Weather & Technical Diversions, Delays & Cancellations

[superking]

well the way winds been blowing. its the right place for surf boards than a boat with the size of some of them waves.

 

[Aviador]

The weather forecast isn't looking good for the South West once again. I really feel for the people effected by the floods. There are some advantages of having the airport perched on top of a hill!

 

[TheLocalYokel]

The weather forecast isn't looking good for the South West once again. I really feel for the people effected by the floods. There are some advantages of having the airport perched on top of a hill!

That is a positive. If the airport flooded we should be sure to see Noah floating by in his Ark.

Not only is this weekend likely to be the latest in a line of storms stretching back to well before Christmas, but more are forecast for early next week with hints that they could be joined by still more as the week unfolds.

 

[TheLocalYokel]

Friday 7 February 2014

BRS web arrivals page is showing TOM 6551 due at 2035 this evening from Tenerife as rescheduled to 8 February at 1830.

Presumably some problem has been encountered 'down the line'.

 

[TheLocalYokel]

Wednesday 12 February 2014

The gales and heavy rain were back yet again today resulting in three diversions and one cancellation:

easyJet A 320 from Malaga and A 319 from Geneva both went to CWL

Ryanair B 738 from Gdansk went to BHX

Aurigny ATR 72 from/to Guernsey was cancelled but that seems more to do with weather conditions in the Channel Islands

The wind was gusting up to 50 knots from the south across the BRS east-west runway at one point.

Flights seem to be landing again now at BRS with a forecast that the winds will ease this afternoon.

 

[TheLocalYokel]

Friday 14 February 2014

Seems to be the worst day so far this winter in terms of airport cancellations.

The wind was a full-on cross wind gusting 50 mph early this afternoon leading to two easyJets and a Ryanair diverting to BHX and a Helvetic from ZRH diverting to CWL, plus a couple of EIR cancellations at lunchtime.

The airport then re-opened but now it seems that easyJet has cancelled its entire evening programme with about ten return flights cancelled, with other airlines also showing cancellations.

Unable to get detailed list just yet as BRS website is unattainable at present - no doubt due to overload, with the BRS twitter site referring people to the arrivals/departures boards.

 

[kraktoa]

The airport website has been sketchy for a few weeks now. bad timing that it has failed today during this storm. Need to know what flights are due in tom morning.

 

[TheLocalYokel]

The airport website has been sketchy for a few weeks now. bad timing that it has failed today during this storm. Need to know what flights are due in tom morning.

I've been able to access the home page in the past hour but cannot get into the arrivals/departure pages. No doubt usage on this part of their web site is high this evening.

Ceefax shows a couple of aircraft landing this evening but it also shows the evening SN BRU and bmi regional FRA cancelled now as well. The BHX forum on this site shows an easyJet and EIR (presumably from DUB) diverting there.

 

[Ray Finkle]

Diverts from BRS to BHX today were 2x Easyjet A319's from Belfast and Newcastle, an Easyjet A320 from Geneva, a Ryanair from Gdansk and an Aer Lingus ATR which I think was from Cork. Easyjet A320 G-EZWI also diverted in an hour or so ago which I have a feeling may have been BRS bound?

 

[Ray Finkle]

Just to add an Easyjet has recently requested clearance back to BRS so should be departing shortly.

 

[TheLocalYokel]

Still can't access the BRS website arrivals and departures boards.

An easyJet from AMS is shown on Ceefax as having landed at 2124, having previously been shown on Ceefax as one of the many easyJets cancelled this evening.

There are still eight inbound easyJets shown as cancelled during the late evening although an easyJet from BFS and a Ryanair from Alicante are still shown with etas on Ceefax.

In the absence of access to the BRS boards a guestimate is that today about 18 rotations have been cancelled, mainly easyJet, with probably half a dozen other flights diverted to BHX with one to CWL.

Addendum 2300 hours 14.1.14

The easyJet from BFS appears to have just landed at BRS according to FR24.

 

[TheLocalYokel]

The BRS website arrivals/departures pages are accessible today. Someone on the official BRS Twitter feed (not me, I'm not a tweeter) has had a go about the website crashing last night, demanding more bandwidth. The reply was that the airport is working on the problem. Let's hope they work hard enough to ensure that the job is done properly.

Flights seem to be operating normally today, albeit with a few delays. It's still extremely windy around Bristol with gale force gusts and this has now continued unabated for around 24 hours. Not only have we had more gales this winter than ever before during my fairly lengthy lifetime, but they seem to last for a day or more without a break. We're still getting sudden but brief torrential showers too.

The wind and rain are forecast to subside this afternoon and the difference today compared with part of yesterday is that the strong winds are not blowing at right angles to the BRS east-west runway.

The numerous flights cancelled yesterday (not to mention all those diverted) mainly by easyJet which cancelled most of its final rotations of the day (seemed to be about eight routes affected) must have lost the airlines and the airport in excess of 3,000 passengers.

It would have been a Friday which is probably the busiest evening at this time of the year and the couple of easyJet flights that did operate in the later evening yesterday seemed to land all right. Factor in the start of the half term holiday and the St Valentines weekend and there must have been a lot of disappointed people at the airport last night, and some of the routes cancelled by easyJet don't operate every day so there was no option of putting some punters on aircraft that might have had space today.

I suppose easyJet made the decision to cancel so many rotations last night as they didn't want to risk not getting the aircraft back into BRS and having them scattered around distant airports this morning which would have caused major disruption to today's programme.

We can only hope that this winter is a one-off but the climate change preachers say it won't be.

 

[TheLocalYokel]

Monday 3 March 2014

Posts on another forum by posters who are reliable say that three bmi regional flights were cancelled:

The morning rotations to Hamburg and Frankfurt and the Milan Malpensa rotation.

All said to be due to technical issues.

 

[TheLocalYokel]

Wednesday 12 March 2014

It was misty/foggy around Bristol this morning that was much slower to clear than the weather forecast predicted. The following diversions occurred in the early morning:

Aer Lingus Regional from Dublin
easyJet from Newcastle
KLM Cityhopper from Amsterdam
bmi regional from Frankfurt
bmi regional from Aberdeen

All went to CWL.

The wind was very light out of the north east. I was surprised that the easyJet did not land on the Cat 3b equipped westerly runway (27). Probably the others are not Cat 3 compliant.

 

[superking]

every time there is bad weather and planes get diverted to wherever , i have noticed the arrival and departure boards on the brs web site goes wrong as well. its just as thou the boards have departed as well. it must be a nightmare for pax wanting to know what is happening. when bad weather causes problems the boards are needed more than ever.
its just as thou brs does not want anyone to know there is problems and more so planes diverted away.
i had to say this as the boards are very out of date today the 13 march and it shows not many problems with weather.
also no bmi showing departed, they operated from cardiff this morning. its just as thou they dont operate from brs at all.

 

[TheLocalYokel]

every time there is bad weather and planes get diverted to wherever , i have noticed the arrival and departure boards on the brs web site goes wrong as well. its just as thou the boards have departed as well. it must be a nightmare for pax wanting to know what is happening. when bad weather causes problems the boards are needed more than ever.
its just as thou brs does not want anyone to know there is problems and more so planes diverted away.
i had to say this as the boards are very out of date today the 13 march and it shows not many problems with weather.
also no bmi showing departed, they operated from cardiff this morning. its just as thou they dont operate from brs at all.

I agree - it's not acceptable. I could not access the site at all for a while this morning, either directly or via the BRS Twitter link. The same occurred a few weeks ago at the time of the severe gales that led to numerous cancellations and diversions that afternoon/evening. Someone complained about it on the BRS Twitter page and the spokesman said their IT people were looking into it. Seems they still are.

At 1205 GMT today I checked the BRS arrivals page and the following is a sample of what I read.

Dublin (EIR) sched 0800 est 1040
Newcastle landed 0759
Budapest diverted to EMA
Malta est 0920
Jersey delayed more info soon
Amsterdam (KLM) est 0941
Belfast est 0941
Edinburgh est 0937
Glasgow sched 0955 (no est)
Brussels est 1000
Tenerife (FR) sched 1020 est 1038

Other flights have estimated delays of several hours.

You are right about bmi flights operating from CWL this morning. Well, the HAM did according to the CWL departures board. They were not shown at all on the BRS website departures page.

The BRS web departures page has been showing about a dozen flights scheduled to leave between 0930 and midday as either flight closed, bag drop or check-in. They've been like that for a couple of hours in most cases. Have they taken off? Who knows? Does the airport?

Then other thing is that around 1030 the BBC Ceefax arrivals page showed some of the easyJet flights still showing ests on the BRS website as having landed at BRS.

If I was expecting someone I would be more than annoyed especially when the BRS Twitter page refers callers via a link to the BRS arrivals page which is currently useless.

So have those flights that were estimating landing a couple of hours ago landed, been diverted or are they still up there gradually disappearing up each others rear end?

This is an extremely poor show. As a long time supporter and user of BRS it gives me no pleasure in saying this.

Addendum

I've just checked the BRS Twitter page (1245 GMT) again and someone asked about the TOM to Sharm el Sheikh and was told it departed on time at 1105. The BRS website is still showing it as checkin desks 34-36. I can only assume the entire arrivals/departures system on the BRS web site has crashed. If so, why aren't they acknowledging this on Twitter and giving out more information there?

My continual complaint about the aviation industry is one of lack of communication with its customers, especially when things go wrong. Nothing changed here.

 

[TheLocalYokel]

It seems there was a problem with the BRS website this morning - BRS Twitter has now confirmed it. It's just a pity that their Twitter people hadn't become alive to the problem much earlier instead of leaving a link to the malfunctioning website for those anxious about flights.

By early afternoon it seems the weather had eased to permit all types of aircraft to land.

I note (from the CWL website)that the TOM from TFS due into CWL at lunchtime diverted into BRS. I don't know if any other CWL flights dropped in.

The weather forecast suggests that there might be thick fog again tomorrow. If so, I hope that the BRS communications team is more on the ball.

 

[TheLocalYokel]

Friday 14 March 2014

Thick fog again today for much of the morning and the following disruptions occurred.

Morning EI from DUB diverted to BHX
Morning SN (Flybe) from BRU diverted to BHX
Morning BM from FRA combined with morning HAM and diverted to either EXT (BRS website) or BHX (enthusiasts' site there)
Morning SI from JER cancelled
Lunchtime EI from DUB cancelled
EI from/to ORK not shown at all today on BRS website arrivals/departures but BHX enthusiasts' site shows it operating into there and returning to ORK as a positioning flight

Going the other way the morning KL from AMS into CWL diverted to BRS because of fog at CWL.

 

[Ray Finkle]

I've just done playback on FR24 and BMR E-135 G-RJXJ departed BHX just after 16:10 as BMR182D and positioned back to BRS, so it looks as though the FRA/HAM flight did go to BHX.

 

[TheLocalYokel]

I've just done playback on FR24 and BMR E-135 G-RJXJ departed BHX just after 16:10 as BMR182D and positioned back to BRS, so it looks as though the FRA/HAM flight did go to BHX.

Many thanks again, Ray.

I hadn't realised that the smaller airlines with the smaller aircraft showed up on FR24, not that I am a regular visitor to that site. I only ever see the likes of easyJet, Ryanair, TOM, TCX and KLM Cityhopper so far as BRS is concerned whenever I do look. I shall have to look more closely next time.

On clear sunny days we get a lot of high level transatlantics in view over the Bristol area and that's when I usually have a look at FR 24 to see what's leaving the condensation trails.