British Airways and Ryanair attack airspace closures, claiming their planes have gone through no-fly zones without incident
The head of British Airways and Iberia has joined the clamour over the handling of the volcanic ash cloud this morning after claiming that a BA test flight "found nothing" after flying through a smoke plume deemed by regulators to be too dangerous for normal commercial flights.
Echoing criticism from Ryanair, Willie Walsh said the plane flew through an ash "red zone" for 45 minutes over Scotland and northern England and encountered no difficulties. The chief executive of International Airlines Group, the parent of Britain and Spain's national carrier, spoke as the cloud from the Grímsvötn volcano moved away from UK airspace and began to affect travel in Germany.
Walsh told BBC4's Today programme that the flight operated at different altitudes, through a zone designated by the Met Office to contain high densities of ash – a level at which no commercial carrier has received safety clearance to operate. "Initially it flew over the north of England, Newcastle, Glasgow, Edinburgh, back to Newcastle. The aircraft then returned and has been examined. All the filters were removed and will be sent to a laboratory for testing. The simple answer is that we found nothing."
Travel plans for thousands of people are getting back on track as the ash cloud moves out of British airspace. Some airline passengers face continuing disruption as flights have been cancelled to destinations in Germany.
About 500 flights were halted – and others delayed – across Europe on Tuesday as the eruption of the Grímsvötn volcano in Iceland caused havoc at airports in Scotland and northern England. The transport secretary, Philip Hammond, has held out hopes that the late May bank holiday getaway will not fall victim to similar travel chaos, although the Met Office has warned possible changes in wind direction could bring the ash back by the end of the week.
A Met Office spokesman said concentrations of ash would reduce significantly over the next 24 hours. But much of the UK could be affected by the ash cloud on Friday if the volcano continued to erupt at current levels. "There's a risk of seeing high concentrations of volcanic ash above 35,000ft on Friday."
Passengers are being warned to continue to check with airlines as carriers return to near-normal services. British Airways cancelled one London-Hamburg and two Hamburg-London flights, and easyJet cancelled some German flights. EasyJet said Hamburg airport would be closed until 2pm UK time and Berlin's Schonefeld and Tegel airports were expected to be shut.
EasyJet said more of its flights could be cancelled later. Ryanair cancelled all its flights in and out of the German airports of Bremen, Lubeck and Magdeburg until 1pm UK time.
There were other delays caused by the knock-on effects of Tuesday's disruption.
Despite the better volcanic and weather forecast, the Barcelona football team who play Manchester United at Wembley in the Champions League final on Saturday brought forward their journey to London from Thursday to Tuesday.
After chairing a meeting of Cobra, the government's emergency planning committee, Hammond said the ash plume was getting smaller and less intense. He was "cautiously optimistic" that south-west winds would clear the remainder from British airspace over the next couple of days. "In the short term it is reasonably positive news," he said.
Hammond and O'Leary, head of Ryanair, have clashed over the airline's claim that one of its planes flew safely through airspace condemned as dangerous by the Civil Aviation Authority. The minister said the aircraft had only gone through a zone already redesignated safe.
The British Airways test flight was to help determine procedures to continue flying in accordance with recommendations developed by ICAO, the global aviation governing body, over the last 12 months.
Hammond said the blanket flight bans imposed by UK authorities last time there was a volcanic eruption were a thing of the past. The new system in the UK allows individual carriers to apply for permission to fly in different environments depending on their capabilities.
This meant proportionally fewer flights had been cancelled and airports closed this time around. "We're red-lining a much smaller proportion of total ash cloud this year compared to last," Hammond said.
Other countries within the EU have different arrangements for managing flights and airspace during such crises.
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Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/may/25/volcanic-ash-cloud-flight-disruption
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