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LONDON - The misery faced by tens of thousands of travellers heading home for Christmas through London was predicted to ease today after three days of chaos when hundreds of flights were cancelled due to thick fog.
British Airways, which has suffered the bulk of the cancellations, said it aimed to fly 95 per cent of customers in and out of Heathrow Airport as planned on today.
"We are hopeful that the weather will improve slightly over the weekend and therefore we can get back to operating a full planned Christmas Eve schedule," said Geoff Want, the airline's director of ground operations.
"We are drafting in extra staff from across the airline over the weekend to ensure that customers get to their final destinations before Christmas Day."
However all domestic services from Heathrow, one of the world's busiest airports, have been cancelled up until midday on Saturday (1am Sun NZT) and flights to and from Paris and Brussels will not resume until Sunday.
The heavy fog which has caused the problems is expected to start lifting later today, and BA said it hoped to run all its long haul services and 87 per cent of its domestic flights.
The airline said it planned extra flights with bigger planes to try to ease disruption as the fog begins to clear.
"It looks a bit clearer this morning," a BA spokesman said.
On Thursday, 350 flights were cancelled and a similar number were stopped on Friday, said a spokesman for airport operator BAA, which runs Heathrow and six other British airports.
No problems were expected over the weekend at the capital's other two major airports, Gatwick and Stansted.
The fog chaos and loss of revenue from hundreds of cancelled flights is expected to cost BA millions of pounds.
BA published quarterly earnings last month which showed it cost the airline 100 million pounds after security was tightened in the wake of what police in August said was a plot to blow up airliners.
- REUTERS
