Post date: May 23, 2011 10:51:48 PM
Keflavik international airport reopens after having been closed due to falling ash from erupting volcano.
KEFLAVIK, ICELAND (MAY 23, 2011) REUTERS - Iceland's main airport Keflavik reopened late on Monday (May 23), while other parts of Europe were on alert for disruptions by an ash cloud billowing from an Icelandic volcano. But experts did not expect a repeat of last year's travel chaos.
Iceland's aviation authority reopened Keflavik airport late on Monday, but said it was impossible to know whether the island's international hub would remain open on Tuesday.
Stranded passengers Judy Rodrigues and Sharon Anderson who were checking in for their flight to Norway, said they had enjoyed their extra time in Iceland.
"We were staying close to downtown, so we walked, and had lunch and enjoyed the day," Anderson said. "The guest house was beautiful, they just kept us all day, told us not
to worry," Rodrigues added.
Kristin Bergersen from Norway said she had worked all day but that it was time to go home now.
"Well I had to be at work today, so I was at my computer all day, reading e-mails and stuff like that," she said adding: "It was a great stay, but I would like to go home now."
Britain's Met Office is predicting the plume of ash from the Grimsvotn volcano would cover the Irish Republic, Northern Ireland, Scotland and parts of northern England by 0600 GMT.
Dutch airline operator KLM said on Monday night it had cancelled 16 flights flying to and departing from four British cities and scheduled for Tuesday. Fights to and from Aberdeen, Glasgow, Edinburgh and Newcastle would be cancelled on Tuesday morning, it said.
Norway's civil aviation body said the one or two flights a day to the Arctic archipelago of Svalbard would shut Monday night. A small part of Greenland's eastern airspace was also closed.
Last year, ash from an Icelandic volcano caused 100,000 flights to be cancelled, stranding 10 million passengers and costing the industry an estimated 1.7 billion United States dollars in lost revenue.
Europe's air traffic control organisation said that if volcanic emissions continued at the same rate, the cloud could reach western French and northern Spanish airspace on Thursday.
Grimsvotn erupted on Saturday (May 21) and plumes of smoke shot as high as 20 km (12 miles) into the sky. The eruption is the volcano's most powerful since 1873 and stronger than the volcano
that caused trouble last year. But scientists say the type of ash being spat out is less easily dispersed and winds have so far been more favourable.