Hey Teamstorm no-one's gonna shoot you down in flames - stats are stats, but dont dread your flight, you dont want to get stressed out before your holiday even begins!
As we've mentiond loads of times on here, for us regular lgw flyers unfortunately sometimes delays are a fact of life due to the tight turnarounds at LGW. Therefore anything causing a delay such as bad weather, a diverson, cleaners/caterers/pax late to a/c etc etc has a kcock on effect and can cause havoc to the flying programme for days.
Take yesterday for example, the runway at LGW was closed for four hours and meant that several of our flights had to divert to MAN and LHR. Our first flight didn't leave LGW until 14:15, about 7 hours late and every other flight was subsequently at least 5 hours late. This now has repercussions for days to come, every flight is again delayed today by between 2 and 5 hours as virgin work hard to get the a/c turned round quickly downroute and at LGW today. Slowly we'll claw back the delay times, but obviously this will affect the monthly stats and show us having serious delays.
What the stats dont tell you is the reason for the delays, which i think would give a more intersting picture. I do a lot of MCOs and especially during hurricane season the flights are often delayed arriving or leaving MCO during storms. Baggage handlers will not work while there is a storm passing through, so you have to sit on the plane and wait. Once again these kind of things can have a knock on effect for several days, thereby upping the delay stats.
The advantage BA have is that they are a much bigger airline with spare planes which they can utilise if one of theirs if going to be late landing back into LGW. Sadly Virign doesn't have this luxury, as we cant afford to have planes sitting around doing nothing.
One thing that may be in your favour flying on 27th is that several flights do not go on xmas day so you shouldn't fall victim to any knock on delays as some a/c will have been sitting on the ground for a day or two.
So you'r right LGW does have a lot of delays, mainly due to the fact that all the flights leave close together in the morning (unlike LHR where they are spread throughout the day) and all the sectors are over 8 hours (unlike LHR where there ae lots of shorter flights e.g LOS/DXB/BOS/EWR etc - so a/c get back to LHR quicker) so it takes longer for the a/c to get back to LGW.
I hope I've given more of an insight as to why LGW sometimes has problems and I hope you enjoy your flight and have a fab time in florida!
As we've mentiond loads of times on here, for us regular lgw flyers unfortunately sometimes delays are a fact of life due to the tight turnarounds at LGW. Therefore anything causing a delay such as bad weather, a diverson, cleaners/caterers/pax late to a/c etc etc has a kcock on effect and can cause havoc to the flying programme for days.
Take yesterday for example, the runway at LGW was closed for four hours and meant that several of our flights had to divert to MAN and LHR. Our first flight didn't leave LGW until 14:15, about 7 hours late and every other flight was subsequently at least 5 hours late. This now has repercussions for days to come, every flight is again delayed today by between 2 and 5 hours as virgin work hard to get the a/c turned round quickly downroute and at LGW today. Slowly we'll claw back the delay times, but obviously this will affect the monthly stats and show us having serious delays.
What the stats dont tell you is the reason for the delays, which i think would give a more intersting picture. I do a lot of MCOs and especially during hurricane season the flights are often delayed arriving or leaving MCO during storms. Baggage handlers will not work while there is a storm passing through, so you have to sit on the plane and wait. Once again these kind of things can have a knock on effect for several days, thereby upping the delay stats.
The advantage BA have is that they are a much bigger airline with spare planes which they can utilise if one of theirs if going to be late landing back into LGW. Sadly Virign doesn't have this luxury, as we cant afford to have planes sitting around doing nothing.
One thing that may be in your favour flying on 27th is that several flights do not go on xmas day so you shouldn't fall victim to any knock on delays as some a/c will have been sitting on the ground for a day or two.
So you'r right LGW does have a lot of delays, mainly due to the fact that all the flights leave close together in the morning (unlike LHR where they are spread throughout the day) and all the sectors are over 8 hours (unlike LHR where there ae lots of shorter flights e.g LOS/DXB/BOS/EWR etc - so a/c get back to LHR quicker) so it takes longer for the a/c to get back to LGW.
I hope I've given more of an insight as to why LGW sometimes has problems and I hope you enjoy your flight and have a fab time in florida!
