Holiday travelers in Europe have run into some serious problems this week, as flights are down in many of the continents busiest airports, and there is currently no end in sight. Even many trains – which seem like the safer alternative in winter weather – have been cancelled across Europe.
Only a few flights managed to make it off the ground at London-Heathrow, and over a third of flights in other travel hubs like Frankfurt and Paris have been grounded. Perhaps the city hit the worst by the freeze is Brussels, whose airport has cancelled every flight until at least Wednesday because they were not prepared with de-icing liquid. European train companies with services between UK, France, and Belgium have also canceled or delayed several of their scheduled services.
Paris has just gotten another round of snowfall, shutting down their bus system, slowing down traffic, and worst of all for many young Parisian’s, forcing Lady Gaga to cancel her show at Bercy Stadium. Berlin had to shut down their commuter trains and many of their roads, while Dutch authorities decided to enforce a 50 km/h speed limit on many of their highways. Italian airports at Pisa and Florence just reopened today after being shut down all weekend. Need a better idea of how bad things are? In Moscow – one of the coldest and snowiest places in the world, where over 9,000 snowploughs clean the streets – numerous city roads have been shut down by authorities until further notice.
This string of unseasonably cold weather has been hitting Europe since late fall, and as we’ve mentioned before, this has caused an influx in holiday travel reservations, especially out of the UK. Unfortunately, it appears for now that many of these hopeful holiday travelers literally cannot escape the freeze, as the Met Office in Britain has warned of even more snow and ice in the coming week. Temperatures got as low as -19.6 degrees Celsius in the UK, and radar only shows more snow and below zero temperatures.
Have any relatives who may be stranded in European transit hubs? Looks like they’re going to have plenty of free time on their hands, so why not give them a call? With Stanacard’s call forwarding technology, you can simply dial their local number and pay absolutely nothing, and they will only pay our service’s super-low rates. So go ahead and spread the holiday cheer, but whatever you do, do not complain about how badly you want a “White Christmas.”
By @StanaMark
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