British Airways grounds flights amid hopes of end to fog chaos

Dec 23, 2006, 12:43 GMT

London- British Airways has cancelled several flights from London's Heathrow airport Saturday, but hoped to operate all domestic flights to and from the airport later in the day.

The airline said it hoped to operate 95 per cent of its Heathrow services, including 87 per cent of short-haul flights, on Saturday, with a full service on Sunday, according to the BBC.

Three days of dense fog have caused hundreds of flight cancellations and severe delays. British Airways had on Friday cancelled 46 flights on Saturday - far fewer than in the past days.

The disruption followed the cancellation of more than 500 connections in previous days. More than 40,000 travellers were affected.

Smaller British carrier bmi had also cancelled a number of flights as the fog meant air traffic controllers had to limit the number of hourly take-offs and landings.

BA's services to Paris and Brussels would begin again on Christmas Eve.

Extra trains and coaches were laid on to transport travellers to destinations in Britain.

Heathrow would normally have handled around 190,000 passengers Friday but that figure is likely to come down to around 150,000.

BA is using larger aircraft in the form of Boeing 747s and Boeing 777s on some short-haul routes out of Heathrow to Madrid, Frankfurt, Geneva and Copenhagen Friday and over the weekend to help increase the number of available seats.

Meanwhile forecasters at the BBC's weather centre said they were now 'reasonably confident' that visibility would improve at Heathrow Saturday, as the fog moved north.

Surveys have shown that a record 2.5 million Britons were planning to travel abroad for Christmas this year.