airline, three of which have no seats left. There is a flight this evening which has some seats left for £175. For other destinations, which usually travel to and from Heathrow, there appears to be no easy alternative routes. For anyone wanting to fly to San Francisco today, for example, they would have to head from an airport away from London, such as Manchester, and in most cases face a layover.
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However, for those keen to head home from San Francisco, it is even trickier and comes at a cost. Currently, Skyscanner is showing three flights from San Francisco to London Heathrow, all due to land tomorrow morning. The price of each for just the one way ticket edges close to £1,000, despite return flights usually costing around £600.
Flights to and from specific airports are also filling up fast. For example, if you need to head to Paris today from London Gatwick, only one direct flight remains. The rest have stopovers and reach over £250 for a one-way ticket. For those returning from Paris, there is a similar situation. There is one direct flight with Vueling remaining for £81, or one with easyJet for £454.
For destinations such as to and from Edinburgh in Scotland, there appears to be slightly more availability. Over 200,000 people travel through London Heathrow everyday, with over 1,000 flights already diverted or cancelled today.
British Airways has been the worst impacted of all airlines today. Heathrow’s four terminals were scheduled to have 665 departures, or more than 145,000 seats, with a further 669 flights due to arrive, around 146,000 seats. So that is impacting more than 1,330 flights and up to 291,000 passengers, and of those just over half [51%] are British Airways, the biggest operator at the airport.