More than 1,200 passengers were affected by the cancellation of flights to and from Munict by Air Malta as a result of heavy snow, the airline said Monday.

Since the situation started developing on Friday evening, resulting in the KM309 being snowbound in Munich airport, nine Air Malta flights were cancelled.

The airport closure resulted in chaos for the airport, with all hotels quickly becoming booked up, airport shops running out of food and supplies and thousands of passengers and airline crew stranded at the airport, the airline said.

The speed of events overtook everyone resulting in passengers being confined to the airport building and Air Malta pilots and crew stranded in their aircraft overnight.

The nine cancelled Air Malta flights resulted in 528 passengers being unable to fly out of Munich and 690 passengers unable to fly from Malta to Munich.

Whilst Munich Airport hoped to return to operation, the weather situation over the forthcoming days did not improve, with the airport advising flight cancellations on the planned day of departure. This obviously was an extremely frustrating period for customers with many hoping to travel on the next day, only for the airline to be advised that the airport remains closed, Air Malta said.