Travel chaos as more flights delayed
Written by admin on July 20, 2024
Travellers have been warned to expect further delays as strong winds cause chaos at Sydney Airport.
There were multiple delayed and some cancelled domestic flights departing Sydney Airport on Saturday afternoon due to the weather.
It comes after airport and airline IT systems were caught up in the global outage on Friday, grounding planes and sending thousands of flyers’ travel plans into disarray.
“Due to high winds Airservices Australia are operating our east-west runway, which may cause some delays throughout the afternoon,” a Sydney Airport spokesperson said.
“Passengers are advised to check with their airline regarding the status of their flight.”
Gayle Baker had been celebrating her 60th birthday in Sydney after her son gifted her a trip away to mark the special occasion.
After five days in Sydney she was meant to head back to Queensland on Friday when chaos struck.
“We got here (Sydney airport) and we didn’t have any messages from Jetstar at all,” she said.
“We were lining up for two and a half hours when our flight got cancelled.”
Ms Baker said her son had to scramble to find them accomodation, which they walked to as they weren’t “paying any more money than (they) needed to”.
At 5am on Saturday the pair heard they had been put on a 12.20pm flight back home, but after waiting in line at the bag drop for more than an hour, their flight was cancelled once again.
Ms Baker said she has her “fingers crossed” their next flight, which is scheduled for later on Saturday afternoon, goes ahead.
“Fingers crossed that flight still goes hopefully,” she said.
“It’s not been a very pleasant 48 hours,” she said.
“Lots of standing and waiting.”
The Bureau of Metrology (BOM) issued a weather warning for a large part of south-eastern Australia covering Victoria, NSW and the ACT.
A BOM spokesperson said Sydney could expect damaging winds until late on Saturday evening, westerly winds were expected to reach up to 60 km per hour in the middle of the day, which would ease to about 25 to 35 km per hour in the late evening.
“A strengthening northwesterly flow ahead of an approaching cold front is bringing vigorous winds to inland and coastal areas,” the spokesperson said.
“Winds are forecast to shift southwesterly from late afternoon and ease from the west during the late evening into Sunday morning.”
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