The airspace over London’s Heathrow Airport and Schiphol airport in Amsterdam, another of Europe’s biggest air travel hubs, closed this morning as a dense cloud of volcanic ash drifted from Iceland.
Ash clouds caused fresh travel hiccups resulting in at least 10 flights from Mumbai to Heathrow and more than 50 flights from India being cancelled on Monday.
The airspace over London’s Heathrow Airport and Schiphol airport in Amsterdam, another of Europe’s biggest air travel hubs, closed this morning as a dense cloud of volcanic ash drifted from Iceland.
Air India’s daily flights to London — AI 131 Mumbai-London, AI 111 Delhi-London — were cancelled, while AI 187 Amritsar-London-Toronto landed successfully in London as the airspace had opened up till then.
“The flights could not be operated today as the UK airspace was closed,” said a spokesperson for Air India. “Passengers who were not local residents were given accommodation.”
Kingfisher Airlines cancelled all its daily flights to London. “Having assessed the current information from Eurocontrol [the agency that coordinates air travel across Europe], and the trends indicating anticipated closure of the airspace over London’s Heathrow airport due to fresh contamination with volcanic ash, we announced cancellation of flights to and from London Heathrow on May 17,” said the airline’s spokesperson.
However, Jet Airways, which operates two daily flights from Mumbai to London, said all its flights were on schedule. According to sources, the airline took a calculated risk and was lucky to be allowed to land in London. “Our flights to London operated as per schedule. It will continue to operate as planned,” the spokesperson said.
Airlines have asked passengers to check before coming to the airport on Tuesday.
However, Air India says it will be operating flights to London as per schedule on May 18. “We will use a bigger aircraft, Boeing 747-400, so that passengers stranded on May 17 can be accommodated as well. The aircraft can accommodate 423 passengers,” the spokesperson said, adding that passengers should call the airline as a precautionary measure.
Kingfisher spokesperson said they were still to make a decision. “A decision will be made closer to the departure time based on updates from Eurocontrol,” he said.
This is the second time in the last one month that volcanic ash has disrupted flights services to Europe.
Last month, airspace across Europe was shut down for about a week after the Eyjafjallajokull volcano in Iceland erupted with its ash spreading in most parts of the European skies .
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