Tokyo’s White Christmas may have been a pretty magical sight to behold recently when snow fell early upon the city — the first November snow observed in the Japanese capital since 1962.
The 192 Singapore Airlines (SIA) passengers, however, were probably cursing the snowfall when they were left stranded in Hokkaido for a few days due to bad weather, Channel NewsAsia reports.
Flight SQ661 from Sapporo’s Chitose airport had been scheduled to depart for Singapore on Friday morning but was delayed because of heavy snow. Though it was rescheduled to leave the next day, the flight faced further delays as the runways remained closed.
SIA wasn’t the only airline affected though — last weekend’s snowy weather cancelled over 240 flights at Chitose airport, and disrupted train services across the region as well.
The major disruption overwhelmed bookings of hotel rooms nearby, forcing some SIA passengers to sleep at the airport terminal. According to the airline, blankets, meal boxes and breakfast vouchers were issued to those affected.
Flight SQ9661 finally departed from Sapporo on Sunday afternoon and its passengers safely arrived here around 1am yesterday, presumably glad that it’ll never be snowy in Singapore.
