More travel chaos to hit Europe as cold snap brings more snow

By Charlotte Van Campenhout and Bart H. Meijer

AMSTERDAM, Jan 6 (Reuters) – More flights will be cancelled, trains will run late and roads will be blocked by snow across Europe in coming days as a cold snap is forecast to worsen, bringing even more heavy snowfall after several days of travel disruption.

Authorities in the Netherlands told people to plan to stay at home if at all possible on Wednesday, with a fresh blizzard expected to arrive overnight.

French Transportation Minister Philippe Tabarot said on Tuesday that airlines had already been ordered to cancel at least 40% of flights at Paris’ main Charles de Gaulle airport the following morning, and a quarter of flights at smaller Orly.

Public transportation in the Paris region will probably also be disrupted by the snow, he added.

As snowfalls are expected again, Dutch airline KLM said it had protectively cancelled 600 flights on Wednesday to avoid last-minute cancellations that could leave travellers stranded at Schiphol airport, one of Europe’s main hubs.

KLM had already cancelled 400 flights at Schiphol on Tuesday and told travellers whose flights had been called off to stay away from the airport to prevent overcrowding.

“We haven’t experienced such extreme weather conditions in years,” spokesperson Anoesjka Aspeslagh said.

A BIRTHDAY IN TRANSIT

Stranded at Schiphol, Simiao Sun said she feared she would spend her 40th birthday in transit. She had been told she would have to wait three days for a rescheduled flight to Britain where she lives.

“My child would miss school and we would both miss work, so I’m queuing here…hoping to get a slightly earlier flight.”

KLM said it was offering alternative flights where possible and doing everything to help travellers, but was “overwhelmed with inquiries”.

On top of that, all domestic rail services in the Netherlands were suspended early on Tuesday after an IT outage hit the rail network.

Trains began running in parts of the country after 0900 GMT, but problems persisted around Amsterdam, with high-speed Eurostar services from Amsterdam to Paris either cancelled or late.

Roads in France were gradually clearing on Tuesday after snow caused severe accidents all over the country, killing at least five people, according to BFMTV news station.

Traffic in the Paris area hit a record 1,000 kilometres of jams on Monday evening.

SNOW FALLS OVER LARGE PARTS OF EUROPE

In Germany, temperatures fell well below minus 10 degrees Celsius (14 degrees Fahrenheit) in the south and east early on Tuesday. Much of the country was covered in snow.

In Britain, the Meteorological Office said winter weather hazards could continue throughout the week for most of the country. Temperatures overnight to Tuesday had fallen as low as -12.5 degrees Celsius in Marham, Norfolk, in eastern England, marking the coldest night of the winter so far.

Heavy snow and rain have also caused havoc across the Western Balkans, closing roads, cutting power and causing rivers to flood. A woman died in the Bosnian capital Sarajevo on Monday after a tree overburdened with wet snow fell on her.

(Reporting by Bart Meijer in Amsterdam, Inti Landauro in Brussels, Louise Rasmussen in Paris, Thomas Seythal in Berlin and Daria Sito-Sucic in Sarajevo; Editing by Michael Perry, Richard Lough, Alexandra Hudson and Nia Williams)