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Controllers screamed: 'Cancel take-off, cancel take-off plan' as 747 accelerated down runway
A Jumbo jet, with 286 passengers on board, had a terrifying near miss when it was forced to screech to a halt to avoid colliding with another plane that had turned into its path.
The Lufthansa Boeing 747 was accelerating along a runway as it prepared to take off at Kennedy Airport, New York, when it narrowly avoided slamming into an EgyptAir Boeing 777.
An air traffic controller screamed: 'Cancel take-off, Cancel take off plans' when he noticed the Munich-bound Jumbo on a collision course.
Close call: The Jumbo jet was racing down the runway when it had to brake to avoid hitting an EgyptAir Boeing 777.A Lufthansa Boeing 747 screeched to a halt to avoid slamming into an EgyptAir plane which had turned into its path.Panic: Controllers at New York's JFK airport screamed into their radios when they saw the two planes about to collide
The Jumbo's pilot slammed on the brakes before radioing back: 'Lufthansa 411 heavy is rejecting take-off.'
A pilot aboard another flight arriving from Los Angeles radioed the tower to say: 'That was quite a show.'
Airport controllers believe the EgyptAir jet made a wrong turn, ending up in the path of the German Lufthansa plane
A source said: 'It was close.'
The Lufthansa plane later arrived safely in Munich and no one is believed to have been injured.
A Federal Aviation Administration spokesman said the incident would be investigated but that it would take several days to sort out the details.
In April this year an Air France A380, Superjumbo collided with a Delta regional jet which was parked outside a terminal building.
The smaller Delta jet was sent spinning around wildly although no one was hurt in the incident, which is still under investigation by the National Transportation Safety
A Virgin plane takes off at Sydney’s domestic airport June 22, 2011. Tens of thousands of air passengers faced more flight chaos in Australia on Wednesday caused by an ash cloud from a Chilean volcano, although grounded flights were starting to resume from some cities as the ash moved offshore
Australian airlines struggled to move a backlog of tens of thousands of passengers today after an ash cloud from a Chilean volcano, which had grounded flights across the country’s eastern and southern states, cleared .
The ash cloud has circled the earth twice to disrupt Australian airlines for a second time, costing Qantas an estimated A$20 million (RM64.20 million) before the latest disruptions and the tourism industry more than A$15 million in two weeks.
Australia’s Bureau of Meteorology’s Volcanic Ash Advisory Centre said long-term modelling suggested the ash cloud would not pass over Australia for a third time and disrupt airlines.
Volcanic ash can be extremely dangerous to aircraft and cause engine failure or engine damage.
Qantas said it had resumed flights from Melbourne and Sydney, the country’s two main terminals, while Virgin Australia had also resumed flights. Qantas low-cost subsidiary Jetstar and discount carrier Tiger Airlines were all also gradually resuming flights.
“There’s possibly some hope that Thursday will start to return to normal,” said Civil Aviation Safety Authority spokesman Peter Gibson.
The majority of international carriers continued flights to and from Australia today, with airlines including Singapore, Thai, Etihad and Emirates landing in Sydney.
A volcano in Chile’s Puyehue-Cordon Caulle chain erupted on June 4 after lying dormant for decades, the latest eruption to hit international travel.
Iceland’s most active volcano at Grimsvotn sent a thick plume of ash and smoke 25km into the sky last month, disrupting air travel in northern Europe.
The eruption of another Icelandic volcano in April 2010, Eyjafjallajokull, led to 100,000 cancelled flights, affecting 10 million people at a cost of US$1.7 billion (RM5.14 billion).
Australia’s Transport Minister Anthony Albanese said the disruption would impact the economy, already hit by natural disasters that cut 1.7 per cent from growth during the first three months of this year, the biggest decline in 20 years.
“Having that disruption to international services means lower revenue in terms of tourism and in a country such as ours, where we rely on aviation to connect each other and to the world, there is a bigger economic cost,” he said.
Air New Zealand domestic flights operated as scheduled today, while Jetstar in New Zealand said yesterday it would cancel all New Zealand domestic flights until midday today.
Andrew Tupper from the Australian Bureau of Meteorology’s Volcanic Ash Advisory Centre, said it was unlikely the ash cloud would make a third journey round the globe.
“The volcano is still erupting but not at the same levels,” he said. “It is very unusual for ash clouds to do two circuits.”
“The last time volcanic ash circled the globe in the southern hemisphere was in 1991.
Peru's president-elect, Ollanta Humala, and UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon are among those forced to take other modes of transport to reach Argentina. The ash cloud has also led Argentina to declare a state of emergency for farmers. ...
BAA chief Colin Matthews faced calls to relinquish his bonus amid continued chaos and delays
Heathrow's chief executive relinquished his bonus today amid claims bosses 'failed' to buy enough de-icer, ruining Christmas getaway plans for more than a million people.
The world's busiest airport has drawn widespread criticism after holidaymakers were left to sleep on cold terminal floors during the festive period as thousands of flights were cancelled or delayed.
Furious airlines have now hit out at Heathrow's owners BAA, insisting the company did not stock up on enough de-icing fluid to keep its two runways open.
Boss Colin Matthews later bowed to calls to relinquish his six-figure bonus.
Snow is cleared from the southern runway. The airport has turned down an offer of help from the Army
Snow ploughs clear the southern runway at Heathrow, as travel chaos continues at the London airport
Passengers sleep on the hard floor of Terminal 3 as flights are cancelled or delayed by bad weather
The world's busiest airport has drawn widespread criticism after Christmas getaway plans were ruined for millions of passengers as flights were cancelled and chaos was predicted to go on 'beyond Christmas Day'
Lord Jones of Birmingham said Mr Matthews, the owner of a ski lodge in the French Alps and a £1.9million west London home, should 'not be getting a bonus when he has diminished Britain's global brand'.
He branded the airport the 'laughing stock' of Europe.
Mick Rix, the GMB union's national officer for the aviation industry, echoed his remarks, saying 'a huge bonus' would be 'an absolute slap in the face to the thousands of people who have been stranded at Heathrow for the past three days'.
BAA's accounts revealed its chief executive was paid a total of £1.6million last year, including a £994,000 salary and benefits with a further £174,000 in pension contributions.
He was expected to receive an additional - and undisclosed - cash bonus this year, linked to BAA's profits during a three-year period. BAA predicts its pre-tax profits will be more than £972 million for 2010.
Mr Matthews said: 'I have decided to give up my bonus for the current year.
'My focus is on keeping people moving and rebuilding confidence in Heathrow.'
Welcoming Mr Matthews' decision, Mr Rix said: 'For once, a British senior director has done the right thing.
'Anything else would have been an outrage and an insult to the thousands of people who have been badly disrupted.'
However, at the airport, passengers relied on the Salvation Army who handed out free tea and coffee from a van more usually brought out during civil disasters.
Heavy snow and ice meant two thirds of flights were grounded at the airport yesterday, while passengers were advised to stay away from Terminals One and Three which were unable to cope with the volume of travellers.
Prime Minister David Cameron expressed his 'frustration' at the continued disruption.
Wolfgang Prock-Schauer, chief executive of airline BMI, said: 'What is really incredible is that 10cm (4in) of snow closed the airport down for two days and then it operated at one-third capacity. It is completely unacceptable.
'BAA was not prepared. It did not have enough de-icing fluid.
'The Prime Minister has stepped in and de-icing fluid has been released from other sources.
'This should have been possible without this kind of intervention.'
Heathrow's second runway finally reopened at 5pm yesterday but Mr Matthews warned not to expect normal services immediately and urged people to check before going to the airport.
Bosses were hopeful that more flights would be able to take off today but many holidaymakers were still facing the prospect of being separated from their families over Christmas.
Flight cancellations were predicted to go on 'beyond Christmas Day'.
Mr Cameron said: 'If it's understandable that Heathrow had to close briefly, I'm frustrated on behalf of all those affected that it's taking so long for the situation to improve.'
Some 180,000 people were scheduled to fly in or out of the airport every day this week, with up to 200,000 expected to pass through Heathrow on its busiest day.
Mr Matthews has pledged to investigate how the situation was dealt with and why it took so long to clear snow from aircraft but only after the 'short-term' aim of getting passengers to where they needed to be had been achieved.
Asked about the plight of the thousands of passengers affected by the shutdown, he said: 'It is heartbreaking - the stories which we hear of people who are missing holidays, weddings, important family events and looking at whether or not they can get home for Christmas.
'That's why we are focused as hard as we can be on building up the rate at which aircraft come and go to get passengers where they want to be.'
But sources from leading airlines claimed the airport lacked the necessary de-icing resources.
BAA rejected the accusations.
We have comfortable stocks of de-icer planned all week and they have been robust and in place throughout,' a spokesman said.
The airport has turned down an offer of help from the Army to remove snow from the southern runway, stands and taxiways.
A British Airways aircraft lands as another taxis for take off at Heathrow Airport in west London December 21, 2010. Airline and international train services were limping back towards normal in parts of Europe today.
Airline and international train services were limping back towards normal in parts of Europe today, but the lingering effects of ice and snow that caused widespread chaos still weighed on schedules.
The disruptions to airlines and high-speed trains in continental Europe, and linking Britain to the continent, created travel chaos for tens of thousands of travellers in the busy Christmas period following heavy weekend snowfalls.
They also brought calls for legislation to force airports to deal more effectively with snow and other bad weather.
European Union transport chief Siim Kallas said he was considering forcing airports to provide a minimum level of infrastructure support during severe weather.
London’s Heathrow, the world’s busiest international airport, and Frankfurt Airport, the biggest on the continent, said on their websites that operations were returning to normal after severe disruptions.
Wolfgang Prock-Schauer, chief executive of airline BMI, owned by Lufthansa, accused BAA of being unprepared for the heavy snow at Heathrow.
“What is really incredible is that 10cm of snow closed the airport down for two days and then it operated at one-third capacity,” he told the Times newspaper.
“BAA was not prepared. It did not have enough de-icing fluid.”
A spokesman for BAA, which is owned by Spain’s Ferrovial, denied there had been a de-icer issue at Heathrow and said lessons would be learnt.
But he added: “This was unprecedented weather which closed most of northern Europe’s airports.”
Heathrow was scheduled to operate 70 per cent of a normal day’s service, about 800 flights, but it was still advising passengers not to come to Heathrow unless they had confirmed flights, the spokesman said.
“We’re hoping by the end of the day we’ll be up to full operation,” he said.
Heathrow reopened its second runway yesterday, offering a ray of hope for thousands of passengers stranded in departure halls, some for days in scenes that British newspapers said resembled refugee camps.
“Airlines are currently operating a significantly reduced schedule while they move diverted aircraft and crew back into position,” BAA said on its website.
British Airways said that, in line with a directive from BAA, it would operate only a third of its normal flight schedule at Heathrow until 6am tomorrow.
“It will take some time to rebuild an operation of our size and complexity at our hub airport, Heathrow,” the airline said on its website.
“We ask you not to travel to the airport unless you have a confirmed booking on one of the flights that is operating.”
Frankfurt international airport was open and running at full capacity today after heavy snow shut it down on Monday for several hours and 400 flights were cancelled.
An airport spokesman said there was a backlog of about 3,500 stranded passengers, including some 600 who spent the night on emergency cots at the airport.
“The airport operation is getting back to normal,” airport spokesman Thomas Uber said . “But it will take a while to catch up.”
German rail operator Deutsche Bahn said it would add extra train services from today to cope with a surge in demand due to air travel disruptions. Deutsche Bahn board member Berthold Huber said the added service would stay in place until December 31.
Eurostar, operator of the high-speed train between London and Brussels and Paris, said it would resume normal check-in service, but asked passengers not to show up until an hour before departure “to avoid congestion and an unnecessary wait”.
Yesterday, thousands of people were forced to queue in frigid temperatures for hours around St Pancras station in north London as every available Eurostar seat was snapped up by travellers bounced from airlines.
Eurostar said nine of its 52 trains would be cancelled today but that passengers for those services would be “reallocated onto one of the next available trains”.
Although the logjam of travellers was starting to ease, many passengers were irate.
“This was our holiday of a lifetime,” a man at Heathrow who’d been planning to travel with his wife told Sky News. “And it’s a nightmare.”
Alerts: Counter-terror officials fear regional airports are being targeted for dummy runs by would-be terrorists
Security officials have tested security at regional airports amid fears terror scouts have been staging dummy runs, it emerged today.
Two suspect packages have reportedly been spotted in the last three months which appeared to be like improvised bombs.
One hidden in a box inside a bag of hand luggage had a BlackBerry attached to a baby's bottle with a charging cable thought to be simulating a detonator.
The second - spotted at the same airport some weeks later - also contained a mobile phone and detonator, according to The Guardian.
Both 'devices' were examined by bomb disposal experts and found to be harmless, meaning no passengers were charged.
Counter-terrorism officials apparently believe that airports are being 'periodically tested' in a bid to hunt out any weaknesses that could be exploited.
One Whitehall source said airports out of London were a greater concern because they are perceived to have less stringent security measures.
'Periodically they [suspected terrorists] are seeing how the system works, that the security systems are being tested,' the source told The Guardian.
BAA, which owns Heathrow and Stansted, has urged the Government to make security procedures less predictable.
It is trialling 'behavioural detection', where staff are trained to pick out any passengers behaving strangely.
Fears have been heightened after the alert at East Midlands Airport last month, when an ink bomb wired up to a mobile phone was found on a freight flight.
Al Qaeda planners believed the plane would have been over the Atlantic to America when it was primed to go off but it had to make an unscheduled stop off to refuel.
The counter-terror battle to prevent 9/11 style attacks is becoming ever more difficult as terrorists become more sophisticated.
But earlier this month, the Government revealed the ban on carrying liquids in hand luggage at UK airports was to be eased and could go completely by 2013.
Passengers have been restricted to carrying just 100ml of liquid in their hand luggage following a failed plot to blow up transatlantic jets in 2006.
Transport Secretary Philip Hammond said he planned to make the system more flexible, starting with aerosols, gels and liquids.
A Department of Transport spokesman said: 'The UK adopts a multi-layered approach to aviation security, combining technology, intelligence and other techniques to give us one of the strictest regimes in the world. This is kept under constant review based on the latest developing threats.'
An Aegean Airlines Airbus A321 passenger jet comes in to land as a Cathay Pacific Boeing 747 taxis at Heathrow airport on December 20, 2010.
Britain said yesterday it was relaxing night flying restrictions at London’s Heathrow airport for the next four days to help it clear a backlog of flights hit by severe icy and snowy weather.
Transport Secretary Philip Hammond said operating hours at the airport would be extended until 1 a.m. and arrivals for repatriation flights would be allowed throughout the night.
The airport, operated by Spanish-owned BAA, told passengers not to turn up at its terminals one and three because of overcrowding yesterday.
“The immediate focus at Heathrow must be maximising the number of flights with the available infrastructure,” Hammond told parliament.
“In order to do this I have agreed with BAA this morning the relaxation of restrictions on night flights for the next four days,” Hammond added.
British Airways, the largest operator out of Heathrow, said the airport would only be using one of its two runways today — as yesterday — meaning the airport would be operating at significantly reduced capacity.
Airline passengers lie on the floor in Terminal 5 at Heathrow airport in west London yesterday, December 20, 2010
Angry Christmas travellers, stranded by snow and ice at London’s Heathrow, criticised airline and airport officials yesterday for failing to keep them informed and leaving them to sleep in terminal buildings.
Student Michael McGouldrich-Secilia, a 24-year-old from Pittsburgh, had been stuck at Heathrow since Saturday after snow forced the cancellation of his flight to Toronto in Canada.
“I was at terminal three for the last two nights. All I had was a mat and one of those silver insulator things (foil blankets),” he said.
“No one will give me any information,” he added, lying on a yellow plastic temporary bed covered by a blanket and clothes.
The airport was closed over the weekend after a snowstorm grounded flights. Only one of two runways was operating yesterday, adding to the frustration of travellers trying to get away for Christmas holidays.
The airport, operated by Spanish-owned BAA, told passengers not to turn up at terminals one and three because of overcrowding yesterday.
Transport Secretary Philip Hammond said he understood travellers’ frustration.
“Whilst people are obviously deeply upset about the inconvenience, particularly at this time of year, at having their travel plans disrupted, most of what I am hearing is a sense of outrage about the way they were then treated when they were stranded at Heathrow Airport,” he told the BBC.
Brandi Gonzalez, 27, a pre-school teacher from Connecticut, had been due to fly to JFK in New York on Friday with her husband and young son but had not been able to get a flight.
Sitting on the floor in the lobby of the Renaissance hotel close to Heathrow, next to her son in a pushchair, she said: “It’s a two-hour wait on the phone to rebook a flight. Today when I called to rebook I sat on the phone for two hours to get hung up on.
“They said: ‘We still don’t have another flight out of here’ and I got hung up on.”
Security scare: According to leaked reports, security at a number of U.S. airports has been frequently breached
The effectiveness of security at U.S. ports is being questioned after a businessman accidentally travelled on a flight with a loaded handgun in his luggage.
Iranian-American Farid Seif was screened by Trasport Security Administration officials at Houston airport in Texas. His hand luggage was also X-rayed before he took off on his international flight.
It wasn't until Mr Seif arrived at his hotel several hours later that he realised that he had forgotten to unpack a loaded snub nose Glock pistol from his luggage before he embarked on his journey.
'It's just impossible to miss it, you know. I mean, this is not a small gun,' Mr Seif told ABC News.
'How can you miss it? You cannot miss it.'
According to ABC, security slip-ups in the U.S. are not rare.
The news network claims experts have confided that 'every year since the September 11 terror attacks, federal agencies have conducted random, covert "red team tests", where undercover agents try to see just how much they can get past security checks at major U.S. airports'.
ABC added that, while the U.S. Department of Homeland Security closely guards those test results, those that have leaked have been 'shocking'.
Undercover TSA agents testing security at a Newark airport terminal on one day in 2006 found that TSA screeners failed to detect concealed bombs and guns 20 out of 22 times, the news network claimed.
And a 2007 government audit revealed that undercover agents were successful slipping simulated explosives and bomb parts through Los Angeles's LAX airport in 50 out of 70 attempts. At Chicago's O'Hare airport, agents made 75 attempts and succeeded in getting through undetected 45 times.
Ironically the TSA has come under increased criticism in recent weeks - after it introduced new measures in a bid to bolster security.
Passengers have complained that new pat-down searches are invasive, and that full body scanning X-ray machines are too revealing.
Authorities at Bangkok's international airport found a tiger cub that had been drugged and hidden alongside a stuffed toy tiger in the suitcase of a woman flying from Thailand to Iran, an official and a wildlife protection group said.
The woman, a Thai national, had checked in for her flight and her overweight bag was sent for an X-ray which showed what appeared to be a live animal inside, according to Traffic, a wildlife trade monitoring group.
The woman was arrested at Suvarnabhumi Airport before boarding her flight. The cub, estimated to be about three months old, was sent to a wildlife conservation centre in Bangkok.
British Airways apologised to passengers after an emergency message warning they were about to crash into the sea was played by mistake.
About 275 passengers were on the London Heathrow to Hong Kong flight on Tuesday evening when the automated message went out. The plane was flying over the North Sea at the time.
abin crew quickly realised the error and moved to reassure the terrified passengers.
“We all thought we were going to die,” Michelle Lord, 32, of Preston, northern England, told The Sun newspaper.
Another passenger was reported saying: “I can’t think of anything worse than being told your plane’s about to crash.”
A spokesman for British Airways said an investigation was under way to discover whether it was human error or a computer glitch.
“We apologise to passengers on board the flight for causing them undue distress,” he added in a statement.
“Our cabin crew immediately made an announcement following the message advising customers that it was an error and that the flight would continue as normal.”
A departure screen shows cancelled flights at Belfast City Airport, Northern Ireland, Sunday, May, 16, 2010. Civil aviation officials said Sunday a drifting, dense cloud of volcanic ash was encroaching on British airspace, forcing the closure of airports in Northern Ireland, Scotland, and northern England.
A dense cloud of volcanic ash drifting from Iceland forced the closure of airports in northern England, Scotland and Northern Ireland on Sunday.
All airports in Northern Ireland shut down at 1 p.m. (1200 GMT; 8 a.m. EDT), along with others in northern England — including Manchester and Liverpool — as well as Prestwick in Scotland, the National Air Traffic Service said.
Dublin's international airport planned to close from 7 p.m. (1800 GMT, 2 p.m. EDT) until at least 9 a.m. (0800 GMT, 4 a.m. EDT) on Monday.
British and Irish aviation authorities could not say when or if other airports would have to close, but they expected London's airports — including Heathrow, Europe's busiest — to remain open until at least 7 p.m. (1800 GMT; 2 p.m. EDT), and Shannon, in western Ireland, to be open until 11 p.m. (2200 GMT; 6 p.m. EDT).
The German Aerospace Center sent up a test flight Sunday to measure the ash concentration, and the country's air traffic control said flights in Germany would not be affected by volcanic ash before Wednesday.
Ash can clog jet engines. The April 14 eruption at Iceland's Eyjafjallajokul volcano forced most countries in northern Europe to shut their airspace April 15-20, grounding more than 100,000 flights and an estimated 10 million travelers worldwide and costing airlines more than $2 billion.
In southern Iceland, activity at the volcano fluctuated throughout Sunday, but had not particularly intensified, civil protection official Agust Gunnar Gylfason said. He blamed the closures on shifting winds.
"What really changes the situation is the weather pattern," he said.
The Icelandic weather service said "presently there are no indications that the eruption is about to end."
"No major changes are seen in the activity, the ash cloud is slightly higher than yesterday," the agency said.
Airlines complained bitterly over the air space closures last month, calling them an overreaction. The European air safety agency last week proposed drastically narrowing the continent's no-fly zone because of volcanic ash to 120 miles (190 kilometers) like the one used in the U.S. The proposal still must be approved.
Virgin Atlantic's president, Sir Richard Branson, criticized the most recent decision by British authorities to impose a no-fly zone.
"The closing of Manchester airspace once again is beyond a joke," Branson said in a statement. He said test flights have "shown no evidence that airlines could not continue to fly completely safely."
A spokesman for Britain's Civil Aviation Authority said Branson's remarks were "surprising" because a meeting of representatives of airline and engine manufacturers last week had agreed to find a way to ensure planes could fly safely in the volcanic ash.
"We as an organization can't just say, 'Oh, I'm sure it's all right, go fly without evidence it's safe,'" Jonathan Nicholson said.
British Airways, facing cabin crew strikes beginning Tuesday, said it had canceled a small number of flights out of Manchester. The airline's chief executive, Willie Walsh, is to meet with Transport Secretary Philip Hammond on Monday.
Eurostar, which runs trains between Britain and continental Europe, said it was adding four extra trains — an additional 3,500 seats — between London and Paris on Monday.
Britain's weather service has said it expects the winds, blowing from the northwest, to shift midweek, which it says would redirect the ash away from Britain.
Eyjafjallajokul (pronounced ay-yah-FYAH-lah-yer-kuhl) erupted in April for the first time in nearly two centuries. During its last eruption, starting in 1821, its emissions rumbled on for two years.
An airplane of British Airways is about to land at the Heathrow Airport in London, capital of Britain, April 21, 2010.
Flights and life are returning to normal in Europe as Iceland's Eyjafjjoell volcano has reined in her temper, though sporadic disruptions to air travel are expected to occur due to the drifting volcanic ash.
Flights in Europe have returned to normal, one week after the volcanic eruption caused the continent to almost completely shut down its airspace, the European air safety coordination body Eurocontrol said on Friday.
"At the current time, almost all European airspace is available, with the exception of part of northern Scotland," Eurocontrol said in a statement. It expected 29,000 flights to take place on Friday, the normal number.
On the same day, Finnish Civil Aviation Administration said in a statement that all airspace restrictions had been removed in Finland and all airports across the country had been opened for air traffic and were operating normally.
The statement also noted that no new flight restrictions were to be expected, based on the latest forecast on volcanic ash cloud movements on Friday morning.
However, the situation remains unstable. The airspace in southern Finland, southern Norway, northern Scotland and western Sweden had to be closed again Thursday, as a change in the wind direction brought volcanic ash from Iceland back into Scandinavian skies.
Iceland was closing its airspace on the weekend since the wind started to blow ash eastwards, forcing Reykjavik' Keflavik airport to be closed on Friday, for the first time in more than a month.
More than 100,000 flights had been canceled since April 14 when European countries shut down their airspace following the Icelandic volcanic eruption, stranding millions of passengers.
The International Air Transport Association (IATA) put the overall cost to the airline industry at 1.7 billion U.S. dollars.
Besides inflicting a huge cost to European airlines, the ash cloud's potential impact on the other sectors of the economy is also significant.
PricewaterhouseCoopers said a week of disruption could destroy 0.025-0.05 percent of annual British gross domestic product. The same could be true of other European countries, though Germany said the impact on its economy would be limited.
During the disruption, some economic activities simply moved from one sector to another. Road and rail transport in many areas increased at the expense of air travel, it argued.
The disruption could also prompt some companies to make fresh investments to strengthen distribution and logistics system, which might actually be positive for economic growth.
An airplane of British Airways is about to land at the Heathrow Airport in London, capital of Britain, April 21, 2010. The British authority reopened its airspace from 10:00 p.m. on Tuesday, which had been shut down since April 15 owing to the influence of volcanic ash from Iceland.
Europe's airspace is now quickly returning to normal business as about 80 percent of scheduled flights took off Wednesday and 100 percent expected for Thursday.
With the Icelandic volcano at the source of this historic travel disruptions losing its fury, scientists now foresee no major chaos like this current one in the near future, although long, small disruptions are still very likely to occur.
All Europe's main air hubs were up and running Wednesday and the European air traffic agency Eurocontrol said it expected some 21,000 flights in European airspace, against a typical 28,000 on a normal day, or more than three-quarters of the full volume to have taken off that day.
The agency predicted normal traffic on Thursday. "It is anticipated that almost 100 percent of the air traffic will take place in Europe tomorrow, Thursday April 22," it said in a statement.
In Europe's far north, Helsinki in Finland and airspace over the remote Scottish isles of Orkney and Shetland were temporarily reclosed due to still unsafe ash levels. But Iceland's other Nordic neighbors, Denmark, Norway and Sweden, have lifted the last of their restrictions.
While airlines are now scrambling to ship millions of stranded passengers to their destinations, recriminations have begun to fly over whether the week-long shutdown was necessary, which caused the worst traffic chaos in Europe since World War Two.
Overall damage to the global airline industry has reached 1.7 billion U.S. dollars since governments closed their airspace on April 14, according to the International Air Traffic Association.
Airline chiefs have fiercely criticized Europe's chaotic response to the volcanic ash cloud, saying the decisions were based on flawed data or unsubstantiated fears. An aviation group called the financial fallout worse than the three-day worldwide shutdown after the 2001 terrorist attacks in the United States.
European governments "must take their responsibility" and help the carriers, said IATA chief Giovanni Bisignani. Now governments needed to look at how to compensate the airlines, he said.
Some scientists have defended the airspace shutdown, with a volcanologist advising the United Nations saying authorities had no choice but to close their airspace for lack of hard facts about aircraft behavior in volcanic ash.
Closure to air traffic "was the only measure that could be taken", said Henry Gaudru, president of the European Volcanological Society.
The economic impact of the cloud has already hit parts of the supply chain and could potentially dent the fragile recovery from the global recession, experts say.
Pricewaterhouse Coopers said a week of disruption could destroy 0.025-0.05 percent of annual British gross domestic product. The same could be true of other European countries, though Germany said the effect on its economy would be limited.
But there is also saying that the disaster causes no significant loss of total economic output. Although several industries such as airlines were hit hard, they could now recoup part of their losses, for example by staging extra flights.
During the disruption, some economic activity simply moved from one sector to another; road and rail transport in many areas increased at the expense of air travel, it is argued.
To the extent that the disruption exposed weaknesses in companies' distribution systems and fall-back plans, it could now prompt fresh investment, which might actually be positive for economic growth.
Travel and tourism, including transport, lodgings and related investment, comprise about 4 percent of West European gross domestic product, according to the World Travel and Tourism Council.
But while hotels received fewer incoming tourists, some were able to raise their prices to take advantage of stranded tourists, media reports quoted economists as saying.
Meanwhile, Iceland has reported only an "insignificant" amount of ash erupting from the Eyjafjoell volcano now, and with scientists and manufacturers having downgraded the risk of flying in areas of relatively low concentrations, it is predicted as unlikely that any future disruptions will be as serious.
"Explosive activity has diminished. Ash production has gone down. It's really insignificant right now," Pall Einarsson from Iceland's Institute of Earth Sciences told reporters at the government's Civil Protection Agency.
However, Einarsson stressed that the volcano continues to erupt and is unpredictable, foreseeing long-lasting eruptions which may cause small- scale fresh air traffic disruptions.
Iceland's Eyjafjallajokull volcano erupted last Wednesday, spewing steam and billows of ash into the sky. The volcanic eruption is not, by any means, a large-scale one and has not caused casualties up to now.
However, the eruption has pulled Europe out of track.
Because of the ash spreading to the European continent, canceled flights to, from, and within Europe have affected millions of travelers worldwide and reportedly cost airliners some 200 million U.S. dollars a day.
The eruption of a small-scale volcano like the Eyjafjallajokull one could trigger a massive chaos. It is of course worthwhile to explore the lessons from the volcano ash crisis.
First and foremost, an early warning and forecasting system is vital to tackling the disaster resulting from the volcanic eruption.
It is commonly accepted that volcanic eruptions are unpredictable. But it is possible to monitor and forecast the movement and scale of volcano ash.
Scientists in Europe have well performed their duty in sending early warning of the volcano ash, thus avoiding potential aviation incident.
German news magazine Spiegel reported that Icelandic meteorologists informed their British colleagues at midday on Wednesday. The British meteorologists immediately put their supercomputer on the job, and 15 minutes later, they had their first forecast of how the dust cloud would probably spread.
"A warning was sent out to airlines at 2 p.m., long before the cloud reached the European continent," said the news magazine.
However, Europeans reacted slowly in rationally arrange train and road transportation systems to divert the people trapped at airports.
Statistics showed that by late Sunday, more than 63,000 flights had been canceled in 23 European countries, stifling the lifeblood of the continent's economy.
Because few planes are available for service, travelers can't continue their travel, machinery parts can't get to factories, food sellers can't transport their goods, and businesses are finding it increasingly difficult to maintain regular business activities.
As an old Chinese saying goes: "it is never too late to mend the sheepfold." The Icelandic volcano ash crisis has helped expand people's knowledge about volcanic eruptions, and various debates and assessments are conducted or to be conducted across the globe, Europe in particular.
European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso has decided to set up an ad-hoc group to assess the impact of the volcanic ash cloud on the air travel industry and the economy.
"The volcanic ash cloud has created an unprecedented situation," Barroso said in a statement, adding that it is important that all measures to be considered are coordinated at the European level.
The transport ministers from all 27 European Union states are planning a video conference to discuss counter measures, aiming to bar more negative impact on the European economy, which is still struggling out of the financial crisis.
However, the railway companies and road transporters are benefiting from the crisis. Major railway stations across West Europe were crowded with passengers and Eurostar tickets are fully booked even two days ahead of departure.
As the volcano ash spreads across borders, people are calling for more international and regional coordination and cooperation.
As a matter of fact, meteorologists, airline companies and governments across Europe have held timely and smooth exchanges of their information since the volcanic eruption.
In 2004, the Indian Ocean tsunami drove the international community to enhance the global early warning system for tsunami.
Later on, in the Haiti earthquake and the Chile earthquake earlier this year, such an early warning system has played a vital role in avoiding more deaths and casualties in the aftermath of the earthquakes.
Similarly, the Icelandic volcano ash crisis could press Europeans to realize the importance of more international and regional coordination and cooperation, and volcano ash monitoring and warning could become a regular practice in Europe in the future.
This false-colour image from an infrared satellite shows how the volcanic ash has spread over Europe. The ash shows up as red - however it can also be drawn up into clouds and is likely to be far more widely dispersed
This image from Nasa's Terra spacecraft shows how violently the volcano was erupting on April 15, when the UK closed its airspace. On the left is a natural-colour image while an infrared composite is on the right
A new satellite image of ash spewing from Iceland's volcano on 19 April from ESA's Envisat satellite. The visible plume is around 250miles long
The ash plume streams southwards over the Northern Atlantic Ocean in a satellite photograph from April 17. Thermal readings from the volcano vent reveal emissions equivalent to the energy consumed by 60,000 homes
The ash plume streams southwards over the Northern Atlantic Ocean in a satellite photograph from April 17. Thermal readings from the volcano vent reveal emissions equivalent to the energy consumed by 60,000 homes
The huge plume of ash thrown from the Icelandic volcano that has closed airports across Europe, may at last be dying down.
Scientists have revealed that although the volcano created powerful new tremors today, the eruptions are weakening and it is finally emitting less dangerous dust. The cloud rising above the Eyjafjallajökull crater is now reaching a height of around 9,800ft according to the UK Met Office. Although a new eruption has pushed that back up to 13,000ft
Last week the tower of dangerous ash was 36,000ft high.
However, weather patterns continue to blow volcanic ash towards the UK.
Still British experts today said they were 'cautiously optimistic' that the ash could be on the wane.
Dr David Rothery, from the UK's Open University said: 'There is no high ash column rising above the vent.
'If this persists then the high altitude ash cloud will be starved of fresh air and eventually disperse.'
An official at Iceland's Met Office said ash production had fallen sharply and the nature of the eruption appeared to be changing.
'Our web cameras show that there is not much ash but mostly steam now,' said the geologist Hjorleifur Sveinbjornsson.
'The colour of the steam is brown but also quite white so it is more like water vaporising.' *
Scientists flying above the volcano said lava had burst from the crater and onto the Eyjafjallajokull glacier that sits atop the volcano.
The appearance of lava could suggest the eruption is moving into a less explosive phase.
Fewer explosions would mean less of the menacing ash that has drifted to the European continent, choking the upper atmosphere with tiny particles of glass and pulverised rock and causing countries across Europe to close their airspace.
There was still a risk, however, that molten rock could create new pathways for meltwater from the ice cap to run into the crater, causing more explosions and a higher level of ash production, he said.
The UK Met office is using both satellite images and a type of radar from the ground to keep track of the cloud. Infrared cameras are providing valuable data because ash particles interact with radiation in a different way to ordinary cloud particles.
This information is then used to create a real-time image of the skies over Europe.
A Met office spokesman said: 'Assuming the volcanic activity continues to weaken, we can expect ash clearance across the UK and we will be looking for the earliest opportunity that this might happen.' However, those in Iceland may not be so lucky. Weather forecasts show a shift in winds to the north could cause ash to fall over the capital Reykjavick.
The Civil Protection Department have prepared plans for such an occurrence such as closing schools.
Iceland sits on a volcanic hotspot in the Mid-Atlantic Ridge and has relatively frequent eruptions, though most happen in sparsely populated areas and pose little danger to people or property.
* Aberdeen and Edinburgh airports open, Glasgow set to close again * No flights from London airports before 7pm * Met Office forecasts latest ash cloud will continue to disperse across England, Wales and Northern Ireland today * Ministers consider night-flights to clear backlog once cloud clears
A new eruption from the Icelandic volcano today threw plans to get Britain flying again into chaos.
Passengers who were told flights would resume today had their hopes dashed after more cancellations were announced as a new ash cloud headed towards the country.
Passengers at Barajas Airport, Madrid, wait for news about flights back to Britain
The after-effects of the volcano eruption in southern Iceland's Eyjafjallajokull glacier is likely to cause further chaos for a fortnight
Is it a bird or is it a plane? After five days of empty skies this Lufthansa passenger jet was spotted flying above London on its way from Germany to the U.S. It was given special permission by aviation authorities to fly above the ash cloud
A pilot gives the thumps up to as gets the go ahead to leave Belfast City Airport this morning. But the airport closed again at 1pm because of the ash cloud
First flight: A Flybe plane takes off from Glasgow for Stornoway at 7.15am today. However because of a new ash cloud drifting from Iceland overnight, the airport closed at 1pm
Flights later today will be limited to eastern Scotland as the volcanic ash cloud situation remains 'dynamic', air traffic control company Nats said.
All London airports remained closed today and there will be no flights before 7pm at the earliest in the rest of England, nor in Wales or Northern Ireland. Nats said that from 1pm to 7pm only part of Scottish airspace, including Aberdeen, Inverness and Edinburgh airports, would be available for flights in addition to airspace south to Newcastle airport.
This will mean that there will be no flights after 1pm from Glasgow, which was among the airports that was able to open briefly this morning and operate limited services.
BA had intended to resume flights from London airports today but last night it had to cancel those plans.
Ministers are said to be considering relaxing night-flight restrictions around Heathrow, once planes can land there, and running a 24-hour operation to clear the backlog of stranded passengers.
Critics have said the closure of British airspace was unnecessarily triggered by the Met Office.
They say a scientific model based on ‘probability’ rather than fact was used by the government agency to forecast the spread of the volcanic ash cloud.
Matthias Ruete, the European Commission’s director general of transport, said air traffic authorities should not have imposed a widespread ban. He suggested the ban should have been restricted to a 20 to 30 mile limit around the volcano in Iceland. Newcastle Airport reopened for flights to and from Aberdeen and the Isle of Man at 7am. It also said easyJet was hoping to operate a 'very limited service' from late afternoon.
EasyJet said all its flights to and from northern Europe including the UK were cancelled until 5pm, but it would continue to operate routes in southern Europe.
Prime Minister Gordon Brown said airports were 'taking advantage of the window of opportunity' as the impact of the volcano ash cloud temporarily lessened, but passenger safety would remain 'paramount'.
Foreign Secretary David Miliband advised stranded British travellers in Europe to head for Calais.
A spokesman for the air traffic control service Nats said: 'The volcano eruption in Iceland has strengthened and a new ash cloud is spreading south and east towards the UK.
'This demonstrates the dynamic and rapidly changing conditions in which we are working.
'Latest information from the Met Office shows that the situation is worsening in some areas.'
The first of three Royal Navy warships, meanwhile, today began rescuing Britons stranded by the air chaos.HMS Albion docked at Santander in northern Spain this morning and started loading about 500 troops and 300 civilians to take them back to the UK.
Another two Navy vessels, aircraft carrier HMS Ark Royal and commando helicopter carrier HMS Ocean, have also been deployed to rescue stranded British travellers from Europe. Government officials are due to announce where they will dock later today.
A brand new £500-million cruise ship, the Celebrity Eclipse, is due to leave Southampton tonight for Bilbao to pick up around 2,000 British tourists from the northern Spanish port.
The Met Office itself said strong high-altitude winds were blowing the new cloud towards the UK more quickly than the one which followed the first eruption.
A trickle of passengers arrived at airports in Scotland this morning as a handful of domestic flights resumed.
A meeting of the government's emergency planning committee Cobra, chaired by Gordon Brown, was held last night to discuss the latest updates on the ash. It will meet again today.
The results of 40 or so airline test flights at the weekend, including a British Airways flight on Sunday, suggested the risks were not as high as the computer models predicted.
None found evidence of any ash in engines, windows or lubrication systems.
Airlines are losing an estimated £130million a day in revenue because of the ban.
Giovanni Bisignani, head of the International Air Transport Association, said: 'The chaos, inconvenience and economic losses are not theoretical.
'They are enormous. We must make decisions based on the real situation in the sky, not on theoretical models.'
In a joint letter to Transport Secretary Lord Adonis, 11 British airlines said the official response to the eruption presented a 'clear case' for compensation from the Government and the EU.
BA alone estimates the crisis is costing it up to £20million a day. Mr Brown announced yesterday that three Royal Navy ships - the aircraft carrier Ark Royal, HMS Ocean and HMS Albion - will join a Dunkirk-style rescue.
Albion was due to pick up some 300 troops, including men from 3rd Battalion The Rifles, returning after a gruelling six-month tour in Afghanistan, from the northern Spanish port of Santander.
Ark Royal and Ocean will use French Channel ports. It is likely people wanting to board will have to show a a British passport.
While the decision to call in the Navy was welcomed, there were questions over whether the ships should all have been sent to Spain and not France where ferry companies said they were coping with the massive demand.
Eurostar has put on at least an extra 28 trains and says it has 30,000 standard class one-way seats available from today at £89.
The Government is also discussing a plan to create an air hub in Madrid for flights from outside the ash zone.
Passengers would then be transported by road and rail to Calais and other French ports.
Even before the situation worsened last night, thousands of Britons stranded abroad had been told they could face two more weeks of chaos and uncertainty.
Tour operators and airlines said the backlog caused by the erupting volcano Eyjafjallokull is so great that it will take up to 14 days to clear.
British Airways said it had 80 aircraft and almost 3,000 cabin crew and pilots out of position across its global network.
Most airlines promised to prioritise those who had been waiting in airports around the world.
There were suggestions last night that some airlines might pay passengers who do not need to return urgently to wait for a later flight.
* Airlines have provoked fury with calls for the abolition of the regime that requires them to help passengers stranded by flight cancellations. EU rules state that where a flight is cancelled, the airline is required to provide hotel accommodation, meals and other essentials such as the cost of phone calls. But there are reports that many people have been left to fend for themselves. Michael O'Leary of Ryanair said it was 'nuts' to impose such a responsibility and a bill of possibly millions on airlines.
EUROPEAN AIRPORTS (as of 8am Tuesday)
AUSTRIA - Open. BELGIUM - Airspace closed until Tuesday 0600 GMT. May then allow some planes to land and from 1200 GMT some to depart. BULGARIA - Open CZECH REPUBLIC - Open DENMARK - Airspace above 20,500 feet open while the closure below that level is extended until at least 2400 GMT on Tuesday. FINLAND - Airspace closed. FRANCE - French airlines will try to resume 75 percent of long-haul flights from Paris and 25 percent of internal flights on Tuesday. GERMANY - Airspace closed, with some exceptions, until at least 1200 GMT Tuesday. HUNGARY - Open IRELAND - Closed ITALY - Airspace to reopen from 0600 GMT. NETHERLANDS - Passenger flights left Amsterdam's Schipol Airport from 1800 GMT Monday. NORWAY - Airspace partly closed. POLAND - Closed. ROMANIA - Open. SPAIN - 17 airports open. SWEDEN - Open SWITZERLAND - Open TURKEY - All airports open
Relatives of flight passengers waved to a Lufthansa airplane with the destination of Chicago taking off from the airport in Duesseldorf, western Germany, on Tuesday.
Briton Huw Thomas ate breakfast on a cot at John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York Monday.
Some European airports reopened Tuesday and others were set to open progressively throughout the day after air-traffic controllers gave the go-ahead for the resumption of some commercial flights, but with conditions remaining variable in parts of Europe, airlines were unable to make plans with certainty.
Airports in Scotland and northern England were open again. A spokesman for airport operator BAA Ltd. said its airports in Glasgow, Edinburgh and Aberdeen had reopened, but that its other airports—London's Heathrow and Stansted, and Southampton—remained shut. Germany and France were expected to reopen airspace later in the day.
The openings came a day after European air-safety authorities agreed to relax flight bans that it enacted after Iceland's Eyjafjallajökull volcano started erupting violently late Wednesday, spewing a cloud of fine but potentially dangerous dust high into the atmosphere. Days of airspace closures across most of northern and central Europe, the world's biggest restriction of flights since 2001, have left more than eight million passengers dislocated and cost airlines at least $1 billion dollars.
Following criticism by airlines that authorities were being overly cautious in grounding flights, European Union officials agreed Monday to divide EU airspace into three zones based on ash concentrations in the atmosphere. European aviation authorities will establish a "limited" no-fly zone surrounded by a buffer area, and airlines will be allowed to fly outside the zone once they are opened by national authorities.
Carriers were quick to make plans to get aircraft off the ground. Eurocontrol, an umbrella agency that coordinates air traffic across 38 European countries, said it expected 14,000 flights to take place Tuesday, roughly half of regularly scheduled air traffic of between 27,000 and 28,000 flights.
Germany's Deutsche Lufthansa AG will operate about 200 flights, including most of its scheduled long-haul flights, a spokeswoman said. Selected domestic and European flights will also run, she added.
French Ecology Minister Jean-Louis Borloo told RTL radio that around three-quarters of scheduled international flights will depart from Paris's two main airports, Roissy and Orly. Air France-KLM SA said its long-haul flights from the two airports would return to normal. KLM, the carrier's Dutch arm, said it has resumed most of its intercontinental flights and more than half of its European operations Tuesday. The airline added that it was using its extensive SkyTeam alliance network to bring home stranded passengers as soon as possible.
But unlike its German and Franco-Dutch peers, U.K. flag carrier British Airways PLC was still waiting to find out whether it will be able to resume some long-haul flights from London airports later Tuesday. However, some London-bound flights from Asia, the west coast of the U.S., Mexico and Mauritius had departed and were expected to arrive in the U.K. after 7 p.m. local time (2 p.m. ET), a BA spokeswoman said, adding that the airline has contingency plans if London airports remain closed. The airline said Monday that it had hoped to fly some short-haul routes Tuesday, but changing conditions forced it to abandon those plans.
Britain's National Air Traffic Services agency said Tuesday that airspace over Scotland and in northern England as far south as Newcastle Airport would remain available from 1 p.m. to 7 p.m., but restrictions would remain in place over the rest of the U.K. below an altitude of 20,000 feet. Flights above that height will be permitted between 1 p.m. and 7 p.m., allowing aircraft to fly over the U.K.
"The situation regarding the volcanic eruption in Iceland remains dynamic and the latest information from the Met Office shows that the situation today will continue to be variable," NATS said.
Flight disruptions are likely to continue during the week, even though more planes were flying Tuesday, said Helen Kearns, spokeswoman for Transport Commissioner Siim Kallas. "We are faced with an unprecedented crisis, the disruptions will continue over the week," she said.
A fresh cloud of volcanic ash from Iceland's Eyjafjallajokull volcano is expected pass over the U.K. and Denmark, but spare France, the European Volcanic Ash Advisory Centre said Tuesday. The new cloud of ash is forecast to arrive Tuesday, and the U.K., in particular, is expecting further disruption.
"Given the meteorological conditions, the volcanic ash should pass over the southern part of the North Sea, the British Isles, Denmark, Scandinavia and perhaps the extreme north of France," said forecaster Didier Rosenblatt.
The reopening of European airspace couldn't come soon enough for passengers and airlines, which are losing hundreds of millions of dollars each day they are grounded. Irish airline Aer Lingus Group PLC on Tuesday estimated its total cash costs from the five-day closure of airspace at between €15 million and €20 million ($20.2 million and $27 million). The company put the daily cost at between €4 million and €5 million, as a result of lost revenue and the costs of passenger disruption. BAA, the U.K. airport operator owned by Spain's Grupo Ferrovial SA, said it is losing between £5 million £6 million a day.
Manufacturing also is feeling the squeeze from blocked global trade routes. Japan's Nissan Motor Co. said Tuesday it will temporarily suspend part of its domestic production lines as it is unable to import air pressure sensors from Ireland.
