Hurricane Sandy: Mass exodus begins as ‘Frankenstorm’ looms

By CLAIRE GARDNER
Published on 29/10/2012 15:07

THE advance of Hurricane Sandy has caused widepread disuption to air travel on the east coast of America with two of Britain’s biggest transatlantic carriers culling services.

• British Airways and Virgin Atlantic cancel flights to east coast of America

• Storm due to hit 7pm local time (12pm GMT)

• Air passengers travelling to America advised to contact their airline

British Airways had to axe all its flights to and from New York, Newark, Baltimore, Washington DC, Boston and Philadelphia.

This amounted to around 20 return flights, with a decision due to be made later today about tomorrow’s BA services to and from the American East Coast cities.

Virgin Atlantic also had to scrap its East Coast services today, cancelling flights to and from New York, Newark, Boston and Washington.

Virgin also axed flights from Newark and New York that had been due to arrive at Heathrow tomorrow morning.

A Virgin spokeswoman said: “Details of arrangements for affected passengers, including rebooking and extended hotel-stay compensation can be found on our website.

“Our flights to America had been very busy at the beginning of this week due to the half-term school holiday. It’s very unfortunate that this major storm has come when it has.”

A BA spokesman said: “Our other US flights are operating normally and we are also able to fly as usual to Toronto and Montreal in Canada.

“We’ll be in contact later with our people in America before deciding on tomorrow’s US East Coast flights.”

UK airports were advising passengers due to travel to the US to contact their airline today before travelling.

Those Britons - and others - due to take internal flights in America were finding that more than 7,000 services had been axed.

Among carriers which had to cancel flights were US Airways, American Airlines and Delta.

As weather forecasters predicted a super-storm, reports emerged that 17 crew had to be rescued on board a tall ship, HMS Bounty. The U.S. Coast Guard responded to a distress call from the ship approximately 90 miles southeast of Hatteras, North Carolina.

A replica built for the 1962 movie version of “Mutiny on the Bounty,” the three-mast, 180-foot vessel was believed to be taking on water and was without propulsion, the US Coast Guard said.

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