Flights on Tuesday morning from the Atatürk airport to domestic and international locations including Van, Sivas, Kahramanmaraş, Nevşehir, Erzincan, Hatay, Ankara, Rome, Malaga, Turin, Naples, London and Beirut were canceled due to bad weather conditions both in İstanbul and the destinations.
The regional director for İstanbul Atatürk International Airport, Celal Özuğur, stated on Tuesday that despite the delays and cancelations, the situation at the airport is under control. Özuğur said three runways are still in use, and on Monday, despite the heavy snowfall, 332 flights landed at the airport, 269 managed to take off and a total of 63,839 passengers passed successfully through the airport.
The situation in İstanbul continues to better than that of much of Anatolia, where heavy snowfall continues to wreak havoc on transportation systems. In the Ankara area, access to 781 villages has been cut off due to the bad weather conditions, Anatolia reported Monday.
Meanwhile, Turkey’s eastern provinces continue to receive the brunt of the bad weather. In the small province of Muş, the depth of snow has reached almost 80 centimeters in many areas. In the nearby province of Bingöl, continuous snowfall for more than 48 hours has led to access to 266 villages being cut off. In Elazığ, 384 of the 546 roads leading to villages have been blocked off by heavy snowfall.
Avalanches have also caused severe problems on highways across the country. On Tuesday, Anatolia reported that rescue teams had successfully reached several groups of people left stranded on the Tunceli-Pülümür highway following avalanches at 20 different points across the route. Clearing such routes, however, is proving more difficult, with efforts still underway to clear the Tunceli-Erzincan highway, where a number of avalanches occurred over the weekend. It was reported Friday morning that a minibus and two Turkish International Road Transport (TIR) trucks were trapped under an avalanche on the Sivas-Erzincan highway in the eastern province of Tunceli.
