As British Airports Open, Huge Backlog Remains
By NICOLA CLARK and ALAN COWELL
Copyright by Reuters
Published: April 21, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/22/world/europe/22europe.html?th&emc=th
PARIS — Airlines around the world began to confront a huge backlog of passengers on Wednesday after six days of European airspace restrictions had forced the cancellation of more than 100,000 flights and cost the airline industry an estimated $1.7 billion.
While officials said it could take weeks for some travel to return completely to normal, some airlines in Europe and Asia said they were moving rapidly to restore flights. Eurocontrol, the agency that coordinates regional air-traffic management, said three-quarters of the 28,000 flights scheduled for European airspace were expected to fly on Wednesday — the highest proportion in days.
About two-thirds of scheduled departures and half of arriving flights were operating at Heathrow Airport outside of London. At Frankfurt International Airport, about half as many flights as normal were taking off and landing.
A spokeswoman said that airlines had added 90 supplementary flights in and out of Heathrow since Britain reopened its airspace opened late Tuesday, becoming the last major European country to do so after a huge plume of volcanic ash spreading south and east from Iceland disrupted travel over much of the continent.
But flights were not resuming as quickly at other British regional airports. Only 10 percent of scheduled flights at Edinburgh operated on Wednesday morning, a figure that was expected to rise to 50 percent by the evening. In Aberdeen, Scotland, only 30 percent of morning flights operated, while 65 percent were expected from 5 p.m.
The International Air Transport Association, or I.A.T.A., said Wednesday that the crisis had cost airlines more than $1.7 billion in lost revenue through Tuesday. At its worst, the association said, “the crisis impacted 29 percent of global aviation and affected 1.2 million passengers a day.”
Before restrictions were eased, the chaos had lasted twice as long as the three-day closing of American airspace after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, which devastated many airlines financially. By midday in Paris, Air France said that it had been able to restore almost all service across its entire network, and had flown more than 40,000 stranded passengers back to France since Monday.
The airline said it expected to operate all its scheduled long-haul flights on Wednesday and many European flights except for those to northern and northeastern Europe, where some airports remained closed.
Aéroports de Paris, which operates Charles de Gaulle and Orly airports, said all intercontinental arrivals and departures and 75 percent of European and domestic flights were expected to operate Wednesday.
British Airways planned to operate all of its intercontinental services from London’s Heathrow and Gatwick airports on Wednesday, although many of its domestic and European flights remained canceled until at least Wednesday afternoon.
Britain’s National Air Traffic Service said it had handled roughly 130 flights in the airspace over England and Wales between 1 a.m. and 7 a.m. on Wednesday and 35 flights in Scotland and Northern Ireland. British airspace would be largely open on Wednesday, except for parts of Scotland with a “dense concentration” of volcanic ash. Aer Lingus, the Irish flag carrier, said it expected to resume a full flight schedule by early afternoon.
With their call centers jammed by customers trying to rebook their flights, some airlines found innovative ways to speed the process, including social media networks. The Dutch carrier KLM advised passengers on its Web site that rebooking could be done via Twitter or on its Facebook page.
According to forecasts by Britain’s Met Office meteorological agency and the Volcanic Ash Advisory Center in London, winds were expected to continue blowing the highest concentrations of ash westward toward the northeast coast of Canada. By midnight Wednesday, the cloud was expected to be largely clear of Europe.
Lufthansa, the German carrier, also planned a full intercontinental schedule on Wednesday while progressively restoring its normal European and domestic flights.
Officials at the airline said it operated 200 flights on Tuesday and would increase that number to 500 on Wednesday — far below its usual number of 1,800 flights daily.
Ryanair, a low-cost airline based in Ireland, said it would resume flights within northern Europe on Thursday and service between Britain and Ireland on Friday. Its rival, easyJet, said it was restarting flights in Britain and continental Europe but expected delays in the next few days because of the backlog of stranded passengers.
Most Asian and American carriers had planned limited service to and from Europe, although Singapore Airlines later said that as of Wednesday it had resumed its full schedule of flights. The airline said it was looking into the possibility of adding extra flights and using aircraft with larger capacity on some routes. Singapore Airlines has nine Airbus A380 jets seating 470 passengers each. Qantas, the Australian carrier, said it would take “approximately two to three weeks to clear the current backlog.” Cathay Pacific, based in Hong Kong, said it was not taking any new bookings on flights to Europe until after May 10.
“We have to be realistic,” the airline said in a statement. “When services resume, all airlines around the world will be competing for landing slots at airports, and airspace and airports are going to be horribly congested.”
Even though most European airports were operating, travel arrangements were far from normal, and many European and British passengers faced time-consuming, improvised efforts to return home by train, road or ferry.
The reopening of European airspace was certain to be accompanied by a potentially acrimonious debate about the indecision of governments in handling the crisis.
The European Commission said Wednesday that a single authority should be allowed to override national sovereignty over airspace in the European Union to determine whether aircraft can fly safely through volcanic ash. There already are plans for an overarching authority to govern Europe’s “Single Sky” by 2012. But confusion among the 27 European Union countries in dealing with the volcanic ash had created a new impetus to “fast track" the proposal, a spokeswoman for the commission said.
The most politically sensitive question was whether a so-called European Network Manager would give binding or advisory recommendations.
“The view of the European Commission is that it should be binding,” said Helen Kearns, the spokeswoman for the European Union’s transport commissioner, Siim Kallas. Giovanni Bisignani, chief executive of the I.A.T.A., on Wednesday repeated industry calls for European governments and the European Union to find ways to compensate the industry for its losses during the ash crisis. He noted that the United States government provided $5 billion to airlines after the attacks of 2001.
“I am the first one to say that this industry does not want or need bailouts,” Mr. Bisignani said in a statement. “But this crisis is not the result of running our business badly. It is an extraordinary situation exaggerated with a poor decision-making process by national governments.”
Britain’s Civil Aviation Authority said the “major barrier to resuming flights had been understanding tolerance levels of aircraft to ash,” suggesting that the authorities had been especially cautious in assessing the danger from the volcanic ash’s ability to clog jet engines, forcing planes to stall midflight with potentially catastrophic consequences.
But with every day of closings, the cost and disruption mounted and airlines pressured governments to reconsider their assessment of the risks.
Several British newspapers reported on Wednesday that British Airways had tried to force the authorities’ hand by ordering 24 long-haul flights to take off and fly toward Britain before the restrictions were lifted late on Tuesday.
The British transport secretary, Andrew Adonis, said safety had been the “paramount concern” but after talking to airplane manufacturers, airlines and scientific specialists, the authorities had reached a better understanding of “how different concentrations of ash affect aircraft engines.”
Like other airline bosses, Willie Walsh, the chief executive of British Airways, said he did not believe it had been necessary to impose a “blanket ban.”
In a subsequent radio interview on Wednesday, Lord Adonis said it was “fair to say” that regulatory bodies had been too cautious in deciding when to re-open British air space. But he denied that decisions had been based on pressure from airlines.
Nicola Clark reported from Paris and Alan Cowell from London.. Reporting was contributed by Mark McDonald from Hong Kong, Jack Ewing from Frankfurt, James Kanter from Brussels, Raphael Minder from Madrid, Bettina Wassener from Hong Kong, and Brian Knowlton from Washington.
As Some Flights Resume, New Confusion Emerges
By JAD MOUAWAD
Copyright by The New York Times
Published: April 20, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/21/world/europe/21uncertain.html?th&emc=th
What a jigsaw puzzle it was, with Paris open, but Frankfurt still mostly closed. Barcelona and Rome were definitely open, as was London by the end of Tuesday night.
Six days after volcanic ash virtually shut down European airspace, the airlines slowly resumed flights there on Tuesday. But airlines are still uncertain about when they can return to a regular schedule. And thousands of stranded travelers and would-be vacationers now face a logistical nightmare as they try to figure out when their flights are going to take off — and from where.
Everyone had the same questions: When is the next available flight? Should vacations be postponed or canceled? How soon can I get back home?
About 95,000 flights have been canceled since the volcano in Iceland erupted last week. It could now take several weeks for airlines to work through the backlog of passengers, analysts said, provided the volcano does not act up.
Delta Air Lines, which has about 50 round-trip flights to Europe on a normal day, estimated that each day of delay added an extra day to get all their passengers to their destinations.
Even as the flights resume, the airlines still face all sorts of uncertainties, starting with the mind-numbing complexity of Europe’s airspace, which is normally one of the world’s busiest. Then, there are the whims of the volcano in Iceland and the erratic nature of the winds over Europe. Since Thursday, most American-based carriers have been operating less than 20 percent of their scheduled flights to airports in Rome, Madrid and Barcelona, in southern Europe.
Airspace in Finland was closed on Tuesday, as were parts of Germany, Poland, Sweden and Ireland, while France was partly reopening traffic. Late on Tuesday in London, Heathrow Airport, a major European hub, reopened for business with a British Airways flight from Vancouver.
One of the problems, analysts note, is that airlines, which have been flying increasingly full planes in recent months, have few empty seats on their scheduled flights. They also have to contend with crews that are themselves stranded and airplanes in the wrong airports.
“Whilst the reopening of airspace is good news both for passengers and the industry as a whole, it is likely to take several days to get everyone who has been affected to their destinations,” said Steve Ridgway, the chief executive of Virgin Atlantic.
Some of the airlines are scheduling extra flights to deal with the extra influx of passengers. Delta said it was adding 15 flights over the next two days.
American Airlines, meanwhile, estimated that it had 60,000 passengers who needed to be reaccommodated, though some might have canceled or postponed trips.
“We have been taking this literally one day at a time,” said Tim Smith, a spokesman at American Airlines. “I’ve lost count of how many times we’ve been given a restart date only to see it slip.”
Ian M. Nieves, 30, an iPhone software developer for Lego, was wrapping up a business trip to the Danish toy company’s headquarters in Billund when he heard that Europe’s airspace had closed last Thursday. He made his way to neighboring Sweden, where he could stay with friends. That journey took him two days and involved two long bus trips and two train rides.
“It was supposed to be a fairly simple in-and-out trip, and it has turned into an odyssey,” Mr. Nieves said as he juggled calls with his travel agent, whose latest suggestion was to find a way to Barcelona, Spain — or Oslo — and try to catch a flight out from there.
“It now sounds like Monday might be the earliest I can get a flight from Frankfurt to Denver,” said Mr. Nieves, who opted to stay in Stockholm until then.
In the United States, meanwhile, many travelers have postponed or canceled trips to Europe, opting for domestic destinations or other international spots like South America, said Rick Seaney, chief executive of FareCompare.com, a travel Web site. He said he expected ticket prices to Europe, which have risen by 30 to 50 percent from last year’s lows, to drop in coming months as travelers put off trips.
“When you have disruptive events like this — such as SARS, or H1N1, or hurricanes, it tends to really hurt demand,” Mr. Seaney said. “People don’t want the anxiety of their trip being canceled.”
Silvia Ekelund and Mats Holm were visiting from Sweden when the flights were grounded, stretching out the itinerary for their romantic New York City getaway — a Christmas present from Mr. Holm, a lawyer — by more than a week. The couple had already done all the shopping, theater and bars that they could handle.
The couple had been booked to leave the city last Friday after a seven-day trip. Now they have made reservations to leave next Monday, and will be taking a short trip to Washington, D.C., in between. “Or maybe we will go to Las Vegas and get married,” Ms. Ekelund said.
Jim Cox, a physician from Dallas, who is on a biannual holiday to see soccer games in Europe, is stuck in London with his father and a former college roommate.
Six other people were supposed to travel with them, including his brother, but never made it to London when their flights from the United States were canceled last week. But Mr. Cox packed in several more soccer games and visited the home of the Arsenal football club, Emirates Stadium.
“I feel so guilty being here while they are all missing out on this,” said Mr. Cox, 46, who added that the weather was “just unbelievable.”
Christine Hauser contributed reporting.
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