UPDATED: Oslo airport closes due to heavy snowfall
5342 Mins Read
OSLO, Jan 17 (Reuters) – Oslo’s main airport closed for safety reasons on Wednesday due to heavy snowfall in Norway’s capital region and many train services and other public transport also faced severe delays or cancellations, operators said.
The Oslo airport said it will remain shut at least until 1330 GMT but the outage could also be extended.
“This is extremely rare… there is so much snow that the pilots can’t see the lights on the ground so we’ve halted all incoming and outgoing flights,” said a spokesperson for Norway’s national airport operator Avinor.
“Safety comes first, the spokesperson added.
Avinor said it asked passengers to monitor information from their airlines for additional information.
Train traffic in parts of eastern Norway also stopped on Wednesday due to the weather conditions, train operator Bane Nor said in a statement.
Winter weather snarls air, train travel across Germany
DUESSELDORF, Germany, Jan 17 (Reuters) – Freezing rain in central and southern Germany grounded hundreds of flights and restricted train traffic on Wednesday as the weather service warned of slippery roads and heavy snowfall.
At Frankfurt airport, 570 of the 1,047 scheduled arrivals and departures were cancelled, while 254 flights were scratched at Munich airport and a smaller airport in the southern city of Saarbruecken ceased operations completely.
Timetables at Frankfurt’s airport showed only a very limited number of flights were still set to depart.
“I’ve had nothing but stress since yesterday,” said Klaus Ludwig Fess standing in the airport’s departure lounge, adding both his initial flight and his rebooked one had been cancelled.
German rail operator Deutsche Bahn, however, also warned of delays and cancellations because of winter weather, and said it was limiting the top speed for its high-speed ICE trains to 200 kph (124 mph) as a precautionary measure.
Its long distance services from Stuttgart and Frankfurt to Paris had been cancelled due to weather conditions in France, Deutsche Bahn said.
France’s weather service warned on its website of black ice in 25 regions and floods in three other areas this afternoon.
In Germany, an extreme risk of black ice and heavy snowfall would remain through Thursday in the affected regions, its weather service said.
Numerous schools in Germany’s centre and southern regions remained closed as on-site education was suspended for the day.
(Reporting by Anneli Palmen and Reuters TV Writing by Miranda Murray and Nette NöstlingerEditing by Tomasz Janowski)
