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Virgin deducts cost of Gatwick closure

The airline says thousands of its passengers were affected

[December 17th 2008]

Virgin Atlantic flight

Virgin Atlantic says it will automatically deduct the costs it incurred when the runway at Gatwick was closed last week from its next payment to airport operator BAA.

BAA closed the runway at Gatwick for several hours on the morning of December 11th after severe weather overnight. In a statement at the time BAA said: “Due to exceptional weather conditions overnight and a sudden fall in temperature on Wednesday 10 December, the runway and taxi-way areas at Gatwick Airport were closed at approximately 06:50 on Thursday 11 December, for essential maintenance and de-icing works”.

Around 100 inbound and outbound flights were affected by the closure of the runway according to BAA. A number of flights were diverted to other airports, including Heathrow and Stansted.

After the runway was finally reopened BAA said: “Gatwick Airport apologises for the inconvenience this may have caused to passengers’ travel plans and we are continuing to work closely with our airline and other business partners to return to a normal operation as quickly as possible”.

Virgin Atlantic said it had to delay departing flights and divert seven arriving aircraft to Luton and Stansted airports. The airline says thousands of its passengers were affected, including many in the Caribbean, Las Vegas and Orlando. Virgin says some of these passengers had to be accommodated in nearby airport hotels.

"It is highly incompetent for an airport operator to fail to predict the cold weather and not have de-icing fluid on standby,” says Virgin Atlantic president, Sir Richard Branson.

“Thousands of our passengers were disrupted and, while our teams looked after customers and offered refunds and hotel rooms, our costs increased sharply as a result. BAA will have to pick up these costs as it created the problem in the first place," concludes Branson.

Virgin Atlantic estimates these extra costs could add up to as much as £100,000 and says the costs will be deducted from its next scheduled payment to BAA.

Written by: Nick Purdom

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