Air Travel Disruptions
Aviation experts warn that increasing weather instability due to climate warming is making flight delays and cancellations more common.
In late June this year, thunderstorms over southern UK and Northern Europe left air traffic controllers struggling to reroute aircraft around the storms; airspace became heavily congested, and many planes due to fly were forced to wait on the ground. In the end, some 900 flights were delayed, some by up to 11 hours, and dozens were cancelled.
Severe storms can shrink the available airspace, meaning traffic has to be restricted and rerouted. If planes are unable to land at one airport, for example, due to high winds, they may need to be diverted to another. But that can create its own problems; if too many unscheduled aircraft land at an already busy airport, it might not have sufficient infrastructure to accommodate them all.
The warning is that air travellers need to understand that disruptions will become more common as global warming increasingly has an impact on travel.
