London: Europe’s busiest airports closed early Monday morning as a dense cloud of volcanic ash drifted across England from Iceland, aviation authorities said.
The airspace over London’s Heathrow Airport closed at 1am local time Monday (0000 GMT), Britain’s National Air Traffic Service said in a statement late Sunday night.
The restrictions affecting Heathrow - as well as Gatwick, Stansted and London City airports – will be in place until at least 7 am Monday, the aviation authority said.
Airports across Britain and Ireland were closed for much of Sunday because of the drifting ash. The shifting of the no-fly zone southward will allow airports in northern England - including the key cities of Manchester and Liverpool – to reopen after 1 am. But all airports in Northern Ireland, as well as some Scottish facilities, will remain shut.
Airports in Amsterdam and Rotterdam will also close for at least eight hours from 6 am (0400 GMT) on Monday due to the volcanic ash cloud from Iceland, Dutch state television reported.
Other Dutch airports would not be affected, said the television, but as Amsterdam and Rotterdam are the country’s two main airports the closures will effectively bring most air traffic in and out of the country to a standstill.
Amsterdam Schiphol is Europe’s third-largest cargo airport and fifth-largest passenger hub. In a statement on its website, Dutch airline KLM said: "We are currently working on a diversion plan for all affected flights to Amsterdam."
In Ireland, Dublin's international airport closed early Sunday evening until at least 12 pm Monday (1100 GMT). Some airports in Ireland’s west were closed and will reopen at different times Monday, but Shannon and southern Cork were open "until further notice."
The British air traffic agency said the ash cloud was changing shape and moving south, toward Oxford, England, 100km northwest of London. Britain's weather service says the northwest winds should shift midweek, redirecting the ash away from Britain.
German authorities sent up two test flights Sunday to measure the ash cloud, one from the German Aerospace Center (DLR) and the other from Lufthansa, the country's biggest airline.
The DLR plane flew to southern England then continued north, collecting data from between 10,000 to 23,000 feet (3,000 to 7,000 meters)
The Lufthansa Airbus A340-600, equipped with special scientific gear, left Frankfurt to fly over northern Germany, the United Kingdom and parts of Scandinavia.
All the data from both flights was immediately sent to aviation authorities in the UK, the Netherlands and Germany, said aerospace center spokesman Andreas Schuetz. Ash can clog jet engines.
The April 14 eruption at Iceland's Eyjafjallajokul volcano forced most countries in northern Europe to shut their airspace between April 15-20, grounding more than 100,000 flights and an estimated 10 million travelers worldwide. The shutdown cost airlines more than $2 billion.
In southern Iceland, activity at the volcano fluctuated Sunday but did not get more intense, civil protection official Agust Gunnar Gylfason said. He blamed the closures on shifting winds.
"What really changes the situation is the weather pattern," he said. The Icelandic weather service said "presently there are no indications that the eruption is about to end."
