Bartamaha (Nairobi):-Virtually all of Europe’s major airports remain closed as a huge plume of volcanic ash drifts south and east across the continent from Iceland.
Millions of air travellers are stranded across Europe after some 16,000 flights were cancelled on Friday.
Britain and Ireland have re-imposed flight bans, warning of “worsening” conditions throughout Saturday.
Airlines are losing some £130m ($200m) a day in an unprecedented shutdown of commercial air travel.
“Current forecasts show that the situation is worsening throughout Saturday,” said the UK’s National Air Traffic Service (Nats).
Britain extended its ban on commercial flights until at least 0100 local time on Sunday (2400 GMT on Saturday).
Eurocontrol, which coordinates air traffic control in 38 nations, said the ash was moving east and southeast and warned of “significant disruption of air traffic”.
Many countries and airlines have grounded fleets amid fears that the ash – a mixture of glass, sand and rock particles, drifting from 5,000ft (1,500m) – could be catastrophic to aircraft.
About two-thirds of the 28,000 daily flights in the affected zone were cancelled on Friday, while only half the usual number of flights between Europe and North America operated.
The disruption has affected hundreds of thousands of travellers since Wednesday when the Eyjafjallajoekull volcano began erupting for the second time in a month.
Magnus Tumi Gudmundsson, a geologist from the University of Iceland, has said activity has increased at the volcano, causing an ash plume to rise 8.5km (5.3 miles) into the air.
He told the AP news agency that scientists would be able to fly above the volcano for the first time to assess how much ice has melted, as winds have cleared visibility.
Major hubs
Europe’s busiest airports, including Heathrow, Frankfurt and Charles de Gaulle, have been affected by the closures.
All 16 international airports in Germany were closed on Saturday and German airline Lufthansa cancelled all its flights until at least 2000 local time (1800 GMT), a spokesman for the company said.
“There has never been anything like this,” he said, adding that there were no Lufthansa planes in the air anywhere in the world.
Unable to catch flights, commuters across northern Europe have sought other means of transport, packing out trains, buses and ferries.
The Eurostar cross-channel rail service said it had never seen so many passengers on one day and the trains are fully booked until Monday.
The large no-fly zone also means that some world leaders might have difficulty attending the funeral of the Polish president on Sunday.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel had to touch down in Portugal for an unscheduled overnight stay on her way back from the US, while the disruption also forced the cancellation of the inaugural Iraqi Airways flight from Baghdad to London.
US pop star Whitney Houston was forced to take a car ferry from Britain to Ireland for a concert after her flight was cancelled.
The travel chaos has been felt as far away as Asia, with dozens of Europe-bound flights being cancelled in Australia, India, China, Japan and Singapore.
Cathay Pacific has cancelled 29 flights since Thursday, and said it would not be accepting new bookings to London, Paris, Frankfurt and Amsterdam for the next few days.
British health officials said any effects of the ash on people with existing respiratory conditions were “likely to be short term”.
The last eruption of the Eyjafjallajoekull volcano was on 20 March, when a 0.5km-long fissure opened up on the eastern side of the glacier at the Fimmvoerduhals Pass. The eruption prior to that started in 1821 – and continued intermittently for more than a year.
Iceland lies on the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, the highly volatile boundary between the Eurasian and North American continental plates.
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Source:-BBC
