Thousands of travelers were stranded at Paris’ main airport yesterday as freezing conditions forced the cancelation of nearly 60 flights, with the prospect of further delays into Christmas Day.
French aviation authorities said they had canceled half of the flights serving Paris Roissy Charles de Gaulle airport until 1pm yesterday because they were struggling to de-ice aircraft in the extreme conditions.
French Transport Minister Nathalie Kosciusko-Morizet, who visited the airport late on Thursday, warned that the delays could, for some passengers, extend into Christmas Day.
“There have been 58 flights canceled this afternoon at Roissy, essentially because of a problem de-icing” the aircraft, Kosciusko-Morizet said.
“That represents 6,000 to 7,000 passengers,” of whom 2,000 were in the airport itself in the small hours yesterday morning, she added.
About half of the delayed passengers were not likely to get a flight out yesterday, Christmas Eve, she said.
Forecasters were expecting below-freezing conditions yesterday morning and the airport was having trouble getting hold of enough glycol, the liquid used to de-ice aircraft, aviation officials said in a statement late on Thursday.
Charles de Gaulle airport had only just cleared the backlog from the delays caused earlier in the week by the freezing conditions, which on Monday saw thousands of passengers forced to spend two nights running sleeping there.
Of the passengers unable to travel, some local people returned home, others were put up in nearby hotels and two gym halls opened by local authorities, an airport official said.
Air France said it had provided 3,500 hotel rooms for its customers.
At the airport itself, meanwhile, officials set up hundreds of camp beds for passengers with nowhere else to go.
“It’s unacceptable!” protested one man, who had been due to fly to Casablanca, Morocco, for his brother’s wedding.
“Everyone’s blaming each other, the company, the airport management,” his tearful wife said. “They’ve been giving us the runaround all day in the airport without taking into account the fact that I’m pregnant.”
In Britain, the operator of London’s Heathrow airport said on Thursday it had launched an external inquiry into the handling of the snow chaos that left thousands of passengers stranded there earlier in the week.
Spanish-owned operator BAA announced the inquiry as Heathrow, the world’s busiest airport for international passenger traffic, began to get back on track with about 90 percent of flights operating after days of cancelations.
James Watson — the Nobel laureate co-credited with the pivotal discovery of DNA’s double-helix structure, but whose career was later tainted by his repeated racist remarks — has died, his former lab said on Friday. He was 97. The eminent biologist died on Thursday in hospice care on Long Island in New York, announced the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, where he was based for much of his career. Watson became among the 20th century’s most storied scientists for his 1953 breakthrough discovery of the double helix with researcher partner Francis Crick. Along with Crick and Maurice Wilkins, he shared the
OUTRAGE: The former strongman was accused of corruption and responsibility for the killings of hundreds of thousands of political opponents during his time in office Indonesia yesterday awarded the title of national hero to late president Suharto, provoking outrage from rights groups who said the move was an attempt to whitewash decades of human rights abuses and corruption that took place during his 32 years in power. Suharto was a US ally during the Cold War who presided over decades of authoritarian rule, during which up to 1 million political opponents were killed, until he was toppled by protests in 1998. He was one of 10 people recognized by Indonesian President Prabowo Subianto in a televised ceremony held at the presidential palace in Jakarta to mark National
US President Donald Trump handed Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban a one-year exemption from sanctions for buying Russian oil and gas after the close right-wing allies held a chummy White House meeting on Friday. Trump slapped sanctions on Moscow’s two largest oil companies last month after losing patience with Russian President Vladimir Putin over his refusal to end the nearly four-year-old invasion of Ukraine. However, while Trump has pushed other European countries to stop buying oil that he says funds Moscow’s war machine, Orban used his first trip to the White House since Trump’s return to power to push for
Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr yesterday vowed that those behind bogus flood control projects would be arrested before Christmas, days after deadly back-to-back typhoons left swathes of the country underwater. Scores of construction firm owners, government officials and lawmakers — including Marcos’ cousin congressman — have been accused of pocketing funds for substandard or so-called “ghost” infrastructure projects. The Philippine Department of Finance has estimated the nation’s economy lost up to 118.5 billion pesos (US$2 billion) since 2023 due to corruption in flood control projects. Criminal cases against most of the people implicated are nearly complete, Marcos told reporters. “We don’t file cases for
RSS