Airports race to clear Christmas backlog
Thousands of weary passengers woke up in airport terminals around the continent, where stranded travellers have been bedding down since Friday, still in the hope of making it to their destination before Christmas Day on Saturday.
In London, Paris and Frankfurt, the continent’s busiest airports were running a slimmed-down schedule in a bid to get stranded passengers on the move.
Around 1,000 passengers spent the night at London Heathrow, the world’s busiest international passenger airport.
“We’re running 70% of our normal planned schedule, which accounts for around 900 flights, and we’re comfortable that we’ll be able to remove the rest of the snow from the airfield,” a Heathrow spokes- woman told reporters.
“Both runways are open and operating,” she said, adding 30,000 tonnes of snow was removed from the apron.
Flights left Heathrow through the night, breaking the normal curfew.
The spokeswoman said the airport was “absolutely” aiming to get everyone away in time for Christmas.
Eurocontrol, the continent’s air traffic supervisory body, said about 3,000 flights had been cancelled across Europe on Tuesday, with similar numbers of cancellations for each of the previous four days.
Airport officials were under increasing pressure to resolve the crisis after the European Union lashed out at the “unacceptable” disruption, but weather reports said snow could persist in northern Europe.
Colin Matthews, head of Heath- row’s operator BAA, said he would not take his bonus for 2010 after union chiefs said accepting the payment would be an “absolute slap in the face” to stranded passengers.
At Paris-Charles de Gaulle, continental Europe’s busiest airport, 15% of flights were to be cancelled between 5pm and 10pm GMT yesterday due to snow flurries, while the schedule is to be slashed by 25% throughout the day today.
Paris’s second airport, Orly, was also likely to be affected.
Services at Frankfurt, Germany’s main hub, were improving though 70 early flights were cancelled.
Overnight some 300 people slept in the terminals, while others were taken to local hotels.
“If the weather holds up, we will get a lot of passengers to their destinations today, but it also depends on the weather at other European airports,” an airport spokesman said.
