In the worst flight disruption since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, some airlines were flying planes in Europe Tuesday. But there was still confusion, and criticism, stemming from the flight ban that governments had imposed as a cloud of volcanic ash descended to the continent from Iceland. http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/21/world/europe/21europe.html?hp
And the situation wasn’t made any better after a second cloud of volcanic ash made its way toward Great Britain.
European officials had agreed Monday to lift flight bans that were imposed last Thursday when the ash from the volcano that erupted in Iceland floated south. Authorities had barred flying out of fear that the volcanic ash would enter and disable jet engines, leading to crashes.
That ban has been widely criticized by airline companies, who were forced to cancel an estimated 95,000 flights, stranding millions of travelers around the world and resulting in hundreds of millions of dollars in lost revenue, according to The New York Times.
The paper reported that while most countries in Continental Europe were opening their airspace, Britain’s airspace was still essentially closed Tuesday.
Only half the usual number of flights in Europe, 14,000 versus the usual 28,000, were going ahead Tuesday. About 75 percent of the airspace over Europe was open, according to The Times, and all European airspace above 20,000-feet elevations was open for traffic.