Thousands of stranded travellers faced a nervy battle to get home for Christmas as snow and ice caused fresh chaos at European airports and paralysed roads and railways across the frozen continent today.

International hubs London, Paris, Frankfurt, Amsterdam and Brussels struggled to clear a backlog of passengers stranded over the weekend as holidaymakers tried to reach their destinations in time for December 25.

Some travellers who had been sleeping on airport floors since Friday faced further frustration, with aircraft stuck in the wrong places, throwing flight schedules into disarray.

Frankfurt airport even resorted to sending in the clowns to ease the frustration.

London Heathrow, the world's busiest international passenger airport, warned travellers to anticipate delays and cancellations "potentially beyond Christmas Day" as it fought to sort out its schedule.

It cut flights down to a third until 0600 GMT Wednesday in a bid to get diverted jets and crew back to their normal positions.

Disappointment turned to anger for many weary travellers as money and patience wore thin. Heathrow's Terminal 3 had been turned into a makeshift camp with exhausted passengers crashed out on temporary mattresses.

"I am ashamed to be British," Marian Perkins, 65, who was hoping to fly to Australia to see her new grandson for the first time, told AFP.

"It's disgusting. We are here in the cold with the same clothes since Friday, because we don't carry winter clothes when we go to Australia," she said.

American musician Giovanni Bet, 22, was trying to get back to Chicago after a tour.

"We were here last night. It was like a shanty camp with people sleeping on the floor," he said.

British airport operator BAA was forced to defend its handling of the crisis, with chief executive Colin Matthews saying Heathrow had to bring in earthmoving equipment and 50 trucks to remove the snow.

"I cannot remember in my lifetime any episode of cold and snow remotely like today," he said.

Night-flight restrictions were lifted until Christmas Eve and special repatriation flights were being arranged.

Temperatures reached a record low in Northern Ireland, hitting minus 17.6 degrees Celsius (0.3 degrees Fahrenheit).

Britain's National Grid forecast a record demand for gas on Monday, while the Automobile Association breakdown service forecast the day would "break all records" for emergency call-outs.

Eurostar, which operates high-speed passenger trains linking London with Paris and Brussels, cancelled some services due to the snow and operated speed restrictions on trains that did run, nearly doubling some journey times.

"We will operate a contingency timetable with some cancellations for a number of days," the company said.

Five-hour queues stretched around the block in freezing weather from the terminal at London's Saint Pancras station.

Brussels airport grounded all departures until Wednesday due to lack of de-icing liquid.

There were fresh snowfalls in France, hitting both Paris international airports, Roissy-Charles de Gaulle and Orly.

"Air traffic at all airports in the Paris region is very disrupted," the civil aviation authority said.

At Roissy, 3,000 people were forced to spend Sunday night in the terminals after 40 percent of flights were scrapped.

Authorities banned heavy trucks from the roads around Paris and many buses were cancelled in the region, the RATP Paris transport network said.

Frankfurt airport, Germany's busiest, resorted to clowns to keep stranded children entertained -- after the police were sent in, according to press reports, to calm some angry passengers.

The airport scrapped around 340 flights Monday -- mainly because others airports around Europe were closed -- after more than a thousand travellers spent the night on camp beds.

Traffic continued to be disrupted at Amsterdam-Schiphol airport Monday with flights cancelled or delayed due to problems at other airports, spokeswoman Antoinette Spaans told AFP.

In Italy, the bodies of two homeless people were found Monday, likely victims of the cold.

The western Mediterranean Sea was also affected by bad weather, with crossings between Tarifa in southern Spain and Tangier in northern Morocco were suspended.