Latest From Heathrow As Europe Air Mess Continues

Heathrow expects to have limited service restored tomorrow. Other airports in Europe have been operating all weekend, but are also severely hampered by snow and ice that has created huge delays and a lot of cancellations.

Here is the latest notice from Heathrow as of Sunday evening:

"Heathrow Airport will be open and operating a limited schedule of arrivals and departures from 0600 on Monday morning, but we expect further cancellations and delays in the coming days, as airlines move diverted aircraft and crew back to their normal positions and we continue to manage the impacts of the poor weather over the weekend and in the days ahead.

Passengers should not come to the airport without a confirmed booking and, if in any doubt, must consult their airlines before traveling."

And here's a BBC report on airport conditions throughout the UK.

By the way, I'd try to link to useful reports on current air-travel conditions in the rest of Europe, but the U.S. media have become so malfeasant in covering this kind of news that nothing timely or useful is available that I can find online. (CNN chooses to cover the story as a Christmas feature on some guy in Europe who's struck and wishes to be home for the holidays.) Hey, editors: We don't need your stinkin' fables. We need accurate travel-weather information, in detail, by airport, by country. This stuff is getable.

Increasingly, frustrated by the infantile trivialization of the mainstream news, many of us rely on a kind of post-modern samizdat to get relevant news. Here in the Sonoran desert, where I spent the day at a rodeo in the sun, I heard from friends -- who do in fact have a world view, with a worldwide social network -- that Geneva is a mess; the Paris airports are open but flights are badly delayed; Frankfurt is struggling back. It would be nice if the media caught onto the story, too. I mean, the roping event in Casa Grande, Arizona, is where I got at least some timely news on European travel problems this afternoon.

[UPDATE: Oh, here's a somewhat more comprehensive Reuters report from the IHT Web site, though it was posted nine hours ago.]

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