When your flight goes awry, it helps to be with a European airline

Tens of thousands of airline passengers are waking up on Sunday morning where they did not intend to be.

Storm Darragh traumatised the UK aviation industry. One dispatcher at London Stansted told me: “This is the worst day I’ve had in the last two years.

“We’ve had a couple of three-hour delays because it was too windy. Air-traffic control wouldn’t let them take off. And diversions from Manchester and Belfast. It’s been s***.”

The passengers who found themselves diverted from Manchester and Belfast may not thank me for saying so, but at least they ended up in the right country.

During Saturday 7 December, I watched transfixed as an Etihad flight from Abu Dhabi to Manchester circled over northwest England for an hour before diverting to … Frankfurt. Within a couple of hours, Air Canada from Calgary, American Airlines from Dallas and Delta Air Lines from Atlanta had all chosen to land in Brussels rather than continue to try to touch down at London Heathrow. I adore the Belgian capital, but I like to make the decision to visit myself.

Then the wholesale cancellations began, with British Airways alone grounding more than 100 domestic and European departures to and from their hub. Most were destinations such as Amsterdam and Milan with multiple frequencies to pick up those stranded. But grounding holiday flights to Malaga, Athens and Larnaca shows what a s*** day BA had as well.

In past years, early December was extremely low season, and finding empty seats on later flights was no problem; but even 17 days away from Christmas 2025, planes are flying unexpectedly full (and, for the airlines, profitably).

The same prevailed on the last two cancelled flights I have had. One was on 11 November, from Kathmandu to Doha. At about six weeks’ notice, the airport in the Nepali capital announced to Qatar Airways and the other Kathmandu carriers that it would close for 10 hours each night for the next few months. With dozens of flights affected, they were further instructed to cut back on some departures.

Notification that my flight from Kathmandu to Doha had been grounded was sent out while I was hiking in the mobile-phone free Himalayas. By the time I picked up the message, less than 24 hours before the now-cancelled flight, all the other imminent departures had been booked.

With pressing commitments in…