BERLIN (AP) — All flights at Munich airport were suspended Saturday after a winter storm dumped snow across southern Germany and parts of Austria, Switzerland and the Czech Republic, affecting travel across the region.
After initially announcing a suspension of air traffic until midday Saturday, the airport later announced that flights would be canceled until 6 a.m. Sunday. Other airports in the region, including in the Swiss financial metropolis of Zurich, also reported weather-related delays and cancellations.
Trains to and from Munich Central Station were also stopped, the German Federal Railways said, advising passengers to postpone or reroute their journey. The dpa news agency reported that some passengers in Munich and the nearby city of Ulm spent Friday night on the trains because of the stop.
There were no buses or trams running in Munich on Saturday afternoon, the local transport company said. Some subway and regional train lines were also affected by the weather.
Fallen trees left “many thousands” of people across Bavaria without electricity, energy supplier Bayernwerk told dpa.
German Bundesliga officials also announced that a soccer match between Bayern Munich and Union Berlin, originally scheduled for Saturday afternoon in Munich, has been canceled.
Police in Lower Bavaria, the region northwest of Munich, said they responded to 350 snow and ice-related incidents between Friday night and early Saturday, some of which resulted in minor to moderate injuries.
In Austria and Switzerland, renewed snowfall prompted authorities to sound the alarm about the danger of avalanches. The states of Tyrol and Vorarlberg in western Austria increased their avalanche warnings to the second highest level after up to 50 centimeters (20 inches) of snow fell in the region overnight.
The Austrian railway company OeBB announced on Saturday afternoon that various sections of the route across the country were closed due to the storm.
In the Czech Republic, the main highway and some other roads were closed for hours, trains and public transport faced delays and cancellations, and over 15,000 households were without power.
The key D1 motorway, which connects the capital Prague with the second largest city Brno, was at a standstill for hours after an accident that caused a 20-kilometer-long chain of trucks. Traffic jams also affected other sections of the motorway as well as the D5, which connects Prague with Germany.
Several high-speed and regional trains had to stop in the south of the country as cross-border trains from neighboring Austria and Germany were not running and some roads were expected to remain closed that day.