Hundreds of Heathrow and Gatwick flights delayed due to thunderstorms

NATS, Britain’s air traffic control service, said “deterioration in weather conditions is expected to continue for the remainder of the day” after “severe weather conditions are forecast across the south-east of England”.

A spokesperson for London Gatwick told BBC News: “Due to persistent storms across the network last night, temporary air traffic restrictions were introduced, resulting in some flights being delayed and canceled this morning.”

In a statement, Easyjet said: “Due to storms in the south of England restricting the number of arrivals and departures today, we, like other airlines, are experiencing some disruption to our flight schedule and have had to pre-emptively cancel some flights to and from Gatwick.

“We are doing everything possible to minimize the impact of weather disruption for our customers and are notifying travelers in advance with options to rebook or receive a refund, as well as hotel accommodation and meals where necessary.”

The airline said the delays were beyond its control but was sorry for the inconvenience.

Passenger Cameron Ashwin said he was grounded on a BA flight at Gatwick just after 6am but would not leave until noon because of the storm.

A woman on

Another said he was at Pula airport, Croatia, but his Jet2 flight status appeared to be more than three hours delayed.

Parts of eastern and south-eastern England continue to be quite warm this weekend; The Met Office has an amber warning for extreme heat until 09:00 BST on Sunday – but isolated thunderstorms are also affecting parts of the UK.

The storm in southern England is expected to worsen on Saturday afternoon.