I'm outta here...

janie · Dec 22, 2006

thank you, Ian ... :lotsoflove:

Have a great holiday!!!

JofAZ · Dec 22, 2006

Ian and Everyone

Have a Merrry Christmas and Happy New Year!!

John

Sparkey · Dec 22, 2006

Have a nice trip!

LONDON, England (CNN) -- Thick fog is causing havoc for Christmas travelers in Britain for a third day, with hundreds of flights cancelled at airports.

Some 350 flights were affected at Heathrow -- Europe's busiest airport -- including all British Airways' domestic flights.

But BA announced Friday afternoon that it planned to start operating domestic services in and out of the airport from midday on Saturday following a gap of three days.

Flights from Heathrow to Paris and Brussels would resume on Sunday, the airline said.

Geoff Want, BA's director of ground operations, said: "We are hopeful that the weather will improve slightly over the weekend and therefore we can get back to operating a full planned Christmas Eve schedule.

"We are drafting in extra staff from across the airline over the weekend to ensure that customers get to their final destinations before Christmas Day."

Britain's Meteorological Office said the fog around the airport would finally begin to lift on Saturday morning.

Spokesman Keith Fenwick said: "While it may remain gray and misty, the key factor -- visibility -- should improve considerably."

BA was operating all long-haul services in and out of Heathrow on Friday, but some departing passengers were expected to face delays of several hours.

It said it hoped to operate 95 percent of services from the airport on Saturday, including 87 percent of short-haul flights, followed by a full schedule on Sunday.

An airline spokesman said it was offering customers "the three Rs -- rebooking, rerouting and refunds."

Heathrow's second-busiest airline, bmi, had scrapped eight flights by early Friday morning on top of 40 cancellations Thursday.

The chaos was expected to continue at other British airports, with Gatwick, Norwich, Southampton and Coventry among those predicting further delays.

A spokesman for airport operator BAA, which runs Heathrow and six other British airports, said although it is the world's busiest international airport, it has only two runways. "We have fundamental capacity constraints," he added.

He said BAA was providing a range of amenities for stranded passengers, including heated marquees outside terminals at Heathrow, with blankets and ponchos, sleeping mats, children's packs and food and drink.

BA also had buses to take as many as 3,000 people north from Heathrow to cities such as Manchester, Newcastle, Glasgow, Edinburgh and Aberdeen, where flights were going ahead as normal.

Heathrow would normally have handled around 190,000 passengers on Friday, but that figure is likely to come down to around 150,000.

BA is using larger aircraft -- Boeing 747s and Boeing 777s -- on some short-haul routes out of Heathrow to Madrid, Frankfurt, Geneva and Copenhagen on Friday and over the weekend to help increase the number of available seats.

"We would like to apologize to all customers who have been disrupted as a result of the continuous dense fog, which is unprecedented in recent times," said Want.

"We understand that Christmas is an extremely important time of year for our customers and their families and we are working around the clock to give every assistance possible.

"We are urging our customers due to travel in the next 48 hours on short-haul services to check for the latest news on their particular flight on www.ba.com."

Virgin Trains, which provides services between London and Scotland, said it was providing an extra 4,800 seats due to "record-breaking demand," and Eurostar, the operator of trains from London to Paris and Brussels, reported a 15-percent spike in traffic.

Copyright 2006 CNN. All rights reserved.This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. Associated Press contributed to this report.
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jenfleur · Dec 24, 2006

Ian, you Marrow!

Have a wicked Xmas. Email me more in 2007 please. Hopefully see you when I get back from Oz at some point eh.

Report back on how much booze consumed over Xmas when done.

Jen xxx

Greta · Dec 24, 2006

Happy Holidays, Ian...

TANDG · Dec 24, 2006

Love you Ian!!! Merry Christmas

barnstyke · Dec 24, 2006

Nar then big lad!!!! Has tha got thi ticket for oakwell, 7,500 dee daa's coming to tarn. Should be over 22,000 there for this one.

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