January 24th - The worst weather-related travel chaos of my career
Simon Calder's Independent Travel Podcast
The Independent
3.6 • 628 Ratings
🗓️ 24 January 2025
⏱️ 6 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
It's grim out there! Today I'm at London's Kings Cross station reporting on what might just be the worst weather-related travel chaos I've ever seen. There are cancellations and closures in the skies, on the railways and on the roads across the UK and Northern Ireland.
If you're trying to travel today, this is essential listening!
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello and welcome to today's independent travel podcast. It's Friday the 24th of January and I'm not sure I've ever reported on such widespread travel chaos due to weather. It's looking absolutely terrible. |
| 0:15.8 | Well, let's start in Northern Ireland where there is no public transport running, where about 30 flights have |
| 0:23.1 | been cancelled to and from Belfast International, many more actually from George Best Belfast |
| 0:28.7 | Belfast City. London Derry, Derry Airport, they've got half a dozen cancellations. |
| 0:35.7 | Scotland is looking pretty grim. Red weather warning there as well. |
| 0:42.7 | Police Scotland saying please do not drive in that area. And even if you did, well, you wouldn't have |
| 0:49.0 | much luck with onward travel because ferries across the Irish Sea aren't sailing. Caledonian McBrain has cancelled all |
| 0:56.8 | their sailings today to and from the Western Isles. And in the skies, well, it's looking |
| 1:03.4 | pretty dismal. Let's round up what there is to and from Scotland. So I'm counting about 200 cancellations of flights to from and |
| 1:14.8 | within Scotland. That is going to affect, I estimate, up to 30,000 passengers. And it's really |
| 1:24.1 | tricky the impact. Unbelievably, some flights actually got away. |
| 1:28.5 | Ryanair, about quarter to seven took off from Edinburgh for London Stansted. |
| 1:34.2 | Pretty much everything else is cancelled for the rest of the morning and most of the afternoon. |
| 1:41.4 | But interestingly, a number of airlines are delaying their flights very heavily |
| 1:47.8 | rather than canceling them. And that applies particularly Jet 2. They've got a 16-hour delay |
| 1:55.0 | on their Edinburgh to Rome flight, similar on flights to Marrakesh, about, well, actually eight hours there. |
| 2:03.5 | Easyjet are doing the same with their flight to Egypt, and the whole idea is that people will get |
| 2:09.9 | to their destination eventually, in the early hours of the morning, probably, feeling fed up, |
| 2:14.9 | I imagine, but at least they will be there, And also lots of Scots will be brought back. |
| 2:20.6 | We also have lots of cancellations in and out of Newcastle Airport, many of them do them from |
| 2:28.1 | London Heathrow, as well as Logan Air flights, places like Southampton and Exeter. |
| 2:35.0 | But Dublin is very much seeing a large number of cancellations. |
... |
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