UK flights grounded until Sunday evening
The UK’s National Air Traffic Service has announced that flight restrictions caused by volcanic ash in the atmosphere will continue to at least 7.00pm this evening. Many airlines have cancelled flights until Monday morning. Budget airline easyJet announced that all flights in northern Europe would be grounded and a limited number would be allowed to fly in the south.
The majority of flights with British Airways, Virgin, Ryanair, BMI and Thompson have been cancelled until Monday morning. All carriers are requesting that passengers keep themselves up-to-date on their websites and BAA has said that there is no point in travellers setting out to its airports until further notice.
German and Dutch airlines say that they carried out test flights on Saturday to assess the situation over northern Europe. So far, they claim that there has been no obvious damage to the aircraft. Lufthansa said that they flew a total of 10 planes from Munich to Frankfurt and that the engines, cockpit windows and fuselage remained unaffected by the ash. The aircraft had mostly been flown at 3,000 meters in good visibility.
KLM said that they are still examining the results of their test flight but hope that if no problems are found that they can request that seven aircraft be flown in from Germany and that normal service can at least begin to get under way.
The Met Office has said that if wind conditions change then restrictions could be eased. However, they were not certain when that change might occur. Volcanologists meanwhile said that the Iceland volcano could continue to spew ash into the atmosphere for months.