British airspace reopens

British officials say UK airspace reopened Tuesday at 3 p.m. MST, after nearly a week of closure due to the dense ash clouds in the sky from a volcano eruption in Iceland.

Earlier Tuesday, many European flights took to the skies for the first time in days.

Airspace in Germany also remained officially closed until 6 p.m. but a limited number of flights were allowed in at low altitude.

But it was the first day since Wednesday’s eruption of Iceland’s Eyjafjallajökull volcano — dormant for nearly 200 years — that travellers were given a glimmer of hope.

Cheers and applause erupted as flights took off from Paris’ Charles de Gaulle Airport, Amsterdam and elsewhere.

The Eurocontrol air traffic agency in Brussels said it expected a little over half — 53 per cent — of the 27,500 flights over Europe to go ahead Tuesday, a marked improvement over the last few days. The agency predicted close to normal takeoffs by Friday.

But with more than 95,000 flights canceled in the last week alone, airlines faced the enormous task of working through the backlog to get passengers where they want to go — a challenge that could take days or even weeks.

Passengers with current tickets were being given priority. Stranded passengers were being told to either pay for a new ticket, take the first available flight or to use their old ticket and wait for days, or weeks, for the first available seat.

Although seismic activity at the volcano had increased, the ash plume appeared to be shrinking. Still, scientists were worried that the eruption could trigger an even larger eruption at the nearby Katla volcano, which sits on the massive Myrdalsjokull icecap and has erupted every 80 or so years. Its last major eruption was in 1918.

Magnus Tumi Gudmundsson, geophysicist at the University of Iceland, said there was circumstantial evidence that an eruption could occur within the next 18 months at the nearby Katla volcano.

“We can of course expect similar (travel) disruption with the Katla eruption,” he said. “But it all depends on prevailing winds.”

Of the eight eruptions in the last 40 years, only the recent eruption at Eyjafjallajökull was followed by winds blowing southeast toward northern Europe.

An international pilots group warned of continued danger because of the ash, which drifted over the North Sea and was being pushed back over Britain on Tuesday by shifty north winds.

The volcano is also grumbling — tremors, which geologists believe to be caused by magma rising through the crust, can be heard and felt as far as 25 kilometres from the crater. “It’s like a shaking in the belly. People in the area a disturbed by this,” said Kristin Vogfjord, geologist at the Icelandic Met Office.

A Eurocontrol volcanic ash map on Tuesday listed the airspace between Iceland and Britain and Ireland as a no-fly zone, along with much of the Baltic Sea and surrounding area. The ash cloud also spread westward from Iceland, toward Greenland and Canada’s eastern coastline.

Still, planes were being allowed to fly above 20,000 feet in the United Kingdom.

Flights resumed in Scotland, but only for a handful of domestic flights. Switzerland also reopened its airspace. Some flights took off from Asia to southern Europe and planes ferried people to Europe from Cairo, where at least 17,000 people were stranded.

Airports in central Europe and Scandinavia have reopened, and most of southern Europe remained clear, with Spain volunteering to be an emergency hub for overseas travellers trying to get home. Spain piled on extra buses, trains and ferries to handle an expected rush of passengers.

Britain sent navy ships to Spain and France to fetch 500 troops coming home from Afghanistan and hundreds of passengers who had been stranded by the chaos. The trip on HMS Albion, an amphibious assault ship, will take 40 hours from Santander in northern Spain to Portsmouth, England.

Patricia Quirke of Manchester said she and nine other families drove all night across Spain to catch the Royal Navy ride.

Many Asian airports and airlines remained cautious, and most flights to and from Europe remained cancelled.

Australia’s Qantas cancelled its Wednesday and Thursday flights from Asia to Frankfurt and London, as well as return flights to Asia, saying the situation was too uncertain to resume flights into Europe.

Not everyone who wanted to could get on a flight Tuesday.

The aviation industry — facing losses of more than $1-billion — has sharply criticized European governments’ handling of the disruption that grounded thousands of flights on the continent.

But Gideon Ewers, spokesman for a London-based pilots group, says historical evidence of the effects of volcanic ash demonstrates that it presents a very real threat to flight safety.

Ash and grit from volcanic eruptions can sabotage a plane, stalling engines, blocking fuel nozzles and plugging the tubes that sense airspeed.