International hubs London, Paris, Frankfurt, Amsterdam and Brussels tried to clear a backlog of passengers forced to sleep on terminal floors for up to three days as they sought to reach their destinations by the end of the week.

Authorities in Frankfurt sent in clowns in a bid to cheer up travellers, but fury mounted in Britain, especially at Heathrow where severe disruption reigned despite the last major snowfall having been on Saturday.

"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.

Heathrow's Terminal 3 had been turned into a makeshift camp with exhausted passengers crashed out on temporary mattresses as money and patience wore thin at the world's busiest international airport.

American musician Giovanni Bet, 22, who was trying to get back to Chicago after a tour, said: "We were here last night. It was like a shanty camp with people sleeping on the floor."

The airport warned travellers to anticipate chaos "potentially beyond Christmas Day". It cut flights to a third until 0600 GMT Wednesday in a bid to get diverted jets and crew back to their normal positions.

British Airways meanwhile asked passengers travelling to or from Heathrow up until December 24 to switch their flight to another date or cancel it in return for a refund.

As Britain was hit by more heavy snow and temperatures plummeted again, London's Gatwick airport announced it was grounding all flights until early Tuesday.

"Sorry. No outbound flights from Gatwick until 6am [0600 GMT] Tuesday 21st December because of heavy snow," the airport said on microblogging site Twitter.

Amid mounting criticism of the travel chaos, British airport operator BAA defended its handling of the crisis.

Chief executive Colin Matthews said 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.

Eurostar, which operates high-speed passenger trains linking London with Paris and Brussels, also faced chaos.

Five-hour queues stretched around the block in freezing weather from London's St Pancras station as Eurostar cancelled some services and operated speed restrictions on trains that did run, nearly doubling some journey times.

"We started queuing yesterday, we were here until seven o'clock and then... we took a hotel and now we have been waiting for an hour already today," Anne-Sophie Prevost, a 24-year-old bank worker from France, told AFP.

A brass band played at the station in an attempt to provide some Christmas spirit inside the imposing Gothic station.

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

There were fresh snowfalls in France, hitting both Paris international airports, Charles de Gaulle and Orly, where three out of 10 flights were cancelled Monday.

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

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

Late Monday, 100 soldiers were sent to the airport with 300 beds and 2,500 blankets as stranded travellers faced another night camped in terminals, local authorities said.

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

French railway operator SNCF handed out 12,000 ready meals and booked 500 hotel rooms in Paris for stranded passengers but said services were expected to be mostly back to normal for Christmas.

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.

There was also disruption at Amsterdam-Schiphol airport and Brussels airport Monday.

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

earlier related report
Three in 10 flights cut at main Paris airports: authority
Paris (AFP) Dec 20, 2010 - French authorities cancelled three in 10 flights on Monday from Paris's main airport Charles de Gaulle and its second-biggest Orly, as fresh snow heaped misery on stranded Christmas travellers.

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

It said it had "asked airlines to cut 30 percent of flights, until 6:00 pm (1700 GMT) at Roissy (Charles de Gaulle) and all day at Orly," where the runways were closed briefly on Monday morning after more heavy snow fell.

Thousands of passengers were already stranded over the weekend at airports in Paris and other European hubs including London Heathrow, as snow and ice caused many flights to be cancelled.

A spokesman for ADP, the company that manages Paris airports, said planes had begun landing again at Orly and Charles de Gaulle but outbound flights were still heavily disrupted and ADP advised passengers to check its website before travelling.

Cancellations and delays struck several other French airports, including Strasbourg in the east which closed down for two hours on Monday morning, authorities said.

Eurostar and Thalys trains linking France with Britain and Belgium as well as French domestic services continued to be delayed on Monday, forced to move slower because of the snow, the French rail company SNCF said.

The SNCF handed out 12,000 ready meals and booked 500 hotel rooms in Paris for stranded passengers, said the head of the company's SNCF Voyages booking service, Barbara Dalibard.

She said services were expected to be mostly back to normal for the coming Christmas weekend rush.

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

The national weather forecaster Meteo France said the snowfall was easing compared to Sunday in some areas including Paris, where up to 15 centimetres (six inches) fell.

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