Severe weather impacting on Wick-Aberdeen air services

Passengers are advised that severe weather has this week had a substantial impact on air services between Wick and Aberdeen, which are operated under a Public Service Obligation (PSO) contract between The Highland Council and Eastern Airways.

Passengers are advised to check with the airline for any updates before travelling and note that there may be delays or cancellations to services as a result of ongoing severe weather.

This week (commencing Monday 18 November), has seen the following services impacted due to ice and snow:

• Tuesday 19 November – the service was unable to operate due to unavailability of aircraft de-icing services at Wick John O’Groats Airport.
• Wednesday 20 November – the service was unable to operate due to a combination of delays awaiting aircraft de-icing at Aberdeen International Airport, followed by snow closures of both Wick and Aberdeen airports.

In both cases, passengers were offered a free rebooking onto the following day’s service, with those who were on the return leg of their journey or more than 90 minutes from home also offered overnight accommodation.

When flights are cancelled, passengers will be offered a full refund in the event that any cancellation delays their arrival by more than 5 hours. Where possible, free road transport to their destination will also be offered, however in the cases above this was felt to represent a substantial risk due to ongoing yellow weather warnings as issued by the Met Office.

Full details of passengers’ rights in the event of a cancellation or delay can be found in Eastern Airways’ Conditions of Carriage.

Councillor Leader Raymond Bremner, Chair of the Wick John O’ Groats Airport Consultative Committee said: “I really appreciate that these recent cancellations will be frustrating to passengers, particularly coming within such a short period of time. However, despite sustained efforts from both the Wick John O’Groats Airport and Eastern Airways teams to make the service work, the severe weather impacts have simply made this impossible and passenger safety has to come first.

“Since the introduction of the new PSO schedule on 14 October, overall service reliability has improved tremendously, with, prior to this week, just two cancellations out of 64 scheduled services. Severe weather is having an impact across Scotland on all modes of transport, with the Met Office now extending yellow weather warnings for the Wick area into Friday and Saturday, but things look set to improve next week and we are confident that we will soon see a return to the high level of service reliability we have come to expect.”

A HIAL spokesperson said: “The weather is affecting our airport at Wick with some disruption earlier this morning.  The airport team is working hard to keep the airport open; passengers should contact their airline for latest flight information.”