Sumburgh Airport was shut this morning due to fog, causing the early flight from Aberdeen to be cancelled.
The mail plane from the Granite City was diverted to Scatsta, though the early morning departures to Edinburgh and Kirkwall were able to leave on schedule.
The town centre was a hive of activity this afternoon with Living Lerwick’s street parade the centre of attraction.
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Brian Gray
Having been a member of the ‘Loganair refugees’ that were dumped in Kirkwall awaiting an already full Northlink ferry to take us one step closer to the destination on my boarding pass, I can say with first hand knowledge that the tranport links to Shetland are not fit for purpose.
I was due to fly from Glasgow to Sumburgh at 1400hrs on Saturday. The weather at Sumburgh was well below the minima required for the approaches available and our flight was delayed 30 minutes. In the age of information, I was able to monitor the weather from the airport gate and despite the weather GETTING WORSE we boarded. No sooner were we in the cruise than the pilot came over the PA to tell us we were diverting to Kirkwall (as we had been informed was a possibility).
On arrival we were taken to the Ayre hotel (where we gained the nickname of Loganair refugees) to wait for the ferry at 11pm. ‘Of course’, we’d get cabins the airport staff had told us. This was a promise the Northlink staff could not honour.
Add to that a second bus transfer to get us finally to Sumburgh on Sunday morning and Flybe/Loganair had me held captive for 20hrs. Our particular flight suffered the shortest delay – there were other refugees who had departed Edinburgh on Friday!
I suppose Flybe will be able to claim that the flights left the gate and departed on time thus keeping their statistics up, but they failed almost everywhere else. Northlink and their single, overcrowded ferry are not doing a good enough job either.
As a final point, not one person at any stage apologised for the inconvenience caused. This tells me that they either don’t care or that they think what they are doing is good enough.
I’m of the opinion however, that this is not good enough…