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Maltese New Year travellers have, by and large, escaped the Arctic cold which is sweeping Europe, with most groups having returned to Malta just before the transport chaos started. But individual travellers on longer breaks have been forced to wait for hours as airports, particularly as Manchester and Gatwick airports in the UK were closed for most of the day.

Air Malta and EasyJet were both forced to cancel services between Malta and London Gatwick airport and there were long delays in flights to and from Manchester.

A number of travellers who were meant to take flights from Malta to London Gatwick in the morning spent hours at the airport terminal and those who were unable to transfer to a Heathrow flight are not expected to take their flights before tomorrow.

Some travellers overseas also had problems getting to the airports because of heavy snow in the streets.

Travel agents who spoke to timesofmalta,com said the worst of the weather broke out immediately after groups had returned to Malta from the New Year tours.

"We do not know of any problems, the tours are back, and the situation in London is not too bad," Norman Hamilton said.

He said that while snow could be a bonus for those who had never seen it, it would be a menace for those whose travel plans were affected. But he knew of no such cases.

Richard Magri of Mondial Holidays also said that group tours were not affected as they returned yesterday or on Tuesday.

AIRPORT CHAOS

A traveller who was returning to Malta from Amsterdam with her husband via Frankfurt said her Lufthansa flight was diverted to Cologne because of the weather. It took the staff four hours to deliver the luggage to passengers, who were left completely in the dark on what was going on. Meanwhile the connecting flight from Frankfurt to Malta was lost.

"There was total chaos at Cologne airport baggage reclaim and the Lufthansa ticketing office upstairs as people called to rebook their flights," the woman said.

Lufthansa eventually transported them by taxi to Frankfurt where there was more confusion on rebooking procedures but they eventually flew to Malta on an Air Malta flight, arriving late in the evening.

Meanwhile, Aronne Micallef, a Maltese resident of the outskirts of Zagreb, Croatia said the snowfalls were the heaviest he had seen in the five years he has been living there.

"I was not able to get out to my car for two days until this morning. At one time the snowfall reached almost 40cm. But luckily we are in the epiphany holiday so disruption has not been that much," he said. The problem was that this cold snap had come just a few days after another cold snap before Christmas which also dumped a large quantity of snow.