Disruptions persist as airports resume service

THOUSANDS OF Irish air passengers experienced disruption yesterday after the plume of volcanic ash from Iceland grounded flights and caused major delays at airports in northern Europe.

Dublin airport was one of the worst-affected, with almost 200 flights cancelled yesterday morning, affecting the travel plans of some 17,000 people. Although Cork and Shannon airports remained open, there were delays and flight cancellations because of closures elsewhere. A complete schedule of flights did, however, resume yesterday afternoon after the Irish Aviation Authority (IAA) lifted restrictions on airspace, saying the outlook was positive.

“The volcanic ash cloud is moving east, away from Irish airspace and, based on the meteorological situation, the IAA does not anticipate putting any further restrictions in place due to volcanic ash for at least the next 48 hours,” the IAA said.

David Curtin, of the agency, said southwesterly airflows moved in from the Atlantic, pushing much of the ash plume over Scandinavia and the weather patterns were expected to continue until at least Friday. He said the Eyjafjallajökull volcano in Iceland had been spewing ash and cloud 23,000- 29,000ft (7,010-8,840m) into the atmosphere last week, but activity had since subsided. Mr Curtin warned a change in wind or increased activity could change the situation.

Dublin Airport Authority spokeswoman Nicola Radford said the disruption to the airport’s first wave of business in the morning had a “knock-on effect”.

“The airport was very busy in the afternoon as there were those with confirmed bookings as well as others who had been affected by the earlier disruption seeking alternative arrangements,” she said.

Airports in Donegal, Sligo, Galway and Knock also reopened yesterday morning, with passengers experiencing delays because of restrictions in other airports.

Aer Lingus said it had been forced to cancel a number of flights despite airports reopening.

It said services from Dublin operated as normal after noon, while flights to and from Cork and Shannon ran as scheduled except for services to London Heathrow, London Gatwick, Amsterdam and Manchester due to airspace restrictions in the UK. Operations from Belfast resumed at 1pm.

Ryanair scheduled extra flights from Dublin, the East Midlands, Glasgow Prestwick and Liverpool to and from Alicante in Spain, the Canary Islands and Faro, Portugal.

It said it was planning additional services between Dublin and London Stansted from today for disrupted passengers.

Ash grounded 1,000 flights and delayed hundreds of thousands of passengers across northern Europe yesterday morning. Several airports, including London’s Heathrow and Amsterdam’s Schiphol, were closed for several hours. Eurocontrol, the European air traffic agency, confirmed 1,000 flights out of 28,000 in Europe were cancelled.

Meanwhile, British Airways yesterday won a court injunction to stop cabin crew from going on strike. The carrier had taken the challenge at Londons High Court, arguing there had been an irregularity in the ballot of airline staff by the Unite union.