logo
M25 closures: Drivers warned of disruption as key motorway stretch closed this weekend

M25 closures: Drivers warned of disruption as key motorway stretch closed this weekend

Independent07-03-2025

Drivers on the M25 have been warned to 'expect delays' this weekend, with a key stretch of motorway closed until Monday.
The M25 between junction 10 (Wisley) and 11, near Woking, will be closed in both directions as part of a £317 million project to add extra lanes.
Disruption will last from 9pm on Friday (7 March) until 6am on Monday.
National Highways urged drivers to 'only travel if necessary' during the closure.
'We're grateful to all drivers who avoided previous closures and completed their journeys in other ways. We urge you to do the same again,' it said.
'If you do travel, expect delays and please leave a lot of extra time for your journey.'
The M25 is the busiest road in the UK, with hundreds of thousands of users travelling on it every day.
Work is being carried out to demolish and remove old bridges. National Highways is installing several new structures for pedestrians and cyclists to cross over the motorway, including the UK's first 'heathland' bridge, a passage with bushes and grasses alongside a path.
The junction 10 project was scheduled to be completed this summer, but due to nine months of 'extreme weather', is now hoping to wrap up by spring 2026.
During the closure, local roads surrounding junction 10 and the Wisley stretch of the A3 are expected to see a major increase in traffic.
British Airways told passengers bound for London Heathrow and Gatwick: 'A diversion will be in place, but please allow extra time and plan ahead for your journey to the airport.'
Alternative routes will take motorists travelling clockwise from the M25 at junction 10 to join the A3 northbound at Painshill, take the A245, then the A320 before rejoining the M25 at junction 11.
For anti-clockwise drivers, National Highways said: 'Avoiding the closure by taking the M25 via the Dartford Crossing may also be quicker.'
Drivers will face the same junction closure later this month. Diversions will again apply from 9pm on 21 March until 6am on 24 March.

Orange background

Try Our AI Features

Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:

Comments

No comments yet...

Related Articles

Wizz Air suffers £500m slump as engine troubles ground planes
Wizz Air suffers £500m slump as engine troubles ground planes

Telegraph

time7 hours ago

  • Telegraph

Wizz Air suffers £500m slump as engine troubles ground planes

Almost half a billion pounds has been wiped off the value of Wizz Air after engine troubles forced it to ground dozens of planes and triggered a slump in earnings. Wizz Air shares fell by more than 25pc on Wednesday after the low-cost airline said operating profit in the 12 months through to March had dropped to barely a third of the previous year's total. The slump saw the company's market capitalisation fall by £480m to £1.25bn. The Hungarian airline's problems stem from issues with the Pratt & Whitney GTF engines that power Wizz's Airbus A320-series jets, problems that have plagued all operators that use these components. Wear and tear to the engines have left a significant chunk of Wizz's fleet idled at any one time as turbines are sent off for repair. The Pratt engine crisis, caused by the use of contaminated powdered metal during manufacturing, which causes components to crack, has affected more than 40 A320 operators. However, Wizz has been the worst hit in Europe. József Váradi, the chief executive of Wizz, said the company was forced to lease a dozen aircraft and 40 spare engines to fulfil its flight schedule and defend key markets. Only a proportion of these costs were covered by a compensation package from US-based Pratt, leading to the sharp drop in earnings. He said: 'We had to protect capacity in the strategic interests of the company. That has cost us a lot of money, but otherwise competitors would have taken those markets that we had invested in previously. 'Even then, we're simply not able to fly the total fleet as much as we would, which also comes with significant costs.' The measures pushed up overall expenses, excluding fuel, by 20pc. Operating profit fell from €438m (£369m) to just €168m, sending Wizz shares tumbling, while net income was lower than expected. Wizz also saw its operations curtailed by the conflict in Ukraine. While listed in London, the company is based in Hungary and is a leading carrier in several East European countries where the war has limited flights. Services to Israel, a major market for the airline, operated only intermittently in response to the fluctuating security situation. While Wizz predicted revenue would increase this year, it declined to provide profit guidance. Management also warned that Wizz was having to cut fares to attract customers. Mr Varadi said the fleet situation should ease in the next year. The number of planes grounded dropped from 42 at the end of March to 37 as of May 9 and should be reduced to 34 by September. Despite the recent setback, Wizz Air still has ambitious expansion plans. It has signed a deal for more than 300 Airbus jets worth more than $45m (£33m), to be delivered by the end of the decade. It has ordered the biggest 230-seat A321s in a bid to undercut larger rivals Ryanair and easyJet. Mr Varadi said Wizz Air could double the size of its British-based fleet from 20 planes to 40 if airport expansion plans go ahead as expected. Government backing for a second runway at Gatwick is expected to be given later this year, while plans for expansion of Luton, Wizz's biggest UK hub, were signed off by Heidi Alexander, the Transport Secretary, in April.

British Airways bans cabin crew from taking certain photos on layovers
British Airways bans cabin crew from taking certain photos on layovers

Daily Mirror

time9 hours ago

  • Daily Mirror

British Airways bans cabin crew from taking certain photos on layovers

BA has cited security concerns over potential AI-powered location identification as the main reason for the ban, which follows another set of photo rules for staff that was introduced in 2023 British Airways staff have been banned from posting photos during layovers in popular destinations, it has been reported. The UK's flag carrier has implemented strict new social media restrictions aimed at stopping cabin crew from sharing layover snaps from their accommodation in locations such as the Maldives, Cape Town and Singapore. ‌ The airline has not implemented the ban in a bid to ruin all of the fun, but instead to mitigate any potential security risks. BA has cited security concerns over potential AI-powered location identification as the main reason for the ban. ‌ It claims that sophisticated computer software could analyze seemingly innocent background details to identify specific hotel locations and crew accommodation patterns, potentially putting the flight staff in jeopardy. Now, crew members must delete such photos and videos from their personal accounts, even private ones. Aviation A2Z reports that all British Airways members, including pilots and cabin crew, are affected. Get Ready With Me videos - in which people film themselves putting on their outfit for the day - filmed in hotel rooms and bathrooms are now banned. Outfit of the Day content showing off BA uniform is also on the scrapheap. Fun photos taken in hotel pools, at private beaches and in the lobby areas are also now forbidden. ‌ Back in February 2023, BA introduced a raft of new rules that stopped staff from posting videos and pictures while they were "professionally engaged' in their duties. That included workers on security checks, passenger service, and operational activities. Those rules were designed to clamp down on cabin crew members documenting their lives for TikTok and Instagram followers. A ban on sharing photos of crew sat inside aircraft engines was also brought in. Staff were unhappy at the time, with the following backlash leading BA to clarify that crew could still share photos in their uniform, so long as they weren't actively working. ‌ In April, a British Airways crew member was found dead in a hotel room during a stopover - although it is not clear if the new photo policy is connected to the tragic event. Concern was raised for Irfan Ali Mirza when the 45-year-old man failed to report for duty on Thursday after staying at the crew hotel in San Francisco, US. He had arrived there on a flight from London Heathrow and had a two-day layover before the return journey. Hotel managers eventually unlocked Irfan's room where they found the father of three dead on the bed. Police said the responding officers' investigation of the scene "did not discover any evidence of foul play" and the body was taken by the medical examiner. The BA 284 flight from San Francisco International Airport to London Heathrow due to depart at 4.20pm on Thursday April 17 was cancelled. One Mile At A Time reported that Mr Mirza's fellow crew members were too upset to fly. BA has been contacted for comment.

Soldiers dug my grave & raped my colleagues when I was taken hostage working as BA cabin crew… ordeal still haunts us
Soldiers dug my grave & raped my colleagues when I was taken hostage working as BA cabin crew… ordeal still haunts us

The Sun

time13 hours ago

  • The Sun

Soldiers dug my grave & raped my colleagues when I was taken hostage working as BA cabin crew… ordeal still haunts us

AS Iraqi soldiers dug a huge ditch, one of them broke down in tears and told Clive Earthy that it was for the British Airways crew member being held as a 'human shield'. But the young man then told the father-of-three: 'Don't worry... the officer is a nice man and he will make sure you will not feel any pain because he will shoot you straight in the head." 14 14 14 This was just one of several occasions when Clive, 82, from Alresford, Hampshire, thought during a four month hostage ordeal in 1990 that 'I was going to die and never see my wife and children again'. Now, 35 years on from the invasion of the Gulf state of Kuwait by Iraqi forces, the grandfather is hoping to solve the mystery of British Airways Flight 149. The Jumbo Jet was allowed to stop in Kuwait City to refuel on August 2, even though the British government knew that dictator Saddam Hussein 's tanks had rolled into his oil-rich neighbour six hours earlier. Once on the tarmac, fighter jets flew across the airport and there were explosions nearby. It only takes a moment to divert a plane, so why wasn't Flight 149's captain told not to touchdown? Clive, who was Head of Cabin Services looking after 367 passengers, thinks he has the answer. He claims a British officer in military uniform at the Boeing's exit told him: 'You're running very, very late, and I've been asked to escort off your flight a group of young men,' who were then ushered away from the normal immigration channel. Later, during captivity in Iraq, Clive says he was told by other members of the UK armed forces that they knew Flight 149 had been coming into Kuwait with important men on board. The theory is that the British Airways passenger plane had been ordered to land in a war zone in order to get a 'black ops' team covertly into the country. This has always been denied by the British government - but it is the policy of the authorities not to reveal SAS operations. Now a Sky documentary titled Flight 149: Hostage of War has delved into the scandal of how innocent passengers came to be used as pawns by Saddam - who paraded his British hostages, including then six-year-old Stuart Lockwood, on TV. Last summer 94 people who survived that journey into hell joined together to sue the British government and British Airways for alleged negligence. That case is ongoing and is expected to put forward new evidence of a cover-up. Clive, who is part of the civil action, tells The Sun: 'I would just like the government, namely the MoD [Ministry of Defence] and British Airways to admit that they knew about certain young men on my aeroplane in advance and could have stopped our flight from landing in Kuwait. 'Do I want money? No. I just want an apology.' While who knew what and when is a matter of debate, what can't be denied is that Flight 149 should not have landed in Kuwait City on August 2, 1990. There had been tension between Kuwait and Iraq, both British allies at the time, for a number of months because Saddam could not pay the millions he'd borrowed from his neighbour to fund a failed war with Iran. Tony Paice, an MI6 Agent at the British Embassy in Kuwait, warned the MoD that 'from an early stage they were going to invade'. For three decades the British government denied this, until in November 2021 it admitted the Foreign Office had been told that Kuwait was being attacked prior to Flight 149 landing. Perhaps if the take-off from Heathrow hadn't been delayed due a fault with the plane's auxiliary unit, it might have made it out before the shooting started. Arriving late on the flight, the final destination for which was supposed to be Kuala Lumpur in Malaysia, was a group of ten 'fit young men' who all sat at the back of the plane. Clive recalls: 'When I went around with the boarding cards, they just sort of said, 'We won't need those'.' Having been the last on, they were the first off on the orders of the military officer that Clive met. He explains: 'When they came up to the front, they were escorted, not through the normal passenger arrivals channels, they went down the steps at the side of the aircraft with the military officer.' Rape and executions Soon after Clive had bigger things to worry about - namely the safety of his passengers and crew. With explosions in the city, they could no longer take-off and were taken on a bus to the opulent five star Regency Hotel. One of the BA stewardesses was raped by an Iraqi soldier during the bus journey, and Clive saw first hand how ruthless their captors were going to be. I would just like the government, namely the MoD and British Airways to admit that they knew about certain young men on my aeroplane in advance and could have stopped our flight from landing in Kuwait Clive Earthy He recalls: 'I went up to the Iraqi major in the hotel and said, 'This young lady thinks she's been attacked on the bus, here, from the airport'. 'And he instantly got the guards, who were escorting the bus, and brought them into the lobby. 'The Iraqi officer took out his gun and handed it to the stewardess to say, 'Shoot him', which upset the stewardess very, very much. 'And the steward, who pulled the Iraqi soldier off of her, was handed the pistol and he declined.' Clive was told that the rapist soldier was taken away and executed. Daring escape American passenger Deborah Saloom, 74, saw the horrors inflicted on the Kuwaiti population and feared they would be next. She says: 'We saw military men chasing men with their automatic weapons, we saw them rounding up people, we saw a man hanging from a rope from a communication pole.' Having been told that Kuwaiti staff were getting their families out of the country, Deborah and her husband B George, 77, decided to trick a bus driver into taking them to the US embassy. Deborah claimed she needed to go to the hospital, but on route revealed the truth. She was 'petrified' during the journey, with the driver having to find ways to avoid checkpoints. It proved to be the right decision because they were safe in the embassy while other passengers were taken to military sites around the country and used as 'human shields'. Clive was not the only one who thought he'd be shot. British passenger Barry Manners was told 'I'm going to kill you' by a guard who then fired a shot away from his head. Even worse, BA steward Charlie Kristiansson was raped by a male soldier. Charlie says in the documentary: 'He shot into the ground and said, 'Britain has raped Iraq and you are going to know what it feels like'.' The first Gulf War On August 2, 1990, tyrant Saddam Hussein ordered the invasion and brutal occupation of neighbouring Kuwait in a row over oil and loans. US President G W Bush put together a 39-nation coalition of 670,000 troops - the largest military alliance since World War II - to liberate Kuwait, with full backing from the United Nations. Bush said: 'Iraq will not be permitted to annex Kuwait. That's not a threat or a boast that's just the way it's going to be.' Britain sent 53,462 military personnel in its largest single deployment since WWII. It cost over £2billion with most of the tab picked up by Saudi Arabia and Kuwait. Some £200million of British kit was lost or written off. The coalition's efforts against Iraq were carried out in two key phases. The first, Operation Desert Shield, marked the military build-up from August 1990 to January 1991. Iraq was given an ultimatum to withdraw, with a deadline of January 15. The second, Operation Desert Storm, began with an aerial bombing campaign against Iraq on January 17, 1991, which lasted for five weeks. It ended with the American-led liberation of Kuwait on February 28, 1991, after the coalition launched a major ground assault into Iraqi-occupied Kuwait. There was a constant fear that Saddam would use his stockpile of chemical weapons against coalition troops. There were many false alarms but the Iraqi despot didn't repeat his chemical attack on the Kurds in Halabja in 1988 which killed as many as 5,000. Gulf War One was the first truly televised war with audiences astonished by the accuracy of a new generation of smart bombs and precision guided munitions. RAF man John Nichol adds: 'You had reporters on the ground filming aircraft taking off, and landing, which went live on air. 'It was astonishing and brand new. Journalists were living in the hotel with the aircrew and buying them beers.' One of the defining moments in British coverage was when the BBC's John Simpson breathlessly told the nation a cruise missile had just flown past his Baghdad hotel window and was "turning left at the traffic lights". The Flight 149 crew and passengers were among 3,000 foreign hostages described by Saddam as 'guests'. Gradually, under international pressure, the dictator started to release women, children and the sick. B George was told there was a scheme for people with Arab heritage, which he had, to get out of Kuwait. He signed up for the scheme, but it was just a 'trick' to get him out of the safety of the embassy in November 1990. B George is tearful as he recalls in a Zoom call: 'They interrogated me. They put a gun to my head and told me they would take me to the desert and shoot me.' 'The penny dropped' Clive was taken to the city of Mosul in northern Iraq, where six men from the British garrison in Kuwait were also being held. Saddam hoped that the United States and the United Kingdom would not attack his country if their citizens were there. The British soldiers made a surprising revelation to Clive. He reveals: 'A couple of them told me, 'We knew Flight 149 was coming in on the 2nd of August.' "They said, 'London, MoD presumably, had told us, meet Flight 149 at the airport and escort off the men, military men, who were to do work in and around Kuwait'. 'And of course that was when the penny dropped. All of a sudden, everybody knew that there was military on my flight. Everybody except us.' All hostages were released on December 6, 1990 after 126 days in captivity. Six weeks later Kuwait was liberated in Operation Desert Storm, when British and US troops attacked Saddam's forces. 14 A search for answers In the aftermath of that victory, the suffering of the human shields has largely been forgotten. But they are still determined to find out why they were put in harm's way. An anonymous member of the black-ops team later claimed that he was on Flight 149. Clive, who worked for British Airways for 34 years before retiring in 1994, has been told by sources in the air industry that only one person could have ordered an SAS team to land in a war zone on a passenger flight. He says: 'They said, 'We think there's only one person who could authorise that sort of thing to go straight away, and that must be the Prime Minister, Maggie Thatcher '.' Thatcher, who died in 2013, denied there was a covert operation and all governments since have maintained there was no cover-up. But with the lawyers bringing legal action claiming they have new evidence, this story is not over yet. Flight 149: Hostage of War is on Sky Documentaries and Now TV on June 11. 14 14 14

DOWNLOAD THE APP

Get Started Now: Download the App

Ready to dive into the world of global news and events? Download our app today from your preferred app store and start exploring.
app-storeplay-store