Hundreds of people spent a snowy and freezing night trapped on board parked airplanes last Thursday.
Six flights, with around 600 passengers total, were unable to take off before Munich Airport‘s 1 a.m. curfew due to the bad weather, the airport said in a Monday statement.
The airport police department has prepared a report on the incident, which is set to be submitted to the public prosecutor on Tuesday, Sven Otto, chief inspector for the Upper Bavaria North Police, told Business Insider.
He added that no complaints have yet been filed with the police by affected passengers.
Around 100 flights were canceled in Munich on Thursday, and temperatures dropped to 30 degrees Fahrenheit. There were long lines to de-ice planes, while runways were periodically closed at short notice to clear the heavy snowfall, the airport said.
Munich, Europe’s 10th-busiest airport, typically shuts at midnight, but it received a permit that day to operate an hour later.
When the six flights couldn’t depart on time, there was no space left to park at the terminal due to all the cancellations, the airport said.
However, the passengers couldn’t be transported to the terminal because “bus service was severely restricted” due to “the late hour and communication problems,” it added.
Five of the flights were operated by Germany’s Lufthansa Group, and another by Air Arabia, a budget airline based in the UAE, according to the airport.
It said that airlines “provided the passengers with the best possible care on the aircraft.” Although those on board spoke of their distress.
“There was no food or drink for us. There were no blankets for us either,” Søren Thieme, who was on one of the Lufthansa planes, told Ekstra Bladet, a Danish newspaper that first reported the incident.
He said passengers on the canceled flight to Copenhagen asked if they could enter the airport, but they were told it was forbidden, and that all the bus drivers had gone home.
“We’re simply trapped here, along with the staff, too,” he told the newspaper.
Lufthansa and Air Arabia did not immediately respond to a request for comment sent by Business Insider.
Munich Airport said it “apologized expressly” to the affected passengers.
“Our top priority is always the safety and satisfaction of our passengers, and these incidents do not meet our standards.”
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