Published by Global Banking & Finance Review®
Posted on January 6, 2026
3 min readLast updated: January 20, 2026
Add as preferred source on GoogleEurope faces travel chaos as a cold snap brings heavy snow, causing flight cancellations and train delays across the continent.
By Charlotte Van Campenhout and Bart H. Meijer
AMSTERDAM, Jan 6 (Reuters) - More flights will be cancelled, trains will run late and roads will be blocked by snow across Europe in coming days as a cold snap is expected to worsen, bringing even more heavy snowfall after several days of travel disruption.
Authorities in the Netherlands told people to plan to stay at home if at all possible on Wednesday, with a fresh blizzard expected to arrive overnight.
French Transportation Minister Philippe Tabarot said on Tuesday that airlines had already been ordered to cancel at least 40% of flights at Paris's main Charles de Gaulle airport the following morning, and a quarter of flights at smaller Orly.
Public transportation in the Paris region will probably also be disrupted by the snow, he added.
At Amsterdam's Schiphol, where more than 400 flights were cancelled on Tuesday, authorities told travellers whose flights had been called off to stay away from the airport to prevent overcrowding.
"We haven't experienced such extreme weather conditions in years," Dutch airline KLM's spokesperson Anoesjka Aspeslagh said, as winter weather crippled traffic at one of Europe's main transit hubs for a fifth day.
A BIRTHDAY IN TRANSIT
Stranded at Schiphol, Simiao Sun said she feared she'd spend her 40th birthday in transit. She had been told she would have to wait three days for a rescheduled flight to Beijing.
"My child would miss school and we would both miss work, so I'm queuing here...hoping to get a slightly earlier flight."
KLM said it was offering alternative flights where possible and doing everything to help travellers, but it was "overwhelmed with inquiries".
On top of that, all domestic rail services in the Netherlands were suspended early on Tuesday after an IT outage hit the rail network. Trains began running in parts of the country after 0900 GMT, but problems persisted around Amsterdam, with high-speed Eurostar services from Amsterdam to Paris either cancelled or late.
Roads in France were gradually clearing on Tuesday after snow caused severe accidents all over the country, killing at least five people, according to BFMTV news station. Traffic in the Paris area hit a record 1,000 kilometres of jams on Monday evening.
SNOW FALLS OVER LARGE PARTS OF GERMANY AND FRANCE
In Germany, temperatures fell well below minus 10 degrees Celsius (14 degrees Fahrenheit) in the south and east early on Tuesday. Much of the country was covered in snow.
In Britain, the Meteorological Office said winter weather hazards could continue throughout the week for most of the country. Temperatures overnight to Tuesday had fallen as low as -12.5 degrees Celsius in Marham, Norfolk, in east England, marking the coldest night of the winter so far.
Heavy snow and rain have also caused havoc across the Western Balkans, closing roads, cutting power and causing rivers to flood. A woman died in the Bosnian capital Sarajevo on Monday after a tree overburdened with wet snow fell on her.
(Reporting by Bart Meijer in Amsterdam, Inti Landauro in Brussels, Louise Rasmussen in Paris, Thomas Seythal in Berlin and Daria Sito-Sucic in Sarajevo; Editing by Michael Perry, Richard Lough, Alexandra Hudson)
A cold snap refers to a sudden and brief period of cold weather, often resulting in lower temperatures and adverse weather conditions like snow or frost.
Flight cancellations occur when an airline decides to not operate a scheduled flight, often due to weather conditions, technical issues, or operational challenges.
A blizzard is a severe snowstorm characterized by strong sustained winds of 35 mph or more, along with heavy snowfall that reduces visibility.
Travel disruption refers to interruptions in the normal flow of transportation services, often caused by weather events, technical failures, or other unforeseen circumstances.
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