21 Dec 2010 - Today is the official start of the winter, and the big freeze in Europe has kept many airports struggling to remain open. Still thousands of passengers are stranded in London, Amsterdam, Frankfurt, ..... Under snowy conditions the gap between landing and departing airplanes becomes bigger for safety reasons. The final decision to land or not shifts from air control to the pilot. One big issue is ice.Pre-cautionary de-icing chemicals are used to keep the planes ice free. Salt is not used, as it is bad for the planes aluminium. Some airports are better prepared than others: Stockholm's Arlanda remained open and hardly reported any delays. A spokesperson of the airport claims that heavy snow is no problem, but that strong side winds are. In the end it probably depends on how busy an airport is, as a minor disruption can cause massive delays at the bigger airports.
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