**Air travel across Europe could be disrupted for days by the effects of a volcanic ash cloud from Iceland, aviation officials say.**As the gritty formation slowly made its way south and east, a raft of countries from Britain to Russia closed their airspace in an unprecedented move.
Officials warned of significant disruption into at least Saturday, with normal services taking days to recover.
Hundreds of thousands of travellers have been hit by two days of chaos.
“The knock-on effect of the volcanic ash plume over northern Europe is likely to disrupt European airspace for several days,” said the Civil Air Navigation Services Organisation (Canso), a global association of air traffic control companies.
“Traffic will have to be reorganised and rerouted and flights replanned, all on a dynamic and quite unpredictable basis,” it said in a statement.
In a news conference on Friday afternoon, the European air traffic control agency Eurocontrol warned travellers to expect “significant disruption” on Saturday, as airspaces across the continent were fully or partially closed.
A raft of countries and airlines have grounded fleets amid fears that the ash - a mixture of glass, sand and rock particles, drifting from 5,000ft (1500 metres) - could be catastrophic to aircraft.
In some of the biggest disruption in commercial aviation history, a swathe of northern European sky was empty of aircraft on Friday.
About two-thirds of the 28,000 daily flights in the affected zone were cancelled, while only half the usual number of flights between Europe and North America took place.
Among the latest developments:
The UK’s National Air Traffic Service (Nats) said current restrictions to UK air space would remain in place until at least 1300 GMT on Saturday; restrictions in Scotland, Northern Ireland and parts of the North Sea have been lifted Ryanair cancelled all flights in northern Europe until 1300 GMT on Monday Switzerland said it would close its airspace from midnight (2200 GMT) Romania said it would close its airspace over the north-west of the country from 0300 (0000 GMT) on Saturday British Airways cancelled all flights in and out of London on Saturday The cloud of ash is drifting across an area including the UK, Scandinavia, Poland, northern France and Austria, towards Russia at about 25 mph (40 km/h).
Major hubs
Some 20 countries shut down all or most of their airspace, although restrictions were gradually lifted in Sweden, Ireland and Norway.
Europe’s busiest airports, including Heathrow, Frankfurt and Charles de Gaulle, have been affected by the closures.
The disruption has affected hundreds of thousands of travellers since Wednesday when the Eyjafjallajokull volcano began erupting for the second time in a month.
Unable to catch flights, commuters have sought other means of transport, packing out trains, buses and ferries.
The Eurostar cross-channel rail service said it had never seen so many passengers on one day and the trains are fully booked until Monday.
The large no-fly zone also means that some world leaders might have difficulty attending the funeral of the Polish president on Sunday.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel had to touch down in Portugal for an unscheduled overnight stay on her way back from the US, while the disruption also forced the cancellation of the inaugural Iraqi Airways flight from Baghdad to London.
Even US pop star Whitney Houston was forced to take a car ferry from Britain to Ireland for a concert after her flight was cancelled.
In addition to the impact on commuters, the grounding of thousands of flights has cost airlines about $200m a day, according to the International Air Transport Association.
Evacuation
Fresh flooding meanwhile has hit the area around Eyjafjallajokull volcano, as hot gases melted the glacier.
Hundreds of people were evacuated from their homes as water carried pieces of ice reportedly the size of small houses down the mountain. A road along the flooded Markarfljot river was also cut in several places.
Matthew Roberts, from the Icelandic Met Office, told the BBC the eruption was weakening and it was no longer producing as much ash.
British health officials said the effects of the ash on people with existing respiratory conditions were “likely to be short term”.
The last eruption of the Eyjafjallajokull volcano was on 20 March, when a 0.5km-long fissure opened up on the eastern side of the glacier at the Fimmvoerduhals Pass. The eruption prior to that started in 1821 - and continued intermittently for more than a year.
Iceland lies on the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, the highly volatile boundary between the Eurasian and North American continental plates.
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