The UK is set for its first snow day of 2025 as an Arctic blast sees snowfall, ice and freezing rain batter the country.

According the Met Office, various yellow and amber weather warnings will remain in place across Sunday for various parts of the country, with the north of England and the Midlands currently projected to be the worst affected areas.

For amber areas, around 3-7cm of snow is forecasted, rising to 40cm for higher ground.

Travel delays and disruption are also expected to be in place across the UK today, before the snow begins to ease up towards the end of the day.

Met Office amber and yellow weather warning forecast for 5 January, 2025 (Met Office)

Numerous airports are already reporting cancellations and delays to flights as they work to clear snow from runways, with passengers at Manchester, Birmingham and Liverpool John Lennon Airport all experiencing disruption.

Providing an update to passengers via X, Manchester Airport confirmed that runways were closed due to heavy snowfall around 7am, with teams working to clear the airfield ‘as quickly as possible’.

Bristol Airport reopened around 11pm after an earlier closure but warned of delays on Sunday morning due to aircraft being out of position.

Leeds Bradford has also confirmed temporary closure to their runways, with morning departures being rescheduled to later in the day.

Meanwhile, National Highways has warned that upto 25cm of snow could hit roads in various parts of northern England, with routes connecting Manchester and South Yorkshire through the Peak District the worst affected.

Milder temperatures are forecasted to move across the country later in the day, however this could bring further issues as snow begins to melt.

The BBC has issued yellow weather warnings for for South Wales and the South and South West of England as forecasted rainfall could lead to localised flooding in certain areas.

Snowfall in Wales (Huw Fairclough/Getty Images)

The National Grid has also reported a number of power cuts across the country, adding that they were working to restore power across parts of the Midlands, south-west England and South Wales on Saturday, including in Birmingham, Bristol and Cardiff.

Health secretary Wes Streeting has urged Brits to take precaution when going outside this weekend, telling BBC Breakfast earlier in the week: “We are heading into a cold snap this weekend and I know there are lots of concerns, not just amongst charity leaders, but also among NHS and social care leaders as well, about the particular risks and vulnerabilities this weekend as temperatures drop, both in terms of risk of accident and injury, but also risk from the cold itself.

“This is a weekend to wrap up and keep warm, to take sensible precautions about going out and about.”

An investigation is underway into the Jeju Air crash which killed all but two of the 181 people on board.

Authorities in South Korea are working to determine exactly what caused the tragic plane crash at Muan International Airport on Sunday (29 December) morning local time.

Shocking footage of the incident appeared to show the Boeing 737-800 jet skidding across the runway without having deployed its landing gear.

It then collided with a concrete wall near the end of the 2,800m runway and burst into flames.

The pilot of the plane, which had departed from Bangkok, Thailand, reported that it had struck a bird before the deadly crash, according to the BBC.

Investigators are now trying to find out what other factors may have played a part in the incident, including whether the aircraft’s control systems were disabled.

The plane’s black box has been retrieved from the wreckage, but is missing a key connector which will delay the data extraction from it, South Korea’s transport ministry said.

However, analysis of the cockpit voice recorder has now begun, which will hopefully provide a clearer picture of the final moments on board.

The Jeju Air plane burst into flames after smashing into a concrete wall (Chris Jung/NurPhoto via Getty Images)

Aviation experts have also been questioning why the ‘unusual’ concrete wall was located near the end of the runway.

The four-metre tall dirt-and-concrete embankment at the South Korean airport was part of a guidance system, which helps pilots land when visibility is poor or at night.

But according to David Learmount, who is the operations and safety editor of Flight International magazine and an aviation boffin, it’s positioning proved to be the ‘defining moment’ of the tragedy.

He believes that if the Boeing 737-800 had not hit the wall, it would have instead gone through a perimeter fence and across a road before coming to a stop in a nearby field.

“To have a hard object about 200m or less into the overrun, I’ve never seen anything like this anywhere ever before,” he told Sky News.

“There was plenty of space for the aircraft to have slowed down, come to a halt.

“And I think everybody would have been alive…the pilots might have suffered some damage going through the security fence or something like that.

“But I even suspect they might have survived.”

Lufthansa pilot Christian Beckert described the concrete wall as ‘unusual’ to Reuters, saying: “The reason so many people died was not the landing as such, but the fact that the aircraft collided with a very hard obstruction just beyond the runway end.

“Normally, on an airport with a runway at the end, you don’t have a wall.”

Aviation experts have been sharing their thoughts on the incident (X)

According to South Korea’s Yonhap News Agency, a navigation system which assists aircraft landings – known as a localiser – is inside of the concrete structure.

It is reported to have been raised and covered with dirt to keep this system level and ensure it works correctly.

At most airports, the instrument landing systems are placed on collapsible structures.

Another pilot with 48 years of experience, Chris Kingswood, explained that obstacles that are located ‘within a certain range and distance of the runway’ are required to be breakable.

“Which means that if an aircraft strikes them that they do break,” he told the BBC. “It does seem unusual that it’s such a rigid thing.”

He said that the alternate outcomes of the crash, specifically what might have happened if the wall wasn’t there, will ‘certainly [be] something that will be investigated’.

Kingswood added: “Aeroplanes are not strong structures – they are, by design, light to make them efficient in flight.

“They’re not really designed to go high-speed on its belly, so any kind of structure could cause the fuselage to break up and then be catastrophic.”

Discussion is also mounting around whether the pilots of the fateful Jeju Air flight even knew the barrier was there.

Aviation analyst Sally Gethin added: “We need to know, were [the pilots] aware there was this hard boundary at the end?

“If they were directed by the control tower to reverse the use of the runway the second time around, that should come out in the investigation of the black boxes.

“I think there are so many questions.”

What have Jeju Air and Boeing said about the crash?

In a statement, Boeing said: “We are in contact with Jeju Air regarding flight 2216 and stand ready to support them. We extend our deepest condolences to the families who lost loved ones, and our thoughts remain with the passengers and crew.”

Jeju Air also added: “We deeply apologize to all those affected by the incident. We will make every effort to resolve the situation. We sincerely regret the distress caused.”

Experts have revealed what crucial factors might have saved the two passengers involved in the Jeju Air plane crash which claimed the lives of the other 179 people on board.

An investigation into the disaster which took place at Muan International Airport in southwestern South Korea on Sunday (29 December) remains ongoing.

The Boeing 737-800 jet was flying from Bangkok, Thailand, and on its landing into South Korea, slammed into a concrete fence and burst into flames at around 9:03am local time.

Its front landing gear reportedly failed to deploy, with some experts speculating that a bird strike could be cause of the incident.

All but two of the 181 on board Jeju Air’s Boeing 737-800 died from the crash on 29 December (Chris Jung/NurPhoto via Getty Images)

According to South Korea’s National Fire Agency, 179 people died out of the 181 people on the plane.

Thai authorities later confirmed that only two members of the cabin crew survived, a man and a woman.

Muan fire chief, Lee Jung-hyun, suggested that this was because they were located in the tail end of the plane, the only part that wasn’t destroyed.

“Only the tail part retains a little bit of shape, and the rest of (the plane) looks almost impossible to recognise,” he told a press briefing.

The two crew members were rescued from the tail section of the burning plane, the fire chief said, adding that they are currently being treated at hospitals with medium to severe injuries.

Notably, seats in the back of the plane are considered to be safer, as the back third of the aircraft, has a fatality rate of 32 percent, whereas those in the middle third had a fatality rate of 39 percent, according to a 2015 analysis by Time magazine of 35 years of Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) data, reports the Daily Mail.

Jeju Air and Boeing have released statements following the crash (South Korean National Fire Agency via Getty Images)

Najmedin Meshkati, an engineering professor at the University of Southern California, says that the Boeing 737-800 has a good safety record and that investigators will learn what happened by looking into flight data and cockpit voice recorders.

“These are really the two pillars for accident analysis and accident reconstruction,” he said.

“Having such a big concrete barrier over there was really very bad luck for this particular aeroplane.”

Geoffrey Thomas, an aviation expert and commentator, also speculated to the BBC that a bird strike could be another possible reason.

He said: “It appears as though there has been a bird strike and one of the engines, the right-hand engine was impacted.

“This would have caused a lot of pressure in the cockpit.

“With all the checking and cross-checking going on relating to this engine failure, it could well be that [the] pilots simply forgot to put the landing gear down. Whether the engine situation was such that they felt they didn’t have time to do that we don’t know.”

Thomas added: “A lot of things about this tragedy don’t make sense.”

In a statement, Boeing said: “We are in contact with Jeju Air regarding flight 2216 and stand ready to support them. We extend our deepest condolences to the families who lost loved ones, and our thoughts remain with the passengers and crew.”

Jeju Air also added: “We deeply apologise to all those affected by the incident. We will make every effort to resolve the situation. We sincerely regret the distress caused.”

South Korean officials investigating the Jeju Air plane crash have issued a worrying update after analysing the black boxes which were retrieved from the wreckage.

Authorities had hoped that the electronic recording devices would provide an insight into what happened in the final moments before the disaster on 29 December.

The Boeing 737-800 which was carrying 181 people had departed from Bangkok, Thailand, and crashed following an emergency landing at Muan International Airport.

Only two cabin crew members survived the fireball after the jet ploughed into a concrete wall at the end of the runway.

The pair – who have both struggled to remember what happened during the incident – were found in the plane’s tail section with several injuries.

Investigators announced they had began extracting data from one of the black boxes on the Jeju Air jet at the start of the month.

South Korea’s transport ministry said this content from the cockpit voice recorder would then be converted into an audio file.

The black boxes from the doomed Jeju Air jet stopped recording four minutes before the crash (JUNG YEON-JE/AFP via Getty Images)

The second black box – a flight data recorder which was damaged in the crash and missing a crucial connector – was then sent to the US for further analysis.

The Ministry of Transport’s director of aviation policy, Joo Jong-wan, explained at the time: “We have determined that extracting data from the damaged flight data recorder here is not possible.

“And so we have agreed with the NTSB to send it to the US and analyse it there,” he said, according to Yonhap News Agency.

However, in the latest update on the probe into the worst airline disaster South Korea has ever seen, the ministry has revealed that both devices stopped working just minutes before the crash.

Four minutes before the disaster, the cockpit voice recorder and the flight data recorder stopped processing data.

The US National Transportation Safety Board discovered the missing chunk of information while analysing the contents of the black boxes.

But according to South Korean officials, other data was available which could aid the investigation.

As well as this, they reassured families of the victims that the probe would be transparent and information would be shared with them.

Sim Jai-dong, a former accident investigator for the transport ministry in South Korea, said the malfunction of the black boxes was extremely surprising.

He said that it suggests that the aircraft could have lost all power, including backup, which he says would be an ‘incredibly rare’ occurrence.

Black boxes are designed to withstand a lot of trauma and are considered to be almost indestructible.

South Korea’s transport ministry are working to determine what happened to the devices (JUNG YEON-JE/AFP via Getty Images)

Typically located at the rear of an aircraft, these devices can survive extreme temperatures and underwater immersion, but they are not completely unbreakable.

They collect flight data such as speed, altitude and fuel levels, as well as voice recordings from inside the cockpit.

The devices can also pick up on other sounds such as engine noises and radio transmissions, which was the case with the fateful Voepass Linhas Aéreas Flight 2283 crash in August last year.

US aviation expert Frank E Turney explained why the data from black boxes is so important for investigators to get their hands on.

The chair of the aviation department for Capitol Technology University previously told The Guardian: “The [black] box or the flight data recorder is not going to sit there and tell you this is what caused this accident.

“What it’s going to do, it’s going to give you all of the underlying factual data that you can use to try to assess how the accident occurred.

“Sometimes the data that you’re getting from the flight data recorder will be very conclusive on what the cause of the accident was, but most of the time it is going to be a piece of the overall investigation, and not necessarily a slam dunk on ‘this is what caused this accident.'”

According to Turney, there is usually a chain of unfortunate events – known as the ‘accident chain’ – which lead up to an air disaster, rather than one single issue.

He reckons that officials will be looking into the structure of the Jeju Air plane, its mechanics and how the pilots handled the situation.

“They’re going to go through all of that, and then at some point they’re going to sit down and go through all of this information to figure it out,” Turney added.

“But the flight data recorder is usually a fairly sizeable piece of the puzzle that they use to determine the accident.”