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Smoke billows from a volcano in Eyjafjallajokull April 16, 2010 - Source: Reuters -
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The ash cloud from Iceland's volcanic eruption is brushing up against Canada's Eastern seaboard, while most of Europe plans to partly reopen airspace today.
Canadian airlines said domestic flight cancellations were mostly because of fog.
Real time Europe flight disruption
information
Environment Canada expected no domestic problems from the cloud,
which has shut European airports. "The ash cloud is very diffuse,
moving slowly and should not affect Canadian airports," said
spokeswoman Laura Cummings.
Britain's national weather service, the Met Office, is responsible
for monitoring the ash cloud under international agreements, and
duty forecaster Bob Syvret said it was unlikely to drift much
further into North America.
"It is just skirting into the Newfoundland area over the next 12 to
18 hours," Syvret told Reuters. "It doesn't look as if it is going
to get much further west than that, just on the coast and a little
further inland."
Newfoundland, on Canada's Atlantic seaboard, is the closest part of
North America to Iceland's erupting Eyjafjallajokull volcano.
An airport spokesman in the capital, St John's, said there had been
flight cancellations on Tuesday. But that was because of thick fog
- common at this time of year - rather than fear that the volcanic
ash could damage planes.
"Up to this point there is no indication that the airspace will be
affected (by the ash cloud)," said Randy Mahon. "Transport Canada
hasn't closed any airspace and we've been in regular communication
with them."
Air Canada, the country's biggest airline, said it brought some
Newfoundland flights forward because of fear of problems from the
ash, which can contain glass, pulverised rock and silicates. But
operations were now back to normal.
After aviation officials closed parts of Europe's airspace over
fears the ash could damage jet engines, airlines have suffered
heavy financial losses described as being worse than after the
September 11 attacks on the United States in 2001.
Winds set to change
The Met Office said the winds that pushed the ash to the edge of
North America are expected to change direction in the next couple
of days, which would prevent the cloud from covering more of Canada
and the United States.
The Met Office issued a
graphic of a map with a red line showing the
volcanic plume up to an altitude of 6,000 metres.
It showed the cloud jutting south from the volcano in Iceland,
covering much of northern Europe and then spreading west over the
Atlantic and east over Russia.
Estimating the density of the cloud at its extremities is difficult
and Syvret said warnings for aviation in North America would be a
matter for US and Canadian officials.
"The cloud is most likely to drift north, away from North America
and towards Greenland, or southeast and back towards the Atlantic,"
he said. "We don't think it is going to get any further
westwards."
European plane cancellations have affected travellers from around
the world. In the United States, the White House said an estimated
40,000 Americans were stranded in London.
Europe plans to partly reopens airspace
Flights from large parts of Europe are set to resume on today
under a deal agreed by the European Union to free up airspace
closed by a cloud of ash hurled into the sky by an Icelandic
volcano.
However, with the cloud still spreading and only sketchy details of
how the authorities would split European airspace into areas where
aircraft could fly or not, other countries are adopting a more
cautious approach.
"From tomorrow morning we should see more planes flying," EU
Transport Commissioner Siim Kallas told reporters after EU
transport ministers held a video conference.
The deal brought relief to some of the millions of passengers whose
travel plans have been disrupted worldwide since Thursday, and
offered hope to frustrated airlines worldwide losing $351.98
million a day from the shutdown and seeing their shares
tumble.
"I'm so happy," said one man with tears in his eyes as he ran for
his flight from Schiphol Airport on Tuesday, one of three bound for
New York, Shanghai and Dubai from Amsterdam with almost 800
passengers on board.
Dutch Transport Minister Camiel Eurlings promised weary travellers
that the Netherlands was "taking a lead" in getting Europe moving,
but said its airspace could be closed again if ash levels
rose.
But neighbouring Germany will mostly maintain its no-fly zone until
12pm today (midnight NZT), and in Britain, where some northern
airports excluding London's international hubs will reopen from 6am
GMT (6pm NZT) today, National Air Traffic Services warned
ominously:
"The volcano eruption in Iceland has strengthened and a new ash
cloud is spreading south and east towards the UK."
The cloud brushed up against Canada's eastern seaboard today, but
Environment Canada said it was diffuse, moving slowly and should
not affect Canadian airports.
Airline losses
The EU deal was reached under pressure from the airline
industry, which says it is losing $351.98 million in revenue a day.
The global freight supply chain is also beginning to sag.
Under the agreement, which Kallas said would go into force from 6am
GMT (6pm NZT), the area immediately around the volcano will remain
closed.
But flights may be permitted in a wider zone with a lower
concentration of ash, subject to local safety assessments and
scientific advice, the European aviation control agency Eurocontrol
said in a statement.
Airlines had declared numerous test flights problem-free over the
past days, but experts have disagreed over how to measure the ash
and who should decide it is safe to fly. A British Airways jet lost
power in all four engines after flying through an ash cloud above
the Indian Ocean in 1982.
France said it was reopening some airports to create air corridors
to Paris. Italian airspace will open from 6am GMT (6pm NZT).
Eurocontrol said it expected up to 9,000 flights to have operated
in Europe on Monday, just a third of normal volume.
"The scale of the economic impact (on aviation) is now greater than
9/11, when US airspace was closed for three days," International
Air Transport Association (IATA) head Giovanni Bisignani
said.
"We must move away from this blanket closure and find ways to
flexibly open air space, step by step."
Worldwide, industry losses for passenger airlines and cargo
companies could reach as much as $4.23 billion from the cloud,
Helane Becker, an analyst with Jesup & Lamont Securities, told
Reuters Insider on Monday. For US airlines, she estimated the
impact at $563.6 million to $845 million.
Travel misery
Firms dependent on fast air freight were feeling the
strain.
Kenya's flower exporters said they were already losing up to $2.82
million a day. Kenya accounts for about a third of flower imports
into the European Union.
"Everything (is being) pushed back down the pipeline," said Greg
Knowler, editor of Cargonews Asia in Hong Kong. "The freight
forwarders are actually sending stuff back to the factories ... One
German forwarder that's based here reckons they have 4,000 tonnes
of backlog in Hong Kong."
Millions of people have had travel disrupted or been stranded and
forced to make long, expensive attempts to reach home by road, rail
and sea, as well as missing days at work and school at the end of
the busy Easter holiday season.
British businessman Chris Thomas had been trying to get home from
Los Angeles since Thursday, when the air shutdown began.
He first flew to Mexico City. From there, he aimed to fly to Madrid
and spend $2,819 to rent a car for the 14-hour drive to Paris. He
was booked on the Eurostar Channel tunnel train to London, and then
planned to drive four hours to Wales.
"It's all a bit crazy but you have to err on the side of caution,"
Thomas said. "Nobody wants to be on the first plane to go down in a
volcanic cloud."
In sport, soccer's European Cup holders Barcelona set off on a
two-day road trip of nearly 1,000 km on Sunday to play Inter Milan
in a Champions League semi-final today.
Businesses have had to find alternative ways of operating.
Communications provider Cisco Systems said companies were turning
to videoconferencing to connect executives.
"We have seen a huge spike in usage," said Fredrik Halvorsen, head
of Cisco's TelePresence Technology Group.
Britain is deploying three navy ships including an aircraft carrier
to bring its citizens home from continental Europe. The British
travel agents' association ABTA estimated 150,000 Britons were
stranded abroad. Washington said it was trying to help 40,000
Americans stuck in Britain.
About 25,000 travellers are stranded in the Philippines. "Lucky for
me, I have my laptop and I could still do some work," David
Hampson, a humanitarian worker from Manchester, England, told
reporters at Manila's international airport.
