European airlines struggle to clear passenger backlog
Thousands of flights took off from European airports today after a week of unprecedented disruptions, but shifting winds sent a new plume of volcanic ash over Scandinavia.
It brought new airspace restrictions to northern Scotland and parts of southern Norway, Sweden and Finland.
But nearly all of the continent's 28,000 other scheduled flights, including more than 300 on lucrative trans-Atlantic routes, went ahead.
Every plane was packed, however, as airlines squeezed in some of the hundreds of thousands of travellers who had been stranded for days.
Airlines said there was no quick solution to cut down the backlog of passengers, for most flights were nearly full anyway and no other planes were available.
"Quite frankly we don't have an answer to this," said a spokesman for the Association of European Airlines.
Many trans-Atlantic planes flying between the United States and Europe were assigned flight paths above the ash cloud that still covered the area east of Iceland.
Flying at over 35,000ft, the planes were well above the current maximum altitude of the ash, which lingered in some places at 20,000ft.
The Swedish aviation authority said airspace was still open over the capital Stockholm, but closed over the southern cities of Goteborg and Malmo.
Meanwhile, new ash clouds were blowing in over western Norway, where Stavanger and Bergen airports were closed.
Scientists at the Icelandic meteorological office said the Eyjafjallajokull volcano produced very little ash today but remained active, with magma boiling in the crater.
The plume of ash was below 10,000ft and winds were not expected to take it over 20,000ft.
In response to the flight disruptions, the European Union said it was stepping up work on a new management system known as the "Single European Sky" that will largely erase national borders in the air.
The ash crisis "exposed serious flaws and that is something that probably cannot be ignored much longer", a spokeswoman said.
The EU has 27 national air traffic control networks, 60 air traffic centres and hundreds of approach centres and towers. The airspace is a jigsaw puzzle of more than 650 sectors.
In contrast, the US air traffic management system is twice as efficient. On any given day, it manages twice the number of EU flights for a similar cost but from only about 20 control centres.
