Anger mounts in Istanbul, Athens over blizzard chaos

ISTANBUL: Stranded passengers chanted protests at Europe’s busiest airport in Istanbul on Tuesday and soldiers dug out snowed-in drivers in Athens as a rare blizzard stirred up anger and chaos across swathes of the eastern Mediterranean.

Istanbul officials ordered all private vehicles off the slushy streets and Athenians abandoned their cars in drifting snow as basic services such as food delivery in both cities ground to a halt.

The problems were compounded in Athens and across some of Greece’s scenic islands by power cuts in the unusual winter freeze. "Athens is not used to this amount of snow," 50-year-old Neo Psychiko remarked as revellers took selfies around the white-dusted hills of the Parthenon temple.

Yet much of the international attention focused on the fate of Istanbul’s main airport -- a gleaming glass-and-steel structure that offers connecting flights spanning much of the world. A blizzard on Monday closed Istanbul Airport for the first time since it took over from the old Ataturk Airport as the new hub for Turkish Airlines in 2019.

The first flight since Monday afternoon landed from the Venezuelan capital Caracas after one of the runways was cleared to accept a few flights. But the other two runways remained snowed under and just a handful of the hundreds of delayed flights were scheduled to take off or land on Tuesday. Istanbul Airport serviced more than 37 million passengers last year despite disruptions caused by the coronavirus pandemic.