Iceland fears 2nd, even larger volcanic eruption

[samanthajane13]

By GUDJON HELGASON and PAISLEY DODDS, Associated Press Writers Gudjon Helgason And Paisley Dodds, Associated Press Writers – 50 mins ago

REYKJAVIK, Iceland – A volcano in southern Iceland has erupted for the first time in almost 200 years, raising concerns that it could trigger a larger and potentially more dangerous eruption at a volatile volcano nearby.

The eruption at the Eyjafjallajokull (AYA-feeyapla-yurkul) volcano, located near a glacier of the same name, shot ash and molten lava into the air but scientists called it mostly peaceful. It occurred just before midnight Saturday (2000 EDT, 8 p.m. EDT) at a fissure on a slope — rather than at the volcano's summit — so scientists said there was no imminent danger that the glacier would melt and flood the area.

TV footage showed lava flowing along the fissure, and many flights were canceled due to the threat of airborne volcanic ash. After an aerial survey Sunday, scientists concluded the eruption struck near the glacier in an area that had no ice.

"This is the best possible place for an eruption," said Tumi Gudmundsson, a geologist at the University of Iceland.

Nonetheless, officials sent phone messages to 450 people between the farming village of Hvolsvollur and the fishing village of Vik, some 100 miles (160 kilometers) southeast of the capital, Reykjavik, urging them to evacuate immediately.

A state of emergency was declared although there were no immediate reports of injuries or damage. Evacuation centers were set up near the town of Hella, but many people returned to their homes later Sunday. The most immediate threat was to livestock because of the caustic gases the eruption released.

"We had to leave all our animals behind," Eli Ragnarsdottir, a 47-year-old farmer, told RUV, Iceland's national broadcaster from an evacuation center. "We got a call and a text message ... and we just went."

Scientists say it is difficult to predict what comes next. Like earthquakes, it is hard to predict the exact timing of volcanic eruptions.

"It could stop tomorrow, it could last for weeks or months. We cannot say at this stage," Gudmundsson said.

The last time there was an eruption near the 100-square-mile (160 square-kilometer) Eyjafjallajokull glacier was in 1821, and that was a "lazy" eruption — it lasted slowly and continuously for two years.

The latest eruption came after thousands of small earthquakes rocked the area in the past month. Scientists in Iceland have been monitoring the volcano using seismometers and global positioning instruments, but Gudmundsson noted that the beginning of Saturday's eruption was so indistinct that it initially went undetected by the instruments.

"The volcano has been inflating since the beginning of the year, both rising and swelling," said Pall Einarsson, a geophysicist at the University of Iceland's Institute of Earth Science. "Even though we were seeing increased seismic activity, it could have been months or years before we saw an eruption like this ... we couldn't say that there was an imminent risk for the area."

Einarsson and Gudmundsson said the eruption could trigger a more damaging eruption at the nearby Karla volcano, which lies under the thick Myrdalsjokull icecap and threatens massive flooding and explosive blasts if it erupts.

"One of the possible scenarios we're looking at is that this small eruption could bring about something bigger. This said, we can't speculate on when that could happen," Einarsson told The Associated Press.

Iceland, a nation of 320,000 people, sits on a large volcanic hot spot in the Atlantic's mid-oceanic ridge. Volcanic eruptions, common throughout Iceland's history, are often triggered by seismic activity when the Earth's plates move and when magma from deep underground pushes it's way to the surface.

All domestic flights in Iceland were canceled because airborne ash might interfere with aircraft engines, although Reykjavik appeared to be unaffected with clear visibility.

Aviation authorities were to determine whether it is safe to fly again early Monday.

A flight to Oslo was canceled, but most international flights into and out of Iceland were delayed but returning to normal, Icelandair said. The airline's flights from the U.S. — departing from Seattle, Boston and Orlando, Florida — were due later Sunday in Reykjavik. Earlier, a flight was turned back to Boston, leaving about 500 people waiting for hours.

First settled by Vikings in the 9th century, Iceland is known as the land of fire and ice because of its volcanos and glaciers. During the Middle Ages, Icelanders called the Hekla volcano, the country's most active, the "Gateway to Hell," believing that souls were dragged below.

In the mid-1780s, the Laki volcano erupted, causing scores to die of famine when livestock and crops were destroyed and changing weather patterns across Europe.

___

Associated Press writers Paisley Dodds and Sylvia Hui contributed to this report from London.


http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100321/...celand_volcano

[samanthajane13]

Iceland volcano eruption intensifies

REYKJAVIK (AFP) – Icelandic authorities warned on Monday of increased disturbance in the area of the volcanic eruption that forced more than 600 people to flee their homes on Sunday.

"Police have increased surveillance in the whole area around the Eyjafjallajokull and Myrdalsjokull glaciers because of increased disturbance this morning in the volcanic eruption," the police and civil protection department said in a statement.

Police warned there could be danger in travelling or driving in the vicinity of the volcanic area and closed some of the area's roads.

Public broadcaster RUV reported small earthquakes in the region of the volcanic eruption were measured early Monday.

It also said the 800 metre (yard) fissure caused by the eruption was getting larger and heading towards the Myrdalsjokull glacier, which sits on top of the powerful Katla volcano.

A volcanic eruption in the south of Iceland forced 600 people to flee their homes early Sunday but no casualties were reported.

It was the first volcanic eruption in Iceland since 2004, and the first in the vicinity of the Eyjafjallajoekull glacier since 1823.


http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20100322...VsYW5kdm9sY2E-

[samanthajane13]

Iceland evacuates hundreds as volcano erupts again
By GUDJON HELGASON, Associated Press Writer Gudjon Helgason, Associated Press Writer – 1 hr 44 mins ago

REYKJAVIK, Iceland – A volcano under a glacier in Iceland rumbled back to life Wednesday, melting ice, shooting smoke and steam into the air and forcing hundreds of people to leave their homes as floodwaters rose.

Emergency officials evacuated 800 residents from around the Eyjafjallajokull glacier as rivers rose by up to 10 feet (3 meters) and flooded a sparsely populated area, said Rognvaldur Olafsson, a chief inspector for the Icelandic Civil Protection Agency.

He said no lives or properties were in immediate danger. Scientists said there was no sign of increased activity at the much larger Katla volcano nearby.

Pall Einarsson, a geophysicist at the University of Iceland, said magma was melting a hole in the 650-foot (200 meter) thick ice covering the volcano's crater, sending floodwater coursing down the glacier into lowland areas.

The Civil Protection Agency said commercial aircraft had reported seeing steam plumes rising from the glacier. There were no immediate signs of large clouds of volcanic ash, which could disrupt air travel between Europe and North America, and Iceland's international airport remained open.

A Coast Guard plane was flying over the area, which was obscured by heavy cloud.

The volcano, 75 miles (120 kilometers) east of Reykjavik, erupted March 20 after almost 200 years of silence.

The original eruption petered out earlier this week. But Gunnar Gudmunsson, a geophysicist at the Icelandic Meteorological Office, said there had been a series of tremors overnight, and rivers in the area began rising Wednesday morning — strong evidence of a new eruption under the glacier.

"Most probably this eruption is taking place at the summit ... under the ice," he said.

Last month's eruption struck near the glacier in an area that had no ice. Gudmunsson said the new eruption appeared to be about eight or nine kilometers (five to six miles) west of the original fissure.

Residents were evacuated to a Red Cross center in the nearby community of Hvolsvollur, the protection agency said.

Iceland, a nation of 320,000 people, sits on a large volcanic hot spot in the Atlantic's mid-oceanic ridge. Volcanic eruptions are often triggered by seismic activity when the Earth's plates move and when magma from deep underground pushes its way to the surface.

The last time there was an eruption near the 100-square-mile (160 square-kilometer) Eyjafjallajokull glacier was in 1821.

A bigger worry is Katla, which in the past has erupted in tandem with Eyjafjallajokull.

Katla is located under the vast Myrdalsjokull ice cap. An eruption could cause widespread flooding and disrupt air traffic between Europe and North America.

The last major eruption took place in 1918, and vulcanologists say a new blast is overdue.

"So far there have been no signs of the reawakening of the Katla volcano, but a lot of things can still happen, so we are monitoring it quite closely," Einarsson said.

___

Associated Press writers Jill Lawless and Danica Kirka in London contributed to this report.

___

On the Net:

Volcano webcam: http://eldgos.mila.is/eyjafjallajoku...thorolfsfelli/


http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100414/...VsYW5kZXZhY3U-

[samanthajane13]

Iceland evacuates hundreds as volcano erupts again
By GUDJON HELGASON and JILL LAWLESS, Associated Press Writers Gudjon Helgason And Jill Lawless, Associated Press Writers – 2 hrs 9 mins ago

REYKJAVIK, Iceland – A volcano under a glacier in Iceland erupted Wednesday for the second time in less than a month, melting ice, spewing smoke and steam, closing a major road and forcing hundreds of people to flee rising floodwaters.

Authorities evacuated 800 residents from around the Eyjafjallajokull glacier as water gushed down the mountainside and rivers rose by up to 10 feet (3 meters).

Iceland's main coastal ring road was closed near the volcano, and workers smashed holes in the highway in three spots in a bid to give the rushing water a clear route to the coast and prevent bridges from being swept away.

Vidir Reynisson, a manager with Iceland's Civil Protection Department, said that by late afternoon the flooding appeared to have peaked.

"But the water is still flowing down to the ocean so it will be some hours before we have a better view of what kind of damage has occurred," he said.

Scientists said the eruption under the ice cap was 10 to 20 times more powerful than one last month, and carried a much greater risk of widespread flooding.

"This is a very much more violent eruption, because it's interacting with ice and water," said Andy Russell, an expert in glacial flooding at the University of Newcastle in northern England. "It becomes much more explosive, instead of a nice lava flow oozing out of the ground."

Civil protection official Agust Gunnar Gylfason said emergency workers rescued some 70 tourists and visitors trapped near the volcano since Wednesday morning. He said the party — including Norwegian visitors — are now safe in a tourist facility and officials are trying to transport them out of the area.

No lives or properties were in immediate danger, Gylfason said. Scientists said there was no sign of increased activity at the much larger Katla volcano nearby.

Iceland's Meteorological Office said a plume of steam rose at least five miles (eight kilometers) into the air. Scientists aboard a Coast Guard plane that flew over the volcano said the new fissure appeared to be up to 1.2 miles (2 kilometers) long.

There were no immediate signs of large clouds of volcanic ash, which could disrupt air travel between Europe and North America. Some domestic flights were canceled, but Iceland's international airport remained open.

The volcano, about 75 miles (120 kilometers) east of Reykjavik, erupted March 20 after almost 200 years of silence.

The original eruption petered out earlier this week. But Gunnar Gudmundsson, a geophysicist at the Icelandic Meteorological Office, said there were a series of tremors overnight, and rivers in the area began rising Wednesday morning — strong evidence of a new eruption under the glacier.

Last month's eruption struck near the glacier in an area that had no ice. Gudmundsson said the new eruption appeared to be about eight or nine kilometers (five to six miles) west of the original fissure.

"Most probably this eruption is taking place at the summit ... under the ice," he said.

Pall Einarsson, a geophysicist at the University of Iceland, said magma was melting a hole in the 650-foot (200 meter) thick ice covering the volcano's crater, sending floodwater coursing down the glacier into lowland areas.

Residents were evacuated to a Red Cross center in the nearby community of Hvolsvollur, the Civil Protection Department said.

Iceland, a nation of 320,000 people, sits on a large volcanic hot spot in the Atlantic's mid-oceanic ridge. Volcanic eruptions are often triggered by seismic activity when the Earth's plates move and when magma from deep underground pushes its way to the surface.

The last time there was an eruption near the 100-square-mile (160 square-kilometer) Eyjafjallajokull glacier was in 1821.

A bigger worry is Katla, which in the past has erupted in tandem with Eyjafjallajokull.

Katla is located under the vast Myrdalsjokull ice cap. An eruption could cause widespread flooding and disrupt air traffic between Europe and North America.

The last major eruption took place in 1918, and vulcanologists say a new blast is overdue.

"So far there have been no signs of the reawakening of the Katla volcano, but a lot of things can still happen, so we are monitoring it quite closely," Einarsson said.

___

Lawless reported from London. Associated Press writer Danica Kirka also contributed to this report.

___

On the Net:

Volcano webcam: http://eldgos.mila.is/eyjafjallajokull-fra-valahnjuk/


http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100414/...celand_volcano

[samanthajane13]

Iceland's volcanic ash halts flights across Europe
By ROBERT BARR and JILL LAWLESS, Associated Press Writers Robert Barr And Jill Lawless, Associated Press Writers – 17 mins ago

LONDON – An ash cloud from Iceland's spewing volcano halted air traffic across a wide swathe of Europe on Thursday, grounding planes on a scale unseen since the 2001 terror attacks as authorities stopped all flights over Britain, Ireland and the Nordic countries.

Thousand of flights were canceled, stranding tens of thousands of passengers, and officials said it was not clear when it would be safe enough to fly again.

In a sobering comment, one scientist in Iceland said the ejection of volcanic ash — and therefore possible disruptions in air travel — could continue for days or even weeks.

With the cloud drifting south and east across Britain, the country's air traffic service banned all non-emergency flights until at least 7 a.m. (0600GMT, 2 a.m. EDT) Friday. Irish authorities closed their air space for at least eight hours, and aviation authorities in Denmark, Norway, Sweden and Finland took similar precautions.

The move shut down London's five major airports including Heathrow, a major trans-Atlantic hub that handles over 1,200 flights and 180,000 passengers per day. Airport shutdowns and flight cancellations spread across Europe — to France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Denmark, Ireland, Sweden, Finland and Switzerland — and the effects reverberated worldwide.

Airlines in the United States were canceling some flights to Europe and delaying others. In Washington, the Federal Aviation Administration said it was working with airlines to try to reroute some flights around the massive ash cloud.

Flights from Asia, Africa and the Middle East to Heathrow and other top European hubs were also put on hold.

The volcano's smoke and ash poses a threat to aircraft because it can affect visibility, and microscopic debris can get sucked into airplane engines and can cause them to shut down. The plume, which rose to between 20,000 feet and 36,000 feet (6,000 meters and 11,000 meters), lies above the Atlantic Ocean close to the flight paths for most routes from the U.S. east coast to Europe.

It was not the first time air traffic has been halted by a volcano, but such widespread disruption has not been seen the Sept. 11, 2001 terror attacks.

"There hasn't been a bigger one," said William Voss, president of the U.S.-based Flight Safety Foundation, who praised aviation authorities and Eurocontrol, the European air traffic control organization, for closing down airspace. "This has prevented airliners wondering about, with their engines flaming out along the way."

At Heathrow, passengers milled around, looking at closed check-in desks and gazing up at departure boards listing rows of cancellations.

"It's so ridiculous it is almost amusing," said Cambridge University researcher Rachel Baker, 23, who had planned to meet her American boyfriend in Boston but got no farther than Heathrow.

"I just wish I was on a beach in Mexico," said Ann Cochrane, 58, of Toronto, a passenger stranded in Glasgow.

The National Air Traffic Service said Britain had not halted all flights in its space in living memory, although most flights were grounded after Sept. 11. Heathrow was also closed by fog for two days in 1952.

In Iceland, hundreds of people have fled rising floodwaters since the volcano under the Eyjafjallajokull (ay-yah-FYAH'-plah-yer-kuh-duhl) glacier erupted Wednesday for the second time in less than a month. As water gushed down the mountainside, rivers rose up to 10 feet (3 meters) by Wednesday night, slicing the island nation's main road in half.

The volcano still spewed ash and steam Thursday, but the floods had subsided. Some ash was falling on uninhabited areas, but most was being blown by westerly winds toward northern Europe, including Britain, about 1,200 miles (2,000 kilometers) away.

"It is likely that the production of ash will continue at a comparable level for some days or weeks. But where it disrupts travel, that depends on the weather," said Einar Kjartansson, a geophysicist at the Icelandic Meteorological Office. "It depends how the wind carries the ash."

The ash cloud did not disrupt operations at Iceland's Keflavik airport or caused problems in the capital of Reykjavik, but has affected the southeastern part of the island, said meteorologist Thorsteinn Jonsson. In one area, visibility was reduced to 150 meters (yards) Thursday, he said, and farmers were advised to keep livestock indoors to protect them from eating the abrasive ash.

In Paris, all flights north were canceled until midnight. In Copenhagen, spokesman Henrik Peter Joergensen said some 25,000 passengers were affected.

"At the present time it is impossible to say when we will resume flying," Joergensen said.

Eurostar train services to France and Belgium and cross-Channel ferries were packed as travelers sought ways out of Britain. P&O ferries said it had booked a passenger on its Dover-Calais route who was trying to get to Beijing — he hoped to fly from Paris instead of London.

The U.S. Geological Survey says about 100 aircraft have run into volcanic ash from 1983 to 2000. In some cases engines shut down briefly after sucking in volcanic debris, but there have been no fatal incidents.

Kjartansson said until the 1980s, airlines were less cautious about flying through volcanic clouds.

"There were some close calls and now they are being more careful," he said.

In 1989, a KLM Royal Dutch Airlines Boeing 747 flew into an ash cloud from Alaska's Redoubt volcano and lost all power, dropping from 25,000 feet to 12,000 feet (7,500 meters to 3,600) before the crew could get the engines restarted. The plane landed safely.

In another incident in the 1980s, a British Airways 747 flew into a dust cloud and the grit sandblasted the windscreen. The pilot had to stand and look out a side window to land safely.

Last month's eruption at the same volcano occurred in an area where there was no glacial ice — lessening the overall risk. Wednesday's eruption, however, occurred beneath a glacial cap. If the eruption continues, and there is a supply of cold water, the lava will chill quickly and fragment into glass.

If the volcano keeps erupting, there's no end to the flight disruptions it could cause.

"When there is lava erupting close to very cold water, the lava chills quickly and turns essentially into small glass particles that get carried into the eruption plume," said Colin Macpherson, a geologist with the University of Durham. "The risk to flights depends on a combination of factors — namely whether the volcano keeps behaving the way it has and the weather patterns."

Iceland, a nation of 320,000 people, sits on a large volcanic hot spot in the Atlantic's mid-oceanic ridge, and has a history of devastating eruptions.

The worst was the 1783 eruption of the Laki volcano, which spewed a toxic cloud over Europe with devastating consequences. At least 9,000 people, a quarter of the population of Iceland, died, many from the famine caused by the eruption, and many more emigrated. The cloud may have killed more than 20,000 people in eastern England and an estimated 16,000 in France.

__

AP reporters Jennifer Quinn, Paisley Dodds, Danica Kirka and Chonel LaPorte in London, Ian MacDougall in Oslo, Shawn Pogatchnik in Dublin, Jan Olsen in Copenhagen, Gretchen Mahan in Brussels, Mike Corder in Amsterdam, Adam Schreck in Dubai, Bradley Klapper and Frank Jordans in Geneva and Matti Huuhtanen in Helsinki contributed to this report.


http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100415/...celand_volcano

[samanthajane13]

Volcanic cloud casts long shadow over US travel
By MICHAEL TARM, Associated Press Writer Michael Tarm, Associated Press Writer – Thu Apr 15, 7:05 pm ET

CHICAGO – A volcanic ash cloud that shut down airports and tied up air traffic across Europe could turn into a long, costly headache for businesses, airlines and tourists in the United States.

The ash spewed by an eruption in Iceland forced airlines to cancel flights and redirect planes around the ash. Those diversions caused jetliners to burn more fuel and created delays in the air-cargo business that could quickly run into tens of millions of dollars.

The slowdown could affect everything from package shipments to business meetings and long-planned vacations.

"The costs could be extraordinary," said Jeffrey Price, an aviation professor at Metropolitan State College of Denver.

Many in the travel industry on Thursday weren't asking if they would be affected — but how badly.

"This is the ultimate act of God," said Chicago-based transportation expert Joseph Schwieterman. "It's hard to imagine a weather scenario that would disrupt the entire Atlantic flight system like this."

Anxious clients called Boston-based Garber Travel, one of New England's biggest travel agencies, asking how they might rearrange flights. But for some travelers bound for Europe, it was too late.

The flight cancellations jeopardized a $6,000 trip planned for more than six months by Robert and Barbara Breault of Coventry, R.I.

Barbara, an avid gardener, had scheduled a vacation that coincided with tulip bloomings in the Netherlands. But their outbound flight Thursday evening from Boston's Logan Airport to London Heathrow was marked "See agent."

"It's not supposed to do this," Barbara said with a laugh. "I had already planned the whole thing."

She had paid not only for the airline tickets, but supplemental charges for window seats and for a private guide, as well as a cruise through Holland's famed canals dubbed the "Tulip Festival Cruise."

On an average day, U.S. airlines operate about 340 flights to and from Europe, according to the Air Transport Association. On Thursday, American carriers canceled about 165 of those flights because of the ash, and the ATA expected at least as many to be canceled Friday.

An FAA spokeswoman said the cancellations affected at least 10 countries: England, Ireland, Northern Ireland, Scotland, Sweden, United Arab Emirates, Finland, France, Belgium and Denmark.

The FAA issued an order holding flights destined for the United Kingdom on the ground. Other flights to and from Europe were being diverted around British airspace, which has been closed until 4 a.m. EDT Friday.

That didn't bode well for two British friends stranded at New York's Kennedy Airport hotel after their flight was canceled.

"I just want to go home now," said 23-year-old Grace Schofield, of Yorkshire, England, whose trip was also disrupted by emergency surgery for appendicitis. "I can only do so much walking around the city before I have to rest."

For one British man trying to make it back to London, the consequences were deeply emotional.

"It was my grandmother's funeral tomorrow so I am going to miss that," said Gary Alderson, who was also at the airport hotel.

Elsewhere, flight cancellations undermined pending business deals.

Mark Kiefer, a Boston-based aviation industry consultant, said he initially planned to send a proposal to a company north of Amsterdam by air courier to meet a Monday deadline.

"They told us that they wouldn't take a package tomorrow, and they wouldn't guarantee you Monday," Kiefer said. Instead, he planned to e-mail the proposal to colleagues in The Hague, have them print it out and then drive about an hour to hand-deliver the document.

Air cargo companies conceded they were scrambling to cope.

FedEx, the world's second-largest package-delivery company, started rerouting flights bound for Charles De Gaulle Airport in Paris. It also moved some packages by truck instead of air.

Company spokesman Steve Barber could not specify what types of shipments were most affected.

Although rare, flight problems caused by volcanic ash are not unheard of. The 1980 eruption of Mount St. Helens in Washington state grounded hundreds of flights for days.

But ironically, the airlines' decision to reduce their schedules to ensure that planes are full could work against them as they scramble to find available seats on alternative flights.

"These high-load factors can make disruptions like this into full-scale disasters — where passengers are stranded for days," Schwieterman said. "Ten years ago, the airline took just a few days to get back to normal. Now, it can take longer."

Routing systems have also become highly sophisticated, with airlines planning the most efficient routes days and weeks in advance.

"The system works great until there is irregular operation, and then everything unravels," Schwieterman said. "In situations like this, the efficiency of the system comes back to haunt them."

A spokeswoman for American Airlines, Mary Frances Fagan, expressed confidence the company could deal successfully with the ash despite the cancellation of 34 flights to airports in London, Manchester, Brussels, Dublin and Paris by Thursday afternoon.

She said airlines are well-versed in dealing with air traffic disruptions caused by weather, hurricanes or even earthquakes.

"Are there specific contingency plans for volcanic ash? I can't say there's a separate chapter in our crisis book, but we deal with Mother Nature day by day all the time," she said.

___

Associated Press writers Samantha Bomkamp in New York, David Koenig in Dallas, Joan Lowy in Washington, D.C., Glen Johnson in Boston, Ray Henry in Atlanta, Adam Pemble in New York, and David Porter in Newark, N.J., also contributed to this report.


http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100415/...and_volcano_us

[samanthajane13]

Iceland's volcanic ash halts flights across Europe
By JILL LAWLESS, Associated Press Writer Jill Lawless, Associated Press Writer – 6 mins ago

LONDON – An enormous ash cloud from a remote Icelandic volcano caused the biggest flight disruption since the 2001 terrorist attacks as it drifted over northern Europe and stranded travelers on six continents. Officials said it could take days for the skies to become safe again in one of aviation's most congested areas.

The cloud, floating miles (kilometers) above Earth and capable of knocking out jet engines, wrecked travel plans for tens of thousands of people Thursday, from tourists and business travelers to politicians and royals. They couldn't see the source of their frustration — except indirectly, when the ash created vivid red and lavender sunsets.

Non-emergency flights in Britain were canceled, and most will stay grounded until at least midday Friday.

Authorities in Ireland, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Finland and Belgium also closed their air space. France shut down 24 airports, including the main hub of Charles de Gaulle in Paris, Germany's Berlin and Hamburg were shut Thursday evening, and several flights out of the U.S. had to double back.

Kyla Evans, spokeswoman for air traffic service Eurocontrol, said half of all trans-Atlantic flights were expected to be canceled Friday.

At London's Heathrow airport, normally one of the world's busiest with more than 1,200 flights and 180,000 travelers a day, passengers stared forlornly at departure boards on which every flight was listed as canceled.

"We made it all the way to takeoff on the plane. ... They even showed us the safety video," said Sarah Davis, 29, a physiotherapist from Portsmouth in southern England who was hoping to fly to Los Angeles. "I'm upset. I only get so much vacation."

A volcano beneath Iceland's Eyjafjallajokull (ay-yah-FYAH'-plah-yer-kuh-duhl) glacier began erupting Wednesday for the second time in less than a month, triggering floods and shooting smoke and steam miles into the air. Video showed spectacular images of hot gases melting the thick ice, sending cascades of water thundering down the steep slopes of the volcano.

About 700 people from rural areas near the volcano were evacuated Thursday because of flash flooding, as water carrying icebergs the size of small houses rushed down the mountain. Most evacuees were allowed to return home after the floods subsided, but more flash floods are expected as long as the volcano keeps erupting, said Rognvaldur Olafsson of the Civil Protection Department.

The ash cloud became a menace to air travel as it drifted south and east toward northern Europe — including Britain, about 1,200 miles (2,000 kilometers) away.

The ash plume drifted at between 20,000 feet and 36,000 feet (6,000 meters and 11,000 meters), where it could get sucked into airplane engines and cause them to shut down. The smoke and ash also could affect aircraft visibility.

Britain's air traffic service said early Friday it was extending a ban on most air traffic until 7 p.m. local time Friday, but flights to Scotland and Northern Ireland, and North Atlantic flights to and from Glasgow, Prestwick and Belfast airports may be allowed until 1 p.m. local time.

The agency said Britain had not halted all flights in its space in living memory, although many were grounded after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks in the United States.

"People can't remember a time when it has been on this scale," said Patrick Horwood of the air traffic service. "Certainly never involving a volcano."

Eurocontrol spokeswoman Evans said the ash had led to the cancellation of about 4,000 flights within Europe Thursday, and that could rise to 6,000 Friday.

Several U.S. flights bound for Heathrow, including those from Chicago, San Francisco, Denver, Las Vegas and New York, had to return to their departure cities or land elsewhere when London airports were closed. Canadian airlines also canceled some Europe-bound flights.

In Washington, the Federal Aviation Administration said it was working with airlines to try to reroute some flights around the huge ash cloud, which is hundreds of miles wide. Flights from Asia, Africa, South America, Australia and the Middle East to Heathrow and other top European hubs were also put on hold.


Continued...

[SaraSidle]

2012 global warming. we are destroying our own planet

[samanthajane13]

Australia's Qantas airline said it had some 1,750 passengers grounded Friday from five flights -- about 1,000 passengers stranded in Singapore, and 350 each in Hong Kong and Bangkok.

New Zealand's national carrier Air New Zealand warned travelers flying to Europe to defer their plans Friday, as it canceled two flights through London and diverted a third to Germany.

In Britain, the closures curtailed some campaigning for the May 6 national election. Monarchs from Norway and the Netherlands traveling to a 70th birthday celebration for Denmark's Queen Margrethe found their plans up in the air.

Swedish Foreign Minister Carl Bildt resorted to driving home to Sweden from Brussels. "We'll arrive sometime tomorrow," his spokeswoman Irena Busic said.

Eurostar train services to France and Belgium and Channel ferries were packed as travelers sought ways out of Britain. P&O ferries said it had booked a passenger on its Dover-Calais route who was trying to get to Beijing — he hoped to fly from Paris instead of London.

It was unclear whether the ash cloud would affect the arrival of President Barack Obama and other world leaders planning to attend the state funeral Sunday of Polish President Lech Kaczynski, who died in a plane crash. Polish authorities banned flights over part of northwestern Poland late Thursday, the country's PAP news agency reported. The funeral is to be held in Krakow, in southeastern Poland.

The Icelandic plume lies above the Atlantic Ocean close to the flight paths for most routes from the U.S. East Coast to Europe, and over northern Europe itself.

Meteorologists from the AccuWeather forecasting service in the U.S. said the current ash plume will threaten air travel over Europe through Sunday at the least. Einar Kjartansson, a geophysicist at the Icelandic Meteorological Office, said the problem might persist for weeks, depending on how much wind carries the ash.

Explosive volcanic eruptions inject large amounts of highly abrasive ash — essentially very small rock fragments — into the upper atmosphere, the cruising altitude of most jet airliners. It can cause significant damage to both airframes and engines.

Health protection officials in Britain said some of the ash will fall to ground level overnight — starting in Scotland before moving south — although Britain's weather forecasters said the public should not be concerned.

The U.S. Geological Survey said about 100 aircraft have run into volcanic ash from 1983 to 2000. In some cases engines shut down briefly after sucking in volcanic debris, but there have been no fatal incidents.

In 1989, a KLM Royal Dutch Airlines Boeing 747 flew into an ash cloud from Alaska's Redoubt volcano and lost all power, dropping from 25,000 feet to 12,000 feet (7,500 meters to 3,600) before the crew could get the engines restarted. The plane landed safely.

In another incident in the 1980s, a British Airways 747 flew into a dust cloud and the grit sandblasted the windscreen. The pilot had to stand and look out a side window to land safely.

Gideon Ewers, spokesman for the International Federation of Airline Pilots Associations, attributed the extent of the disruption to amount of air traffic in the area where the plume was drifting.

"Normally, these volcanic eruptions affect air travel in areas of thin traffic such as the Aleutian islands in Alaska, or in Indonesia and the Philippines," he said.

Ironically, Iceland's Keflavik airport remained open Thursday. Flights to Europe were canceled but those to North America were operating normally.

Iceland, a nation of 320,000 people, sits on a large volcanic hot spot in the Atlantic's mid-oceanic ridge, and has a history of devastating eruptions.

___

AP reporters Robert Barr, Jennifer Quinn, Paisley Dodds, Danica Kirka and Chonel LaPorte in London, Slobodan Lekic in Kabul, Ian MacDougall in Oslo, Louise Nordstrom in Stockholm, Shawn Pogatchnik in Dublin, Jan Olsen in Copenhagen, Gretchen Mahan in Brussels, Mike Corder in Amsterdam, Adam Schreck in Dubai, Bradley Klapper and Frank Jordans in Geneva and Matti Huuhtanen in Helsinki contributed to this report.

__

On the Net:

http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/corporat...0/volcano.html


http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100416/...celand_volcano

[samanthajane13]

Volcanic ash affects airplanes, weather, sunsets
By MALCOLM RITTER, AP Science Writer Malcolm Ritter, Ap Science Writer – Thu Apr 15, 5:32 pm ET

NEW YORK – In 1989, all four engines of a Boeing 747 over Alaska conked out after it flew into a cloud of volcanic ash. The crew was able to restart them, but incidents like that dramatize why hundreds of flights every year are diverted around such gritty debris.

A volcano can blow immense amounts of material into the sky, making the weather cooler and producing spectacular red and orange sunsets. But Thursday's disruption of air travel underlines what airborne ash can mean for jetliners.

Such a huge effect on airline schedules is unusual, because ash plumes usually appear well away from the most crowded airspaces. This week's eruption in Iceland blew debris over Northern Europe, threatening most routes from the East Coast to Europe.

Volcanic ash can stay aloft for days and travel far. Of the more than 20 aircraft damaged by ash from the 1991 eruption of Mount Pinatubo in the Philippines, most were flying more than 600 miles from the volcano.

The tiny particles are invisible to the weather radar on airplanes and cannot be seen at night. So volcano monitoring is serious business in the United States.

"Once we detect an eruption, our first call goes to the FAA," said Tom Murray, director of the U.S. Geological Survey's Volcano Science Center, which oversees five volcano observatories nationwide. USGS scientists work closely with Federal Aviation Administration and the National Weather Service to track ash plumes.

The abrasive ash can sandblast a jet's windshield, block fuel nozzles, contaminate the oil system and electronics and plug the tubes that sense airspeed. But the most immediate danger is to the engines.

"Jet engines are like giant vacuum cleaners. If they're in a volcanic ash cloud, they're just sucking in all that ash and that damages the engines," Murray said.

The most immediate hazard occurs after ash melts or vaporizes in the extreme heat of the engine's combustion chamber, said Michael Fabian of Embry Riddle Aeronautical University's campus in Prescott, Ariz.

The melted ash can then congeal on the blades of the engine's turbine "like spray paint," he said. The deposits can block the normal flow of air through the engine, causing engines to lose thrust or shut down.

What's more, he said, the deposits can coat the fuel system's temperature sensors, fooling them into thinking the engine is running cooler than it is. So the system pours in more fuel, raising the heat and damaging the turbine, which can also make the engine shut down.

The effects can be harrowing. In the 1989 incident, the 747 dropped more than two miles in five minutes as the crew struggled to restart the engines. The 231 passengers could smell the volcanic sulfur of ash that had come from the Redoubt volcano, 150 miles away. Eventually, all the engines were restarted and the plane landed safely at Anchorage. All four engines had to be replaced.

Ash from the Mount Pinatubo eruption in the Philippines drifted more than 5,000 miles to the east coast of Africa. The eruption shot a column of ash and smoke more than 19 miles high, containing enough matter to qualify as perhaps the biggest eruption of the 20th century. The heavy fall of ash left about 100,000 people homeless and forced thousands more to flee.

The effects of that ash were even more widespread. Average world temperature dropped by more than 1 degree over the following two years, an effect seen by many scientists as a counterbalance to global warming.

The weather effect was much bigger for the 1815 eruption of Tambora in Indonesia, often called the biggest eruption in recorded history. The following year was called "the year without summer," with sporadic snowfall and killing frosts in June through August in New England and Europe. Crops failed and soup kitchens opened to feed the hungry.

Ash from the eruption of the Krakatau (sometimes called the Krakatoa) volcano between Java and Sumatra in 1883 darkened the surrounding area for two days. It drifted around the Earth several times, making for brilliant sunsets that live on today, in sketches done in England by artist William Ashcroft.

___

Science Writer Alicia Chang in Los Angeles and Aviation Writer Slobodan Lekic contributed to this report

___

On the Net:

Volcano information: http://www.volcano.si.edu

Volcano alerts: http://volcanoes.usgs.gov


http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100415/...cano_airplanes

[samanthajane13]

Travel chaos as cloud of ash drifts over Europe
By JENNIFER QUINN and ROBERT BARR, Associated Press Writers Jennifer Quinn And Robert Barr, Associated Press Writers – 40 mins ago

LONDON – Volcanic ash sifted down on parts of northern Europe on Friday and thousands of planes stayed on the tarmac to avoid the hazardous cloud. Travel chaos engulfed major European cities and the U.N. warned of possible health risks from falling ash.

Eurocontrol, the European air traffic agency, said the travel disruptions that reverberated throughout the world Thursday were even worse on Friday, with about 11,000 flights expected to operate in Europe instead of the usual 28,000. It said delays will continue well into Saturday as the massive yet invisible ash cloud moves slowly south and east.

"There will be significant disruption of air traffic tomorrow," spokesman Brian Flynn said, adding the agency would hold a meeting Monday of aviation officials from all 40 Eurocontrol countries.

Polish officials fretted that the ash cloud could threaten the arrival of world leaders for Sunday's state funeral of President Lech Kaczynski and his wife, Maria, in the southern city of Krakow. Kaczynski's family insisted Friday they wanted the funeral to go forward as planned.

So far, President Barack Obama, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev and German Chancellor Angela Merkel are among those coming and no one has canceled.

Merkel, however, could not even get back to Berlin after a visit to Washington. She was diverted to Portugal and looking for a hotel room.

Train stations, hotels and car rental agencies were jammed in key European cities by people scrambling to make alternative plans. Extra long-distance trains were put on in Amsterdam and lines to buy train tickets were so long the train company was handing out free coffee.

The high-speed Thalys trains, a joint venture of the French, Belgian and German rail companies, allowed passengers to buy tickets even if there were not enough seats.

"We think we can help a lot of passengers get closer to their final destinations," said Thalys spokeswoman Patricia Baars.

Aviation experts said it was among the worst disruptions Europe has ever seen.

"We don't have many volcanoes in Europe," said David Learmount of Flight International, an editor at the aviation publication. "But the wind was blowing in the wrong direction."

Ice chunks the size of houses tumbled down from a volcano beneath Iceland's Eyjafjallajokull (ay-yah-FYAH'-plah-yer-kuh-duhl) glacier on Thursday as hot gases melted the ice. The volcano began erupting Wednesday for the second time in less than a month.

As torrents of water roared down the steep slopes of the volcano, flash floods washed away chunks of Iceland's main ring road. More floods are expected as long as the volcano keeps erupting, which scientists said it was continuing to do in daily pulses.

The cloud of basalt, drifting between 20,000 to 30,000 feet (6,000 to 9,000 meters) high and invisible from the ground, at first blocked the main air flight path between the U.S. east coast and Europe. On Friday, the British Meteorological Office said the cloud's trajectory was taking it over northern France and Austria and into eastern and central Russia at about 25 mph (40 kpm).

Fearing that microscopic particles of highly abrasive ash could endanger passengers by causing aircraft engines to fail, authorities shut down air space over Britain, Ireland, France, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Finland and Belgium. That halted flights at Europe's two busiest airports — Heathrow in London and Charles de Gaulle airport in Paris — as well as dozens of other airports, 25 in France alone.

A Finnish F-18 Hornet jet had a scare, nearly overheating even on a short flight as the ash blocked its cooling ducts. Air Force spokesman Joni Malkamaki says the Hornet "flew for about an hour" on a regular training flight in clear weather and the pilot saw no signs of any volcanic cloud.

As the cloud moved east, flights were halted Friday at Frankfurt airport, Europe's third-busiest terminal, and at 10 other German airports including Duesseldorf, Berlin, Hamburg and Cologne. No flights were allowed either at Ramstein Air Base, a key U.S. military hub in southwestern Germany.

Only about 120 trans-Atlantic flights reached European airports Friday morning, compared to 300 on a normal day, said Eurocontrol. About 60 flights between Asia and Europe were canceled.

Air space restrictions were lifted or imposed or extended as the cloud moved east and south. Aviation authorities in Ireland reopened airports in Dublin and Cork and France allowed some planes to land at Paris' three airports Friday afternoon.

Sweden and Norway declared skies in the far north to be safe again even as flights in both capitals — Stockholm and Oslo — were still on a lockdown. Norwegian Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg managed to get a flight to Madrid from New York but was still not sure when or how he would get home.

Switzerland, Croatia and Slovakia closed their airspaces and Poland expanded its no-fly zone Friday to most of the country, excluding the southern cities of Krakow and Rzeszow.

Britain and Belgium extended flight restrictions until Saturday morning, but Britain allowed some flights out of Northern Ireland and western Scotland.

Britain's Met Office said the wind was expected to blow from the north, which would bring further ash across parts of Britain. Small amounts of ash settled in Iceland, northern Scotland and Norway.

Professor Jon Davidson of the Department of Earth Sciences at Durham University in England said the dispersal of the ash cloud depended on the weather — and if the volcano still erupted.

The World Health Organization in Geneva said the ash cloud mostly remained high in the atmosphere on Friday, but it could pose a health risk if particles reached the ground. It advised Europeans to try to stay indoors if the ash fell, because inhaling the particles can cause respiratory problems, especially for those suffering from asthma and respiratory diseases.

The volcano caused ministers and officials from at least 12 countries to miss the start of a European Union finance ministers meeting in Madrid.

Iceland, a nation of 320,000 people, sits on a large volcanic hot spot in the Atlantic's mid-oceanic ridge, and has a history of devastating eruptions. One of the worst was the 1783 eruption of the Laki volcano, which spewed a toxic cloud over Europe with devastating consequences.

___

Associated Press Writers Jill Lawless in London, Karl Ritter and Louise Nordstrom in Stockholm, Melissa Eddy and Verena Schmitt-Roschmann in Berlin, Ciaran Giles in Madrid, Bradley Klapper and Frank Jordans in Geneva and Ian MacDougall in Oslo contributed to this report.

(This version corrects that Merkel was diverted to Portugal.)


http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/eu_icelan...F2ZWxjaGFvc2E-

[samanthajane13]

Volcanic ash spreads high over Europe, Russia
By ARTHUR MAX, Associated Press Writer Arthur Max, Associated Press Writer – 58 mins ago

AMSTERDAM – A huge yet invisible cloud of volcanic ash from Iceland spread southward over Europe and eastward into Russia on Friday at the speed of a car in city traffic, meteorologists said.

How far the volcanic ash spreads and when the microscopic dust will begin to disperse or settle on the ground depends entirely on two unpredictable events: How long the volcano beneath Iceland's Eyjafjallajokull (ay-yah-FYAH'-plah-yer-kuh-duhl) glacier keeps pumping tons of dust into the air and what wind patterns do.

The British Met Office, the country's weather agency, said the trajectory was taking the cloud at least over northern France and Austria and into eastern and central Russia.

"The current forecast is that the dust cloud will spread over quite a wide area by the early hours of tomorrow morning," said spokeswoman Helen Chivers.

Harry Geurts of the Dutch meteorological office KNMI said the cloud was moving southeast around 25 miles (40 kilometers) per hour from the North Sea, but normal cloud cover was making it difficult to track.

He said the direction and speed of the cloud is hard to predict because wind speeds vary at different altitudes.

Chivers said no major changes in the weather or wind speed were predicted for the next 24 hours.

The volcano, which erupted Wednesday for the second time in a month, was continuing to erupt daily in pulses rather than in a continuous stream of ash and smoke, she said. The ash cloud drifted between 20,000 to 30,000 feet (6,000 to 9,000 meters) high but was not a solid band of ash and particles.

It was invisible from the ground, and most of the dust will dilute and dissipate over time, but some ash was beginning to settle in parts of Scotland and England, lightly coating some of the Met's instruments, Chivers said.

Ash was also reported in rural Iceland, parts of Norway and the Faroe Islands.

A 2008 study by Italian scientists looked at the dispersal of ash from the Etna eruption in 1998 — and highlighted the uncertainty of any predictions.

It said the trajectory of an ash cloud "is highly variable and can change within a few hours" in response to changes in the wind at various heights. It also depends on the size of the particles being thrust into the air. The smaller the grains of ash, the more concentrated it will remain in the air rather than fall to Earth.

Scientists are also looking for possible effects of the Icelandic eruption on climate change, the gradual warming of the Earth's average temperature caused by greenhouse gas emissions, mainly carbon dioxide from industry and tailpipes.

Major volcanic eruptions in the past were found to have had a temporary cooling effect on the planet. Scientists say an eruption in Peru in 1601 and a series of volcanos in the South Pacific later that century sent temperatures plunging.

But Chivers said the Icelandic eruption so far did not appear as powerful as those historical events, and Dutch meteorological professor Bert Holtslag said the ash cloud likely was too low.

"I expect that the impact of this volcano on global temperatures so far will be small because most of the material is apparently emitted and transported in the troposphere (below 6 miles or 10 kilometers)," said Holtslag of Wageningen University's Center for Water and Climate.

If the Icelandic volcano continues erupting and if the dust forms a layer in the stratosphere — which is 6 to 30 miles (10 to 50 kilometers) high — the "implications may be more significant," he wrote in an e-mail.


http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100416/...cano_ash_cloud

[samanthajane13]

Flight disruptions in Europe get even worse
By JILL LAWLESS, Associated Press Writer Jill Lawless, Associated Press Writer – 3 mins ago

LONDON – Thick drifts of volcanic ash blanketed parts of rural Iceland on Friday as a vast, invisible plume of grit drifted over Europe, emptying the skies of planes and sending hundreds of thousands in search of hotel rooms, train tickets or rental cars.

Polish officials worried that the ash cloud could threaten the arrival of world leaders for Sunday's state funeral for President Lech Kaczynski and his wife Maria in the southern city of Krakow.

So far, President Barack Obama, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev and German Chancellor Angela Merkel are among those coming and no one has canceled. Kaczynski's family insisted Friday they wanted the funeral to go forward as planned but there was no denying the ash cloud was moving south and east.

The air traffic agency Eurocontrol said almost two-thirds of Europe's flights were canceled Friday, as air space remained largely closed in Britain and across large chunks of north and central Europe.

"The skies are totally empty over northern Europe," said Brian Flynn, deputy head of Eurocontrol, adding "there will be some significant disruption of European air traffic tomorrow."

The agency said about 16,000 of Europe's usual 28,000 daily flights were canceled Friday — twice as many as were canceled a day earlier. Only about 120 trans-Atlantic flights reached European airports compared to 300 on a normal day, and about 60 flights between Asia and Europe were canceled.

The International Air Transport Association said the volcano was costing the industry at least $200 million a day.

Southern Iceland's Eyjafjallajokull (ay-yah-FYAH'-plah-yer-kuh-duhl) glacier began erupting for the second time in a month on Wednesday, sending ash several miles (kilometers) into the air. Winds pushed the plume south and east across Britain, Ireland, Scandinavia and into the heart of Europe.

Gray ash settled in drifts near the glacier, swirling in the air and turning day into night. Authorities told people in the area with respiratory problems to stay indoors, and advised everyone to wear masks and protective goggles outside.

In major European cities, travel chaos reigned. Extra trains were put on in Amsterdam and lines to buy train tickets were so long that the rail company handed out free coffee.

Train operator Eurostar said it was carrying almost 50,000 passengers between London, Paris and Brussels. Thalys, a high-speed venture of the French, Belgian and German rail companies, was allowing passengers to buy tickets even if trains were fully booked.

Ferry operators in Britain received a flurry of bookings from people desperate to cross the English Channel to France, while London taxi company Addison Lee said it had received requests for journeys to cities as far away as Paris, Milan, Amsterdam and Zurich.

The disruptions hit tourists, business travelers and dignitaries alike.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel had to go to Portugal rather than Berlin as she flew home from a U.S. visit. Norwegian Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg managed to get a flight to Madrid from New York but was still not sure when or how he would get back home.

The military also had to adjust. Five German soldiers wounded in Afghanistan were diverted to Turkey instead of Germany, while U.S. medical evacuations for troops in Iraq and Afghanistan are being flown directly from the warfronts to Washington rather than to a care facility in Germany. The U.S. military has also stopped using temporarily closed air bases in the U.K. and Germany.

Aviation experts said it was among the worst disruptions Europe has ever seen.

"We don't have many volcanoes in Europe," said David Learmount of Flight International, an aviation publication. "The wind was blowing in the wrong direction."

In Iceland, torrents of water carried away chunks of ice the size of small houses on Thursday as hot gases melted the glacier over the volcano. Sections of the country's main ring road were wiped out by the flash floods.

More floods from melting waters are expected as long as the volcano keeps erupting — and in 1821, the same volcano managed to erupt for more than a year.

Small amounts of ash settled in northern Scotland and Norway, but officials said it posed little threat to health.

The ash cloud, drifting between 20,000 to 30,000 feet (6,000 to 9,000 meters) high and invisible from the ground, initially blocked the main air flight path between the U.S. east coast and Europe. On Friday, the cloud's trajectory was taking it over northern France and Austria and into eastern and central Russia at about 25 mph (40 kph).

Fearing that microscopic particles of highly abrasive ash could endanger passengers by causing aircraft engines to fail, authorities shut down air space over Britain, Ireland, France, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Finland and Belgium. That halted flights at Europe's two busiest airports — Heathrow in London and Charles de Gaulle airport in Paris — as well as dozens of other airports, 25 in France alone.

Air space restrictions were lifted, imposed or extended Friday as the cloud moved.

Flights were suspended at Frankfurt airport, Europe's third-busiest terminal, and at other German airports including Duesseldorf, Berlin, Hamburg, Munich and Cologne.

Irish aviation authorities reopened airports in Dublin and Cork and France allowed some planes to land in Paris. Sweden and Norway declared skies in the far north to be safe but kept a lockdown on flights to both capitals — Stockholm and Oslo.

Britain's National Air Traffic Service said the air over England would remain closed to flights until at least 7 a.m. (0600 GMT, 2 a.m. EDT) Saturday, although some flights were being allowed in Northern Ireland and Scotland.

Nonetheless, British Airways announced it was canceling all of its flights to and from London airports late Friday and on Saturday.

Switzerland, Slovakia, Croatia and Hungary closed their airspace, and Poland expanded its no-fly zone to most of the country, excluding Krakow. Belgium extended its flight restrictions until late Saturday morning.

Iceland, a nation of 320,000 people, sits on a large volcanic hot spot in the Atlantic's mid-oceanic ridge and has a history of devastating eruptions. One of the worst was the 1783 eruption of the Laki volcano, which spewed a toxic cloud over Europe, killing tens of thousands.

___

Associated Press Writers Robert Barr, Jennifer Quinn and Jane Wardell in London, Karl Ritter and Louise Nordstrom in Stockholm, Melissa Eddy and Verena Schmitt-Roschmann in Berlin, Ciaran Giles in Madrid, Bradley Klapper and Frank Jordans in Geneva, Ian MacDougall in Oslo and Pauline Jelinek in Washington contributed to this report.


http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/eu_icelan...lnaHRkaXNydXA-

[samanthajane13]

Volcanic cloud casts pall over interwoven world
By ARTHUR MAX and ANGELA CHARLTON, Associated Press Writers Arthur Max And Angela Charlton, Associated Press Writers – 9 mins ago

PARIS – A cloud of ash hovered over Europe on Friday, casting a pall over an interwoven world.

Made up of microscopic particles as hard as a knife's blade, the dust cloud coughed up by an Icelandic volcano crept across the industrial powerhouses of Europe, into the steppes of Russia and as far south as Hungary.

It left behind stranded travelers, grounded cargo flights, political confusion and even fears the cloud of grit settling on Earth will endanger the lungs of children, asthmatics and others with respiratory ailments.

How long it lasts and how far it spreads depends entirely on two unpredictable events: Whether the volcano beneath Iceland's Eyjafjallajokull (ay-yah-FYAH'-plah-yer-kuh-duhl) glacier keeps pumping tons of dust into the air and what wind patterns do.

The invisible cloud could split, reaching down into northern Italy, and perhaps break apart over the Alps. Scientists say the volcano could continue erupting for months, with more chaos ensuing with each big belch of basalt powder and gas.

"It's going to be a mess," said volcanologist Michael Rampino of New York University. "It's a menace to air traffic, just sitting there, waiting to go off."

Henry Margusity, senior meteorologist for AccuWeather.com, predicted the jet stream winds will continue picking up dust over Iceland and carry it to Britain and Europe "like a spray can of ash" through next Wednesday.

Is it a first? The devastating 19th-century eruption of Indonesia's Krakatau island was bigger. In ancient times, Mount Vesuvius buried an entire city and in the 17th century, a series of eruptions from Peru to the South Pacific blocked the sun's energy and sent the Earth's temperatures plunging.

But in this era of global trade crisscrossing the planet by air, the Icelandic eruption has implications that underscore the particular vulnerabilities of the modern world.

The airline industry said it was losing $200 million a day in cancellations — not counting additional costs for rerouting or taking care of grumpy passengers.

Almost two-thirds of Europe's usual 28,000 flights were grounded Friday — twice as many as a day earlier, according to the air traffic agency Eurocontrol. Air space remained closed in Britain and across large chunks of north and central Europe.

Restrictions were imposed or lifted as the cloud moved: Flights were suspended at Frankfurt airport, Europe's third-busiest, and elsewhere in Germany, while Ireland reopened airports in Dublin and Cork.

Even powerful politicians were left far from home. German Chancellor Angela Merkel, was forced to govern Europe's biggest economy from Portugal after her flight from the United States was diverted.

A new iPad helped Norway's Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg keep in touch with his government while he was stuck in Switzerland, where he ended up after trying to fly home from the U.S.

With German air space closed, a flight carrying five German soldiers wounded in Afghanistan was diverted to Turkey; U.S. medical evacuations from Iraq and Afghanistan went directly to Washington.

Airline cancellations also brought personal anguish.

Anissa Isker arrived at Charles de Gaulle airport early Friday in hopes of taking her 8-year-old son Ryan, who has a rare genetic disease and uses a wheelchair, to Miami for treatment that could help him walk.

The hard-to-schedule treatment costs $3,000, a sum she is afraid she will lose if they can't leave this weekend.

"I think it's going to be tough, especially with my little one. When I told him we cannot leave, he got nervous," Isker told AP Television News. "Because he wants to go, he has made up his mind and he cannot understand."

Potentially lifesaving organs, too, were stuck in transit.

All organs that usually get flown out to patients were instead being distributed to those within driving distance.

"Hearts, lungs and livers, which are normally transported by air, are now delivered regionally and by ground travel," said Nadine Koerner, a spokeswoman for the German Foundation for Organ Transplant.

The World Health Organization warned the ash could cause breathing problems. Europeans, especially those with respiratory ailments or asthma, should try to stay indoors if the ash starts settling.

"We're very concerned about it," said WHO spokesman Daniel Epstein. "These particles when inhaled can reach the peripheral regions of ... the lungs and can cause problems."

Other experts, however, weren't convinced the volcanic ash would have a major health effect. Ken Donaldson, a professor of respiratory toxicology at the University of Edinburgh, said volcanic ash was much less dangerous than cigarette smoke or pollution.

With planes in Norway grounded and trains booked up, British comedian John Cleese resorted to a $5,100 (30,000 kroner) taxi ride to Brussels from Oslo, where he had taped an appearance on a Norwegian talk show Thursday night. From there, he planned to go by train to London, his publicist said.

The volcanic ash drifted at between 20,000 to 30,000 feet (6,000 to 9,000 meters), but was not a solid band of dust and particles. It was moving at around 25 miles (40 kilometers) per hour, said Harry Geurts, of the Dutch meteorological office KNMI.

Ash settled like a layer of talcum powder in parts of Iceland and lightly coated parts of Scotland, England, Norway and the Faroe Islands.

Oddly, the sun shone over much of Britain and the European low countries — more used to overcast skies than sunshine. Europe could be treated to spectacular sunsets for weeks or months to come from the lingering dust.

Rampino, the volcano expert, said the explosive power of the eruption was unusual for Iceland, where volcanic activity normally occurs as lava flows.

It may have been an interaction between the volcano's magma and the glacial ice that thrust the ash high enough to catch the winds of the jet stream sweeping toward northern Europe, he said.

"It's very difficult to predict the size, predict the behavior of a volcano," he said.

A study by Italian scientists of the dispersal of ash from the Etna eruption in 1998 highlighted the uncertainty of any predictions.

It said the trajectory of an ash cloud can change within a few hours in response to wind speeds at various heights. Particle size is also a factor: The smaller the grains of ash, the less likely they will fall to Earth.

The minuscule size of the Iceland particles makes them likely to disperse in the atmosphere unless they wash down with rain.

For now, the ash appeared unlikely to have the same cooling effect on the planet as major eruptions in history, including the 1991 eruption of Mount Pinatubo in the Philippines, which reduced temperatures and lowered sea levels for several years.

The Philippines eruption spewed up to 28 tons of sulfur dioxide into the air in two days that acted like millions of tiny mirrors reflecting sunlight back into space, said Brenda Ekwurzel, a climate scientist from the Union of Concerned Scientists in Washington.

"These are two different types of volcanos to start out with," she said. "We're still stuck with global warming."

___

Max reported from Amsterdam. Associated Press writers around Europe contributed to this report.


http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100416/...ud_over_europe

[samanthajane13]

Flight disruptions in Europe get even worse
By JILL LAWLESS, Associated Press Writer Jill Lawless, Associated Press Writer – 1 hr 23 mins ago

LONDON – Thick drifts of volcanic ash blanketed parts of rural Iceland on Friday as a vast, invisible plume of grit drifted over Europe, emptying the skies of planes and sending hundreds of thousands in search of hotel rooms, train tickets or rental cars.

Polish officials worried that the ash cloud could threaten the arrival of world leaders for Sunday's state funeral for President Lech Kaczynski and his wife Maria in the southern city of Krakow.

So far, President Barack Obama, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev and German Chancellor Angela Merkel are among those coming and no one has canceled. Kaczynski's family insisted Friday they wanted the funeral to go forward as planned but there was no denying the ash cloud was moving south and east.

The air traffic agency Eurocontrol said almost two-thirds of Europe's flights were canceled Friday, as air space remained largely closed in Britain and across large chunks of north and central Europe.

"The skies are totally empty over northern Europe," said Brian Flynn, deputy head of Eurocontrol, adding "there will be some significant disruption of European air traffic tomorrow."

The agency said about 16,000 of Europe's usual 28,000 daily flights were canceled Friday — twice as many as were canceled a day earlier.

U.S. airlines canceled 280 of the more than 330 trans-Atlantic flights of a normal day, and about 60 flights between Asia and Europe were canceled.

The International Air Transport Association said the volcano was costing the industry at least $200 million a day.

Southern Iceland's Eyjafjallajokull (ay-yah-FYAH'-plah-yer-kuh-duhl) glacier began erupting for the second time in a month on Wednesday, sending ash several miles (kilometers) into the air. Winds pushed the plume south and east across Britain, Ireland, Scandinavia and into the heart of Europe.

Gray ash settled in drifts near the glacier, swirling in the air and turning day into night. Authorities told people in the area with respiratory problems to stay indoors, and advised everyone to wear masks and protective goggles outside.

In major European cities, travel chaos reigned. Extra trains were put on in Amsterdam and lines to buy train tickets were so long that the rail company handed out free coffee.

Train operator Eurostar said it was carrying almost 50,000 passengers between London, Paris and Brussels. Thalys, a high-speed venture of the French, Belgian and German rail companies, was allowing passengers to buy tickets even if trains were fully booked.

Ferry operators in Britain received a flurry of bookings from people desperate to cross the English Channel to France, while London taxi company Addison Lee said it had received requests for journeys to cities as far away as Paris, Milan, Amsterdam and Zurich.

The disruptions hit tourists, business travelers and dignitaries alike.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel had to go to Portugal rather than Berlin as she flew home from a U.S. visit. Norwegian Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg managed to get a flight to Madrid from New York but was still not sure when or how he would get back home.

The military also had to adjust. Five German soldiers wounded in Afghanistan were diverted to Turkey instead of Germany, while U.S. medical evacuations for troops in Iraq and Afghanistan are being flown directly from the warfronts to Washington rather than to a care facility in Germany. The U.S. military has also stopped using temporarily closed air bases in the U.K. and Germany.

Aviation experts said it was among the worst disruptions Europe has ever seen.

"We don't have many volcanoes in Europe," said David Learmount of Flight International, an aviation publication. "The wind was blowing in the wrong direction."

In Iceland, torrents of water carried away chunks of ice the size of small houses on Thursday as hot gases melted the glacier over the volcano. Sections of the country's main ring road were wiped out by the flash floods.

More floods from melting waters are expected as long as the volcano keeps erupting — and in 1821, the same volcano managed to erupt for more than a year.

Small amounts of ash settled in northern Scotland and Norway, but officials said it posed little threat to health.

The ash cloud, drifting between 20,000 to 30,000 feet (6,000 to 9,000 meters) high and invisible from the ground, initially blocked the main air flight path between the U.S. east coast and Europe. On Friday, the cloud's trajectory was taking it over northern France and Austria and into eastern and central Russia at about 25 mph (40 kph).

Fearing that microscopic particles of highly abrasive ash could endanger passengers by causing aircraft engines to fail, authorities shut down air space over Britain, Ireland, France, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Finland and Belgium. That halted flights at Europe's two busiest airports — Heathrow in London and Charles de Gaulle airport in Paris — as well as dozens of other airports, 25 in France alone.

Air space restrictions were lifted, imposed or extended Friday as the cloud moved.

Italian aviation authorities were closing airspace in northern Italy on Saturday until midday, with airports in Milan and Venice to close.

Germany shut down all of its international airports, including Munich and Frankfurt, Europe's third-busiest terminal.

Sweden and Norway declared skies in the far north to be safe but kept a lockdown on flights to both capitals — Stockholm and Oslo.

Aviation officials said the air over England would remain closed to flights until at least 1 p.m. (1200 GMT, 8 a.m. EDT) Saturday, and British Airways announced it was canceling all of its flights to and from London airports late Friday and on Saturday. Airspace restrictions in Scotland and Northern Ireland have been lifted, and Irish aviation authorities reopened airports in Dublin and Cork.

In France, airports in Paris and about 20 other locations in northern France will remain closed until at least midday Saturday.

Belgium extended its flight restrictions until late Saturday morning.

Switzerland, Slovakia, Croatia and Hungary closed their airspace, and Poland expanded its no-fly zone to most of the country, excluding Krakow.

Iceland, a nation of 320,000 people, sits on a large volcanic hot spot in the Atlantic's mid-oceanic ridge and has a history of devastating eruptions. One of the worst was the 1783 eruption of the Laki volcano, which spewed a toxic cloud over Europe, killing tens of thousands.

___

Associated Press Writers Robert Barr, Jennifer Quinn and Jane Wardell in London, Karl Ritter and Louise Nordstrom in Stockholm, Melissa Eddy and Verena Schmitt-Roschmann in Berlin, Ciaran Giles in Madrid, Bradley Klapper and Frank Jordans in Geneva, Ian MacDougall in Oslo and Pauline Jelinek in Washington contributed to this report.


http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100417/...celand_volcano

[samanthajane13]

Volcano illustrates world's interconnectedness
By MICHAEL TARM, Associated Press Writer Michael Tarm, Associated Press Writer – 2 hrs 15 mins ago

CHICAGO – A volcano erupts in Iceland, and the effects ripple around the globe: A mom in Romania frets about making her son's wedding in Texas. A florist in New York worries shipments won't arrive. Patients awaiting treatment in Nigeria have to wait another week for the doctors.

The fallout from the ash cloud looming over Europe illustrates just how interconnected our world has become.

Thousands of planes fly millions of passengers and tons of cargo each day, providing the economic lifeblood of nations and businesses. The flights deliver products for sale or items as small as a specialized tool that lets a factory keep operating.

The planes also bring medicines to hospitals and food aid to earthquake or hurricane victims. And they bring war and peace. Soldiers are often transported to and from hot spots by air.

Tales of woe and inconvenience span every social level, from the Norwegian prime minister who got stuck in New York and had to govern using his iPad, to ordinary people who saved money for trips of a lifetime, then had to abandon those plans.

The eruption was a single act of nature, but it stopped the world in countless ways.

___

A Texas mom stranded in Europe fears that the travel disruptions could force her to miss her son's wedding.

San Antonio native Nancy Price is due to fly from Bucharest to Munich, on to Chicago and then south to Texas for the Saturday nuptials in San Antonio. There's no other way for her to get home.

Planning for the wedding is further complicated because the couple is being married by Price's brother, Rev. Bert Clayton, a Methodist minister.

Clayton is in London with his wife. He's due to fly to the U.S. on Wednesday, so he's watching whether the travel disruption will continue.

Price has lived with her husband in a village north of Bucharest for the past 15 years. Ever the optimist, she says: "We are packing anyway."

___

Marathoners train for months to be ready for race day. They're seasoned to overcome obstacles, but no one can outrun this volcano.

Many runners who have trained for Monday's Boston Marathon may not get the chance to compete after being stranded by flights that never left the tarmac. David Gray missed last year's race because of injury, and this was supposed to be the year he got the chance to climb Heartbreak Hill. Instead, he's stuck in hotel room in Brussels, Belgium.

"To have an act of God like this happen is really frustrating," Gray said.

A 41-year-old television producer from New York City who has run twice in the New York Marathon, Gray has tried everything: He's asked to be rerouted through Italy or Spain, figuring they were far enough south to avoid the ash cloud. But the only way he can get to those countries is by train or rental car, and they are all booked.

He's asked about flying out of Moscow, and going over the North Pole rather than the North Atlantic, but to no avail.

___

Anissa Isker arrived at Charles de Gaulle Airport outside Paris in hopes of taking her son to Miami for specialized treatment that could help him walk. He has a rare genetic disease that keeps him in a wheelchair.

The hard-to-schedule treatment costs $3,000, a sum she is set to lose if they cannot leave this weekend. The French civil aviation authority is keeping airports in northern France closed until at least Saturday.

"When I told him we cannot leave, he got nervous, because he understood the situation," Isker said.

Across the Atlantic, Babafemi Adenuga faced a medical predicament of his own.

The family physician and medical professor at Howard University was supposed to lead a team of around 30 medical personnel to Nigeria to provide free care where it is badly needed.

But their flight to Nigeria connects in Frankfurt, and it was canceled because of the volcanic ash. Adenuga was scrambling Friday to get to Nigeria as soon as possible.

In Europe, potentially lifesaving organs were also stranded. A spokeswoman for the German Foundation for Organ Transplant said all organs that usually get flown out to patients were instead being distributed regionally.

With the airlines stalled, organs must now be delivered by land — and their recipients are chosen by distance.

Continued...

[samanthajane13]

Oliver Dragojevic, a Croatian singer who has been hugely popular in the Balkans for 40 years, had a dream: To follow the steps of Sinatra, Clapton and Pavarotti and sing in the Royal Albert Hall.

And he might have made it if flights into London hadn't been grounded — meaning that he and his band probably won't reach London in time for Monday's concert.

Ictinus Grupa, the agency that organized the concert, said the concert is "very much in question." Booking another show at the Royal Albert Hall hasn't happened yet.

"Of course I'd be very disappointed" if the concert is eventually canceled, Dragojevic said in a phone interview. "It was supposed to be a big thing for me."

Fans from Croatia are devastated, too. Merlin Tours, a travel agency that was selling a four-day package to London starting Saturday, said they are flooded with calls from about 50 people who were scheduled to go.

___

Mourners from across the world are expected in Poland on Sunday for the funeral of Polish President Lech Kaczynski. But Alexander Lacherbauer-Lynn won't be among them because no flight will take off in time.

Lacherbauer-Lynn grew up in Chicago, steeped in his Polish ancestry. His mother and father emigrated from Poland, he spoke Polish at home, and he's spent many of his summers in Poland.

So the 20-year-old political science major at Loyola University jumped at the chance when a Polish parliamentarian invited him to attend the funeral of Kaczynski, who was killed in a plane crash in eastern Russian earlier this month.

Lacherbauer-Lynn said the pageantry and gathering of dignitaries for the state ceremony was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.

"It would have been very historic," he said. "I don't think anything like that will occur again."

Other world leaders were inconvenienced, too. After getting stranded in New York City, the Norwegian prime minister discovered a new tool for governing from afar: Apple's iPad.

A spokeswoman for Jens Stoltenberg said the prime minister's return flight was canceled, so he began using his newly purchased device to keep in touch with his office back in Norway and to do work.

___

Salmon and flowers are just two of the many products that are transported through Europe to destinations around the world. But the ash cloud meant many restaurants, supermarkets and florists might not get their shipments.

In New York City's Flower District, the Friday night flights from the Netherlands are a big deal. Thousands of dollars worth of tulips, peonies, daffodils and hundreds of other varieties come in by air, to be distributed starting Saturday morning. This weekend's weddings won't have Dutch flowers.

"This is the beginning of our busy season," said Andrew D'Amore at wholesaler Fischer and Page. "We just hope it doesn't go too much longer."

David Pilat, designated seafood buyer for the giant Whole Foods Market, is worried about a silvery pink delicacy — Atlantic salmon.

The problem is that all of the suppliers of the fish are in Norway, Scotland, the British Shetland Islands and in Iceland.

Ironically, only the salmon farms in Iceland were able to ship fish because the ash cloud is blowing away from most of the island, Pilat said.

"I've been staying in constant touch with our logistic folks, and we have freight booked at London's Heathrow Airport ready to go when they can," he said.

___

Associated Press writers Mark Pratt in Boston, Warren Levinson in New York, Matt Barakat in Fairfax, Va., and Angela Charlton in Paris contributed to this report.


http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100416/...ano_the_ripple

[samanthajane13]

Volcano spews more ash, spawns wider flight chaos
By PAISLEY DODDS, Associated Press Writer Paisley Dodds, Associated Press Writer – 21 mins ago

LONDON – A lingering volcanic ash plume forced extended no-fly restrictions over much of Europe on Saturday, as Icelandic scientists warned that volcanic activity had increased and showed no sign of abating — a portent of more travel chaos to come.

Scientists say that because the volcano is situated below a glacial ice cap, the magma is being cooled quickly, causing explosions and plumes of grit that can be catastrophic to plane engines if prevailing winds are right.

"The activity has been quite vigorous overnight, causing the eruption column to grow," Icelandic geologist Magnus Tumi Gudmundsson told The Associated Press on Saturday. "It's the magma mixing with the water that creates the explosivity. Unfortunately, there doesn't seem to be an end in sight."

An expansive cloud of grit hovered over parts of western Europe on Saturday, triggering extended flight bans that stranded people around the globe. Continued volcanic activity could produce more plumes if the weather patterns stay the same.

The Icelandic Meteorological Office said the amount of ash in the plume grew Saturday and that the vast ash cloud is continuing to travel south and southeast. Scientists had planned to fly over the volcano to see how much ice has melted to determine how much longer the eruption could spew ash, but the Icelandic Coast Guard said Saturday's flight had been postponed.

Aviation experts say the volcanic plume has caused the worst travel disruption Europe — and the world — has ever seen.

"I've been flying for 40 years but I've never seen anything like this in Europe," said Swedish pilot Axel Alegren, after landing his flight from Kabul, Afghanistan, at Munich Airport; he had been due to land at Frankfurt but was diverted.

Anxious passengers have told stories of missed weddings, graduations, school and holidays because of the ominous plume, which seemed likely to disrupt world leaders' plans to attend Sunday's state funeral for Polish President Lech Kaczynski and his wife Maria in the southern city of Krakow.

So far, delegations from India, Japan, South Korea, Mexico, New Zealand and Pakistan have canceled plans to attend the state funeral. President Barack Obama, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev and German Chancellor Angela Merkel still planned to attend. Slovenian President Danilo Turk decided to travel to Poland by car.

Most of northern and central Europe's airspace has been shut down, affecting airports from New Zealand to San Francisco. On Saturday, the French prime minister extended the closure of airspace in northern France until Monday morning. British airspace is closed until at least 0600 GMT Sunday, and forecasters said the ash cloud would progressively cover the whole of the U.K. later Saturday. British Airways is canceling all short-haul flights to and from London airports Sunday.

Stranded passengers reported the delays were causing financial hardships. Some had to check out of hotels and sleep in the airports.

"I have been staying in a hotel but have now checked out and do not know what I am going to do — I have limited financial resources here," said Anthony Adeayo, 45, who was due to travel from Britain to Nigeria with British Airways.

Others, desperate to return home or get to meetings, rushed to book a ride on ferries or taxis.

P&O Ferries said its ferry services from France's Calais to Britain's Dover were overbooked and there was no space left on their ferries for foot passengers, while a Virgin Holidays Cruises phone operator said dozens of people have called in to ask about transatlantic crossings to New York aboard the Queen Mary 2 cruiser.

A British taxi firm said it pocketed a fortune from driving a group of clients hundreds of miles to Switzerland.

Shoppers were warned Saturday that continued flight bans could spark shortages of imported fresh fruit and vegetables.

"There are no shortages yet, but we may start to see certain ranges affected if this carries on," said Christopher Snelling, head of global supply chain policy for the Freight Transport Association.

The Belgian and Swiss governments extended their ban until Saturday evening. Italian aviation authorities were closing airspace in northern Italy on Saturday until 1800GMT. Spain's Iberia airline is canceling most of its European flights until further notice.

In the Nordics, air space in the central and southern parts of the region was expected to remain closed at least until Sunday afternoon.

At least 45 flights between Europe and Asia were cancelled Saturday. Australia's Qantas canceled all flights to Europe, and passengers were being offered refunds or seats on the next available flight. The airline said it was not known when flights would resume. Cathay Pacific was already canceling some Europe-bound flights leaving Hong Kong on Sunday.

"The British Airways telephone message says check the Web site for updates but when you check the site it says call the customer services number," said James Kirkman, 41, who was visiting family in Australia with his two kids. "There's no information. The kids were due back at school on Monday."

Southern Iceland's Eyjafjallajokull (ay-yah-FYAH'-plah-yer-kuh-duhl) volcano began erupting for the second time in a month on Wednesday, sending ash several miles (kilometers) into the air. Winds pushed the plume south and east across Britain, Ireland, Scandinavia and into the heart of Europe.

Authorities told people in the area with respiratory problems to stay indoors, and advised everyone to wear masks and protective goggles outside.

The air traffic agency Eurocontrol said about 16,000 of Europe's usual 28,000 daily flights were canceled on Friday — twice as many as were canceled a day earlier. U.S. airlines canceled 280 of the more than 330 trans-Atlantic flights of a normal day.

The International Air Transport Association says the volcano is costing the industry at least $200 million a day.

The disruptions hit tourists, business travelers and dignitaries alike.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel had to go to Portugal rather than Berlin as she flew home from a U.S. visit. China, Japan and Russia and five other Asian nations were missing finance talks with the European Union in Spain.

The military also had to adjust. Five German soldiers wounded in Afghanistan were diverted to Turkey instead of Germany, while U.S. medical evacuations for troops in Iraq and Afghanistan had to be flown directly from the warfronts to Washington rather than to a care facility in Germany. The U.S. military has also stopped using temporarily closed air bases in the U.K. and Germany.

In Iceland, torrents of water have carried away chunks of ice the size of small houses. Sections of the country's main ring road were wiped out by the flash floods.

More floods from melting waters are expected as long as the volcano keeps erupting — and in 1821, the same volcano managed to erupt for more than a year.

Iceland, a nation of 320,000 people, sits on a large volcanic hot spot in the Atlantic's mid-oceanic ridge and has a history of devastating eruptions. One of the worst was the 1783 eruption of the Laki volcano, which spewed a toxic cloud over Europe, killing tens of thousands.

___

Associated Press Writers Naomi Koppel and Sylvia Hui in London, Geir Moulson in Berlin, Angela Charlton in Paris, Raf Casert in Brussels, Slobodan Lekic in Munich, David Nowak in Moscow and Kwang-Tae Kim in Seoul, South Korea, contributed to this report.


http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100417/...celand_volcano

[samanthajane13]

Hollywood vs. The Volcano: Ash disrupts celebs
By DERRIK J. LANG, AP Entertainment Writer Derrik J. Lang, Ap Entertainment Writer – Sat Apr 17, 11:13 am ET

LOS ANGELES – A volcanic cloud of ash hovering over Europe is causing quite a scene in Hollywood and beyond.

The ash spat out by an Icelandic volcano that has left thousands of air travelers stranded is also affecting celebrities, filmmakers, musicians and even pro-wrestlers.

With almost two-thirds of Europe's flights grounded, cancelations and postponements were popping up across the entertainment landscape on Saturday as Icelandic scientists warned that volcanic activity had increased and showed no sign of abating.

Organizers of the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival in Indio, Calif., tweeted that some acts were forced to pull out of the weekend event, including British rockers The Cribs and Bad Lieutenant, Scottish rockers Frightened Rabbit, and British dance trio Delphic. It also appears unlikely that British synth singer Gary Numan will make it to Coachella for his Sunday slot.

"The last thing I expected this morning when I woke up was to hear that volcanic ash might be preventing us from flying to America," Numan posted on his Web site. "At the moment, the very best British Airways are offering us, and this without any guarantee, is to put us on a Sunday flight that gets into Los Angeles in the afternoon on Sunday."

However, several performers from Europe scheduled to perform at Coachella were already across the Atlantic Ocean or had boarded planes before the volcanic cloud forced a rash of flight cancelations. Those included Radiohead's Thom Yorke, Gorillaz, Muse, Hot Chip, Fever Ray and Florence and the Machine.

Whitney Houston was forced to ditch a plane for a ferry across the Irish Sea to perform in Dublin. The R&B diva, currently in the middle of her "Nothing But Love" world tour, opted for the not-so-glamourous boat ride after no-fly orders shut down airports across Europe. Houston is scheduled to perform the first of three shows Saturday at the O2 arena in London.

The ash cloud also grounded several other musicians in Europe. Welsh indie pop band Los Campesinos! canceled their Friday appearance at the Culture Shock Festival in Purchase, N.Y., as well as their Saturday concert in Hoboken, N.J. Pop singer Mika postponed his Friday concert in Lisbon, Portugal, after unexpectedly finding himself stranded in Paris.

"Volcano freak out," he tweeted. "This is bad."

The situation was also causing havoc for World Wrestling Entertainment, the professional wrestling organization nearing the end of a two-week European tour. Several wrestlers and crew members traveled for nearly 17 hours in buses and ferries to make it from Lieven, France, to Belfast, Ireland. The trip normally takes about an hour and a half in a plane.

WWE spokesman Kevin Hennessy said it was unclear if everyone would arrive in time for Monday night's scheduled "WWE Raw" event at the Izod Center in East Rutherford, N.J. He said the WWE wrestlers and crew normally "fly commercial, but we are booking a charter just to be safe." Hennessy added that "Sunday is normally a simple travel day — very easy."

Although scientists were indicating that travel chaos could extend into the new week, New York's Tribeca Film Festival, which is set to begin Wednesday, had yet to receive any cancellations by late Friday. The festival will feature films from nearly 40 countries and several filmmakers from Europe had been planning to attend.

Worldwide press junkets for two of the summer season's most anticipated films — "Iron Man 2," starring Robert Downey Jr., and "Robin Hood," starring Russell Crowe — also were still scheduled as planned next weekend in London, according to studio officials.

Some U.S. book publishing executives were forced to cancel plans to attend next week's London Book Fair because of the disrupted air travel. But organizers said Friday the three-day gathering will proceed as scheduled.

Back in Hollywood, Saturday's blue-carpet world premiere of Disneynature's "Oceans," at the El Capitan Theatre was already prepared to hit bumpy waters. The film's French director, Jacques Cluzaud, and producers won't be attending the debut of their Disney documentary narrated by Pierce Brosnan and starring underwater critters. They're stuck overseas.

___

AP writers Sandy Cohen in Los Angeles, Jake Coyle and Hillel Italie in New York, and Sylvia Hui in London contributed to this report.


http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100417/...no_celebrities

[samanthajane13]

Ash may hover for days over uncertain Europe
By SYLVIA HUI and ANGELA CHARLTON, Associated Press Writer Sylvia Hui And Angela Charlton, Associated Press Writer – 40 mins ago

PARIS – The Icelandic volcano that has kept much of Europe land-bound is far from finished spitting out its grit, and offered up new mini-eruptions Saturday that raise concerns about longer-term damage to world air travel and trade.

Facing days to come under the volcano's unpredictable, ashy plume, Europeans are looking at temporary airport layoffs and getting creative with flight patterns to try to weather this extraordinary event.

Modern Europe has never seen such a travel disruption. Air space across a swath from Britain to Ukraine was closed and set to stay that way until Sunday or Monday in some countries, affecting airports from New Zealand to San Francisco. Millions of passengers have had plans foiled or delayed.

Activity in the volcano at the heart of this increased early Saturday, and showed no sign of abating.

"There doesn't seem to be an end in sight," Icelandic geologist Magnus Tumi Gudmundsson told The Associated Press on Saturday. "The activity has been quite vigorous overnight, causing the eruption column to grow."

Scientists say that because the volcano is situated below a glacial ice cap, the magma is being cooled quickly, causing explosions and plumes of grit that can be catastrophic to plane engines, depending on prevailing winds.

In Iceland, winds dragged the ashes over new farmland, to the southwest of the glacier, causing farmers to scramble to secure their cattle and board up windows.

With the sky blackened out and the wind driving a fine, sticky dust, dairy farmer Berglind Hilmarsdottir teamed up with neighbors to round her animals and get them to shelter. The ash is toxic — the fluoride causes long-term bone damage that makes teeth fall out and bones break.

"This is bad. There are no words for it," said Hilmarsdottir, whose pastures near the town of Skogar were already covered in a gray paste of ash.

Forecasters say light prevailing winds in Europe — and large amounts of unmelted glacial ice above the volcano — mean that the situation is unlikely to change quickly.

"Currently the U.K. and much of Europe is under the influence of high pressure, which means winds are relatively light and the dispersal of the cloud is slow," said Graeme Leitch, a meteorologist at Britain's National Weather Service. "We don't expect a great deal of change over the next few days."

A Dutch geologist who is in Iceland observing the volcano, Edwin Zanen, described it to Dutch state broadcaster NOS:

"We're at 25 kilometers (16 miles) distance from the crater now. We're looking at a sun-soaked ice shelf, and above it is looming a cloud of ashes of oh, 4 to 5 kilometers (2.5 to 3 miles) high. There are lightening flashes in it. It's a real inferno we're looking at.

"There's absolutely no sign that the thing is calming down. On the contrary, we can see that at this moment it's extraordinarily active," he said.

With the prospect of days under the cloud of ash, pilots and aviation officials sought to dodge the dangerous grit by adjusting altitude levels.

Germany's airspace ban allows for low-level flights to go ahead under so-called visual flight rules, in which pilots don't rely on their instruments.

Lufthansa took advantage of that to fly 10 empty planes to Frankfurt from Munich on Saturday in order to have them in the right place when the restrictions are lifted, airline spokesman Wolfgang Weber said.

The planes flew at about 3,000 meters (9,843 feet) — well below their usual altitude — in close coordination with air traffic control.

KLM is carrying out a test flight from Schiphol to Dusseldorf at 3,000 meters or lower, hoping for approval to carry out more low-altitude flights in Europe if the ash problem continues.

The Swiss looked the other direction — above the ash cloud. The Swiss Federal Office of Civil Aviation began allowing flights Saturday above Swiss air space as long as the aircraft were at least at 36,000 feet (11,000 meters). It also allowed flights at lower altitudes under visual flight rules, aimed at small, private aircraft.

All air space in Poland — hosting a huge state funeral for late President Lech Kaczynski — remained closed Saturday to flights above the cloud level of 6,000 meters (20,000 feet) because of the ash cloud.

Some low-level flights are being allowed in the south, however, which is how the Polish Air Force will be able to ferry the coffins of Kaczynski and his wife from Warsaw to Krakow aboard a prop-powered military cargo plane early Sunday morning.


Continued...

[samanthajane13]

Several world leaders, including President Barack Obama, had to abandon plans to attend the funeral because of ash-related disruptions.

European businesses are testing their flexibility to cope with this new crisis.

The aviation industry, already reeling from a punishing period, is facing at least $200 million in losses every day, according to the International Air Transport Association.

Scandinavian airline operator SAS AB said it has given notice of a temporary layoff of up to 2,500 ground service staff in Norway as a result of the flight disruptions. Airline spokeswoman Elisabeth Manzi said it is a precautionary move, and that said eventual temporary layoffs may not affect all 2,500 notified.

Budget airline Norwegian ASA, losing $1.5 million to $1.7 million a day because of the ash-driven closures, is holding meetings with unions Monday to discuss potential temporary layoffs, spokeswoman Asta Braathen said.

"If we are looking at the future, we cannot maintain the cost of all this forever," said Geert Sciot, communications manager of Brussels Airlines, citing such costs as providing buses to passengers meant to fly from Athens or Lisbon to Brussels.

German mail and logistics company Deutsche Post DHL AG rerouted packages that were supposed to be flown via the company's Leipzig, Germany, hub via Italy and other points south, while those already in the areas affected were diverted to trucks and trains, spokesman Stefan Hess said.

"The longer it lasts, the more difficult it gets in principle — but a cloud like this isn't static," he said.

Producers of Italy's milky white, prized buffalo mozzarella, which is highly perishable, pondered their options.

"In the next couple of days we have to decide," said Vito Amendolara, head of the farmers lobby Coldiretti's office in Campania, the region around Naples famed for the cheese. "We cannot sell buffalo milk as it is, because it is too fatty and is meant solely for production of mozzarella. We will either have to throw away the milk or find alternative markets" by heavily promoting it locally.

Around the world, anxious passengers have told stories of missed weddings, business deals and holidays because of the ominous plume. Stranded passengers reported the delays were causing financial hardships. Some had to check out of hotels and sleep in airports.

"It's like a refugee camp," said Rhiannon Thomas, of Birmingham, England, describing the scene at New York's Kennedy Airport.

Her family spent the night at the airport Friday, and may be there for days before they can get a flight home. "At least we got beds," said Thomas' mother, Pat, referring to the hundreds of narrow blue cots brought in to JFK's Terminal 4. "Some people slept on cardboard."

German Chancellor Angela Merkel was heading homeward in an armored car along an Italian highway Saturday — continuing a long and circuitous return from the United States.

Merkel was diverted to Lisbon, spent the night in the Portuguese capital, then flew to Rome on Saturday. From there, she and her delegation set off by road toward northern Italy's South Tyrol region for another overnight stay.

Pope Benedict XVI's flight to Malta for a weekend pilgrimage was one of the few to depart Saturday from Rome. Greeting journalists aboard the plane, the pontiff told them he hoped they would have "nice trip without this dark cloud that has arrived on the rest of Europe."

Southern Iceland's Eyjafjallajokull (ay-yah-FYAH'-plah-yer-kuh-duhl) volcano began erupting for the second time in a month Wednesday, sending ash several miles (kilometers) into the air.

In Iceland, torrents of water have carried away chunks of ice the size of small houses. More floods from melting waters are expected as long as the volcano keeps erupting — and in 1821, the same volcano managed to erupt for more than a year.

___

Hui reported from London. Associated Press Writers Carlo Piovano in Reykjavik, Iceland, Malin Rising in Stockholm, Toby Sterling in Amsterdam, Naomi Koppel in London, Geir Moulson in Berlin, Raf Casert in Brussels, Victor Simpson in Malta, and Alice Herford in Rome contributed to this report.


http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100417/...htYXlob3ZlcmY-

[Marian Paroo]

If this had to happen at all, why couldn't it happen last November, leaving me "stuck" in England!!!!

[samanthajane13]

European airlines send up test flights despite ash
By VANESSA GERA, Associated Press Writer Vanessa Gera, Associated Press Writer – 4 mins ago

KRAKOW, Poland – An elaborate state funeral for Poland's President Lech Kaczynski and his wife, Maria, was held Sunday bereft of many world leaders whose travel plans were paralyzed by the plume of volcanic ash that blanketed Europe.

The couple's bodies were flown from Warsaw to Krakow early Sunday for the tradition-laden ceremony and burial in the nearby Wawel Cathedral, the final resting place for Poland's kings, poets and statesmen, including Gen. Wladyslaw Sikorski, the exiled World War II leader who died in a mysterious plane crash off Gibraltar in 1943.

President Barack Obama, French President Nicolas Sarkozy and German Chancellor Angela Merkel were among the leaders who canceled at the last minute because of the expanding volcanic ash cloud, dangerous to airplane engines, that has enveloped Europe and closed nearly all of the continent's airports since late Thursday.

"All the French people will be, in their thoughts, with the Polish people" on Sunday, Sarkozy said in a letter sent to acting President Bronislaw Komorowski expressing his regret for being unable to attend.

The volcanic ash from Iceland did not deter everyone. The leaders of Baltic and Balkan states, came by car for the stately event.

Polish police estimated the number of mourners in and around Krakow at nearly 150,000.

Russian President Dmitry Medvedev flew by plane from Moscow for the funeral. His presence was a further sign of the warming ties between the two countries, which had been strained for centuries, most recently because of communism and the 1940 Katyn massacre.

Krakow Archbishop Stanislaw Dziwisz acknowledged those ties in remarks to the congregation, noting that the tragedy had given rise "to many layers of good between the people and nations."

"The sympathy and help we have received from Russian brothers has breathed new life into a hope for closer relations and reconciliation between our two Slavic nations," Dziwisz said. "I direct these words to the president of Russia."

Despite the dearth of global dignitaries, no one said the funeral should be postponed.

"I wouldn't move the funeral," said Bartek Kargol who was among thousands of people waiting for the event Krakow. "This event is for our president."

Christian Stoltner, a German student, said Poles need their time to mourn.

"One cannot do anything about the fact that there are ashes around now," he said. "The date was set and momentum was built and slowly it's time to find closure."

The funeral Mass was held at St. Mary's Basilica, a 13th-century red-brick Gothic church set on a vast market square in Krakow's Old Town.

Inside, scores of Poland's political elite were seated in the ancient pews, shoulder to shoulder with leaders from Estonia, Belarus, Armenia, Latvia, Lithuania and Ukraine.

The Mass was led by Dziwisz. The Kaczynskis' daughter, Marta, and the president's twin brother, Jaroslaw, sat in the front row as Mozart's requiem was played.

"Memory and truth are stronger than the greatest tragedies," Janusz Sniadek, the chairman of the Solidarity trade union said. "The solidarity of Poles in these days of mourning is a tribute to you, your wife and all the victims."

After the Mass, the bodies of the first couple were carried atop a pair of artillery caissons pulled by army Humvees in a funeral procession led by the archbishop, priests and soldiers across the picturesque Renaissance old town and up the Wawel hill. That is the historic seat of kings where a fortress wall encircles a castle and a 1,000-year-old cathedral overlooks Vistula River.

As they made their way down the nearly mile-long (1.6-kilometer-long) route, the crowds waved Polish flags, clapped and chanted: "Lech Kaczynski! We thank you!"

Twenty monks rang the massive Zygmunt Bell inside the Wawel Cathedral, its pealing echoing across Krakow.

The funeral came eight days after the Polish air force Tupolev 154 crashed on approach to Smolensk, Russia, killing the first couple and 94 others.

After an all-night vigil at St. John's Cathedral in Warsaw, the bodies of the couple were driven slowly through Warsaw past places linked to Kaczynski's life, including City Hall, where he served as mayor of Warsaw, and a museum he championed on the Warsaw Uprising of 1944.

They were then flown by military transport to Krakow, below the volcanic ash plume. As their funeral cortege made its way to St. Mary's, thousands of mourners lined the streets and many tossed bouquets of flowers on the hearses.

Ahead of the Mass, scores of people flocked to a memorial at the base of Wawel hill to pay tribute to those who died, leaving flowers and candles.

Pictures of Kaczynski and his wife, as well as other victims, could be seen amid candles and flowers left by mourners who came to pay their respects.

The April 10 plane crash — which investigators in Russia and Poland have said was likely because of human error — plunged the country into a deep grief not seen since the death of Pope John Paul II five years ago.

The plane went down in heavy fog after clipping a birch tree on approach to Smolensk, Russia. Those aboard had planned to attend a memorial for thousands of Polish army officers executed in 1940 by Josef Stalin's secret police.

The first couple will be laid to rest together in a honey-hued sarcophagus made from Turkish alabaster in a crypt of the cathedral and it will be open to mourners after Sunday's ceremonies.

The decision to bury Kaczynski at Wawel sparked protests in recent days, with people saying that despite the national tragedy he still does not belong in the company of some of the nation's most august figures.

Karolina Rajchel, 19, a student who traveled five hours from Wroclaw, said she had not supported every step that Kaczynski took, but called the protests "out of place" in light of his death.

"Kaczynski had good and bad qualities, but now you shouldn't say anything bad about the dead," she said. "I am here to honor the president as well as all those who died."

Among those buried there are Jozef Pilsudski, who led Poland from 1926 until his death in 1935; Romantic-era poet Adam Mickiewicz; and Tadeusz Kosciuszko, a hero of the American Revolution and of Poland's 1794 uprising against Russia's occupation.

___

Associated Press Writer Monika Scislowska in Warsaw and AP Television News Producer Theodora Tongas and Associated Press Writer Marta Kucharska in Krakow contributed to this report.


http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100418/...nd_plane_crash

[samanthajane13]

Germany loosens flight restrictions slightly

BERLIN – German air traffic control slightly loosened its ban on flights from the country Sunday, allowing some traffic at Frankfurt and airports in the north.

The air traffic control agency said flights from Frankfurt and the smaller Hahn airport nearby would be allowed until 8 p.m. (1800 GMT) — but only for planes heading to some destinations to the north.

Berlin, Hannover, Erfurt and Leipzig were allowed to until 8 p.m. (1800 GMT) Sunday — but only for some planes headed eastward.

The agency said it was acting on the basis of weather forecasts from the Volcanic Ash Advisory Center in London. Restrictions on Hamburg airport initially were lifted as well, but that decision was swiftly reversed.

All other German airports, including Munich, remain closed until at least 1800 GMT.

It wasn't immediately clear how many flights might be able to depart. Air Berlin and Lufthansa already have canceled all flights until at least that time.

There was no immediate sign of activity at Berlin's Tegel airport.


http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100418/...1hbnlsb29zZQ--

[samanthajane13]

A glance at flight disruptions due to volcanic ash
By The Associated Press The Associated Press – 1 hr 43 mins ago

Eurocontrol, the European air navigation and safety organization, says by the end of Sunday more than 63,000 flights will have been canceled since April 15.

Of around 24,000 flights that normally operate on a Sunday only some 4,000 will fly, Eurocontrol said.

U.K.: All airspace closed until at least 0000 GMT (8 p.m. EDT Sunday).

Ireland: All airspace closed until at least 1200 GMT (8 a.m. EDT) Monday.

France: All airspace north of an axis between Nice on the Mediterranean and Bordeaux near the Atlantic will remain closed through 8 a.m. (0600 GMT) Tuesday. Air France tried five evaluation test flights Sunday. Airports in Marseille, Nice and Toulouse remain open through Monday.

Germany: Air traffic control slightly loosened its ban on flights from the country Sunday, temporarily allowing some traffic at Frankfurt and airports in the north. Flights were allowed from the Frankfurt hub and the smaller Hahn airport nearby until 8 p.m. (1800 GMT) — but only for planes heading to some destinations to the north. They — along with the airports in Hannover, Erfurt and Leipzig, which also were cleared for limited operations Sunday afternoon — will then be closed again until at least 2 a.m. (0000 GMT) Monday. The two Berlin airports were allowed to operate until 10 p.m. (2000 GMT) Sunday — but only for some planes headed eastward. All other German airports, including Munich, remained closed.

Austria: Airports closed until at least 0000 GMT (8 p.m. EDT Sunday). Overflights at or above 26,000 feet (8,000 meters) are allowed.

Belgium: Belgian airspace closed until at least 0600 GMT (2 a.m. EDT) Monday, but likely to decide then whether to let fleets reposition empty aircraft for traffic when service resumes.

The Netherlands: All airspace closed until at least 1200 GMT (8 a.m. EDT) Sunday.

Switzerland: Airspace closed until at least 1200 GMT (8 a.m. EDT) Monday. Planes using instruments can fly across Switzerland as long as they stay above 36,000 feet (11,000 meters).

Italy: Airspace in northern Italy closed until 0600 GMT (2 a.m. EDT) Monday.

Spain: reopened all its airports at 1330 GMT (10:30 a.m. EDT). Flights to all European destinations except Portugal, south Italy, Greece and Istanbul remain closed. Flights to north and south America operating normally.

Sweden: Airspace closed in southern Sweden, including Stockholm. Air travel permitted north of the city of Soderhamn in central Sweden.

Denmark: airspace closure has been extended until at least 0600 GMT (2 a.m. EDT) Monday.

Finland airspace closed until 1500 GMT (11 a.m. EDT) Monday.

Norway: authorities have lifted air travel restrictions in most parts of central and northern Norway down to Bergen. Airspace in the far north and south, including the capital, remain closed but Oslo's Gardermoen airport could open during the evening.

Iceland: flights to UK and mainland Europe suspended indefinitely; flights to U.S. operating normally.

Bulgaria: reopens airspace for overflights above 26,000 feet (8,000 meters). Airports in Sofia, the capital, and the southern city of Plovdiv were temporarily reopened Sunday afternoon, but flights to all European destinations except Cyprus, Greece and Moscow remained closed.

Poland: Airspace closed Sunday. Overflights permitted above 20,000 feet (6,100 meters).

Czech Republic: airspace closed until at least 1000 GMT (6 a.m. EDT) Monday.

Slovakia: Airspace closed until at least Sunday evening.

Russia: Russian airlines are canceling flights to various points in Europe, but Russian airspace remains open.

Croatia: the country's airspace reopened mid-Sunday except small Osijek airport in the east. Flights from Split and Dubronvik to Madrid and Rome are on, as well as domestic flights.

Turkey: Black Sea cities of Zonguldak, Sinop and Samsun closed until 0900 GMT (5 a.m. EDT) Monday. Istanbul Ataturk, Turkey's main airport, could be affected Monday.


http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100418/...FuY2VhdGZsaQ--

[samanthajane13]

EU says half of normal flights may run Monday
By ARTHUR MAX and SLOBODAN LEKIC, Associated Press Writer Arthur Max And Slobodan Lekic, Associated Press Writer – 2 hrs 39 mins ago

AMSTERDAM – European air traffic could return to about 50 percent of normal levels Monday if weather forecasts confirm that skies over half the continent are emptying of the volcanic ash that has thrown global travel into chaos, the European Union said.

The prospects for a return to normal air travel remained far from clear, however.

Several major airlines safely tested the skies with weekend flights that did not carry passengers. Germany temporarily loosened some airspace restrictions before the EU announcement Sunday evening, allowing limited operations from some of its largest airports before closing them again Sunday evening. Other countries enforced closures on their national airspace through late Sunday, Monday or even Tuesday as meteorologists warned that the airborne ash was still unpredictable and potentially dangerous.

The shutdowns imposed after an Icelandic volcano begun erupting Wednesday have stranded millions of travelers. They are costing the aviation industry, already reeling from a punishing economic period, at least $200 million a day, according to the International Air Transport Association.

EU Transport Commissioner Siim Kallas told reporters in Brussels that "it is clear that this is not sustainable. We cannot just wait until this ash cloud dissipates."

Diego Lopez Garrido, state secretary for EU affairs for Spain, which holds the rotating EU presidency, said that "now it is necessary to adopt a European approach" instead of a patchwork of national closures and openings.

"Probably tomorrow one half of EU territory will be influenced. This means that half of the flights may be operating," Lopez Garrido said about conditions Monday.

France's transport minister, Dominique Bussereau, said there will be a meeting on Monday of European ministers affected by the crisis to coordinate efforts to reopen airspace.

Regulators need to take into account that airlines from Holland to Austria flew successful test flights on Sunday despite official warnings about the dangers of the plume, Lopez Garrido said.

KLM Royal Dutch Airlines said that by midday Sunday it had flown four planes through what it described as a gap in the layer of microscopic dust over Holland and Germany. The ash began spewing from an Icelandic volcano Wednesday and has drifted across most of Europe, shutting down airports as far south and east as Bulgaria.

Air France, Lufthansa and Austrian Airlines also sent up test flights, although most traveled below the altitudes where the ash has been heavily concentrated.

National air safety regulators have the right to close down a country's air space in cases of extreme danger. But they can also grant waivers to airlines to conduct test flights or to ferry empty airliners from one airport to another at lower altitudes not affected by the main ash clouds.

Kallas called the problems spawned by the eruption unprecedented and said there were no EU-wide rules for handling such a crisis.

Kyla Evans, spokeswoman for the European air traffic control agency Eurocontrol, said earlier in the day that it was up to national aviation authorities to decide whether to open up their airspace. The agency's role was to coordinate traffic once it was allowed to resume.

"But there is currently no consensus as to what consists an acceptable level of ash in the atmosphere," said Daniel Hoeltgen, a spokesman for the European Aviation Safety Agency. "This is what we are concerned about and this is what we want to bring about so that we can start operating aircraft again in Europe."

KLM said its received permission from Dutch and European aviation authorities for planes of various types to fly the 115-mile (185-km) flight from Duesseldorf in western Germany to Amsterdam's Schiphol Airport at an unspecified normal altitude above 10,000 feet (3,000 meters). They did not encounter the thick though invisible cloud of ash, whose main band has floated from 20,000 to 32,000 feet, the height of most commercial flight paths.

The announcement of successful test flights prompted some airline officials to wonder whether authorities had overreacted to concerns that the tiny particles of volcanic ash could jam up the engines of passenger jets. The possibility that the ash had thinned or dispersed over parts of Europe heightened pressure from airline officials to loosen restrictions.

"With the weather we are encountering now — clear blue skies and obviously no dense ash cloud to be seen, in our opinion there is absolutely no reason to worry about resuming flights," said Steven Verhagen, vice president of the Dutch Airline Pilots Association and a Boeing 737 pilot for KLM.

Meteorologists warned, however, that the situation above Europe remained unstable and constantly changing with the varying winds — and the unpredictability was compounded by the irregular eruptions from the Icelandic volcano spitting more ash into the sky.

KLM's first test flight was Saturday and the airline said it planned to return more planes without passengers to Amsterdam from Duesseldorf on Sunday, planning to bring the total number of flights to 10 by the end of the day. Engineers immediately took the aircraft for inspection as they landed.


Continued...

[samanthajane13]

"We hope to receive permission as soon as possible after that to start up our operation and to transport our passengers to their destinations," said Chief Executive Peter Hartman, who was aboard one of Saturday's flights.

Air France said its first test flight Sunday, from Charles de Gaulle airport to Toulouse in southern France, "took place under normal conditions."

"No anomalies were reported. Visual inspections showed no anomalies," Air France said in a statement soon after it landed. "Deeper inspections are under way."

It did not say how high the planes had flown.

Germany's Lufthansa flew 10 empty long-haul planes Saturday to Frankfurt from Munich at low altitude, between 3,000 and 8,000 meters (9800 and 26000 feet), under so-called visual flight rules, in which pilots don't have to rely on their instruments, said spokesman Wolfgang Weber.

"We simply checked every single aircraft very carefully after the landing in Frankfurt to see whether there was any damage that could have been caused by volcanic ash," Weber said. "Not the slightest scratch was found on any of the 10 planes."

German air traffic control said Air Berlin and Condor airlines had carried out similar flights.

Air Berlin, Germany's second-biggest airline, said it had transferred two planes from Munich to Duesseldorf and another from Nuremberg to Hamburg without problems on Saturday. They flew at 9,840 feet (3,000 meters).

A technical inspection of the aircraft after landing "did not reveal any adverse effects," the company said.

Air Berlin Chief Executive Joachim Hunold declared himself "amazed" that the results of the German airlines' flights "did not have any influence whatsoever on the decisions taken by the aviation safety authorities."

Businessman Niki Lauda said Sunday that his Fly Niki airlines planned a test flight from Vienna to Salzburg. Austrian Airlines spokesman Martin Heheman said it was flying an Airbus A320 to the southern city of Graz, where the plane will undergo a technical check to see what if any effects the volcanic cloud had. If none, three more test flights from Graz to Vienna are planned.

Austrian Airlines spokeswoman Pia Stradiot, when asked if the firm thought the flights were safe, said: "That's exactly what we want to test and this is why we are immediately checking the planes after they land."

Rognvaldur Olafsson, a spokesman with the Civil Protection Agency in Iceland, said Sunday the eruption is continuing and there are no signs that the ash cloud is thinning or dissipating.

"It's the same as before," he said. "We're watching it closely and monitoring it."

The British Meteorological Office said there was no way to be certain that areas clear of ash will remain that way. The cloud "won't be present at all parts of the area at risk at all times, you can see clear area, but it will change, it won't stand still," said meteorologist John Hammond.

The Met Office said the ash reached up to 20,000 feet, but that the grit also was dropping to low levels in some places and settling on the ground in parts of southern England.

The Swiss Federal Office of Civil Aviation began allowing flights Saturday above Swiss air space as long as the aircraft were at least at 36,000 feet (11,000 meters). It also allowed flights at lower altitudes under visual flight rules, aimed at small, private aircraft.

Ash and grit from volcanic eruptions can sabotage a plane in various ways: the abrasive ash can sandblast a jet's windshield, block fuel nozzles, contaminate the oil system and electronics and plug the tubes that sense airspeed. But the most immediate danger is to the engines. Melted ash can then congeal on the blades and block the normal flow of air, causing engines to lose thrust or shut down.

Scientists say that because the volcano is situated below a glacial ice cap, magma is being cooled quickly, causing explosions and plumes of grit that can be catastrophic to plane engines, depending on prevailing winds.

"Normally, a volcano spews out ash to begin with and then it changes into lava, but here it continues to spew out ash, because of the glacier," said Reynir Bodvarsson, director of Swedish National Seismic Network. "It is very special."

Bodvarsson said the relative weakness of the eruption in Iceland also means the ash remains relatively close to the earth, while a stronger eruption would have catapulted the ash outside of the atmosphere.

In 1989, a KLM Boeing 747 that flew through a volcanic ash cloud above Alaska temporarily lost all four motors. The motors restarted at a lower altitude and the plane eventually landed safely.

___

Lekic reported from Brussels. Associated Press writers Karl Ritter in Stockholm, Greg Katz in London, Angela Charlton in Paris, Toby Sterling and Mike Corder in Amsterdam and Malin Rising in Stockholm contributed to this report.


http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100418/...celand_volcano

[samanthajane13]

European airlines test skies, press to end ban
By ARTHUR MAX, Associated Press Writer Arthur Max, Associated Press Writer – 1 hr 12 mins ago

AMSTERDAM – Major airlines that sent test flights into European air space found no damage Sunday from the volcanic ash that has paralyzed aviation over the continent, raising pressure on governments to ease restrictions that have thrown global travel and commerce into chaos.

Is it safe to fly yet? Airline officials and some pilots say the passengerless test flights show that it is. Meteorologists warn that the skies over Europe remain unstable from an Icelandic volcano that continues to spew ash capable of knocking out jet engines.

European Union officials said air traffic could return to half its normal level on Monday if the dense cloud begins to dissipate. Germany allowed some flights to resume.

Eighty percent of European airspace remained closed for a devastating fourth day on Sunday, with only 4,000 of the normal 20,000-flight schedule in the air, said Brian Flynn, deputy head of operations for Eurocontrol, which supports the air traffic control network across the European Union's 27 states.

"Today it has been, I would say, the worst situation so far," Flynn said.

The test flights highlighted a lack of consensus on when to reopen the skies. The microscopic but potentially menacing volcanic grit began closing airports from Ireland to Bulgaria on Thursday, stranding countless passengers and leaving cargo rotting in warehouses.

"It is clear that this is not sustainable. We cannot just wait until this ash cloud dissipates," EU Transport Commissioner Siim Kallas told reporters at the European capital in Brussels.

KLM Royal Dutch airlines, the national German carrier Lufthansa, Air France and several regional airlines sent up test flights, probing altitudes where the cloud of ash has wafted over Europe since the volcano turned active on Wednesday. British Airways planned an evening flight over the Atlantic from Heathrow, one of Europe's busiest hubs.

None of the pilots reported problems, and the aircraft underwent detailed inspections for damage to the engines and frame.

"Not the slightest scratch was found" on any of the 10 empty long-haul planes Lufthansa flew Saturday to Frankfurt from Munich, spokesman Wolfgang Weber said. The planes flew at low altitude, between 3,000 and 8,000 meters (9800 and 26000 feet), under so-called visual flight rules, in which pilots don't have to rely on their instruments.

Steven Verhagen, vice president of the Dutch Airline Pilots Association, said he would not hesitate to fly an aircraft today carrying his own family.

"With the weather we are encountering now — clear blue skies and obviously no dense ash cloud to be seen, in our opinion there is absolutely no reason to worry about resuming flights," said Verhagen, a pilot of Boeing 737s for KLM. "We are asking the authorities to really have a good look at the situation, because 100 percent safety does not exist."

Civil aviation authorities in each country must decide whether to resume commercial traffic, but the 27-nation EU said if weather forecasts are correct it expected half its flights to operate normally on Monday. While it was still unclear how the dust would affect jet engines, the EU said it was encouraged by promising weather predictions, at least for the next 24 hours.

"Probably tomorrow one half of EU territory will be influenced. This means that half of the flights may be operating," said Diego Lopez Garrido, state secretary for EU affairs for Spain, which holds the rotating EU presidency. He did not provide details about which flights might resume.

France's transport minister, Dominique Bussereau, said there will be a meeting on Monday of European ministers affected by the crisis to coordinate efforts to reopen airspace.

Meteorologists warned that the situation above Europe was constantly changing because of varying winds and the continuing, irregular eruptions from the Icelandic volcano. That uncertainty is bumping up against Europe's need to resume flights.

"There is currently no consensus as to what consists an acceptable level of ash in the atmosphere," said Daniel Hoeltgen, a spokesman for the European Aviation Safety Agency. "This is what we are concerned about and this is what we want to bring about so that we can start operating aircraft again in Europe."

The ranks of stranded passengers, meanwhile, were growing, and many would be stuck for days even if restrictions were fully and immediately lifted.

Mike Parker, trying to return to London from Milan, had made it as far as Paris by Sunday. He stood in line for hours for a bus ticket, only to be told "there's nothing available, there's no trains, there's no planes, there's nothing."

"This is my third day and it looks like it might be another three days before I get back," Parker said.

Rognvaldur Olafsson, a spokesman with the Civil Protection Agency in Iceland, said Sunday the eruption is continuing and there are no signs that the ash cloud is thinning or dissipating.

"It's the same as before," he said. "We're watching it closely and monitoring it."

German air traffic control was the first on Sunday to loosen its ban on passenger flights, allowing some traffic from Frankfurt and airports in the north, but only for northern destinations. Eastward-bound flights were permitted from Berlin, Hannover, Erfurt and Leipzig. The Swiss Federal Office of Civil Aviation also began allowing some flights Saturday.

AccuWeather.com said the top of the ash plume had dropped to about 10,000 feet from 33,000 earlier in the week, putting it in the flight path of even low-flying aircraft. Shifts in the wind will increase the risk for the Netherlands and Germany on Tuesday and Wednesday, the forecaster said.

Ash and grit from volcanic eruptions can damage a plane in various ways. The abrasive ash can sandblast a jet's windshield, block fuel nozzles, contaminate the oil system and electronics and plug the tubes that sense air speed. The greatest danger is to the engines, where melted ash can then congeal on the blades and block the normal flow of air.

There are no recorded instances of fatal aircraft crashes involving volcanic ash, though several have suffered damage and some temporarily lost engine power.

Scientists say that because the volcano is situated below a glacial ice cap, magma is being cooled quickly, causing explosions and plumes of grit that can be catastrophic to plane engines.

"Normally, a volcano spews out ash to begin with and then it changes into lava, but here it continues to spew out ash, because of the glacier," said Reynir Bodvarsson, director of Swedish National Seismic Network.

Bodvarsson said the relative weakness of the eruption in Iceland also means the ash remains relatively close to the earth, while a stronger eruption would have catapulted the ash out of the atmosphere.

___

Associated Press writers Karl Ritter in Stockholm, Greg Katz in London, Angela Charlton in Paris, Toby Sterling and Mike Corder in Amsterdam, Slobodan Lekic in Brussels, George Jahn in Vienna and Malin Rising in Stockholm contributed to this report.


http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100419/...celand_volcano

[samanthajane13]

Mission impossible: Escape from Europe
By GEORGE JAHN, Associated Press Writer George Jahn, Associated Press Writer – 31 mins ago

VIENNA – Stranded travelers are piling into buses, trains and high-priced taxis in a frantic scramble to accomplish an increasingly tricky mission: Escape from Europe.

Spain was becoming a dream destination not for its beaches and monuments but simply by virtue of the fact it's one of the few European countries unaffected by the ash cloud drifting across the continent.

Monstrous lines filled the departure terminals at Madrid's Bajaras Airport as people sought a chance to flee — and tempers were fraying.

"I am on the standby list and I am homeless right now," said Roberta Marder, 73, from Tulsa, Oklahoma. "I am here fighting in the line and trying to get a ticket."

Many people arrived with stories of grueling road trips to get to Madrid.

Doug Hahn, 36, from Portland, Oregon was settling into his seat Thursday on a New York-bound plane in Amsterdam when the flight was canceled. He and three other stranded travelers rented a car and drove to Madrid — a 16 hour road journey.

The price? Six hundred euros, split three ways — a "good deal" for Hahn, who said the car company initially wanted 1,600 euros for the one-way rental. He managed to get a ticket for a Miami flight later in the day.

With flying conditions uncertain, only a fraction of the continent's airports were operating. Eurocontrol, the continental air authority said airlines in Europe were expected to fly only between 8,000 and 9,000 of their 28,000 scheduled flights on Monday — mostly from southern Europe.

A German rental agency on Sunday was asking more than 1,000 euros — close to $1,400 — for a car one-way from Belgrade, Serbia, to Munich, while another firm demanded 1,850 euros ($2,500) for a Madrid to Brussels rental. In Stockholm, Magnus Klintback, a spokesman for the Swedish firm Taxi Kurir, said about 50 clients had willingly paid prices of up to 34,000 kronor — nearly $5,000 — to different European destinations from which they had a chance to fly home.

Legions of other travelers were simply stranded.

At Frankfurt Airport, one of continental Europe's biggest hubs, airport spokesman Uwe Witzel said that almost 500 passengers — most of them from Africa or Asia with no visas for the EU — were spending their fourth day in the transit area.

Witzel said the stranded were being provided with three meals a day, showers and fresh clothing as needed.

"We've set up an Internet lounge, we've hired people to entertain the kids and we've also arranged a spot outside the terminal building where people can go to get a breath of fresh air and some sun," he said.

In Austria, authorities lifted flight bans early Monday, buoying travelers' spirits. Officials said that approximately 65 flights had left by noon.

But most were within Europe. Austrian Airline officials said the only two transcontinental flights possible later in the day were to Beijing and Bangkok.

Attinchat Apirukkunwong won't be on either.

"I am still patient now, but probably not for much longer," said the Bangkok native, his face strained by the fatigues of a European vacation gone awry. He said he was hoping for a flight back home via a Turkish Airlines flight to Istanbul.

For Greg Moncada, flying was a professional imperative — he had scheduled job interviews on Tuesday.

"I'm trying to get to Seattle," said Moncada, high school principal at Vienna's American International School. "I have to be there tomorrow."

Stranded Europeans trying to get home were no better off.

At Incheon International Airport in South Korea, a group of about 30 frustrated passengers blocked a Korean Air ticketing counter and demanded a meeting with company officials to arrange travel to anywhere in Europe after they heard an Air France jet flew from the airport to the French city of Bordeaux.

They held up a makeshift sign saying, "We want to come back home," each word written on a separate piece of paper and held by an individual traveler.

"We need a flight, we need a time," Thierry Loison, who has been stuck since Friday at Incheon on the way back to France after a vacation in Bali, told Korean Air officials. "We were like animals this morning."

Passengers resting on blankets spread on the floor of a business center complained about the lack of hotel accommodations. They said they were only receiving a voucher for one meal a day at McDonald's and that they were running out of money.

Chloe Paull, a teaching assistant at a secondary school in England on her way home after a trip to Japan during school break, was supposed to be back at work Monday. She has been stuck in South Korea since Saturday and said Air France is sending her back to Japan, where she's booked into a Wednesday flight back home.

"The problem is it might not be open so I can just be stuck in Japan, same as here" she said with a laugh.

Being stranded is becoming a financial burden, she said.

"My job isn't highly paid and I spent a lot of money in Japan," she said. "It's an expensive place."

___

Associated Press writers throughout Europe and Asia contributed to this report.


http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100419/...pe_from_europe

[samanthajane13]

UK sends warships to rescue stranded Britons
By JENNIFER QUINN and JAMEY KEATEN, Associated Press Writer Jennifer Quinn And Jamey Keaten, Associated Press Writer – 3 mins ago

LONDON – Britain sent Royal Navy warships on Monday to rescue those stranded across the Channel by the volcanic ash cloud and the aviation industry blasted European officials, claiming there was "no coordination and no leadership" in the crisis that shut down most European airports for a fifth day.

As airline losses spiraled over $1 billion, Eurocontrol, the air traffic agency in Brussels, said less than one-third of flights in Europe were taking off Monday — between 8,000 and 9,000 of the continent's 28,000 scheduled flights. Airports in southern Europe were open, however, and Spain offered to become an emergency hub for the whole continent.

In Iceland, meteorologists said eruptions from the volcano were weakening and the ash was no longer rising to a height where it would endanger large commercial aircraft. British Transport Secretary Andrew Adonis confirmed there was been a "dramatic reduction in volcanic activity."

Video still showed smoke billowing into the air from the volcano under the Eyjafjallajokull glacier.

Hundreds of thousands of passengers have been stranded around the world since the volcano in southern Iceland begun erupting Wednesday for the second time in a month. Passengers in Asia, frustrated over sleeping on airport floors for days and running out of money, staged protests at airport counters.

European airlines are seeking financial compensation for a crisis that is costing the industry at least $200 million a day — and by some estimates up to $300 million a day. The BA airline chief said test flights had proven that flying was safe.

As pressure mounted from airlines, European civil aviation authorities were holding a conference call Monday about what steps could be taken toward opening airspace.

"It's embarrassing, and a European mess," said Giovanni Bisignani, chief executive of the International Air Transport Association. "It took five days to organize a conference call with the ministers of transport and we are losing $200 million per day (and) 750,000 passengers are stranded all over. Does it make sense?"

The IATA, world's leading airline industry group, expressed its "dissatisfaction with how governments have managed it, with no risk assessment, no consultation, no coordination, and no leadership." The group urged governments to more urgently "focus on how and when we can safely reopen Europe's skies."

Several airlines have run flights over the last few days, and none reported problems or damage, prompting some to wonder whether governments had overreacted to concerns that the microscopic particles of ash could shut down jet engines.

British Airways said it had flown a plane Sunday through the no-fly zone and found "no variations in the aircraft's normal operational performance."

"The analysis we have done so far, alongside that from other airlines' trial flights, provides fresh evidence that the current blanket restrictions on airspace are unnecessary," BA chief executive Willie Walsh said Monday.

KLM Royal Dutch Airlines said it had flown four planes Sunday through what it described as a gap in the layer of microscopic dust over Holland and Germany. Air France, Lufthansa and Austrian Airlines also sent up test flights, although most traveled below the altitudes where the ash has been heavily concentrated.

With airlines pressing for a restrictions to be lifted, a senior Western diplomat said Monday that several NATO F-16 fighters had flown through the ash cloud, and one had suffered engine damage from glasslike deposits — evidence that the danger from the cloud is very real.

The official declined to provide more details on the military flights and spoke on condition of anonymity due to the sensitivity of the information.

Some smaller airports reopened Monday but authorities in Britain, France, Germany, and the Netherlands — home to four of Europe's five largest airports — said their air space was still closed. Britain said it was keeping flight restrictions on through early Tuesday while Italy briefly lifted restrictions then quickly closed down again.

Eurocontrol said Monday that southern Europe was mostly open for flights — including Portugal, Spain, parts of Italy and France, the Balkans, Bulgaria, Greece and Turkey — as were parts of northern Europe like Norway.smo


Continued-

[samanthajane13]

In London, Prime Minister Gordon Brown said the aircraft carrier HMS Ark Royal and assault ship HMS Ocean would be sent across the English Channel. A third ship is being spent to Spain to pick up soldiers trying to get back to Britain after a tour of duty in Afghanistan.

"I expect Ocean to be in the Channel today. I expect the Ark Royal to moving towards the Channel later," Brown said after meeting with the government's emergency committee, known as COBRA.

He said Britain was speaking with Spanish authorities to see whether Britons stranded overseas could be flown there and then taken home by boat or bus.

Brown said the ash cloud had created "the biggest challenge to our aviation transport network for many years."

In Spain, all airports were open Monday and the government volunteered to become the new hub of Europe to get stranded passengers moving again. Infrastructure minister Jose Blanco said Spain could to take in around 100,000 people under the new emergency plan, which focuses on aircraft trying to bring Britons home from Asia, Latin America and North America.

Spain will also beef up train, bus and ferry services to get travelers to their destinations, he said.

Tensions boiled over at Incheon International Airport in South Korea, where 30 frustrated passengers blocked a Korean Air ticketing counter and demanded officials arrange travel to anywhere in Europe after hearing about the test flights. Some complained about sleeping on airport floors and only getting one food voucher a day — for McDonald's.

"We need a flight, we need a time," Thierry Loison, who has been stuck at the airport since Friday, told Korean Air officials. "We were like animals this morning."

Transport ministers from Britain, Germany, France and Spain were meeting Monday by videoconference and will later be joined by all 27 EU transport ministers, said French Transport Minister Dominique Bussereau.

"We will try to outline corridors, if we can, based on the evolution of the cloud, to allow the reopening of as large a number of flight paths as possible, as quickly as possible and in good security conditions," Bussereau said.

Diego Lopez Garrido, state secretary for EU affairs for Spain, which holds the rotating EU presidency, said "now it is necessary to adopt a European approach" instead of a patchwork of national closures and openings.

Ash and grit from volcanic eruptions can sabotage a plane in many ways: the abrasive ash can sandblast a jet's windshield, block fuel nozzles, contaminate the oil system and electronics and plug the tubes that sense airspeed. But the most immediate danger is to the engines. Melted ash can then congeal on the blades and block the normal flow of air, causing engines to shut down.

"There is currently no consensus as to what consists an acceptable level of ash in the atmosphere," said Daniel Hoeltgen, a spokesman for the European Aviation Safety Agency. "This is what we are concerned about."

Scientists say because this volcano is located below a glacial ice cap, magma is being cooled quickly, causing explosions and plumes of grit that can be catastrophic to plane engines, depending on prevailing winds.

Geologists in Iceland saw a red glow at the bottom of the volcano, suggesting the eruption is turning to lava flow, and said there is less ice in the crater, which would reduce the plume.

"We hadn't seen that before," Kristin Vogfjord, a geologist at the Icelandic weather office, said Monday.

___

Keaten reported from Paris. Associated Press writers Slobodan Lekic in Brussels, Arthur Max in Amsterdam, Karl Ritter in Stockholm, Jill Lawless in London, Kelly Olson in Seoul, Angela Charlton in Paris, Toby Sterling and Mike Corder in Amsterdam and Malin Rising in Stockholm contributed to this report.


http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100419/...celand_volcano

[samanthajane13]

Airline losses from ash spiral over $1 billion
By JAMEY KEATEN, Associated Press Writer Jamey Keaten, Associated Press Writer – 23 mins ago

PARIS – As airline losses from the volcanic ash cloud spiraled over $1 billion on Monday, the industry demanded EU compensation and criticized European governments for relying too much on scientific theory — not fact — in their decisions to shut down airspace across the continent.

Shares of some European airlines fell as flight disruptions from the volcanic cloud moved into a fifth day, and the International Air Transport Association complained of "no leadership" from government leaders — one of whom admitted to EU dissension about how to respond.

"It's embarrassing, and a European mess," IATA CEO Giovanni Bisignani told The Associated Press. "It took five days to organize a conference call with the ministers of transport and we are losing $200 million per day (and) 750,000 passengers are stranded all over. Does it make sense?"

European civil aviation authorities held a conference call Monday about what steps could be taken toward opening airspace, and transport ministers from all 27 EU member states were to hold another later in the day.

Dominique Bussereau, France's transport minister, told reporters Monday that he had urged EU president Spain ever since Saturday to call the ministerial meeting immediately — but Madrid declined.

"Naturally, it would have been better if had taken place Sunday or Saturday," Bussereau said.

British Airways said airlines have asked the EU for financial compensation for the closure of airspace, starting last Wednesday. With London among the first hubs shut down, the British carrier said it's losing as much as 20 million pounds ($30 million) per day.

BA Chief executive Willie Walsh said European airlines have asked the EU and national governments for financial compensation for the closure of airspace. He pointed to a precedent: compensation paid to airlines after the closure of U.S. airspace following the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks.

"This is an unprecedented situation that is having a huge impact on customers and airlines alike," Walsh said. "We continue to offer as much support as we can to our customers, however, these are extraordinary circumstances that are beyond all airlines' control."

Environment Minister Jean-Louis Borloo — the No. 2 in the French Cabinet — said a meeting was planned Tuesday of French airlines, travel agencies and the government to examine possible state aid to the industry.

"This aid will evolve of course based on the severity of the crisis. For that, we need a European pre-accord that we have obtained — an accord in principle so this sector aid can be allocated," Borloo told France's i-Tele.

German Transport Minister Peter Ramsauer said government decisions were based on a "sea of data" — and defended the continued closure of air space in his country. He brushed off airlines' complaints about losses, saying they know about their susceptibility to weather conditions.

"It is completely obvious that you have to calculate with such risks," he told Radio station Deutschlandfunk. "And I defend myself right away against any calls to the government," to compensate for the corporate losses.

The IATA, in a statement, called on governments to place "greater urgency and focus on how and when we can safely reopen Europe's skies" — such as through more in-depth study of the ash cloud.

"We have to not just use — as the Europeans were doing — a theoretical model, let's try to use figures and facts," Bisignani said." It means sending test planes at certain kinds of altitudes to check what was the situation with the ashes."

While the association says "safety is our top priority," Bisignani said in the statement that its member airlines have run test flights with no problems and "they report missed opportunities to fly safely."

Bisignani said that Europe — unlike the United States, for example — is "not well-equipped" when it comes to planes that can test the air quality in the skies. He estimated that once flights in Europe do resume, it would take three to six days for traffic to return to normal.

France's Borloo said disparate analyses needed to be brought together based on "real tests on real planes with real pilots," so some air "corridors" could be reopened.

"The issue today is not to reopen all European commercial airspace, the issue today is to increase the ability to reopen corridors to allow the general de-congestion of European traffic," he told reporters.

Pierre-Henri Gourgeon, the No. 2 executive at Air France-KLM, said his company is losing euro35 million a day and called for more test flights to see if routes are safe to fly. He said the French-Dutch carrier conducted five test flights on its own Sunday and planned another seven Monday.

Speaking to reporters Monday at Air France headquarters near Paris' main airport, Gourgeon said aviation authorities had relied on "insufficient" information when they imposed a near-blanket flight ban in some countries.

The prospect of continued losses and flight cancelations pushed down shares of many airlines. In early afternoon trade Europe, German carrier Deutsche Lufthansa AG was down 3.9 percent to euro12.24 in Frankfurt; Air France-KLM SA dropped 4.5 percent to euro11.87, and British Airways was down 4.4 percent to 224.6 British pence.

___

Associated Press Writers Juergen Baetz in Berlin and Danica Kirka in London contributed to this report.


http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100419/...rlines_volcano

[samanthajane13]

Volcano flight chaos leaves many passengers broke
By KRISTEN GELINEAU, Associated Press Writer Kristen Gelineau, Associated Press Writer – 2 hrs 48 mins ago

SYDNEY – Andrew and Debbie Jackman of Britain spent more than two years saving up for their family vacation to Australia. They probably wish they'd saved a little longer.

On Friday, they found out their Qantas flight from Sydney to Britain had been canceled thanks to a volcano erupting in Iceland. So the Cambridge couple and their two teenage sons squeezed into a 150 Australian dollar ($138) hotel room to wait out the night. On Saturday, the hotel raised the price of the same room to AU$350 — simply because it could, Andrew said ruefully. After endless negotiations, the hotel brought the price back down to AU$160, but the family, broke and frustrated, opted to move Sunday to a hostel.

"We're at the end of the holiday so we've spent all our money," a weary-eyed Andrew said, as he sat with his family next to the Qantas customer service counter at Sydney Airport. "Because that's what you do on holiday."

A dangerous cloud of ash from the volcano has grounded flights in and out of Europe for four days, leaving thousands of people stranded — and increasingly strapped for cash. Stuck passengers have had to shell out for hotels, restaurant meals, clothing and transport to and from the airport as they seek information on when their travel nightmare might end.

In Japan, Francois Broche was down to his last 3,000 yen ($30). The 33-year-old literature and philosophy professor from Nimes, France, said he would have to call his bank at home to see if he can get his money transferred — but doesn't know how.

"I stayed in my hotel last night, but that was all my money," he said at the Narita International Airport, near Tokyo. "I think I'm going to stay here and sleep at the airport. Help me God."

Nicolas Ribard, 29, from Avignon, France, was among about a dozen stranded tourists squatting on sleeping bags that Narita airport officials had lent them. He and three other friends had about 3,000 yen between them, and were surviving on airport-issued crackers, bottled water and coupons for one free shower a day.

Their earliest possible flight would be Taiwan's EVA Airways on May 12 — but only if they are willing to pay an extra 150 euros ($200). Otherwise, they have to wait until June, Ribard said.

Airport officials came by Monday and offered a tour of the airport to kill time.

"This is not what we need," Ribard said. "We want a bowl of rice."

Many stranded travelers are also fretting over lost paychecks. Tom Napier — an American stuck in Oslo, where he had been visiting a friend — said his prolonged absence from his job as a high school history teacher in Bernards, New Jersey, will "more than likely" affect his salary.

"I am a little afraid that my pay will be docked," said Napier, 35. "I also have tutoring jobs during the week that usually supplement my salary. That will be gone. And even if I don't get my pay docked, all my days off will have to be charged as sick days."

Andrew Cutter, 40, of London, who got stuck in Sweden while visiting his brother, said he will miss out on income from his job as a contractor in the events industry.

Cutter had planned to go back to London with Ryanair on Sunday, but has now rescheduled his flight for Thursday, hoping airspace will be open by then. The four days will cost him about $1,000 in lost wages.

"Really, if I'm not back by next Monday, I think it's going to be an issue," he said. "I had to buy some extra clothes today because I didn't have enough."

Steeper-than-usual hotel prices is another passenger complaint. In Hong Kong, Busi Daniel, a 39-year-old French tourist, said he spent Sunday night in a hotel after his flight was canceled. But a huge jump in price meant he would be forced to sleep at the airport on Monday.

"Yesterday, we had a hotel room at 250 euros. At midday, it was 460 euros, and in the evening, the price was 800 euros for a room — we can't pay that," he said Monday as he waited at KLM Royal Dutch Airlines' counter in Hong Kong's airport.

The Jackmans spent hours pleading for mercy from the Novotel Sydney Brighton Beach after it raised the price of their room the second night.

Asked if the hotel was guilty of price-gouging, the hotel's general manager, Alan Burrows, said simply, "We dynamically price much like the airlines do, according to how many rooms we have to sell in the hotel."

Unlike many airlines, Qantas — Australia's largest carrier — has said it's been paying for stranded passengers' accommodations and providing meal vouchers. That was news to the Jackmans, who said airline representatives told them they were on their own.

On Monday, after spending three hours on hold with Qantas, the family trekked back to the airport (another AU$30 cab ride), and spoke to a customer service representative in person. It was only then, they said, that the airline offered to pay for a hotel room — for one night.

Following queries from The Associated Press, Qantas said it planned to call the family to apologize — and to refund the money they've spent on hotels.

"We regret that the Jackmans have been overlooked in this case," spokesman Simon Rushton said.

Andrew Jackman said that was just the news his cash-strapped family was hoping for, adding that they might even do a bit of sightseeing.

"I think we can enjoy ourselves now."

___

Associated Press writers Ian MacDougall in Oslo, Malin Rising in Stockholm, Joyce Woo in Hong Kong and Malcolm Foster in Tokyo contributed to this report.


http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100419/...Nhbm9mbGlnaA--

[samanthajane13]

Europe resumes some air travel despite volcano
By JILL LAWLESS and SLOBODAN LEKIC, Associated Press Writers Jill Lawless And Slobodan Lekic, Associated Press Writers – 37 mins ago

LONDON – Europe began to emerge from a volcanic cloud Monday, allowing limited air traffic to resume and giving hope to millions of travelers stranded around the world when ash choked the jet age to a halt.

Even then, however, the eruption from the Icelandic volcano that caused the five days of aviation chaos was said to be strengthening and sending more ash toward Britain, which could make it unlikely that London airports would reopen Tuesday.

Three KLM passenger planes left Schiphol airport in Amsterdam on Monday evening during daylight under visual flight rules bound for New York, Dubai and Shanghai. An Associated Press photographer saw one jet taking off into a colorful sunset, which weather officials said was pinker than normal due to the ash.

European Union transport ministers reached a deal during a crisis videoconference to divide northern European skies into three areas: a "no-fly" zone immediately over the ash cloud; a caution zone "with some contamination" where planes can fly subject to engine checks for damage; and an open-skies zone.

Starting Tuesday morning, "we should see progressively more planes start to fly," said EU Transport Commissioner Siim Kallas.

The German airline Lufthansa said it would bring 50 planeloads of passengers home.

But the optimism was tempered Monday night by a statement from the British National Air Traffic Service, which said the eruption of the volcano has strengthened and a new ash cloud was spreading toward Britain.

The service said airspace over some parts of England may be reopened Tuesday afternoon but that the open zone for flights may not extend as far south as London, where the country's main airports are located. It also indicated that Scotland's airports and airspace can reopen as planned Tuesday morning but said the situation in Northern Ireland was uncertain.

Europe's aviation industry — facing losses of more than $1 billion — criticized official handling of the disruption that grounded thousands of flights to and from the continent.

Visual flight rules allow a pilot to fly without reference to instruments, if weather conditions are good enough so the pilot can see landmarks and avoid any other aircraft. Those flights need to be under 18,000 feet, lower than usual altitude for commercial traffic.

Scientists have instruments that can both detect the presence of the ash and measure its concentration — information that can be relayed to pilots.

The airlines said test flights in recent days by airlines including KLM, Lufthansa and British Airways suggested planes can fly safely despite the ash. None of the flights reported problems or damage.

"The analysis we have done so far, alongside that from other airlines' trial flights, provides fresh evidence that the current blanket restrictions on airspace are unnecessary," said BA chief executive Willie Walsh. "We believe airlines are best positioned to assess all available information and determine what, if any, risk exists to aircraft, crew and passengers."

Scientists and pilots urged caution.

"Mixing commercial and safety decisions risks lives," said Philip von Schoppenthau, secretary-general of the European Cockpit Association, a union representing 38,200 pilots from 36 European nations.

"Our members have many firsthand experiences of the extremely abrasive and clogging effects of such clouds," he said.

Millions of travelers have been stuck since the volcano under Iceland's Eyjafjallajokull glacier begun erupting April 14 for the second time in a month, spewing a vast cloud of ash that has drifted over most of northern Europe and is now spreading west toward North America.

White House press secretary Robert Gibbs said about 40,000 Americans in Britain were stranded abroad, citing Louis Susman, the U.S. ambassador to Britain.

"We are working closely with the State Department to examine all the opportunities that we have to speed this process along, understanding that people — you know, some people, maybe, may have gone on vacation," Gibbs said. "They're running out of medicine. They don't have a place to stay."

Eurocontrol, the air traffic agency in Brussels, said less than one-third of flights in Europe were taking off Monday — between 8,000 and 9,000 of the continent's 28,000 scheduled flights. Officials said more would operate Tuesday — although it wasn't immediately clear how many.

German Transport Minister Peter Ramsauer said all planes under the "control zone" plan will be thoroughly checked once they've landed.

"Much stricter tests and checks will be applied to all planes," Ramsauer said, in hopes of gaining more data about the risk from the ash. "Nobody knows how long the situation will continue."

Airports in central Europe and Scandinavia have reopened, and most of southern Europe remained clear, with Spain volunteering to be a staging-point for overseas travelers trying to get home. Infrastructure Minister Jose Blanco said Spain could to take in around 100,000 people under the new emergency plan, which focuses on trying to bring Britons home from Asia, Latin America and North America.



Continued...

[samanthajane13]

As British schools reopened after the Easter break with empty desks and missing teachers — thanks to an estimated 150,000 Britons stranded abroad — authorities resorted to extraordinary measures.

The government said it was sending three Royal Navy warships, including the aircraft carrier HMS Ark Royal, across the English Channel to bring home stranded citizens. One ship was heading to Spain to pick up soldiers trying to get back to Britain after a tour of duty in Afghanistan.

British Prime Minister Gordon Brown said the ash cloud had created "the biggest challenge to our aviation transport network for many years," and European officials said the disruption was worse than that caused by the Sept. 11 attacks.

Tensions boiled over among frustrated passengers at Incheon International Airport in South Korea, where 30 people blocked a Korean Air ticketing counter and demanded officials arrange travel to anywhere in Europe after hearing about the test flights.

"We need a flight, we need a time," Thierry Loison, who has been stuck at the airport since Friday on the way back to France, told Korean Air officials. "We were like animals this morning."

Others complained of rail fares that rose suddenly and hotel rates that tripled overnight. Graham Wishart, 65, stuck in London when his flight to Toronto was canceled, said his hotel bill had gone from 68 pounds ($104) to 189 pounds ($289) a night.

"People are raking in dough here from people who are stuck as a result of this natural disaster," he said. "It's just not right."

A spokeswoman for Canada's environmental department said part of the ash cloud is moving southwest of Iceland, but should not affect Canadian airports. Some flights were canceled at an airport in the eastern province of Newfoundland, although normal schedules were resumed after later data suggested the ash was having no impact on Canada's east coast.

Critics said the coordinated action among European officials came too late.

"It's embarrassing and a European mess," said Giovanni Bisignani, chief executive of the International Air Transport Association.

The IATA accused European governments of offering "no risk assessment, no consultation, no coordination, and no leadership." The group urged governments to more urgently "focus on how and when we can safely reopen Europe's skies" — such as through more in-depth study of the ash cloud to identify safe corridors for planes.

Ash and grit from volcanic eruptions can sabotage a plane in many ways: the abrasive ash can sandblast a jet's windshield, block fuel nozzles, contaminate the oil system and electronics and plug the tubes that sense airspeed. But the most immediate danger is to the engines. Melted ash can then congeal on the blades and block the normal flow of air, causing engines to shut down.

Airlines said the test flights showed the danger was exaggerated. But a senior Western diplomat said Monday that several NATO F-16 fighters suffered engine damage after flying through the ash.

The official declined to provide more details on the military flights, except to say that glasslike deposits were found inside the planes' engines after they patrolled over European airspace.

The crisis caused by the volcano has hit everyone from Icelandic fisherman — unable to transport their catches abroad — to Kenyan farmers whose Europe-bound produce sits rotting in warehouses.

In addition to forcing President Barack Obama to cancel plans to attend the state funeral of Polish President Lech Kaczynski, the ash also caused U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton to call off a scheduled trip to Finland.

The ash also forced the postponement until next week of a much-anticipated visit to Russia by a team of U.S. officials who were to discuss Russian concerns about adoptions.

The most immediate impact has been on airlines, already struggling because of the recession-induced travel downturn.

IATA estimated the industry was losing $200 million a day. British Airways said it was losing up to 20 million pounds ($30 million) a day. Other airlines were also racking up huge losses.

___

Lawless reported from London, Lekic from Brussels; also contributing were Associated Press writers Raf Cassert in Brussels; Geir Moulson and Melissa Eddy in Berlin; Angela Charlton and Jamey Keaten in Paris; Karl Ritter in Stockholm, Jennifer Quinn, Robert Barr and Danica Kirka in London; Carlo Piovano in Reykjavik; Kelly Olsen in South Korea; Toby Sterling, Arthur Max and Mike Corder in Amsterdam; Rob Gillies in Toronto; Malin Rising in Stockholm; and Matthew Lee in Washington.


http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100419/...celand_volcano

[samanthajane13]

Stranded passengers bathe in restroom sinks
By MEGAN K. SCOTT, Associated Press Writer Megan K. Scott, Associated Press Writer – 1 min ago

NEW YORK – During her first four days living in an airport, Dominica Zschiesche cleaned her body with hand wipes and used a public bathroom sink to shave her legs and wash her hair.

But by Day Five at Camp Kennedy, she seemed almost at home, standing near the concourse barefoot and with her hair wrapped in a blue towel after she finally got to shower

"It was wonderful. It was the best shower I ever had," said the 29-year-old art student from Frankfurt.

Hundreds of passengers are stranded at Kennedy Airport while they wait for the volcanic ash cloud over Europe to clear and flights to resume. They were doing the best they could in the stuffy, smelly space.

A Belgian family sat on the terminal floor around a coffee table they built out of a cardboard box. And in a corner, two British tourists made light of their situation by scrawling a sign on a sheet of notebook paper: "JFK Squatters, Yorkshire Branch."

They have set up mini-encampments, brushing their teeth and hair in public bathrooms, fending off boredom by constructing a big cardboard airplane, and sleeping on cots under fluorescent lights amid the din of televisions and the public address system.

"Time goes by slow," said Laurence De Loosa, trying to get home to Belgium from a vacation to celebrate her 21st birthday with a friend. "The lights were on all night. "It was not so easy to sleep. The TV was still on."

As homey as they tried to make it, the airport still presented a hostile environment for some.

Geoff Gilbert, a 57-year-old structural engineer waiting for a flight to Manchester, England, had his wallet stolen at an airport McDonald's. Now, he said Monday, he's completely out of money.

"It's not very comfortable, he said of the airport. "You're indoors all the time. It's hot in there, sticky."

And the end — though in sight — is very far off. "I still have a long wait. I don't fly out until Sunday," he said.

The cloud has paralyzed trans-Atlantic flights since Thursday, causing the biggest flight disruptions since 9/11.

The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which runs the metropolitan area's major airports, has set up 1,000 cots and blankets at JFK and Newark, N.J., served hot meals to the stranded, and handed out essentials such as bottled water and baby wipes. The Red Cross and various consulates have provided some of the bedding and food.

On Monday afternoon, five days into the crisis, the agency opened trailers with a dozen showers at JFK.

The 500-some people camping out at the Port Authority's airports "are being well taken care of," said Chris Ward, the agency's executive director.

Some passengers made JFK their home because hotel rooms were scarce, they had gone way over budget on their New York vacations, or they just thought that staying close to the airport was the smartest thing to do if they wanted to get home soon.

Around the world, hundreds of passengers were having similar experiences, resting on blankets spread on airport floors and relying in some cases on McDonald's meal vouchers.

"We have one meal a day. At the moment a lot of people are not eating," Andrew Turner, a graduate student en route to London after a vacation in Sydney, said from Incheon International Airport in South Korea.

The passenger experience was more pleasant at Frankfurt Airport in Germany, where spokesman Uwe Witzel said the hundreds of stranded travelers were getting three meals a day, showers, fresh clothing and more.

"We've set up an Internet lounge, we've hired people to entertain the kids, and we've also arranged a spot outside the terminal building where people can go to get a breath of fresh air and some sun," he said.

At JFK's Terminal 4, passengers were putting their personal touches on their homes away from home.

Andrew Jenkins and Tom Laughton scrawled, "JFK Squatters, Yorkshire Branch" above their cots. Jenkins, 23, from Yorkshire, England, was relying on Red Cross blankets and $10 daily food vouchers from the Irish airline Aer Lingus.

"We were expecting to be sleeping on the floor," Jenkins said. "As long as we keep getting food vouchers, it's not going to kill us, is it?"

For Johan Bombeke, wife Annemie Quintiga and their three children, being stuck in an airport was no reason not to have furniture. The family arranged the cots they were given in a square, and in the center, they put a coffee table, constructed out of the box that the pillows they received came in.

Alan Godfrey of London staved off boredom by using the boxes the cots were delivered in to construct a 4-foot-long airplane with the sign "Big Al's Airways. Tickets Available! $1." He drew windows on it and attached the wings with drinking straws.

Godfrey had been at the airport since Friday, marking the passage of time with little penstrokes on the wall, one for each night.

The "Welcome to Terminal 8" announcement was playing over and over on the public address system all night, said Christien Lynen, 49, of Belgium. Lynen ate fruit, chips, croissants and soda provided by the Belgian Consulate to stranded travelers. At night, while she tried to fall asleep, she kept smelling the trash collected nearby.

"When you're in a group you're stronger. Luckily we are all together. Everyone is very nice. We help each other," Lynen said.

Mayor Michael Bloomberg said community outreach workers have been sent to JFK to help stranded travelers.

"We love them and we want them to have a good time, but it's kind of hard to do when you can't get your luggage or have to sleep on a cot," he said. "There's no substitute for somebody that wants to get home — they're not going to be happy no matter what you do for them."

___

Associated Press writers Sara Kugler, Deepti Hajela, Karen Matthews and AP Photographer Seth Wenig in New York; Juergen Baetz in Berlin; and Alessandra Rizzo in Rome contributed to this report.


http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100419/...irport_camping

[samanthajane13]

Some EU flights resume but travel chaos not over
By PAISLEY DODDS and DANICA KIRKA, Associated Press Writers Paisley Dodds And Danica Kirka, Associated Press Writers – 37 mins ago

LONDON – Many European flights took to the skies Tuesday for the first time in days but the travel chaos was far from over: London's airports remained shut, a massive flight backlog was growing and scientists feared that history could repeat itself with yet another volcanic eruption in Iceland.

London's airports — among the busiest in Europe and a major worldwide hub — are likely to stay closed until Wednesday, and forecasters said more delays were possible if the dense ash cloud remained over much of the country. Airspace in Germany also remained officially closed until 8:00 p.m. (1800 GMT) but a limited number of flights were allowed in at low altitude.

But it was the first day since Wednesday's eruption of Iceland's Eyjafjallajokull volcano — dormant for nearly 200 years — that travelers were given a glimmer of hope.

Cheers and applause erupted as flights took off from Paris' Charles de Gaulle Airport, Amsterdam and elsewhere.

"Everyone was screaming in the airplane from happiness," said Savvas Toumarides of Cyprus, who finally arrived in New York after getting stuck in Amsterdam for five days and missing his sister's wedding. He said the worst part was "waiting and waiting and not knowing."

"We were in the hotel having breakfast, and we heard an aircraft take off. Everybody got up and applauded," said Bob Basso of San Diego, who has been staying near Charles de Gaulle since his flight Friday was canceled. "There's hope."

Basso, 81, and his son had tickets for a flight to Los Angeles later Tuesday.

The Eurocontrol air traffic agency in Brussels said it expected a little over half — 53 percent — of the 27,500 flights over Europe to go ahead Tuesday, a marked improvement over the last few days. The agency predicted close to normal takeoffs by Friday.

"The situation today is much improved," said Brian Flynn, deputy head of operations at the Brussels-based agency.

But with more than 95,000 flights canceled in the last week alone, airlines faced the enormous task of working through the backlog to get passengers where they want to go — a challenge that could take days or even weeks.

Passengers with current tickets were being given priority — stranded passengers were being told to either pay for a new ticket, take the first available flight or to use their old ticket and wait for days, or weeks, for the first available seat.

"I'm supposed to be home, my children are supposed to be in school," said Belgian Marie-Laurence Gregoire, 41, who was traveling in Japan with her husband and three children, ages 6, 8, 10. They said the best that British Airways could do was put them on a flight to Rome.

"I'm tired. I just want to go home," she said.

Although seismic activity at the volcano had increased, the ash plume appeared to be shrinking. Still, scientists were worried that the eruption could trigger an even larger eruption at the nearby Katla volcano, which sits on the massive Myrdalsjokull icecap and has erupted every 80 or so years. Its last major eruption was in 1918.

Magnus Tumi Gudmundsson, geophysicist at the University of Iceland, said there was circumstantial evidence that an eruption could occur within the next 18 months at the nearby Katla volcano.

"We can of course expect similar (travel) disruption with the Katla eruption," he said. "But it all depends on prevailing winds."

Of the eight eruptions in the last 40 years, only the recent eruption at Eyjafjallajokull was followed by winds blowing southeast toward northern Europe.

An international pilots group warned of continued danger because of the ash, which drifted over the North Sea and was being pushed back over Britain on Tuesday by shifty north winds.

The volcano is also grumbling — tremors, which geologists believe to be caused by magma rising through the crust, can be heard and felt as far as 25 kilometers from the crater. "It's like a shaking in the belly. People in the area a disturbed by this," said Kristin Vogfjord, geologist at the Icelandic Met Office.

A Eurocontrol volcanic ash map on Tuesday listed the airspace between Iceland and Britain and Ireland as a no-fly zone, along with much of the Baltic Sea and surrounding area. The ash cloud also spread westward from Iceland, toward Greenland and Canada's eastern coastline.

Still, planes were being allowed to fly above 20,000 feet (7,000 kilometers) in the United Kingdom.

Flights resumed in Scotland, but only for a handful of domestic flights. Switzerland also reopened its airspace. Some flights took off from Asia to southern Europe and planes ferried people to Europe from Cairo, where at least 17,000 people were stranded.

Airports in central Europe and Scandinavia have reopened, and most of southern Europe remained clear, with Spain volunteering to be an emergency hub for overseas travelers trying to get home. Spain piled on extra buses, trains and ferries to handle an expected rush of passengers.

Britain sent navy ships to Spain and France to fetch 500 troops coming home from Afghanistan and hundreds of passengers who had been stranded by the chaos. The trip on the HMS Albion, a 570-foot (173-meter-long) amphibious assault ship, will take 40 hours from Santander in northern Spain to Portsmouth, England.

Patricia Quirke of Manchester said she and nine other families drove all night across Spain to catch the Royal Navy ride.

Many Asian airports and airlines remained cautious, and most flights to and from Europe remained canceled.

Patrizia Zotti, from Lecce, Italy, carried her 6-month-old son on her back as she waited to finally board a flight out of Tokyo on Tuesday. While happy about getting airborne at last, she was concerned about the ash.

"I've read that the exploratory flights were safe, but I'm still a bit worried," she said.

Australia's Qantas canceled its Wednesday and Thursday flights from Asia to Frankfurt and London, as well as return flights to Asia, saying the situation was too uncertain to resume flights into Europe.

Not everyone who wanted to could get on a flight Tuesday.

Phil Livingstone, a university student from St. Helens, England spent three nights sleeping on chairs at Seoul's Incheon International Airport and living off noodles and the one meal a day authorities provided.

"Hope is high at the minute just because it's the only thing we've got," he said.

The aviation industry — facing losses of more than $1 billion — has sharply criticized European governments' handling of the disruption that grounded thousands of flights on the continent.

But Gideon Ewers, spokesman for a London-based pilots group, says historical evidence of the effects of volcanic ash demonstrates that it presents a very real threat to flight safety.

Ash and grit from volcanic eruptions can sabotage a plane, stalling engines, blocking fuel nozzles and plugging the tubes that sense airspeed.

___

Associated Press writers Slobodan Lekic in Brussels, Carl Piovano in Reykajavik, Iceland, Alex Kennedy in Singapore, Megan Scott in New York, Jay Alabaster and Malcolm Foster in Tokyo, Tanalee Smith in Adelaide, Australia, Bradley Klapper in Geneva and other AP reporters around the world contributed to this report.


http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100420/...celand_volcano

[samanthajane13]

In US, welcome mat goes out for stranded travelers
By JOHN CURRAN, Associated Press Writer John Curran, Associated Press Writer – Tue Apr 20, 4:22 am ET

KILLINGTON, Vt. – The Mountain Inn was ready to call it a season. Then came the call from a group of British schoolboys who'd checked out a day earlier after five days on the Killington slopes.

They'd headed home, only to find out after a six-hour bus ride to New York that they wouldn't be flying anywhere, thanks to grounded European air travel in the wake of Iceland's volcanic eruption.

Could they come back to Vermont? Sure, said innkeeper Chirag Patel. He called in two housekeepers, got his mother and father — co-owners of the inn — to come in to make up the beds and prepared for the unexpected return of 66 guests, even though he'd been planned to close the place for a few months Sunday.

At 2 a.m. Sunday, 60 weary teenagers and chaperones from The Judd School checked back into the 50-room Mountain Inn, across the street from Killington ski resort.

"I thought it would be good, I'm going to miss my geography test on Monday," a glum Miles Partridge, 15, said Monday. "Then when I realized it might be a bit longer, I thought I'd rather get back to my family then sort of stay in America."

Still, they were among the lucky ones. While thousands around the globe slept on airport floors or chairs, others got a dose of old-fashioned Yankee hospitality as Americans opened their homes, wallets and businesses to stranded air travelers waiting for Europe's skies to clear.

"The American people have been fantastic to us," said Peter Dayson, who was with a 41-person group of British collegians stranded in Logan, Ohio. "We're very humbled by the way we've been looked after and treated."

In Chicago, a suburban mom put an ad on Craigslist offering free lodging — in her finished attic — to any family stranded by the air travel ban, sympathetic to the strain it would be on their budget.

"We would benefit more than they would by getting a chance to meet a family," said Michelle Dolan, 40, of Park Ridge, Ill., a mother of three whose home is a 15-minute ride from O'Hare International Airport, where there were dozens of cancellations Monday. "I would almost pay for that experience."

In Newark, N.J., a family of Brits returning from Las Vegas got stranded at Newark Liberty International Airport, where a TV report on their plight drew numerous inquiries. Jeanmarie Keenan, of Scotch Plains, N.J., drove there to find Mick Jordan, wife Jane and 13-year-old son Billy low on cash and eating only one meal a day

Jeanmarie Keenan found her way to them and said, "Are you the Jordan family?" before taking them home with her.

"We'd had nowhere to sleep for three nights," said Mick Jordan. "Then she came up to us and we just said, 'Oh, thank you very kindly.' They've been absolutely brilliant. We never expected to get what we got."

In Orlando, Fla., SeaWorld offered free admission to anyone showing a return plane ticket on (what should have been) flights to Europe.

"It's fantastic," said Karl Keogh, 41, an Irish tourist who took advantage of it along with brother Alan Keogh, 52. "It's nice to see someone cares ...'"

Universal Orlando Resort was giving visitors who had an expired ticket an extra day's admission to its two theme parks if they had proof of a delayed flight. They later expanded the freebie to anyone who could show they'd been stranded in central Florida due to the volcano, not just those who'd been visiting Universal.

Walt Disney World, meanwhile, offered free admission to its theme parks and water parks Tuesday and Wednesday for Europeans who show canceled plane ticket or an expired boarding pass.

Dayson, a producer and director, was in Ohio with performing arts students from Havering College performing a new musical featuring Beatles hits, near Hocking College, with which they have a "cross over" exchange program. Once they learned they couldn't fly out, Hocking's administrators, hotel staff and others helped those who'd run out of money or needed food or medicine, Dayson said.

The British schoolboys got a break, too.

The Mountain Inn — where they'd just spent a five-day ski vacation — agreed to continue the discounted rate for rooms that typically go for $99 to $129 a night at the end of the ski season.

Two local restaurants agreed to provide dinners, and a shuttle bus to ferry the boys to and from the inn, about a half-mile away.

The real challenge was keeping 60 boys aged 13 to 16 safe and occupied for what could be several more days, and finding a way to finance it.

Their school, located in Tonbridge, Kent, wired money to teacher-chaperone Martin Rivers to help pay for bowling, movies and a rock-climbing expedition. Also sent: homework assignments, including study materials for Shakespeare's "The Tempest," which some of the boys worked on Monday afternoon, sitting at tables in the inn's restaurant.

"You can't keep 60 boys in a hotel with nothing to do," said Rivers. "It's not fair on them."

Killington Resort, meanwhile, offered free ski rentals and lift tickets to the group, in case they wanted to ski some more, spokesman Tom Horrocks said.

"It's such a small world now, that such a situation happening all the way to the other side of the Atlantic Ocean is affecting on this side at the same time," said Patel, the innkeeper.

___

Associated Press writers Michael Tarm in Chicago, Mike Schneider in Orlando, Fla., JoAnne Viviano in Columbus, Ohio and Dave Porter in Newark, N.J., contributed to this report.


http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100420/...lcano_taken_in

[samanthajane13]

Lengthy eruption would put economy under a cloud
By ARTHUR MAX, Associated Press Writer Arthur Max, Associated Press Writer – 1 hr 41 mins ago

AMSTERDAM – Even as Europe's dormant airports sputter back to life, prudent travelers and businessmen should ask: What if Iceland's volcano erupts again?

Because it might. Over and over again, for weeks, perhaps months, scientists say.

The last eruption from the Eyjafjallajoekull volcano in 1821 lasted off-and-on for 13 months — but back then there were no jet engines to get clogged by ash.

What should the world brace for if ash clouds waft over Europe intermittently for six months or a year, repeatedly closing airports with just a few hours' warning?

A devastated tourist industry. Less out-of-season produce at supermarkets. Businesses forced to improvise. And higher prices on just about everything.

Europe's recovery from the economic recession likely would be set back to zero. Banks and governments, worried about runaway inflation, could tighten credit. Railways and roads would be overloaded with freight and people needing more reliable means of travel.

A BMW plant in Germany and a Nissan plant in Japan were forced to close temporarily this week because the ash prevented the arrival of parts shipments. Prolonged disruptions to supply chains could have a profound effect on manufacturing and global trade.

The psychological effects of the uncertainty could be numbing. As long as the volcano keeps rumbling, few people are likely to risk long delays camped out at airports or trapped in overpriced hotels.

Some people may feel more isolated, unable to escape on a cheap last-minute air ticket. They may think twice about visiting Grandma if it means six hours on a train rather than an hour in the sky. Booking a seat on the intercity express may be a lot harder.

Optimists will see benefits in a slower pace of life and the excuse to pass up yet another business conference. Vacations will be closer to home.

The climate might benefit from the absence of polluting aircraft, although the cancellation of 100,000 or so flights would amount to just a blip on the rising graph of the world's carbon emissions.

National railways are enjoying a boom, with extra trains running from Moscow and Madrid and all points in between. Eurostar added 33 trains since the weekend carrying 165,000 passengers from Britain to the continent, or 50,000 more than usual.

Economically, however, the picture would be generally grim.

Travel and tourism account for up to 5 percent of Europe's economic output. Even if the number of travelers drops by just one person in five, Europe would have to scrap its hoped-for return to growth this year, said economic analyst Vanessa Rossi of the London research institute Chatham House.

The spin-off effects of a sharp drop in travel could wipe off 1 to 2 percent of GDP. "That basically means we've got a continued recession," Rossi said.

"If it persists, it's quite chaotic. You find ways through it, but it's going to be more costly," she said. "This is absolutely bad news at the wrong time. But nobody chooses a volcano to erupt. So that's it."

The International Air Transport Association calculated that the airlines lost $200 million a day during the first five days of the volcanic crisis, and carriers are looking to their governments for support.

Tim Clark, president of the Dubai-based Emirates airlines, said the worldwide airline industry faced the threat of "implosion" if the crisis lasts too long. Without government help, "there won't be many carriers left. You simply can't afford to shut down something the size of Europe," he said, putting Emirates' own losses at $10 million.

Countries like Greece and Portugal, already facing debt crises, need tourism to help them limp back to growth — plans that could go seriously awry under a longer eruption. The ripple effect would spread around our interconnected globe.

African agricultural exports, a big chunk of national economies, face potential collapse unless air freight could be replaced with refrigerated shipping containers.

Kenya, which exports 1,000 tons a day of fresh goods, threw away 10 million flowers — mostly roses — since the eruption began April 14. Asparagus, broccoli and green beans meant for European dinner tables was fed to Kenyan cattle because storage facilities were filled to capacity.

If flights remained disrupted, pineapples would soon pile up on farms in Ghana, since the airport has no refrigeration facilities.

European airports like Amsterdam's Schiphol are major transit points for travel between Africa and North America, and from Asia westward. If those airports couldn't receive flights, Europeans would stay home, more business would be done by teleconference, and the United States and the rest of the world would see a drop in travel revenue.

India's imports of rough diamonds from Antwerp and London have taken a hit, denying raw material for its huge diamond polishing industry. Exports of the prepared industrial diamonds and jewelry back to Europe and the U.S. would suffer if flights remain halted, said Chandrakant Sanghvi, regional chairman of India's Gem and Jewelry Export Promotion Council.

Other businesses say they are coping with interrupted air supplies, but they appear not to have given much thought to long-term shutdowns of their supply chains. In the first week of the emergency, the focus was on finding solutions to immediate problems rather than on structural changes.

"I would say it's day-to-day," Ford spokesman Todd Nissen said in Detroit. "There's so many plants that could potentially be affected. ... It's such a complex system."

With its 50 Europe-based planes grounded, international delivery service DHL has engaged in creative routing, said Jorge Wiedemann from its corporate headquarters in Bonn, Germany. Air freight from the U.S. and other points was diverted to Spain, then put on a fleet of trucks. The centralized distribution system based in Leipzig was modified to add regional hubs, he said.

"We are dealing with it on a daily basis." Wiedemann said "So far it's going well and there is no major backlog. How long we can deal with a situation like that is something I can't answer."

Most European food markets rely on local produce, or crops from neighboring countries, especially in the summer. Nonperishable canned or packaged imports usually arrive by container ships.

Those people with a taste for papaya and other exotic produce will have to go without, and menus in high-end restaurants and sushi bars may be red-inked with "unavailable." One Boeing 747 with 110 tons of fish destined for Europe sat on the tarmac in the Middle East, among some 2,000 tons of other disrupted shipments.

Simon Tilford, chief economist of the Center for European Reform, put such breakdowns in the category of "inconveniences" rather than "an existential threat," even under the worst-case scenario.

"There's no doubt it would be very disruptive if it went on for that long. But I don't believe, unless it was a complete blanket on civilian air travel, that the impact on the economy will be that grave." he said.

"Europe is not a particularly trade-dependent economy," said Tilford. Most traffic of goods is internal among the 27 members of the European Union.

"The longer it goes on, the more time we have to find alternative ways of doing things," he said.

___

Associated Press writers Adam Schreck in Dubai, Ashok Sharma in New Delhi and Tom Krisher in Detroit contributed to this report.


http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100420/...without_planes

[samanthajane13]

Volcano Fallout: Where's the Tuna and Pineapples?
By JAY NEWTON-SMALL / LONDON Jay Newton-small / London – 57 mins ago

David Leroy, owner of one of London's hottest sushi restaurants, Chisou, is on his last tuna and when that goes he has no way of getting any more. "One of our tuna suppliers just called and said they have no more until flights resume," Leroy says, shaking his head. He's already run out of sea urchin, monkfish liver and scallops.

Mike Elgin, one of 54 fish sellers at London's massive Billingsgate fish market, which usually moves nearly 100 tons of fish a day, would love to sell Leroy a tuna - if he had one. "We can't get fish in from all over the world," Elgin says, noting that supplies of tuna, parrot fish, swordfish, kingfish and certain types of dorade have sold out. On the other hand, "Would you like to buy some Scottish salmon?" Elgin asks with a grin. "I've got five pallets sitting outside that were meant for Chicago." Over all, Elgin says, sales are down 10% because of the ash clouds that have grounded all flights to and from England for more than six days now.

The economic effects of Iceland's spewing volcano ripple beyond the hundreds of millions a day in lost airline revenues and, according to U.S. Travel Association estimates, the at least $650 million in lost U.S. tourism income. There's no Fedex or United Parcel Service to deliver vital packages and papers. Export/import businesses such as the makers of British cheeses, Scottish whiskies, Paddington bears and Wellington boots are struggling to deal with backlogged orders. But no industry, outside of the airlines, has been so severely affected by the crisis as the British makers and consumers of perishable goods - especially such delicacies as fresh fish or luxuries as flowers whose life in bloom is just a few hour long.

Across London, supplies of exotic produce from figs and pomegranates to anchovies are running out. The fruits and vegetables section in most supermarkets look like a scene out of Dickens, with shoppers whining to clerks, "Please, sir, I want some more." Not that Londoners are starving: the United Kingdom has plenty of lamb and beef, potatoes and carrots. It's just that its people, like so many in this age of globalization, have grown accustomed to oranges and pineapples year round. "The volcano has transported us into a locavore fantasy, forcing us all onto the type of 100-mile diet that used to be imaginable only as a stunt," says Sasha Issenberg, author of The Sushi Economy: Globalization and the Making of a Modern Delicacy. "Over the last generation or so, individual palates and whole cuisines have been reshaped around the expectation that everything is accessible - regardless of where it was harvested, hunted or caught - as long as one is close to an airport and willing to pay for the privilege."

Food merchants aren't the only ones suffering. While some of the more than 50 flower traders at the New Covent Garden Market rely mostly on British blossoms, others, such as foliage salesman Barry Porter, have more than 35% of their business air-freighted in from overseas. Porter is lucky that it's late spring in southern Europe - the eucalyptus that he would normally get from Colombia or Israel he's now receiving from Italy and Spain. But that means that the roses and carnations that Colombia, Kenya, Israel, Ecuador and Costa Rica are producing right now are literally withering on the stem at the cost to the local producers since, unless a contracted shipment was already en route, the buyers have no responsibility to pay for them. "With a natural product you can't suddenly turn a tap on and supplies are available," says Helen Evans, head of communications for the New Covent Garden Market Authority. "We're not getting mini-pineapples or banana flowers - those very exotic items they're not going to have."

Another trickle-down effect on florists, caterers and grocers is that the limitation on flights has stalled the high-end entertainment market, as hosts and guests alike for gala events have been unable to fly into London. Weddings and movie premieres and expensive company spectacles have been postponed. "Shops servicing corporate clients, corporate parties, big event planners, major weddings - they've been hit pretty badly," Evans says. "A lot of these are small family-run businesses and their margins are extremely small and some were already feeling the impact of the economic downturn. If something isn't done soon - this could get dire."


http://news.yahoo.com/s/time/2010042...08599198330800