Travel chaos as snow cripples London and South-East

Gallery: Snow scenes in London

The Met office issued more severe weather warnings for the rest of southern England, many parts of which have seen up to 16 inches of snow, and the AA advised people against driving.

Gatwick airport remained closed throughout the day as snow continued to block runways. By lunchtime, more than 240 flights had be axed in and out of the airport, and 28 were cancelled and more delayed at Stansted, which closed for two hours this morning.

Budget airline easyJet alone has cancelled 250 flights across its network.

Gatwick and Stansted had closed overnight, leaving stranded passengers sleeping on the terminal floors.

Sacha Portens, 20, a chef from Woking, rebooked her Ryanair flight from Gatwick to Dublin that was cancelled last night for 8.45am today, but that was then axed. She said: "It's been a complete nightmare. I've had to sleep on the floor and spend hours queuing. I sat in the plane last night for two-and-a-half hours before being pulled off. I'm told the next flight I can get is at 11.30pm tonight."

Dozens of flights were also cancelled at Heathrow, with British Airways axing up to 30. The firm warned it could take two days for flights to return to normal.Domestic flights to Scotland and the north of England were worst hit.

Queues to rebook flights took up to two hours and the airport was filled with passengers sleeping on floors.

By 12.30pm today, the AA had attended more than 7,000 road breakdowns, with the day-end figure likely to reach around 15,000 - compared with about 9,000 for the whole of a normal Wednesday.

Up to 1,000 stranded motorists had to be rescued by the Army on the A3 in Hampshire this morning after being trapped in their cars overnight.

An elderly man in Titchfield, Hampshire died after his Morris Minor spun out of control on an icy road, and in Oxford a six-year-old boy is fighting for his life in hospital after falling though an icy pond at his home. Thomas Hudson is thought to have been trapped in the water for as long as half an hour.

Gordon Brown today insisted there is sufficient salt and grit for Britain's freezing roads despite claims from some councils that stocks are running low.

At Prime Minister's Questions, he said: "I think the whole House wants to be assured that in this difficult period of weather, areas that need to grit the roads will have the salt that is necessary to do so and all the support that other local authorities not so affected and central government can give them.

"I can assure you salt supplies have been built up as a result of what we discovered and what we did last year.

"At the same time I can announce there will be greater co-ordination of the distribution of salt and I hope that I will be able to reassure your constituents they will get the salt and grit that is necessary."

Temperatures across the South-East will drop as low as -5 with a low of -3 expected in the capital overnight.