Severe weather causes cancellations at Frankfurt Airport – What’s next today?

A number of flights at Frankfurt Airport were canceled on Wednesday due to heavy rain and thunderstorms. Operations continued to be tense on Thursday.

Frankfurt – Those who wanted to take off from Frankfurt Airport on Wednesday evening (August 16) on their well-deserved vacation probably had their nerves put to the test. Due to a severe storm that swept over Frankfurt, 34 flights could not take off and had to be cancelled. The German Press Agency (dpa) also writes that 27 scheduled arrivals failed to land.

Severe weather causes failures at Frankfurt Airport and floods the runway

A video shared on the social media platform Twitter is said to show the reason for the failed take-offs and landings. Here you can see how the airport’s runway is almost knee-deep in water. It almost seems as if the passengers had to swim from the planes to the terminals. A spokesman for Fraport says: “In between, incredible amounts of water came from the sky. Unfortunately, the discharge into the rainwater retention basins takes a little longer.”

Flights in Frankfurt are canceled due to storms and can only be made up until midnight at the latest

Due to the severe storm, the handling of flights had to be interrupted for two hours on Wednesday evening. “There is a night flight ban at Frankfurt Airport from 11 p.m. With the approval of the Hessian Ministry of Transport, the canceled flights were allowed to be made up until midnight. After that, however, no further exception was granted. Therefore, not all flights could take off,” said the Fraport spokesman.

There is still “tense operation” at Frankfurt Airport

There may still be delays and cancellations at Frankfurt Airport on Thursday (17 August). The Fraport spokesman says: “At the moment there is still a tense business here, but that should ease up again during the course of the day. It is important that the passengers are at the airport two and a half hours before departure and that they check the websites of their airlines.” (Jakob von Sass)