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Volcanic ash closes airports in Spain, Italy and Portugal
Separately, a finger of the main ash cloud -- centered in the mid-Atlantic at altitudes of up to 35,000 feet (10,500 meters) -- was still touching on parts of Portugal and Spain, affecting airports at Porto, La Coruna, Vigo, and Santiago.
The Irish Aviation Authority described the cloud as 2,100 miles long and 1,400 miles wide (3,400 kilometers by 2,200 kilometers). It ordered Ireland’s five westernmost airports to close Sunday afternoon. However Ireland’s three biggest airports in Dublin, Shannon and Cork were expected to stay open because the cloud is remaining off Ireland’s Atlantic coast.
Irish airline Aer Lingus apologized to its customers for a string of flight cancelations since last Tuesday, when the ash threat returned to Irish air space after a two-week break. Its transatlantic services to Boston and New York were operating Sunday subject to delays.
“When the plume impacts on our air space, our first focus is to plot a different flight path to avoid canceling flights. However this is often unavoidable. When airports are closed for business, or flight paths are not available, we must unfortunately cancel flights,” Aer Lingus chief executive Christoph Mueller said in a statement on the airline’s website.
The disruptions to air traffic appeared minor compared to the five-day closure of European airspace last month, which forced the cancellation of over 100,000 flights, stranded passengers around the world and caused airlines direct losses of more than one billion euros.
Eurocontrol, the Brussels-based agency that coordinates air traffic control centers throughout the continent, said trans-Atlantic flights will continue to be diverted northward over Greenland to avoid the cloud stretching from Iceland to the Azores Islands. It warned airlines to plan on taking on more fuel for the longer flight around the oceanic no-fly zone.
“Flights are required to make significant rerouting to avoid the area of ash cloud coverage,” a midday advisory said. “This is leading to some delays. However significant numbers of cancellations have not occurred.” Eurocontrol said there would be approximately 24,500 flights within the European area, about 500 below average for a Sunday at this time of year. It said the ash cloud was expected to dissipate and that most of the closed airports were likely to reopen later Sunday.
Brussels airport listed at least six flights bound for North America as either delayed or canceled, with only one flight -- an American Airlines flight to New York -- having departed. In Geneva, dozens of flights to Portugal, Spain, France, Ireland, Britain and Hungary were canceled, while Zurich airport listed flights to Washington, Dublin and Porto as canceled.
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