EUROPE SNOW CANCELLED LADY GAGA SHOW / ABU DHABI TREE 'OVERLOAD'
LONDON (AP), DECEMBER 20, 2010 (STAR) – Stranded travelers slept on makeshift beds at European airports yesterday as wintry weather caused travel havoc, dashing the hopes of those attempting to head away for the holidays by road, rail and air.
It is almost inevitable that some cancelations and delays will continue through this week, potentially causing further disruption for many Christmas travelers, British travel industry group ABTA said.
Icy conditions curtailed Europe's high speed train services, left cars skidding through slushy streets and saw major events postponed — including music shows and sporting events.
In Paris, a Lady Gaga concert was canceled because trucks delivering sets for the pop diva's extravagant event couldn't get to the city's Bercy stadium. The show was expected to be rescheduled for Tuesday.
British pop star Lily Allen was among those caught in the travel chaos in London, where several thousand people spent the night on the floors of terminal buildings at the city's major airports. "Bad start to a much needed holiday," Allen said in a post on her Twitter account after her flight was cancelled.
Heathrow Airport, Europe's busiest hub for air passengers, stopped accepting arrivals yesterday, causing havoc at the start of the Christmas travel rush. About 40 percent of flights were canceled at Frankfurt airport and at Paris' Charles de Gaulle.
Passengers slept in makeshift dormitories at the Paris airport and at Amsterdam's Schiphol, while staff at Heathrow and Gatwick airports in London handed out foam mats and foil blankets to the stranded. Some fashioned improvised beds from clothes, chairs and stacked suitcases.
"Dad are we in Argentina yet?" one elementary school child sobbed, as his father bought sandwiches, playing cards and comic books from a store inside a Heathrow terminal building.
Janos Kalman, a 50-year-old psychiatrist from Szeged in Hungary, said he had braved a night on a terminal floor at Heathrow after his flight to Budpaest was canceled. "I've seen people crying and panicking, and the staff trying to cope with it all," he said.
London subway trains were packed with dejected holiday travelers in search of hotel rooms, while many tourists complained there was little clear information amid the chaotic scenes at the city's airports.
"There seems to be a lot of confusion and I have only seen one Heathrow worker. All the airline desks are shut because it is a yesterday — it's absolutely ridiculous," said Elizabeth Herridge, who arrived at the airport to learn her flight to Amsterdam had been canceled.
Tour operators acknowledged there would likely be some disruption to flights through next week, with many aircraft currently stuck in the wrong location.
"Inevitably there is always some knock-on effect when there's a situation like this. People will need to consult with their airlines next week to check on their flights," said Sean Tipton, spokesman for Britain's ABTA.
However, he said the disruption caused by Europe's blast of icy weather was minor compared to the chaos triggered by the giant ash cloud spewed from Iceland's Eyjafjallajokull volcano earlier this year. "To those people caught up in the disruption that's not going to be much consolation," Tipton said.
Britain's national weather forecaster, the Met Office, said the nation has experienced the heaviest snow falls in December in decades and is on course for record low temperatures.
"You have to look back to December 1981 to find similar snow depths," forecaster Helen Chivers said. "If the second half of the month is as cold as the first, this will be the coldest December on record since 1910."
France is also having one of its snowiest winters in years. Many TGV fast trains were running slower than usual, tacking about 20 minutes on to each journey. Eurostar trains to Britain and Thalys trains to Belgium and the Netherlands were also affected.
French weather service Meteo France said it forecasts more snow for the Paris region for Monday and a risk of snow and ice in Paris on Dec. 26 — another major travel day.
In Italy, Florence's airport remained closed yesterday morning amid snow and ice storms that blanketed Tuscany. At Frankfurt airport, Germany's biggest, more than 500 flights were canceled yesterday out of a planned total of 1,330 departures and arrivals.
Temperatures dipped to below -20 C (-4 F) in some parts of Scandinavia, where meteorologists warned snow was piling up on the icy roads following heavy snowfall and strong winds. Airports were operating normally, but several long-distance trains were delayed.
Soccer games in England, Scotland, France and the Netherlands were called off as a result of the conditions, including a high-profile match scheduled for yesterday in London between Chelsea and Manchester United.
Abu Dhabi hotel regrets $11M Christmas 'overload' (philstar.com) Updated December 19, 2010 08:01 PM Comments (3)
ABU DHABI (AP) — An Abu Dhabi luxury hotel that boasted an $11 million Christmas tree decorated with gold and gems admitted Sunday it may have taken the holiday spirit a bit too far.
A statement from the Emirates Palace hotel said it regretted "attempts to overload" the Christmas tree tradition by adorning it with premium bling including gold, rubies, diamonds and other precious stones from a hotel jeweler.
The statement was a rare bit of reflection on the Gulf's ethos of excess. The tree was unveiled last week with full fanfare in a hotel that features its own gold bar vending machine and a one-week $1 million package that includes private jet jaunts around the Middle East.
But the hotel management apparently had second thoughts after questions arose about whether the opulent tree was innocent good cheer or unfortunate bad taste.
The hotel regrets "attempts to overload the tradition followed by most hotels in the country with meanings and connotations that do not fall in line with the (hotel's) professional standards," said a statement carried on the state-run news agency WAM.
The hotel even tried to distance itself from the 43-foot (13-meter) faux fir in one of its rotundas, saying a hotel-based jeweler was solely responsible for creating and decorating the tree.
"The hotel is just a venue for exhibiting the tree," the statement said.
The hotel also claimed the tree was not a stunt, but rather an effort to boost the holiday mood for its guests based on the United Arab Emirates' "values of openness and tolerance."
Although officially Muslim, the UAE features many signs of Christmas for its huge foreign population. Lights, carolers and Santas are fixtures in nearly every mall.
----------------------------------------------------------
Chief News Editor: Sol Jose Vanzi
© Copyright, 2009 by PHILIPPINE HEADLINE NEWS ONLINE
All rights reserved
----------------------------------------------------------
PHILIPPINE HEADLINE NEWS ONLINE [PHNO] WEBSITE
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
Follow us on Twitter: http://twitter.com/phnotweet
This is the PHILIPPINE HEADLINE NEWS ONLINE (PHNO) Mailing List.
To stop receiving our news items, please send a blank e-mail addressed to: phno-unsubscribe@yahoogroups.com
Please visit our homepage at: http://www.newsflash.org/
(c) Copyright 2009. All rights reserved.
-------------------------------------------------------------
