Airport Crisis Frustrates Travelers, and Airlines

Airport Crisis Frustrates Travelers, and Airlines
By NICOLA CLARK, JULIA WERDIGIER and STEVEN ERLANGER
Copyright by The New York Times
Published: April 18, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/19/world/europe/19ash.html?hp


PARIS — The shutdown of much of Europe’s airspace looked set to last into Monday as the geyser of ash from an Icelandic volcano continued to spew into the atmosphere Sunday, even as some isolated airports, such as those in Frankfurt, Berlin and Warsaw, cleared the way for a handful of flights heading east or north.

Britain’s National Air Traffic Services extended its ban on flights across its airspace until at least 6 a.m. local time Monday, prompting the country’s flag carrier, British Airways, to cancel all of its Monday flights. Air France canceled Paris-bound flights through 8 a.m. Monday. And across the globe, Cathay Pacific of Hong Kong, Qantas of Australia and China Airlines in Taiwan also canceled Europe-bound flights into Monday and beyond.

Eurocontrol, the Brussels-based agency that coordinates air traffic management across the region, said it expected 20,000 — more than 80 percent — of the 24,000 flights normally scheduled would be canceled Sunday. Since the ash cloud first appeared over European airspace Thursday, more than 63,000 flights have been canceled, it said.

But Germany began allowing some flights to take off from a few airports from 4 to 8 p.m. “A gap in an easterly direction has appeared in the ash cloud,” a spokeswoman told Reuters late Sunday afternoon. A few other countries, including France, Switzerland and Poland, opened at least parts of their airspace to allow flights above 35,000 feet. And major U.S. airlines, which canceled more than 130 Europe-bound flights on Sunday, said they were planning to operate some flights to and from Spain, Portugal and Italy, “conditions permitting.”

Still, airline officials were having a hard time hiding their frustration with the situation. On a conference call Sunday with Eurocontrol, one airline representative sharply chastised national civil aviation authorities for being inconsistent in applying flight restrictions and stressed that the flight bans were creating “a serious economic issue for us.”

With airlines eager to reposition aircraft and flight crews scattered across the region, some governments began allowing limited, low-altitude flights without passengers. Germany’s civil aviation authority said it had allowed several such ferry flights by Lufthansa, Air Berlin and Condor airlines overnight. Such flights are being operated under so-called visual flight rules, whereby pilots navigate by sight, rather than relying on their cockpit instrument panels.

Air France, British Airways and KLM also reported successful test flights on Sunday.

“I understand the requirement for safety,” said Dale Moss, the chief executive of OpenSkies, the Paris-based, all-business-class subsidiary of British Airways, in an interview Sunday. “But the level of frustration is painfully high” for both airlines and passengers, he said.

“We need some scientific data quick, so that we can start projecting and putting contingency plans in place,” he said.

Earlier, Lufthansa expressed frustration at what it suggested was excessive caution by the German authorities. But German officials defended their decision. “What’s more important, the safety of passengers or business?” asked Helmut Malewski, a meteorologist at the German Weather Service. “No one knows how to deal with this situation. We’re erring on the side of safety.”

Britain’s Met Office meteorological agency said that the eruption of Iceland’s Eyjafjallajokull volcano was continuing as of early Sunday morning “and possibly intensifying,” with the ash plume rising to 30,000 feet. The cloud had extended as far south as Spain overnight, prompting the closure of airspace in the northern part of that country, according to Eurocontrol.

While the closing of the airways has already laid waste to the immediate plans and business of industry, the arts and world leaders, the possibility that it could drag on for days, if not weeks, is raising concerns about the longer term consequences for public health, military operations and the world economy.

The disaster is estimated to be costing airlines $200 million a day, but the economic damage will roll through to farms, retail establishments and nearly any other business that depends on air cargo shipments. Fresh produce will spoil, and supermarkets in Europe, used to year-round supplies, will begin to run out.

But unless flights are disrupted for weeks, threatening factories’ supply chains, economists do not think the crisis will significantly affect gross domestic product.

“If it really drags on another week that could be really serious,” said Peter Westaway, chief economist for Europe at the Nomura investment bank. The air travel shutdown could affect productivity, he said, if hundreds of thousands of people miss work or are not able to do business because they are stuck in limbo somewhere.

On Sunday, London’s busy St. Pancras train station, where Eurostar trains leave for Paris and Brussels, was still crowded with people trying to get to continental Europe and elsewhere. Long lines formed in front of ticket counters and people waited patiently without knowing when the next available ticket might be.

Silvana Sobreira, sitting on a bench, wondered how and when she would be able to get home in Brazil. She and her husband were on a vacation trip across Italy, Austria and now Britain for the last 17 days but are now stuck.

“We’re hoping to get a ticket to Paris but it doesn’t look good,” she said. From Paris, the couple would then rent a car to Lisbon, Portugal, and then fly back to Brazil, she said — just as an announcement advised travelers that all Eurostar tickets to Paris were sold out for Sunday.

The shutdown has also affected American military operations. Military supplies for operations in Afghanistan have been disrupted, and a spokeswoman for the Pentagon said that all medical evacuation flights from Iraq and Afghanistan to Germany, where most injured soldiers are typically treated, were being diverted directly to Andrews Air Force Base in Maryland.

Within the European Command, some routine resupply missions and movement of personnel missions have been diverted or delayed, she said.

The World Health Organization issued an advisory saying that as long as the ash remains in the upper atmosphere, there is not likely to be increased health risk. So far, analysis of the ash shows that about a quarter of the particles are smaller than 10 microns, making them more dangerous because they can penetrate more deeply into the lungs, the W.H.O. said.

In Britain, where a layer of fine dust is already covering large areas of the country, the authorities are advising those with respiratory problems to stay indoors or wear masks out of doors.

But experts said most people had no reason to be alarmed. Dr. Neil W. Schluger, chief scientific officer for the World Lung Foundation, said people with asthma or lung disease could stay indoors or wear a mask to avoid irritation, but that there was little real danger, especially with the ash falling so far from the source.

“The bottom line,” said Dr. Ronald G. Crystal, chief of pulmonology at New York Presbyterian/Weill Cornell Hospital, “is there’s no long-term health effect from volcanic ash.”

The airline industry was the first economic casualty. Steve Lott, a spokesman for the International Air Transport Association, said that with the conservative estimate of a $200 million loss in revenue per day, “we could easily hit a billion dollars’ loss in revenue next week.”

“The bottom line is that it could not have happened at a more difficult time for airlines that are trying to climb out of the global recession,” he said. “It’s been that way, many airlines feel like they take one step forward, two steps back.”

The volcano, meanwhile, continued to defy predictions. Clive Oppenheimer, a volcanologist at the University of Cambridge, said the average span of a volcanic eruption is a month or two. In the case of this volcano, he said, scientists need to know more about how much molten rock is beneath it, but concluded, “We could see intermittent activity over the coming months.”

Cathay Pacific, for one, said it would not accept any new bookings for the next few days. But Leo Liao, a Hong Kong businessman who was stranded at the Frankfurt airport, was cheerful and philosophical. “It’s a natural issue,” he said. “Never complain. You can’t change this.”


Nicola Clark and Steven Erlanger reported from Paris, and Julia Werdigier from London. Reporting was contributed by Bettina Wassener from Hong Kong and Joseph Berger from New York.