Heathrow Airport is shut until Friday night

[Ozgirl76]

And my husband is due to fly home to Australia on Friday evening. I predict chaos.
Airport is saying that people should not travel to Heathrow and should contact their airlines.

It is dramatic - the whole airport is closed. The busiest airport in the world. 🙄

The disruption, sabotage and cyber attacks certainly feel like the warm up to something major.

Not on any flight I’ve been on. They always tell you to switch off all devices or put them in flight mode.

Russia is war mongering and so are the US, because China is the real winner, coming from the back.
BYD just announced yesterday they have the technology to charge electric vehicles in the same amount of time as petrol cars. As well as their AI inroads, most recently. Tesla shares dropped massively. China owns a lot of US sovereign debt as well.
All the US and Russia still have on people is nukes. It is all bluffing, the end of the titans.
The new superpowers are China and India and that is why the US and Russia are a little disorientated. Give them any attention, including negative attention, they will be happy as it makes them feel powerful.

i travel to Australia a fair bit and it's certainly on the long haul flights. (Inflight wifi). I never use it though because I still have the natural wariness of using anything like that in the air! (old gimmer alert)

Funny, they sell wifi on virtually all long haul flights now. How long has it been since you were on a plane?

You’ve been missing out, @Tryingtokeepgoing is correct in flight Wi-Fi, and use thereof, has been commonplace on Long Haul flights for many years.

December . I don’t take long haul flights though. I flew four times last year to different destinations.

I genuinely despair at the stupidity and ignorance seen on here regarding Russia. I am embarrassed for you talking about ‘tin hats’ when a hostile state is gunning for our country in the way they are.

It’s called a Cold War for a reason. Wake up.

second busiest,
dubai is the busiest, heathrow is second busiest

And yet it’s still a thing now.

Agree

Exactly. The actual event is dramatic enough without the fictitious layer of "we're are at war, it was Russia". I'm sure all will come out in due time.

Ive been on flights where you could pay for wifi, think it was SIngapore.
https://www.travelsupermarket.com/en-gb/blog/flights/inflight-wi-fi-guide/

DH was away on business thankfully came back yesterday via Heathrow.

Every transatlantic/long haul flight I’ve been on in the last few years has had inflight WiFi, across a load of airlines (BA/AA/Delta/Virgin) ~ not all short haul offers it though.

My boyfriend is currently stuck in Tokyo , no indication of what’s happening flight wise yet for him.

I firmly believe they won’t be a warning of something worse just that they’ll become more frequent. Total disruption can be achieved with a high frequency of simultaneous ‘attacks’ like this. The Russians would not need to attack us conventionally with weapons. They’d sit back and watch us fight each other over things people need and wouldn’t be able to get. They know how we acted over toilet paper and pasta during covid it really wouldn’t be hard .

In terms of passenger numbers maybe, but I’m pretty sure LHR is a bit further down world rankings in terms of flight movements these days.

Okay I didn’t know that. As I said, I don’t take long haul flights.

@MarchHare339

theres been inflight internet for years, it’s not fitted to older short haul planes but any newer ones with in flight entertainment centres have it. I first encountered it in 2019.

We were meant to be flying to Singapore today for a once-in-lifetime Asia trip. The news came on the radio as we were en route to Heathrow, so back home we went - of all the days! While it's a first world problem it's gutting that our carefully planned itinerary is now completely up in the air. While I'd love to think we could get our tomorrow and salvage it, it's unlikely really isn't it 😭

@MarchHare339 - they do still tell you to switch off devices or switch to flight mode for take off and landing but many long haul flights these days do offer Wi-Fi. At a cost.

This is another one of those days when I’m thankful I no longer work in the travel industry. It will be utter chaos for days and the costs involved will be huge.

I think the first part is sending people back if they can so the poster on the flight from Canada is heading back to Canada because tomorrow the plane will be in the right place if Heathrow is open. If it had been diverted to a UK or EU airport then both the plane and the passengers getting off would be in the wrong place, and then the passengers intending to board at Heathrow are no where near the plane.

Flights without enough fuel will be diverted to anywhere with space, the right length of runway etc. Then other things kick in, maybe keep passengers local in a hotel, or bus them send them by train to the airport they were supposed to go to.

On 9/11 about 20 000 people landed in Canada instead of the USA. Some were landed near big cities but then you had about 3000 who ended up in Gander because they had the runway for wide bodied planes.

If you are interested google, "operation yellow ribbon'.

Not even just on long haul! Flying between Denmark and London and depending on the airline, often have the use of paid for WiFi. I just won’t pay because I’m a tight fucker 😂

But WiFi on planes is not new!