Thousands of passengers were affected during travel as both Heathrow and Gatwick Airports canceled upwards of 32 flights due to bad weather and problems with air traffic control. More than 10,000 travelers were stranded in these two airports with no current refunds for their grounded flights.

Thousands of passengers were stranded at Heathrow and Gatwick Airports recently. Why? Both these airports called off over 32 flights each. This affected EasyJet and British Airways passengers. The prime causes were bad weather and problems with air traffic control. The chaos was visceral, with many passengers stranded within the lounges of these airports, unable to go home.

Passengers headed for destinations like Lanzarote, Budapest, Venice, Belfast, Edinburgh, Rome, Naples, Barcelona, and Larnaca were affected. It was so bad that more than 10,000 passengers spent the night in various airports. Hundreds of them were relying on getting a refund, especially those traveling on EasyJet. However, the air traffic control restrictions were treated as ‘extraordinary circumstances’, which meant they were unlikely to receive any kind of refund.

Further, Ryanair was expected to suffer from continuing problems with air traffic control. The carrier said that while French air traffic controllers did not conduct any strikes this summer, staff shortages at controllers still delayed the flights. Ryanair apologized to its passengers for these delays, saying that they were beyond their power to do anything.

Some of the passengers have narrated their frustrating experience online. One passenger, Phil, described his flight from Gatwick had been canceled after delaying one hour as the crew worked over their working hours, leaving him and many other passengers stranded at the airport.

Gatwick Airport itself has apologized for the disruption caused by the bad weather, which sent thunderstorms across the UK and parts of Europe. It added a statement regretting inconvenience to passengers whose travel plans were impacted.

The situation was particularly difficult for British Airways passengers as well. Some travelers reported sitting on the tarmac at Gatwick Airport as bad weather conditions prevented them from taking off for four hours. Another incident included a flight from Stuttgart to Heathrow that was hit by lightning and had to divert to Gatwick Airport for safety reasons.

In other words, flight cancellations at Heathrow and Gatwick Airports have been a matter of harassment for thousands of passengers in the recent past. First, bad weather, and then problems in air traffic control, caused causalities of wide-scale disruptions; hundreds of travelers were stranded and unable to reach destinations. Apologies from the concerned airports and airlines notwithstanding, it is an indication of how the air trip is vulnerable to unexpected challenges.