Fog has grounded at least 10 flights at Heathrow Airport on Monday morning, with British Airways the hardest hit, as a Met Office yellow warning for fog across large parts of England remains in force until 11am.
The warning, which covers London and the South East along with a swathe of England stretching from Bath to York, took effect at 6pm on Sunday and is due to clear later on Monday morning. Forecasters said visibility could fall to around 50 metres in places overnight, flagging "a chance of delays or cancellations to flights" as dense fog settled over the region, Met Office meteorologist Niamh Murray told the Press Association.
The flight-cancellation tracker Whichterminal.co.uk recorded 10 flights cancelled at Heathrow "so far today" as of 1:45am on Monday, naming British Airways as the most affected airline, in line with a pattern over the past 30 days in which BA has accounted for 179 of Heathrow's cancellations, more than any other carrier at the airport. Flight-tracking data reviewed by this newsroom shows a run of British Airways departures and arrivals cancelled or pre-emptively grounded from Terminal 5 through the morning, including services to and from Belfast, Glasgow, Dublin, Edinburgh, Zurich, Paris, Basel, Nice, Newcastle and Berlin.
The disruption follows a run of foggy days at Heathrow. Travel outlet The Contrail reported that around 19 British Airways-operated flights were cancelled and roughly 130 of Heathrow's departures ran late on Sunday as the airport worked through its third consecutive day of fog, with the outlet's live-blog warning that Sunday night's fog risked being worse because it fell across the airport's busy early-morning wave of long-haul arrivals from the United States.
Neither Heathrow nor the Met Office has pointed to any cause for the disruption beyond the weather. Fog is particularly disruptive at Heathrow because low cloud and poor visibility force air traffic control to slow the rate at which aircraft can land and take off, and the resulting delays often persist for hours after visibility improves as aircraft and crews fall out of position.
Passengers flying with British Airways or any other airline from Heathrow on Monday should check their flight status directly with their airline before travelling and allow extra time, since fog can also slow the roads and public transport routes into the airport.
Whichterminal.co.uk live flight-cancellation tracker; The Contrail's Heathrow fog-disruption live-blog.
What this means for your journey: if fog disrupts your flight, build in extra time for the drive as well, since visibility on the approach roads can be just as poor as at the airport. See our /parking/ page for options that let you arrive early without the stress.