Flights Resume Where Ash Cloud Is Thinnest

(April 20) -- Cheers went up as European air travel started up again slowly, with some flights resuming from Paris and other cities for the first time in nearly a week as airliners were allowed to fly through the thinnest swaths of a volcanic ash cloud that has wreaked havoc on world air travel.

The resumption of flights, albeit limited, was a relief to thousands of stranded passengers who've been living in airport lounges or hotels from New York to Paris to Hong Kong.

"We were in the hotel having breakfast, and we heard an aircraft take off. Everybody got up and applauded," San Diego resident Bob Basso told The Associated Press. He's been staying in a hotel near Paris' Charles de Gaulle airport since his flight home was canceled Friday.

A planeload of long-delayed travelers arrived in New York overnight from Amsterdam. "Everyone was screaming in the airplane from happiness," passenger Savvas Toumarides told the AP. He missed his sister's wedding in New York over the weekend after getting stranded in Amsterdam on Thursday. The worst part, he said, was "waiting and waiting and not knowing."

The first commercial flight out of Charles de Gaulle since Thursday departed for New York this morning. Flights were also taking off from Amsterdam and Frankfurt, the BBC reported. But the busy airports in London were still closed, and with 95,000 flights canceled since Thursday, the challenge of getting everybody where they wanted to go remained daunting for the airline industry.

The Eurocontrol air traffic agency in Brussels says it's expecting some 14,000 flights over Europe to go ahead today -- a huge improvement over a nearly total no-fly zone over the continent for almost a week. A typical Tuesday would have up to 28,000 European flights, the agency said. Eurocontrol predicted close to a normal schedule by Friday.

"The situation today is much improved," said deputy head of operations for Eurocontrol Brian Flynn, according to the AP.

Switzerland has reopened its entire airspace, after test flights showed the concentration of ash in the atmosphere is low enough that it won't clog airliners' engines. German airspace was closed until tonight, though some flights were allowed, AP said.

Britain's air traffic control agency put out an alert early this morning about yet another eruption at Iceland's Eyjafjallajokull volcano, which is sending out a new ash cloud spreading south toward the U.K.

"This demonstrates the dynamic and rapidly changing conditions in which we are working," the National Air Traffic Service said, adding that some airspace over England could perhaps open this afternoon "although not as far south as the main London airports" of Heathrow and Gatwick.

British Airways canceled all short-haul and departing long-haul flights today and long-haul flights into the U.K. before noon Wednesday.

The world's largest carrier, Delta, said it's hoping to restart flights today to Madrid, Barcelona, Rome, Athens and Istanbul. Chicago-based United Airlines is hoping for a "full recovery" to normal schedules by Wednesday, it said.

The resumption of some flights began late Monday, after a European Union agreement that sets up three flight zones over the continent: one that remains closed, another open to all flights and a third only open to certain flights.

"From [Tuesday] morning on we should see progressively more planes start to fly," European Transport Commissioner Siim Kallas said Monday in comments carried by several news agencies. "This is good news for Europe's stranded passengers, good news for the airline industry and other sectors hard hit by this crisis."

Since flights began being canceled because of the growing ash cloud late last week, airlines have been losing up to $300 million a day, according to the International Air Transport Association, the trade group representing airlines. Airports had lost close to 136 million euros ($184 million) as of Sunday, according to Olivier Jankovec, director general of Airports Council International, Europe. Nearly 7 million passengers have been affected, he said in a statement.

Resumption of flights is "a positive thing for the airlines, provided that it's done in such a way that safety is maintained," John Strickland, an analyst at JLS Consulting Ltd. in London, told Bloomberg News. "But it's a long way short of any semblance of normal operations."

Kallas called the situation where nearly all European flights were grounded "unsustainable," and said European officials had to do something. "We cannot just wait until this ash cloud dissipates."

Meanwhile, relief was in sight for thousands of passengers who have been living in airport lounges for several days. On Monday, authorities at New York's JFK airport rolled in trailers with a dozen showers for stranded passengers.

"It was wonderful. It was the best shower I ever had," Dominica Zschiesche, a 29-year-old German art student, told The Associated Press. She said she'd been cleaning herself with hand wipes for four days, and using a public bathroom sink to wash her hair and shave her legs.

Arpad Villas was hoping to get back home to Budapest after a vacation in Miami. He'd been at JFK since Friday and, without money for lodging, had to sleep on the ground.

"It was very hard," Villas, 24, told AOL News. "I did sleep maybe an hour."

Traveling with Peter Badki, 28, they left the airport for Manhattan to see the sites.

"We have free food, free bed, and we can see Manhattan," he said. "It's quite good."

British naval ships are heading to Spain to retrieve stranded vacationers there, as well as British soldiers. The HMS Albion will arrive this morning in Santander, "where its primary role will be to collect U.K. service personnel who have recently left the ongoing operation in Afghanistan," Britain's Ministry of Defense said in a statement.

In Germany, Lufthansa airlines said the ash cloud has thinned enough to allow 50 planes currently in various locations around the world to fly back to Germany today, ferrying up to 15,000 passengers. Some domestic flights are also due to begin. In Frankfurt, some airport workers could be seen taking protective coverings off the engines of planes parked on the tarmac, CNN reported. Some planes there have been outfitted with special foil to block ash particles, it said.

Iceland's Eyjafjallajokull volcano erupted for the first time in nearly two centuries on March 20, spewing lava down its eastern flank. After a lull, it erupted again --and more than 10 times stronger -- on April 14, sending hot gases out over a glacier that covers most of the mountain. That effect causes ash to soar 15,000 feet into the air, catching winds that carry it across the Earth's atmosphere. Since then the ash cloud has stretched from Moscow almost as far as Canada.

The last time the volcano erupted, in 1821, it continued for almost two years.

"We really don't know if this eruption is going to last as long as the previous one," Gudrun Larsen, a volcanologist at the University of Iceland, told Bloomberg. "But we can't say it's not a possibility."