A number of agencies across the Republic of Ireland, Northern Ireland, Scotland and the north of England pre-emptively shut their doors on Thursday and Friday (23-24 January) after several rare red weather warnings were issued, along with a slew of amber and yellow alerts.
Barrhead Travel took the decision on Thursday to shut all its stores in red warning areas, including its Glasgow HQ. Northern Ireland’s Oasis Travel, which has eight branches, was another to shut all of its branches on Friday as the storm intensified.
Hays Travel has shut its stores in Northern Ireland until 2pm on Friday, while a number of its branches across Scotland will be shut until Saturday.
Two Met Office red warnings for wind remained in place on Friday morning – one covering the entirety of Northern Ireland, which remains valid until 2pm, and another covering southern, central and border regions of Scotland, including Glasgow and Edinburgh. This will remain in place until 5pm.
Much of the rest of Scotland remains subject to amber warnings for wind, and the whole of England is covered by a yellow wind warning. Winds topped 100mph in coastal areas of Northern Ireland and Scotland, hitting highs of 114mph. There are also snow and ice warnings in place for many areas of Northern Ireland and Scotland.
Loganair took the decision on Thursday to cancel its entire Friday schedule, and it is offering flexibility on all flights departing on Saturday too, while Belfast International airport confirmed that as of around 7.45am on Friday, some 230 flights due to fly to and from the airport had so far been cancelled.
A number of other airports have warned they expect further disruption on Friday as Storm Eowyn moves further north, although there have been reports of disruption so far south as Bristol and Cardiff.
As of 1pm on Friday, aviation analytics firm Cirium said more than 1,100 flights arriving into or departing from airports in the UK and Ireland had so far been cancelled, amounting to around 20% of all scheduled flights.
The worst affected airports in the UK are Edinburgh (85 departures and 80 arrivals cancelled), Heathrow (51 departures and 62 arrivals cancelled), Glasgow (44 departures and 43 arrivals cancelled), Aberdeen (36 departures and 32 arrivals cancelled) and Belfast City (24 departures and 21 arrivals cancelled).
In the Republic of Ireland, there have so far been 120 departures and 110 arrivals cancelled at Dublin airport, nine departures and seven arrivals at Cork and five departures and five arrivals at Knock.
