Airport Crisis Frustrates Travelers, and Airlines
By STEVEN ERLANGER, JACK EWING and NICOLA CLARK
Published: April 18, 2010 ( New York Times)
PARIS — As a large part of European airspace remained shut down for the fourth day Sunday and the towering fountain of ash from an Icelandic volcano showed no signs of letting up, questions about the long-term impact of the eruption were being raised in a continent trying to recover from recession.
Britain’s National Air Traffic Services extended its ban on flights across its airspace until at least 1 a.m. Monday, prompting the country’s flag carrier, British Airways, to announce the cancellation of all of its flights scheduled for Monday.
Airline officials were having a hard time hiding their frustration with the situation. On a conference call Sunday with airlines hosted by Eurocontrol, the Brussels-based agency that coordinates air traffic management across the region, one airline representative sharply chastised national civil aviation authorities for being inconsistent in applying flight restrictions and stressed that the flight bans were creating “a serious economic issue for us.”
With airlines eager to reposition aircraft and flight crews scattered across the region, some governments began allowing limited, low-altitude flights without passengers. Germany’s civil aviation authority said it had allowed several such ferry flights by Lufthansa, Air Berlin and Condor airlines overnight. Such flights are being operated under so-called visual flight rules, whereby pilots navigate by sight, rather than relying on their cockpit instrument panels.
Britain’s Met Office meteorological agency said that the eruption of Iceland’s Eyjafjallajokull volcano was continuing as of early Sunday morning “and possibly intensifying,” with the ash plume rising to 30,000 feet.
The cloud had extended as far south as Spain overnight, prompting the closure of airspace in the northern part of that country, according to Eurocontrol. Airports across most of the continent were expected to remain shuttered at least into Sunday afternoon, though a few countries, including France and Switzerland, had opened at least parts of their airspace to allow overflights above 35,000 feet.
While the closing of the airways has already laid waste to the immediate plans and business of industry, the arts and world leaders, the possibility that it could drag on for days, if not weeks, is raising concerns about the longer term consequences for public health, military operations and the world economy.
The disaster is estimated to be costing airlines $200 million a day, but the economic damage will roll through to farms, retail establishments and nearly any other business that depends on air cargo shipments. Fresh produce will spoil, and supermarkets in Europe, used to year-round supplies, will begin to run out.
But unless flights are disrupted for weeks, threatening factories’ supply chains, economists do not think the crisis will significantly affect gross domestic product.
“If it really drags on another week that could be really serious,” said Peter Westaway, chief economist for Europe at the Nomura investment bank. The air travel shutdown could affect productivity, he said, if hundreds of thousands of people miss work or are not able to do business because they are stuck in limbo somewhere.
He would know. He was speaking by cellphone from Tokyo where he was watching British soccer on a barroom TV at 3 a.m. and waiting for news of when he might be able to get back to his office in London.
“We don’t understand how interconnected we are until you can’t do it anymore,” he said.
The shutdown has also affected American military operations. Military supplies for operations in Afghanistan have been disrupted, and a spokeswoman for the Pentagon said that all medical evacuation flights from Iraq and Afghanistan to Germany, where most injured soldiers are typically treated, were being diverted directly to Andrews Air Force Base in Maryland.
Within the European Command, some routine resupply missions and movement of personnel missions have been diverted or delayed, she said.
The World Health Organization issued an advisory saying that as long as the ash remains in the upper atmosphere, there is not likely to be increased health risk. So far, analysis of the ash shows that about a quarter of the particles are smaller than 10 microns, making them more dangerous because they can penetrate more deeply into the lungs, the W.H.O. said.
In Britain, where a layer of fine dust is already covering large areas of the country, the authorities are advising those with respiratory problems to stay indoors or wear masks out of doors.
But experts said most people had no reason to be alarmed. Dr. Neil W. Schluger, chief scientific officer for the World Lung Foundation, said people with asthma or lung disease could stay indoors or wear a mask to avoid irritation, but that there was little real danger, especially with the ash falling so far from the source.
“The bottom line,” said Dr. Ronald G. Crystal, chief of pulmonology at New York Presbyterian/Weill Cornell Hospital, “is there’s no longterm health effect from volcanic ash.”
International transportation, however, was still what the front page of the French newspaper Le Parisien called “La Grande Pagaille” — the big mess.
The ash cloud scuttled routine diplomacy, an effect most evident in the dwindling guest list of dignitaries planning to attend the state funeral on Sunday for President Lech Kaczynski of Poland and his wife, who died in a plane crash last week. On Saturday, at least a dozen delegations canceled plans to attend, including those of President Obama, Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany and Prince Charles of Britain.
President Valdis Zatlers of Latvia embarked Saturday on a 14-hour car trip so he could attend.
Mrs. Merkel had to spend Friday night in Lisbon after returning from the United States. She made it to Rome on Saturday and was expected to continue her journey by bus after spending the night in northern Italy, The Associated Press reported.
The airline industry was the first economic casualty. Steve Lott, a spokesman for the International Air Transport Association, said that with the conservative estimate of a $200 million loss in revenue per day, “we could easily hit a billion dollars’ loss in revenue next week.”
“The bottom line is that it could not have happened at a more difficult time for airlines that are trying to climb out of the global recession,” he said. “It’s been that way, many airlines feel like they take one step forward, two steps back.”
At Air France, Hervé Erschler, a company spokesman, sounded exhausted. “We don’t know exactly how many of our flights got canceled,” he admitted, “but I can tell you that right now there is literally no traffic.”
Even FedEx abandoned its pledge to absolutely, positively get it there overnight, if “there” meant northern Europe. More than 100 FedEx flights have been rerouted, diverted or canceled, said Carla Boyd, a company spokeswoman. She said 15 airports that FedEx serves directly have been closed.
At least one major airline, Lufthansa, expressed frustration at what it suggested was excessive caution by the German authorities, who kept every German airport closed to air traffic for a second day. Amélie Schwierholz, a Lufthansa spokeswoman in Frankfurt, said the company had flown a large jet from Munich to Frankfurt on Saturday without passengers but without incident, although at a lower altitude than normal.
But German officials defended their decision. “What’s more important, the safety of passengers or business?” asked Helmut Malewski, a meteorologist at the German Weather Service. “No one knows how to deal with this situation. We’re erring on the side of safety.”
“I understand the requirement for safety,” said Dale Moss, the chief executive of OpenSkies, the Paris-based, all-business-class subsidiary of British Airways. “But the level of frustration is painfully high” for both airlines and passengers, he said.
OpenSkies, which began daily services between Paris and New York in 2008, just before the start of the economic downturn, had begun to see a return of premium-class travelers in recent months and is preparing to start flights to Washington, D.C. next month. Mr. Moss said he did not think the restrictions would be life-threatening to his airline in the short term, but said he would be concerned if they continued for several weeks.
“We need some scientific data quick, so that we can start projecting and putting contingency plans in place,” he said.Cathay Pacific said it would stop taking such reservations for several days, while Qantas encouraged “customers who have somewhere to stay to remain where they are.” But Thai Airways said Sunday that it would add extra flights from Bangkok to Rome and Madrid, which remain open, in order to compensate for cancellations on other routes to Europe.The volcano, meanwhile, continued to defy predictions. Clive Oppenheimer, a volcanologist at the University of Cambridge, said the average span of a volcanic eruption is a month or two. In the case of this volcano, he said, scientists need to know more about how much molten rock is beneath it, but concluded, “We could see intermittent activity over the coming months.”
But Leo Liao, a Hong Kong businessman who was stranded at the Frankfurt airport, was cheerful and philosophical. “It’s a natural issue,” he said. “Never complain. You can’t change this.”
Steven Erlanger and Nicola Clark reported from Paris, and Jack Ewing from Frankfurt. Reporting was contributed by Julia Werdigier from London, Nadim Audi from Paris, Nicholas Kulish from Warsaw, Bettina Wassener from Hong Kong, Ian Urbina from Washington, and Liz Robbins and Donald G. McNeil Jr. from New York.
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