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| The shutdown of a swathe of European airspace has grounded thousands of flights [AFP] |
A huge plume of ash spewing from an Icelandic volcano has continued to keep aircraft grounded, stranding millions of passengers across Europe and around the world.
With scores of normally busy airports turned to ghost towns and thousands of flights cancelled, airlines have said they face losses running into hundreds of millions of dollars a day.
Around 17,000 flights were cancelled on Friday, with warnings that up to six million passengers around the world could be affected if the shutdown continues into Sunday.
Transatlantic flights have slowed to a trickle, while flights into Europe from the Asia-Pacific, Africa and the Middle East have also been badly disrupted.
Al Jazeera's David Chater, reporting from Iceland, said the situation could get "worse".
"It [is] a huge mountain of ash still vigorously climbing into the sky," he said.
"We commissioned a pilot in the last few hours of daylight to take another look for us. I saw his pictures before I headed out towards the volcano, and I can tell you it is still vigorously erupting. There's no let-up at all. In fact, it looks to me like it is even worse."
The closure of European airspace is the biggest shutdown to hit aviation since World War II, closing the continent's three biggest airports - London Heathrow, Paris-Charles de Gaulle and Frankfurt.
Moving eastward
Over the next 24 hours the plume is expected to extend eastward over Russia and as far south as the Alps, with Italy becoming the latest country forced to restrict flights.
Eurocontrol, the body which co-ordinates air traffic control across 38 European nations, has said it expects to see "significant disruption" of air traffic well into Saturday.
In a statement it said it expected to see about 10,000-11,000 flights in European airspace. On a normal day it would expect 28,000.
Although largely invisible to the naked eye, aviation experts say the microscopic ash particles made up of pulverised rock and glass pose a major threat to aircraft engines - causing a potentially catastrophic failure.
In 1982, a British Airways 747 lost power in all its engines when it flew into a volcanic ash cloud over Indonesia, plunging several hundred metres before it was able to restart its engines.
The sandblast effect of flying through an ash cloud can also badly scratch aircraft windows, reducing visibility to near zero.
Graham Lake, director-general of Canso, a civil air navigation service, described the situation as "unprecedented".
"I don't think there has ever been a situation where such a huge amount of air space has been closed - certainly outside of the US," he told Al Jazeera from Amsterdam, the Netherlands.
"A quick calculation shows that about 300 million people are directly affected by this [volcano erupting] and I don't think the situation is likely to change anytime soon."
But Lake said the the authorities were "monitoring the situation extremely closely" and taking good advice from the meteorological offices across the region.
Health hazard
Meanwhile the World Health Organisation has warned that the fine volcanic ash could harm people on the ground with pre-existing breathing problems as it falls to earth.
The shutdown was triggered by the eruption on Wednesday of a volcano under southern Iceland's Eyjafjallajokull glacier, sending clouds of ash several kilometres into the air.
Winds have since pushed the plume south and east across Britain, Ireland, Scandinavia and into the heart of Europe.
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| A Eurocontrol official shows how the ash plume has grounded air traffic [AFP] |
"In terms of closure of air space, this is worse than after 9/11," a spokesman for the Civil Aviation Authority, Britain's aviation regulator, said.
"The disruption is probably larger than anything we've probably seen."
Following the 2001 attacks on Washington and New York, US air space was closed for three days and European airlines were forced to halt all transatlantic services.
Shares in major European airlines such as Lufthansa, British Airways, Air Berlin, Air France-KLM, Iberia and Ryanair fell between 1.4 and 3.0 per cent on Friday.
Air industry group IATA said the shutdown was costing the world's airlines more than $200m a day.
Countries that have closed all or most of their airspace include: Austria, Belgium, Britain, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Hungary, Latvia, the Netherlands, Poland, Romania, Slovakia, Spain, Sweden and Switzerland.
Shifting course
Ireland, Lithuania and Norway gradually reopened their skies late on Friday as the ash plume shifted course, while airspace over Scotland and Northern Ireland was also reopened to traffic.
Flights from Iceland have been largely unaffected.
Scientists, however, have warned that the volcano could continue to erupt for days to come, threatening to extend the travel chaos.
With airlines counting the economic cost of the shutdown, Scandinavia's SAS airline warned on Friday it would temporarily lay off up to 2,500 employees in Norway starting on Monday if flights remained grounded.
Travellers with booked flights have been advised to register their contact details with their respective airlines, but not to turn up at airports that are known to be closed.
The shutdown is also expected to prevent several world leaders from the attending Sunday's funeral of Lech Kaczynski, Poland's late president, who died in an air crash last Saturday.
Poland had considered delaying the ceremony, but a senior presidential aide insisted it would go ahead.
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