LONDON, MAY 17
Ash clouds from a new surge in Icelandic volcanoes caused fresh travel chaos in major
European air routes shutting down key airports with Air India cancelling its Heathrow bound flights from Delhi and Mumbai today.
The black clouds also shut other major airports in Europe including Schipol and Rottredam in Holland, and Gatwick and London as well as flights to and fro from Ireland and Scotland.
Around 1,000 flights out of 28,000 were disrupted according to Eurocontrol. London’s Heathrow which is the busiest airport in Europe and Gatwick reopened at 1300 GMT (1730 IST) after being closed down for seven hours from 0400-1300 hrs. All airports in Ireland and Scotland were also shut down.
Air India cancelling its Heathrow bound flights from Delhi and Mumbai today. Jet Airways, however flew scheduled flights from Delhi and Mumbai as their flights land at
Heathrow in the night.
The latest closures came at the beginning of the week as travel was expected to be disrupted due to a five-day strike called by British Airways cabin crew.
Europe’s skies became a no-fly zone for up to a week in April following the eruption of Icelands Eyjafjoell volcano, in the biggest shut down of continents airspace in the last 50 years.
Airports across Britain and Ireland were closed for much of yesterday because of the drifting ash.
The shifting of the no-fly zone southward will allow airports in northern England-including the key cities of Manchester and Liverpool-to reopen today.
A string of other airports remain closed including Cardiff, Swansea and Bristol as well as Edinburgh, Aberdeen and Inverness in Scotland.
Britain’s Transport Secretary Philip Hammond said: “We are gathering more evidence all the time. The aircraft manufacturers are looking at that evidence. They are looking at what inspection regimes they can put in place that would allow safe flying through a somewhat higher threshold of ash. If we can do that the likelihood of volcanic ash disrupting flights will obviously diminish. The British air traffic agency said the ash cloud was changing shape and moving south, toward Oxford, 100 km northwest of London.”
Britain’s weather service said the northwest winds should shift midweek, redirecting the ash away from Britain. At Heathrow airport many passengers awaiting connecting flights had slept in terminals overnight after they were cancelled.
German authorities sent up two test flights yesterday to measure the ash cloud, one from the German Aerospace Centre (DLR) and the other from Lufthansa, the country’s biggest
airline. The DLR plane flew to southern England and then continued north, collecting data from between 3,000 to 7,000 metres.
The Lufthansa Airbus A340-600, equipped with special scientific gear, left Frankfurt to fly over northern Germany, the UK and parts of Scandinavia. All the data from both flights was immediately sent to aviation authorities in the United Kingdom, the Netherlands and Germany, said aerospace centre spokesman Andreas Schuetz.
A spokesman for British Airways said, that airlines should take the decision whether or not it was safe to fly, describing the current approach as “overly restrictive” and “not justified”.
