Airlines have appealed to passengers to give up their seats to stranded travelers, as carriers across Europe attempted to clear a backlog of thousands of tourists grounded by the ash cloud spewed from Iceland’s volcano.
British Airways and Virgin Atlantic appealed on Saturday for passengers booked on long-haul flights next week to consider giving up their seat to make way for travelers still stuck following flight disruptions.
A week of airspace closures caused by ash clouds gusting from Iceland’s Eyjafjallajokull volcano caused the worst breakdown in civil aviation in Europe since World War II.
More than 100,000 flights were canceled and airlines are on track to lose more than US$2 billion.
“It’s a very difficult situation and we’ve had to deal with a lot of complexity, aircraft stuck in different parts of the world, crew stuck in different parts of the world,” British Airways chief executive Willie Walsh said.
Flight authorities in Europe say the majority of the continent is now free of volcanic ash, and most airline services are operating as normal. Several carriers said they are adding extra flights to help the stranded return home.
Iceland’s civil protection agency said Eyjafjallajokull was still spewing ash, but that the plume was now about 3km high — not large enough to reach jet streams.
Winds are now gusting from the south east — away from Europe, said Olof Baldursdottir of the civil protection agency.
Most airports in Iceland — including Keflavik International Airport and Reykjavik International Airport — were closed.
At London’s Gatwick airport — the city’s second busiest hub — Daniel Starks, a 39-year-old farmer, said he was one of 200 tourists stuck on the Spanish island of Tenerife for an extra five days as a result of the disruptions.
“There’s a lot still out there that can’t get back,” he said.
The French Foreign Ministry said on Saturday that about 10,000 French travelers remained stranded — about half the number estimated on Friday, including 60 people stuck in Nepal.
France has made 1 million euros (US$1.3 million) available in aid to French travelers to help cover expenses due to ash-related delays.
A spokesman for Germany’s Deutsche Lufthansa AG said only a few passengers were still stranded abroad.
But Virgin Atlantic founder Richard Branson has labeled as unnecessary the Europe-wide ban on flights prompted by concerns the volcanic ash could cause problems with airliner engines.
“A blanket ban of the whole of Europe was not the right decision,” Branson said. “Planes have to put up with sandstorms in Africa, the engines are designed to put up with a lot more than existed.”
He said Virgin engineers had insisted that there “were plenty of corridors through which the airlines could have flown.”
Branson said his airline lost £50 million (US$77 million).
British Prime Minister Gordon Brown has defended the decision to close European airspace, insisting it was correct to prioritize passenger safety.
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