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.
“Now I’m taking the train to Berlin,” he said.
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.
