Tourists who did not have time to get off the planes after their arrival and did not have time to take off found themselves “hostages” in a large European airport: passengers were stuck inside their liners due to a hellish flood. Heavy rains in several parts of Germany caused flooding that disrupted the departures and landings of dozens of flights in Frankfurt.
According to information provided by the German news agency DPA, heavy downpours covered the city Wednesday and Thursday, which is home to the country’s busiest airport. Long rains flooded the runways, as a result of which the planes could not take off, and the landing liners could not let off the tourists. Social networks were flooded with videos that recorded the catastrophic consequences of the flood: planes were standing in giant puddles, and lightning flashed above them.
It was clarified that the ground service was paralyzed for 2 hours on Wednesday. Queues in the terminals stretched for many meters, as tourists had to rebook seats on other flights or cancel their departure. Due to the harsh climatic conditions, more than 70 flights were canceled from the schedule and another 23 flights, the final route of which was Frankfurt, were diverted by operators to other airports. According to the estimates of the German airport, more than 1,000 tourists were affected by the bad weather and the hellish flood.
On Thursday morning, the situation did not improve much. As explained by the press service of the airport, the departures of 20 flights of Lufthansa airline and 18 flights of other carriers were canceled for safety reasons because they were canceled. the situation with rains has not normalized.
However, it was not only the flood that created chaos at European airports this summer. We will remind you that last July turned out to be the hottest in the entire history of meteorological observations in the Mediterranean, and August is not far behind. Due to massive forest fires in Spain, Greece, and Portugal, tourists stopped booking tours there and reoriented themselves to other, safer vacation destinations. And recently, the old problem returned to the tourist island of Sicily in Italy. Vacationers, there have been kept in fear for many years by the Etna volcano, which at the beginning of the month again spewed a powerful column of ash, as a result of which the local airport temporarily stopped working – a number of flights had to be canceled in order to save the lives of tourists.
But as for another foreign destination popular with tourists, not everything is smooth there either: an extreme climatic situation is observed in the tourist province of Antalya in Turkey. There, clouds of steam hid the sea and the city from view. Very high humidity against the background of heat turned the resort into a “steam room”. This effect was evident in flight activity – read the details at this link.