Airport Christmas for stranded travellers

FRANCE: Hundreds of travellers whose flights were grounded by icy weather in Europe spent Christmas Day jammed in airport queues after sleeping overnight on camp beds in Paris and Brussels terminals.

Flight schedules returned to normal in Paris on Saturday, as emergency supplies of de-icing fluid got planes off the ground.

But the chaos left many angry about repeated weather disruption this month that upset end-year travel for hundreds of thousands of people and raised questions about the inability of the air and rail industries to deal with snowy conditions.

“It is not acceptable that Roissy Charles de Gaulle has this supply problem with glycol,” Air France AIRF.PA Chief Executive Pierre-Henri Gourgeon said of Paris’ main airport, which had to bring in deliveries of de-icer from Germany and United States.

Environment Minister Nathalie Kosciusko-Morizet said the government would look into what went wrong and how airports could avoid future shortages of de-icing fluid.

Travellers at Roissy were relieved to finally board planes but many still missed Christmas dinners at their destinations. Travel chaos was compounded by disruptions to high-speed trains and clogged roads from England to Sweden in one of Europe’s snowiest Decembers.

“We already had a nightmare in England and now this here,” one man groaned on France’s LCI television. Airports operated largely normally in Britain, Belgium and Germany on Saturday, although there were some cancellations in Frankfurt and Zurich.

Several hundred people had slept overnight in Paris and Brussels airports, or in nearby hotels.

At Roissy, staff handed out instant coffee and pastries for breakfast and Transport Minister Thierry Mariani also told passengers he would look into what caused the de-icer shortage.

At least 300 people slept on military-style beds at Roissy on Friday after some 400 flights were cancelled. More slept at nearby hotels, where authorities had reserved 3,300 rooms.

While some people cried into mobile phones as departure boards showed long lists of cancellations, others prayed at a mass held at the airport to be able to get on their flights.

Paris, Sunday, Reuters