VH-BZF From Australia, joined Oct 1999, 781 posts, RR: 0 Posted (12 years 5 months 1 week 4 days 9 hours ago) and read 926 times:
We've talked about Nth American airports, now how about airports in Europe (eg. CPH, HEL, MOW, ZRH) & Nth Asia (NRT, PEK, SEL etc), are they often closed due to bad weather/snow?
I know LHR suffers from fog, but what about the others?
Let us know!
Cheers - BZF in sunny OZ!
Ansett Australia - (was) One of the worlds great airlines!
HaanZ From New Zealand, joined May 2000, 171 posts, RR: 0 Reply 1, posted (12 years 5 months 1 week 4 days 2 hours ago) and read 898 times:
Hi
Up here in Scandinavia, OSL sometimes struggles with "extreme" weather conditions such as rain freezing to ice once it hits the ground. Also, snow can be a problem, when only one runway can be kept operational.
There haven't been any major probs lately though, and with the climate/weather changes(?) seen recently it sure looks like there will be any weather related problems in a while (apart from fog of course).
Aussie_ From Australia, joined Dec 2000, 1765 posts, RR: 5 Reply 2, posted (12 years 5 months 1 week 4 days 2 hours ago) and read 896 times:
I have on several occasions had problems in Vienna due to fog. Also once in Crete we were stuck for 4 days due to a massive storm which made take-off and landing on the relatively short runway at Heraklion (which ends on a cliff face) unsafe.
Other London airports also have major fog problems such as Stansted which can often be closed for whole mornings at a time in winter.
Also, heavy snow will close any airport, but the snow is more common in Germany and east and north of there than in countries like Belgium, Holland or France.
As an aside, I know Brussels airport well and have never known it to close on account of bad weather, though delays can certainly occur
DatamanA340 From South Korea, joined Dec 2000, 547 posts, RR: 0 Reply 3, posted (12 years 5 months 1 week 4 days 2 hours ago) and read 894 times:
If SEL gets so much snow enough to close airport, SEL will be suspended earlier for "Heavy Fog". Fog suspends the airport about 60 days per year, at least for several minutes.
I don't know for other major Asian airports, but smog in China metropoles will harm their airport activity. Kansai is interesting: The airport are runned well, but only one bridge is closed. Just imagine what will be happened.
Vadheim From Norway, joined Jul 2000, 618 posts, RR: 0 Reply 4, posted (12 years 5 months 1 week 4 days 1 hour ago) and read 888 times:
Snow can of course be a problem at airports where you do'nt expect snow.
I would however say that Nordic airports (Scandinavia) are well prepared, as we live in countries where we know there will be snoww during winter. The problems we saw at OSL in '98 and '99 is more related to the fact that it was a new airport and the organisation did'nt work as well together as they do today.
All Nordic airports have excellent operational conditions, even though they sometime experience extreme weather during winter months (Nov.-Apr.).
ZRH From Switzerland, joined Nov 1999, 5534 posts, RR: 40 Reply 5, posted (12 years 5 months 1 week 3 days 23 hours ago) and read 881 times:
We here in Zurich usualy don't have problems with snow. We have much less snow than Chicago for example. This year we did not have any snow till today. In November we have some troubles with fog.
Nightfly From Germany, joined Nov 2000, 212 posts, RR: 0 Reply 6, posted (12 years 5 months 1 week 3 days 19 hours ago) and read 866 times:
In case of much snow, german airport could be closed for some hours, but this happens rarely, because the amount of snow isn´t often so high that it its necessary to close.
In Germany, the conditions of airports are different. So if there´s snow at FRA, there doesn´t need to be snow at CGN. These airports for example are only 2 hours away from each other. So if FRA has to be closed, a part of the long haul flights would get down at CGN. If the weather is better, they set over to FRA. Passengers would be transported by bus to FRA.
In Germany many international airports are close together, this helps in case of long haul flights.
With domestic flights, you have the same problem as everywhere when an airport is closed.
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From Australia, joined Oct 1999, 781 posts, 
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