London: Air travel across much of Europe was paralysed for a fourth day on Sunday because of a huge cloud of volcanic ash, but Dutch and German test flights carried out without apparent damage seemed to offer hope.
Many countries closed their airspaces until well into Sunday or Monday, leaving tens of thousands of passengers stranded worldwide, and weather experts said wind patterns meant the cloud was not likely to move far until later in the week.
They said the plume floating through the upper atmosphere from Iceland could become more concentrated on Tuesday and Wednesday, posing an even greater risk and threatening to compound airline losses running at more than USD 200 million a day.
The no-fly rulings have been imposed because the dust of pulverised rock and glass particles can paralyse jet engines and damage airframes but the test flights on Saturday prompted some optimism from airline officials.
KLM, part of Franco-Dutch Air France-KLM, said it flew at the regular altitude of 10 kilometres (6 miles) and up to the 13 km maximum. Germany's Lufthansa said it flew 10 planes to Frankfurt from Munich at altitudes of up to 8 km.
"We have found nothing unusual, neither during the flight, nor during the first inspection on the ground," KLM chief executive Peter Hartman, who took part in his airline's test, said in a statement.
"If the technical examination confirms this image, we are ready tomorrow to fly back our seven planes from Duesseldorf to Amsterdam. We then hope to get permission as soon as possible to partially restart our operations."
The air travel disruption is the worst since the September 11 attacks on New York and Washington in 2001, when US airspace was closed for three days and European airlines were forced to halt all transatlantic services.
European aviation agency Eurocontrol said no landings or takeoffs had been possible for civilian aircraft in most of northern and central Europe on Saturday because of the ash spewed out by the Icelandic volcano, which was still erupting.
It expected 5,000 flights in European airspace on Saturday, compared with the usual 22,000. On Friday, there were 10,400 flights compared with the usual 28,000, said the agency.
Bureau Report
First Published: Sunday, April 18, 2010, 09:12