Mass flight cancellations heaped fresh misery on European travellers Tuesday, as the freezing weather that has caused at least 90 deaths on the continent brought chaos to Christmas holiday plans. Passengers stranded by snow-blocked roads, delayed trains and a three-day suspension of the Eurostar rail service found no relief at airports as icy runways were closed and heavy snow grounded hundreds of flights.
At least 90 people have died in winter storms across Europe, including 10 in Poland in the last day, the majority of them homeless men. Temperatures there have plunged to minus 20 degrees Celsius (minus four degrees Fahrenheit). British Airways also cancelled a "small number" of short-haul flights on Tuesday morning, blaming the disruption caused by Monday's heavy snowfall which had shut London Gatwick, Britain's second busiest airport, for several hours.
Germany's Frankfurt airport, Europe's third busiest, was closed for about four hours overnight after the runways iced over, stranding about 8,000 people. And in Berlin, freezing rain led to the closure of the main international airport Tegel for about an hour. London Luton airport was also closed overnight, and although it re-opened many flights were cancelled or subject to lengthy delays.
In Italy, Milan's Malpensa airport was closeed in the morning after heavy snowfall while Linate airport, which also serves the northern industrial city, was barely operating for much of the day. Hundreds of passengers spent the night at Linate after the national carrier Alitalia, which accounts for some 75 percent of the airport's capacity, cancelled all flights in and out.
British Airways chartered a Boeing 747 on Monday to fly about 350 stranded passengers between London Heathrow and Paris Charles de Gaulle, and said it would repeat the service again later Tuesday, a spokesman said. But while flights hit problems, passengers were finally able to travel through the Channel Tunnel on Eurostar after the operator solved the problems which caused trains to break down on Friday, stranding 2,000 people.
Thousands of drivers were stuck in their cars in southern England overnight as another freeze descended, and the motoring association AA said it was their busiest night for 25 years, with about 700 calls received every hour. In Buckinghamshire, west of London, about 100 people, including 20 children, spent the night in the John Lewis department store after being snowed in.