Scandinavia also continued to keep most of its planes on the ground. By midday Friday, all major airports in
In
As the cloud of ash and dust moved east, flights were halted Friday at
The Irish Aviation Authority reopened most of
In
Also among those scheduled to attend the funeral are Russian President
The White House says Obama still planned to fly to
The Associated Press reported that Kaczynski’s family wanted the funeral to go forward as planned.
“”It is the will of the family that, under no circumstance, the date of the funeral be changed,”” said Jacek Sasin
Eurocontrol, the European air traffic agency, said the flight disruptions that upended travel in
“”We expect around 11,000 flights to take place (Friday) in European airspace. On a normal day, we would expect 28,000,”” said
Ice chunks the size of houses tumbled down from a volcano beneath
As torrents of water roared down the steep slopes of the volcano, about 40 people nearby were evacuated because of flash flooding. More floods from melting waters are expected as long as the volcano keeps erupting, said Rognvaldur Olafsson of the Civil Protection Department.
The ash cloud, drifting between 20,000 to 30,000 feet high and invisible from the ground, left tens of thousands of travelers stranded around the globe and blocked the main air flight path between the
Trains and hotels in key European cities were packed as people scrambled to make alternate travel plans.
No more than 120 trans-Atlantic flights reached European airports Friday morning, compared to 300 on a normal day, said Eurocontrol’s Evans. About 60 flights between
Professor
“”It’s not toxic or poisonous, it’s not radioactive … and shouldn’t pose any danger to general health,”” Scottish first minister
Officials at the World Health Organization in
WHO spokesman
Explosive volcanic eruptions inject large amounts of highly abrasive ash — essentially very small rock fragments — into the upper atmosphere, the cruising altitude of most jet airliners. It can cause significant damage to both airframes and engines.
The U.S. Geological Survey said about 100 aircraft have run into volcanic ash from 1983 to 2000. In some cases engines shut down briefly after sucking in volcanic debris, but there have been no fatal incidents. Still, authorities are very wary, because ash cannot be detected by a plane’s normal weather radar.
In 1989, a KLM Royal Dutch Airlines Boeing 747 flew into an ash cloud from
In another incident in the 1980s, a