Chaos continues at Gardermoen
Freezing fog has paralyzed air traffic at Oslo's Gardermoen International Airport (OSL), with many stranded passengers spending the night in the departure hall.
Oslo Gardemoen Airport on Friday morning. Photo by Tone Georgsen.| Your rights |
| Cancellations: Provisions, hotel accommodation if necessary. Choice of refund or rerouting of ticket. Standard compensation of between 250-600 euros, depending on distance of flight. Airlines are exempted from paying compensation if they can document that the cancellation was due to extraordinary circumstances. Delays: A flight delay over two hours entitles you to provisions, and hotel accommodation if necessary. A delay of over five hours entitles a refund of the ticket price, if the journey is not taken. |
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| Baggage trouble delays flights - 28.06.2007 |
| Glass trouble for Gardermoen - 07.03.2007 |
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| Airport traffic keeps growing - 11.10.2006 |
About 70,000 passengers can be affected by the difficult weather conditions.
"There is no change weather-wise here this morning. It is -11C (12F) on the ground and 5C (41F) at 3,000 feet, so we are getting a great deal of humidity. This humidity becomes ice on the engines. With no wind, there is no indication that the weather will change, and the delays will continue through the day," said OSL information chief Jo Kobro at 8 a.m. on Friday.
Kobro urged passengers to contact their airlines and turn up early. At 7:30 a.m. on Friday morning most planes had left on schedule but several of the day's departures are already canceled or delayed.
Gardermoen was hit by a combination of cold and fog all of Thursday, and with iced engines there were few takeoffs. On Friday morning only ten planes an hour were being allowed to take off.
"It looks to be a relatively chaotic day," said information chief Thomas Midteide in SAS Norway. "We are doing everything we can to get people home for Christmas, but if the planes don't get permission to leave the ground it is difficult."
Midteide said that buses and other alternatives would be taken into use if necessary.
Frustrated passengers told Aftenposten.no had spent the night on the floor in the departure hall and other places.
"At 1:30 a.m. SAS announced over the loudspeakers that their staff were tired after working 13 hours in a row so they had to close and get some sleep," a passenger said around 3 a.m. on Friday. "There is no food or bottled water and there is no one from SAS to ask for information."
At 6:3o a.m. the same passenger was on the airport train, returning to Oslo.
"I have spent the night on a stone floor and now I have given up. I am infuriated by such incredibly bad service. The queue went through the entire airport. People have been sleeping on baggage carts. Families with small children have spent the night there, you feel terribly sorry for them," the passenger told Aftenposten.no.
"There have been many passengers overnight at Gardermoen. In the end it was impossible to find hotel rooms for them, so they had to use benches and whatever at the airport. We offered them what we had," Kobro told news agency NTB.
Kristjan Molstad
Aftenposten English Web Desk
Jonathan Tisdall
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