While other airports around the kingdom were able to open, Britain's main air hub was struggling to clear ice that formed overnight, leaving thousands stranded in the terminals.

The west London airport was accepting no arrivals on Sunday, while only "a handful" of departures were leaving. Heathrow said it was concentrating on a "full re-opening on Monday".

British singer Lily Allen was among those stuck, posting a series of increasingly angry Twitter messages as she tried for some six hours to get on a flight at Heathrow before announcing: "Guess we're all kipping here."

Among other major airports, London Gatwick, London Stansted, London Luton, Birmingham, Glasgow and Bristol were open but said the impact of the snow would lead to delays and cancellations.

"Today is Gatwick's busiest day of the festive getaway and we are doing everything we can to get passengers on their way and aircraft in the air," a spokeswoman for Europe's eighth-busiest passenger airport said.

Low-cost carrier Ryanair scrapped all flights from Gatwick, Stansted and Luton before 1000 GMT.

British Airways said it was working hard to sort out its flying schedule following a days of scrapped flights Saturday at Heathrow and Gatwick.

Meanwhile Eurostar, which operates high-speed passenger trains linking London with Paris and Brussels, was operating with speed restrictions that added up to an hour on journey times.

National rail routes and trunk roads were also affected.

In Lancashire, northwest England, hundreds of people had to spend the night in their cars after an accident blocked the main north-south motorway.

Sporting events were also hit, with Sunday's three English Premier League matches postponed, including the big clash between title rivals Chelsea and Manchester United.

Temperatures plunged to minus 19 degrees Celsius (minus two degrees Fahrenheit) in Pershore, west central England.

The Met Office national weather service said snow falls this month have been the heaviest for December since 1981.

If the second half of the month is as cold as the first, this will be the coldest December on record in Britain since 1910.

earlier related report
Snow forces flights cancellation at Paris' Roissy airport
Paris (AFP) Dec 19, 2010 - Some 40 percent of flights were to be cancelled at Paris's main Roissy-Charles-de-Gaulle airport Sunday because of snow, avaiation authorities said.

Airport officials asked their European counterparts not to allow departures of Roissy-bound flights until 2:30 pm (1330 GMT), a source said.

Another source said some 20,000 passengers were patiently awaiting their flights at various Roissy terminals.

Some 450 aircraft were however able to take off with delays averaging one hour and 20 minutes. Incoming flights were running an hour late.

Snow had forced the closure of the airport's four runways Sunday morning and only two reopened by 2:00 pm (1300 GMT).

Orly airport, south of Paris, faced much less disruption with flights running 45 minutes late on average and several cancelled.

Only a few bus services in the French capital were operating early Sunday and none at all in the suburbs, with conditions expected to worsen as heavy snow continued to fall, a spokesman for the city transport authorities said.

earlier related report
Snow stops more than 500 flights in Frankfurt: airport
Berlin (AFP) Dec 19, 2010 - Frankfurt airport, Germany's busiest, cancelled more than 540 flights Sunday due to heavy snowfall which has created chaos throughout the European air traffic network, a spokeswoman said.

"The snow has been falling again for half an hour and is expected to continue until this evening," she added at about 1230 GMT, predicting further flights from the around 1,300 scheduled to be axed.

More than 1,000 stranded passengers had to spend the night on beds set up in the airport terminals, some for a second night in a row, while others found rooms in nearby hotels.

"The check-in areas are packed with passengers," the spokeswoman said.

Unusually heavy snowfall had already seen hundreds of flights scrapped Friday and Saturday, including several due to severe winter weather at other European airports, as the holiday travel season got underway.

Flag carrier Lufthansa advised passengers to use the German rail service, which was also hit by delays and cancellations.

State-owned rail company Deutsche Bahn asked travellers Sunday to avoid taking trains in the afternoon due to overbooking.

It added in a statement that it had set a lower speed limit for its trains due to icy conditions.

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