Heathrow will double snow fleet
Heathrow Airport hopes it won’t see a reprise of last December’s snowy disruption after BAA chief executive Colin Matthews announced plans to double its fleet of snow clearance vehicles.
Thousands of passengers had their Christmas plans dashed when Heathrow closed for four days during what turned out to be the coldest December on record.
Mr Matthews is determined there won’t be a repeat of such events as the move will provide the airport with an overall fleet of more than 100 vehicles while tripling the number of staff trained to operate them.
“I felt terrible about the situation that passengers were in,” he told BBC Radio 4. “In retrospect, we should have been prepared for more. We must prepare for intense snow in the future.”
Mr Matthews will be secretly hoping that it won’t be a case of history repeating itself after a confident and self-assured statement issued by the Heathrow media centre late November, boasting that the airport had invested £500,000 in new equipment, only added to the humiliation.
“The cost of one lost day of operations is huge,” he added. “The costs of preparing for twice as much snow are not huge. The equation is not difficult.
“The question is about the right judgement. Heathrow saw 7cm of snow in an hour and that is extraordinary. It looks like we are becoming exposed to more extreme weather events.”
Photo by Martin Deutsch
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