Airline passenger news and views

Another severe spell of weather, another transport holocaust. As soon as some snow falls airports shut down and delayed flights start to add up like a giant snowball that rolls for days. Not this year, though.

The heavy snow that hit Britain last Saturday night - leaving up to 16 centimetres of the icy stuff in some parts - caused transport chaos with trains delayed, cars stranded and flights cancelled across the country. Heathrow, Europe's busiest airport, ended up cancelling half of flights for Sunday 5 February, after initially deciding to cut only 30% of them.

However, the situation was nowhere near to December 2010's catastrophe, when the airport almost ground to a halt for days. Heathrow was severely criticised for its poor performance at the time, which led it to spend almost £30m in winter resilience since then.

This time Heathrow decided to cancel flights in advance and published regular updates on its website showing which flights where expected to be affected by disruptions. The airport predicted that 70% of flights - normally it has about 1,300 flights a day serving 180,000 people - were going to operate normally, a percentage that finally fell to 58%.

Nevertheless, the decision to cancel flights in advance let passenger know with time to make alternative arrangements or rebook was praised by the government. The transport secretary, Justine Greening, told the BBC Sunday Politics programme: "Actually cancelling flights in advance so passengers don't get to the airport and then find their flight being cancelled was one of the main recommendations of the inquiry that Heathrow held into the debacle last year when we saw huge disruption."

"They are clearly trying to manage the airport and I think the most important thing is making sure that we put safety first. We've got to get planes up into the air and down on to the ground safely.

"That does take a little bit more time to make sure wings are de-iced and that the runways are clear, but over all they're trying to do their best."

Heathrow's owner BAA was also pleased with the airport performance and said its snow plan had "worked far better than in previous years."

Stansted, Luton, Manchester and Birmingham airports were also forced to suspend operations at some point on Saturday night.

On Monday afternoon Heathrow announced that its services had returned to normal.

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