Eurostar Chief Vows to Resume Partial Service by Tuesday

Eurostar Chief Vows to Resume Partial Service by Tuesday
By DAVID JOLLY
Copyright byh The Associated Press
Published: December 21, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/22/world/europe/22chunnel.html?ref=global-home


PARIS — With thousands of passengers stranded on both sides of the English Channel and a public rebuke from President Nicolas Sarkozy of France, the operator of Eurostar trains vowed Monday to resume at least partial service by Tuesday.

Mr. Sarkozy, perhaps sensing danger to the image of France’s vaunted railroad technology, said Monday that he had called Guillaume Pepy, Eurostar’s chairman, onto the carpet over the “unacceptable incidents.” Mr. Sarkozy also called on Eurostar to provide more information to passengers, the Elysee Palace said in a statement.

On Friday, those trapped in the tunnel had no food or water and little idea of what was happening, and both Eurostar and the tunnel operator, Eurotunnel, have been roundly criticized for poor crisis communications. The companies were already seeking to restore a reputation that suffered after a September 2008 fire in the tunnel.

Only minutes after Mr. Sarkozy’s announcement, Nicolas Petrovic, Eurostar’s chief operating officer, told journalists at the Gare du Nord in Paris that the company would begin “limited” service on Tuesday with 26,000 seats available, about two-thirds the normal level. But he said he did not expect a full resumption of service until next Monday, and he urged people who could defer their travel to do so.

The problems stymied travelers as they began their holiday journeys amid extreme weather that has killed more than 30 people in Europe and severely disrupted air and road traffic on both sides of the Atlantic. Late Monday, with European airlines still seeking to dig out from the backlog caused by a weekend in which hundreds of flights were scratched or delayed, British Airlines canceled all European and domestic flights from London Heathrow airport.

At the Eurostar press conference, Mr. Petrovic said the company had put up “several hundred” stranded passengers in hotels and that it would reimburse those who had paid for hotel accommodation out of their own pockets. He also said the sheer number of passengers meant the company was unable to provide bus service through the tunnel for everyone.

Mr. Petrovic declined to estimate the cost of the fiasco to Eurostar, but he said it would be “very expensive.” About 88,000 passengers appear to have been stranded, a company spokeswoman said; many of them will have canceled their trips altogether, she said, while others have already found alternate means of travel.

“The worst thing is being told so many terrible stories by other passengers,” said Rebecca Brown, 17, who arrived in Paris from Britain on Thursday for a shopping trip and was waiting at Gare du Nord on Monday. “We hear so many rumors from other passengers but get no information from Eurostar.”

“It’s the worst time of year for something like this to happen,” her friend, Jessica Loney, also 17, said as they sat at a café in Gare du Nord.

Aude Criqui, a spokeswoman for Eurostar, said the company was working from the assumption that the sharp temperature difference between the cold outside and the relatively warm air inside the tunnel under the English Channel caused extreme condensation in critical electrical parts on the trains, resulting in electrical failure. All Eurostar trains are powered by electricity.

It is not clear why the conditions this year, which are not appreciably worse than previous winters, should have been a factor.

Both the French transportation minister, Dominique Bussereau, and his British counterpart, Sadiq Khan, called for investigations of the breakdown, and Eurostar said separately that its own board had ordered a review.

Through the weekend and on Monday, transportation hassles were compounded by flight delays caused by poor weather in Europe and the United States, where a huge storm dumped snow on the East Coast.

Lufthansa, the German carrier, had to cancel 300 flights over the weekend, with flights to Amsterdam, Düsseldorf and Brussels particularly affected, Thomas Jachnow, a spokesman, said.

Ryanair, the leading European low-cost airline, sought to take advantage of the Eurostar troubles, offering special fares and flights for stranded passengers from London Stansted and Paris Beauvais.

“Everything at the Paris airports is okay,” said Eric Heraud, a spokesman for the French civil aviation authority. “The problem is that the final destination airports — in the U.K., in Madrid and Düsseldorf — have been having terrible weather.”

Meanwhile, the forecast for much of Europe calls for continued cold weather, with snow, rain and icy conditions through at least the weekend.

Tanaya Macheel contributed reporting.