LONDON (Reuters) – Europe’s skies were open for business today, but with so many planes having been grounded by the pall of volcanic ash spreading from Iceland it could take days, or weeks, to clear the backlog.
Britain, a major global air hub as well as a busy destination in its own right that has been squarely under the ash plume, reopened its airspace last night, giving a huge boost to travellers and air freight.
Britain’s Civil Aviation Authority made clear that scientists and manufacturers had downgraded the risk of flying in areas of relatively low ash concentrations.
“The major barrier to resuming flight has been understanding tolerance levels of aircraft to ash. Manufacturers have now agreed increased tolerance levels in low ash density areas,” CAA head Deidre Hutton said.
Air France plans to run all long-haul flights today, Poland will reopen its airspace from 0500 GMT, and the Dutch allowed night flights from yesterday after taking the lead in allowing passenger flights on Monday.
Germany, with the major Frankfurt hub, kept its airspace largely closed until at least 0000 GMT, although some 800 flights operated yesterday, all on visual take-off and landing.
Britain had lagged its European neighbors in downgrading the threat to airplanes from the ash, which can potentially scour and even paralyze jet engines.
In 1982 a British Airways jet lost power in all four engines after flying through an ash cloud above the Indian Ocean.
Recriminations about what took governments so long to give the green light to an airline industry losing $250 million a day from the shutdown are likely to follow — especially since carriers had flown successful test flights for several days.
The Association of European Airlines, representing 36 major commercial and freight carriers, criticized Britain yesterday for not reopening its skies sooner.
“Other people look to the UK and say ‘Why are they still cautious when we are thinking of opening up?,’ and of course this can influence judgments,” David Henderson, AEA manager of information, told Reuters before Britain lifted its no-fly zone.
Icelandic officials said late yesterday there was less activity from the volcano under the Eyjafjallajokull glacier, which has been erupting for almost a week, but strong winds could still leave Europe at the mercy of the cloud.
Raymond Benjamin, secretary-general of the International Civil Aviation Organization, said that authorities were able to declare that the danger had passed.
An expert from the World Meteorological Organization said in Geneva that a low pressure weather system moving into Iceland should help clear the ash cloud within days.
For the airline industry, which said its losses from the shutdown were worse than after the September 11 attacks on the United States, freeing up the flights is a welcome relief. But with aircraft and crew scattered where they were grounded on Thursday, timetables will be wrecked.
“To get back to normal levels of operation from an (airline) industry point of view will take weeks,” British Airways chief executive Willie Walsh told BBC television.
