There has been disruption to flights at Newcastle Airport because of heavy snow caused by Storm Bert.

Tim Harding, 53, and his wife, Chona, 58, were due to fly at 9.15am with Dutch airline KLM to Amsterdam from Newcastle before flying with Delta airlines to Orlando, Florida, to meet their family in the US for Thanksgiving.

Tim said: ‘Going to the airport… it was sleeting all the way through then all of a sudden it started coming down.

‘There were about four or five snow ploughs on the runway and they just couldn’t clear it. It was windy and it was literally coming down really quick, so hard. In the space of two hours, it went from nothing to decimated.

‘The gritters were out continuously, the ploughs were out continuously, but it just wasn’t having an impact unfortunately.

‘I was surprised how quickly it came down and how much came down in a two-hour period. I haven’t seen that for a long time.’