FRANKFURT – Frankfurt airport, Germany’s biggest, reopened on Tuesday after fresh snowfall grounded early flights and caused others to be re-routed to Munich in the south, spokesmen said.
Planes were grounded earlier in the day for some three and a half hours and 300 of the 1,300 daily flights at Europe’s third biggest airport were cancelled, a spokesman told AFP. By around 0800 GMT, however, the situation seemed to be improving in the main terminal used by flag carrier Lufthansa and its partners, although some trans-Atlantic passengers were delayed by about an hour.
After 376 cancellations on Monday, airport managers were hopeful of a return to normal, but unexpected fresh snow dashed their hopes. Frankfurt, which with London’s Heathrow and Paris’ Charles-de-Gaulle airport is one of the largest European hubs, has also been hit by knock-on effects from other feeder airports unable to function.
More than 1,000 travellers spent the night at Frankfurt airport, which laid out camp beds and distributed drinks, sandwiches and soft buttered pretzels. Long check-in lines seen on Monday were not apparent early on Tuesday however, but Lufthansa gave no forecast for when traffic might return to normal.
The German carrier also declined to estimate how much the disruption might cost. In Munich, an airport spokesman told AFP that 50 flights of the daily 1,100 had been cancelled, and added: “That is due to poor conditions elsewhere however.” The southern German city was not affected by bad weather and many flights to other airports had been redirected there, he said.
