Heavy snowfall disrupts travel in Switzerland and Germany
Heavy snowfall disrupted travel in Switzerland and southern Germany, with hundreds of flights delayed or canceled so far.
Munich airport took the main hit. The nation’s second-biggest hub closed at around 10:35pm on Friday night and won’t reopen until Sunday. Some 760 flights were scheduled for Saturday.
In Switzerland, 22 departures and 21 arrivals have been canceled so far at Zurich Airport because of continuing snowfall. Additionally, de-icing procedures added some 20 to 40 minutes to take-offs, delaying departures.
With the German Meteorological Office warning of “severe weather” in the state of Bavaria, Munich rail routes to cities including Salzburg and Innsbruck in Austria, Zurich, and Nuremberg and Stuttgart in Germany were also affected.
More
Fresh snowfall increases risk of Swiss avalanches
“We assume that the restrictions will continue throughout December 2” Deutsche Bahn said in a statement. “We recommend postponing travel to and from Munich.”
The snow also halted a scheduled football match on Saturday between FC Bayern Munich and 1. FC Union Berlin in Germany’s top division.
“The stadium owner has closed the Allianz Arena due to the heavy and persistent snowfall and the associated safety risks,” said Germany’s football association DFL. “A new date will be announced shortly.”
Central Europe isn’t alone in facing transport chaos due to snow. Travel warnings are multiplying across the United Kingdom this weekend, with rail strikes and planned works exacerbating the situation.
©2023 Bloomberg L.P.
This news story has been written and carefully fact-checked by an external editorial team. At SWI swissinfo.ch we select the most relevant news for an international audience and use automatic translation tools such as DeepL to translate it into English. Providing you with automatically translated news gives us the time to write more in-depth articles. You can find them here.
If you want to know more about how we work, have a look here, and if you have feedback on this news story please write to english@swissinfo.ch.
External Content
Your subscription could not be saved. Please try again.
Almost finished… We need to confirm your email address. To complete the subscription process, please click the link in the email we just sent you.
In compliance with the JTI standards
More: SWI swissinfo.ch certified by the Journalism Trust Initiative
You can find an overview of ongoing debates with our journalists here . Please join us!
If you want to start a conversation about a topic raised in this article or want to report factual errors, email us at english@swissinfo.ch.