Volcanic ash stops flights across northern Europe

A huge cloud of ash from a volcano in Iceland turned the skies of northern Europe into a no-fly zone today, leaving hundreds of thousands of passengers stranded.

Flights from Malta were also affected: See http://www.timesofmalta.com/articles/view/20100415/local/many-uk-airports-closed-as-volcanic-ash-drifts-into-airspace )

An eruption yesterday, the second in a month, from below the Eyjafjallokull glacier hurled a plume of ash six to 11 kilometres (3.8 to 7 miles) into the atmosphere, and this spread south east overnight.

"Due to ash, air traffic on the sea area between Scotland, Norway, northern Sweden, Britain, Norway and northern Finland is being limited," Finland's airport agency Finavia said.

No flights will be allowed in British air space, except in emergencies, from 1100 GMT until at least 1700 GMT as the ash spreads across the country, Britain's National Air Traffic Service (NATS) said.

"Volcanic ash represents a significant safety threat to aircraft," it said in a statement, adding that it was coordinating with weather forecasters and other countries.

In 1982 a British Airways jumbo jet lost power in all its engines when it flew into an ash cloud over Indonesia, falling to within a few thousand feet of the ground before it was able to restart its engines.

Last year British airports handled around 6,000 flights a day, according to data from Britain's Civil Aviation Authority.

WIDESPREAD DISRUPTION

Airspace in northern Sweden was closed and transatlantic flights were taking a longer route south to avoid the ash, said Jan Lindqvist, a spokesman for Arlanda airport in Stockholm.

All air traffic in and out of Norway's main Oslo Airport was cancelled from 10 a.m..

Denmark's Copenhagen airport said it would close around 5 p.m. and it could not say when flights would resume. Danish air traffic controller Navair said the country's part of North Sea air space was already closed.

Finland's airport manager Finavia said northern Finland's air space would be closed until 2 p.m. on Friday, with airlines Finnair and SAS cancelling several domestic and international flights.

Paris, Brussels and Amsterdam and Geneva airports said they had cancelled a large number of flights, and Eurocontrol said it had provisional plans to close part of the airspace above Belgium, the Netherlands and Germany later on Thursday.

Eurocontrol said later Dutch airspace would close from this afternoon, the Dutch news agency ANP reported.