VARIOUS: Hundreds of passengers face delays at Charles de Gaulle Airport as thick fog envelop London's Heathrow airport while only few London-bound flights from Germany are affected

While thousands of passengers were stranded in London on Thursday (December 21)as heavy fog in southern England grounded hundreds of flights during one of the busiest travel periods of the year, European destinations were widely spared a knock-on effect of disgruntled passengers. Air France and British Airways airlines companies cancelled eleven flights from Paris to London due to poor visibility and heavy fog at the destination, leaving hundreds of passengers stranded at Charles de Gaulle airport. Despite not knowing that the planes were cancelled because of heavy fog in London, most passengers were extremely calm and serene in the hope they would find another alternative to reach their homes before Christmas. "We were trying to get to London and we have a connection through to Chicago onto De Moine. I guess we need another way in getting back to the United States", said American traveller John Bowler from De Moine. Another English passenger Gabriel Trilling due to spend Christmas in London with her family added :"I'm not really sure, we are just all waiting in lines hoping to be re-routed through some other place so that we can get to our destination. It's pretty inconvenient, trying to get home for Christmas to see my family and if I'd known beforehand maybe I would not have carried all my staff". But French airport authorities have decided to re-direct most passengers to Eurostar trains to avoid them spending the day at Charles de Gaulle airport. In Germany, only nine flights to London were affected by the bad weather, according to a Frankfurt airport spokeswoman. Seven British Airways and two Lufthansa flights bound for London were cancelled, the spokeswoman told Reuters Television by telephone. Passenger Anne-Marie Lucas was also full of understanding for the mass cancellations. "If you're flying at Christmas time you should always allow a little bit of a buffer," Lucas said. "There is likely to be something. And with fog -- it was foggy yesterday in London and the weather forecast says until the weekend -- you take that into account." Claudia Sievers, who had been trying to head from Frankfurt to London for her Christmas holidays, opted for a trip to Manchester instead. Asked whether she would still make it in time for Christmas, she said "well, today is the 21st so it's alright. I get to the island on the 21st and then hopefully the trains work and then it's alright." The three Berlin airports of Schoenefeld, Tegel and Tempelhof saw only one cancellation from Tegel, according to a spokeswoman there. Weather forecasters at Britain's Met Office said the fog might lift from London's Heathrow airport later in the day, but there was a risk it would return over the Christmas period, continuing to next week.

ITN Source | November 22, 2006

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