Flights take off, but ash limits Norway, Sweden

[April 22, 2010]  BRUSSELS (AP) -- European airports sent thousands of planes into the sky Thursday after a week of unprecedented disruptions, but shifting winds sent a new plume of volcanic ash over Scandinavia, forcing some airports in Norway and Sweden to close again.

The new airspace restrictions applied to northern Scotland and parts of southern Norway, Sweden and Finland, said Kyla Evans, spokeswoman for Eurocontrol, the European air traffic agency.

But nearly all of the continent's 28,000 other scheduled flights, including more than 300 flights on lucrative trans-Atlantic routes, were going ahead. Every plane was packed, however, as airlines squeezed in some of the hundreds of thousands of travelers who had been stranded for days among passengers with regular Thursday tickets.

Airlines said there was no quick solution to cut down the backlog of passengers, for most flights were nearly full anyway and no other planes were available.

"Quite frankly we don't have an answer to this," said David Henderson, spokesman for the Association of European Airlines.

Some travelers got a break. Authorities chartered a luxury cruise ship -- the Celebrity Eclipse -- to pick up 2,200 tourists in the northern Spanish port of Bilbao on Thursday and bring them back to England. A British Royal Navy ship also arrived in Portsmouth, southern England, carrying 440 troops coming home from Afghanistan and 280 civilians back from Santander, Spain.

All of British airspace was open and major airports such as London's Heathrow -- Europe's busiest -- were operating nearly full schedules but airlines still warned passengers to check first. British Airways said all of its flights London's Gatwick and City airports would take off, as well as the "vast majority" of flights from Heathrow.

Many trans-Atlantic planes flying between the United States and Europe were assigned flight paths above the ash cloud that still covered the area east of Iceland. Flying at over 35,000 feet (10,670 meters), the planes were well above the current maximum altitude of the ash, which lingered in some places at 20,000 feet (6,100 meters).

The Swedish aviation authority said airspace is still open over the capital Stockholm, but closed over the southern cities of Goteborg and Malmo. Spokesman Bjorn Stenberg said changing winds meant the ash cloud over Sweden hadn't dispersed as forecast.

Meanwhile, new ash clouds were blowing in over western Norway, where Stavanger and Bergen airports were closed.

The weeklong airspace closures caused by the ash threat to planes represented the worst breakdown in civil aviation in Europe since World War II. More than 100,000 flights were canceled and airlines are on track to lose over $2 billion.

The aviation crisis that began with the April 14 volcanic eruption in Iceland left millions of passengers in limbo, and the uncoordinated airspace closures by national governments sparked calls for a wholesale reform of Europe's air traffic management system.

Scientists at the Icelandic meteorological office said the Eyjafjallajokull volcano produced very little ash Thursday but remained quite active, with magma boiling in the crater. The plume of ash was below 10,000 feet (3 kilometers) and winds were not expected to take it over 20,000 feet.

Geophysicist Steinunn Jakobsdottir said volcanic ash was expected to fall south and southwest of the crater in southern Iceland in the coming days, but would not disrupt air travel between Europe and North America.

The volcano threw magma chunks the size of cars into the air and sent powerful shock waves into the air as an Associated Press reporter, photographer and television crew flew over it Wednesday in a helicopter.

In a black crater in the middle of a glacier, red magma thrashed about, propelling steaming blobs of lava onto the surrounding ice. Every so often charges of gas -- which surge from deep inside the mountain through the magma and cause tremors 15 miles (25 kilometers) away -- exploded in a fireworks show of molten rock.

The air shivered with a constant, menacing growl, like a perpetual clap of thunder. Bolts of lightning shot through the fumes and an eerie glow pervaded the pit of fire.

In response to the flight disruptions, the European Union said it was stepping up work on a new management system known as the "Single European Sky" that will largely erase national borders in the sky.

The ash crisis "exposed serious flaws and that is something that probably cannot be ignored much longer," EU spokeswoman Helen Kearns said.

The EU has 27 national air traffic control networks, 60 air traffic centers and hundreds of approach centers and towers. The airspace is a jigsaw puzzle of more than 650 sectors.

In contrast, the U.S. air traffic management system is twice as efficient. On any given day, it manages twice the number of EU flights for a similar cost but from only about 20 control centers.

European governments and civil aviation authorities defended their decisions to ground fleets and close the skies -- and later to reopen them -- against heated accusations by airline chiefs that the decisions were based on flawed data or unsubstantiated fears.

The International Air Transport Association has called on the EU to quickly compensate airlines for lost revenue, much like the U.S. government did following the 9/11 terror attacks.

IATA also demanded that the EU's strict passenger rights rules -- which force airlines to pay for hotels and meals in cases of routine flight delays -- be relaxed to reflect the extraordinary nature of the crisis.

Military aviation also was partly paralyzed, although NATO took the precaution of moving its Boeing E-3A early warning radar planes to southern Italy. From there they were able to conduct high-altitude surveillance missions.

"Military flying within the UK was brought to a complete halt other than search-and-rescue sorties," said Glenn Sands from Air Forces Monthly, adding that a graduating ceremony for pilots had to be moved back several weeks.

[Associated Press; By SLOBODAN LEKIC and CARLO PIOVANO]

Lekic is an AP aviation writer based in Brussels. Piovano reported from Iceland. Associated Press writers Robert Wielaard in Brussels, Malin Rising in Stockholm and Jennifer Quinn in London also contributed to this report.

Copyright 2010 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.