London (AFP) – Snow and ice forced the grounding of dozens of flights in Europe on Sunday, disrupting the end of the busy New Year holiday travel season. Here is a roundup of some of the disruptions:
**Britain** – Airports in the northwestern cities of Manchester and Liverpool, the central city of Birmingham, and Bristol in the west reopened Sunday after heavy snow across large parts of England forced runway closures. Leeds Bradford airport in the north, however, said its runway would remain closed until further notice. The snow also left some key roads in northern England shut, with the rail line between northern Leeds and Halifax suspended due to the weather conditions.
**Germany** – Snow and black ice forced the cancellation of dozens of flights at Frankfurt airport, Germany’s largest. A total of 120 of some 1,990 flights at the airport in the country’s west were cancelled, with a spokesperson telling AFP that take-off and landing runways needed clearing while “de-icing the planes is also more complex and more demanding.” Poor visibility was another factor behind the cancellations. In Munich, 35 flights were cancelled as a precaution out of a total of 750 departures and landings scheduled at Germany’s second-largest airport, a spokesperson said.
**Netherlands** – At Amsterdam’s Schiphol Airport, a major European hub, 68 flights were cancelled and more than 200 delayed due to snowy conditions, according to the airport website. It warned passengers to check the status of their flight before travelling. The cancellations were mainly to European destinations, but long-haul flights also suffered, with services scrapped to Newark and Detroit in the United States.
**Spain** – In Spain, travellers faced major delays of up to 3.5 hours. Some flights arriving at Madrid and Barcelona airports from several European cities were cancelled, the airports’ websites said. These included Frankfurt, Cologne, Munich, Amsterdam, Rotterdam, Liverpool, Manchester, London, and Paris. No snow or ice warnings were issued for Spain on Sunday, but a yellow-level warning for wind was in place for parts of the north.
**Czech Republic** – Prague’s Vaclav Havel airport was shut down because of freezing rain and black ice at 1600 GMT on Sunday. It was expected to reopen in the evening. The closure affected dozens of flights, with some incoming ones diverted to other cities, the airport authorities said on X. “Some planes heading to Prague had to return to the airports they had taken off from,” airport spokeswoman Denisa Hejtmankova told AFP.
© 2024 AFP
