By Alex Morales and Steve Rothwell April 16 (Bloomberg) — Air services across northern Europe will be disrupted into the weekend after a cloud of ash from a volcano in Iceland shut dozens of airports in the U.K., France and Scandinavia. British airspace will be closed until at least 7 p.m. today, according to flight-control authority National Air Traffic Services, compounding travel disruptions that are among the most severe in U.K. aviation history. NATS is not expecting a rapid improvement in the conditions. “In general, the situation cannot be said to be improving with any certainty as the forecast affected area appears to be closing in from east to west,” the agency said in a statement. Thousands of flights were grounded yesterday after Iceland’s 5,500-foot, ice-covered Eyjafjöll volcano erupted and winds carried dust across a swath of northern Europe. Airports in the U.K., Norway and Sweden halted flights on concern that the plume could damage engines or critical parts such as speed sensors. The ash-plume threat will continue through April 18 for Europe, AccuWeather.com said. “It’s unbelievable — volcanic ash. How often does this happen?” said David Jimenez, 27, who was stranded at Stansted airport, north of the U.K. capital, from where he had planned to fly to Malaga, Spain. “I don’t want to have to spend my holiday in sunny London.” Eruption-related disruptions may last for a further 48 hours, Kyla Evans, a spokeswoman for Eurocontrol, the body overseeing the region’s flight paths, said yesterday. Delta Air Lines Inc. and UAL Corp.’s United Airlines led their peers in canceling European flights. Ryanair, EasyJet The plume covered most of Norway and Scotland, as well as parts of England, Ireland, Sweden, Finland and Russia, according to data from the U.K. Met Office’s volcanic-ash advisory service. The cloud was forecast at midnight London time to cover the bulk of the U.K., Scandinavia and the Benelux countries, as well as parts of Germany, France and Russia, according to the Web site of the advisory service. The ash may cover most of Ireland, Germany, Austria, Poland, the Czech Republic, Belarus and the Baltic nations by 6 a.m. Ryanair Holdings Plc and EasyJet Plc , Europe’s two biggest discount airlines, both warned of disruptions. “It looks like it’s going to be at the earliest 1 p.m. before we can operate any flights,” said Stephen McNamara , a spokesman for Ryanair, in a telephone interview. The number of flight cancellations is “likely to be in the hundreds.” British Airways Plc , Europe’s third-biggest airline, said it can’t be sure when services will resume. Normal Operations “Once they start operations again, obviously we will have aircraft in places they are not supposed to be,” said Jonathan Nicholson , a spokesman for the U.K. Civil Aviation Authority. “It takes time before normal operations resume once flying starts again.” Bus operator National Express Group Plc said all services from Heathrow to Scotland were full yesterday and that extra vehicles will be added today. U.K. trains are running as normal. Norway’s Avinor aviation authority said it cannot rule out that the country’s air space will remain closed today. France’s civil aviation authority shut the Roissy-Charles de Gaulle and Orly airports near Paris late yesterday. The closings will be in effect until at least 2 p.m. Ease Congestion Deutsche Lufthansa AG , Europe’s second-biggest airline, yesterday canceled flights to and from the affected countries as well as to Amsterdam and Brussels to ease congestion caused by aircraft diverted to those hubs. It said it was monitoring forecasts to see if German airspace will be affected. Iceland has more than 200 volcanoes and 600-plus hot springs. When Eyjafjöll last erupted in 1821 the event lasted more than a year, according to the Global Volcanism Program at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington. The latest eruption, which began early April 14, is a further blow to a country struggling to rebuild a crippled economy after financial collapse prompted the world’s fifth- richest nation per head in 2007 to turn to the International Monetary Fund. Volcanic fumes have disrupted commercial air travel in the past. In 1982, all four engines on a British Airways Boeing Co. 747 flying to Perth, Australia, shut down as the aircraft encountered ash spewed from Mount Galunggung in Indonesia . The plane fell for almost four miles before the pilot was able to restart three engines and make an emergency landing in Jakarta. ‘Volcanic Clouds’ Another Boeing jumbo lost all engine thrust in 1989 after encountering ash from Alaska’s Redoubt Volcano, and four other airliners were damaged during the next three months, according to the Federal Aviation Administration Web site. “Given the fact that this could bring a plane down very easily, airlines are not going to risk flying through these volcanic clouds,” Hunter Keay , an analyst at Stifel Nicolaus & Co. in Baltimore, said yesterday in an interview with Tom Keene on Bloomberg Radio. Emmanuelle Wargon of Paris and her husband, Mathias, learned yesterday that their Air France flight to New York from Paris today had been canceled because of the eruption, and they may have to postpone a long-planned vacation with their three children, ages 12, 10 and 6. “We had planned for all sorts of things,” Wargon, a magistrate in France’s National Audit Office, said in a telephone interview. “But we didn’t plan for a volcano.” To contact the reporters on this story: Alex Morales in London at amorales2@bloomberg.net ; Steve Rothwell in London at srothwell@bloomberg.net
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Iceland Volcano Disrupts Flights Across Europe, Threatens Weekend Travel
