Translated material
Fiery protest
Airlines demand officials forget about the volcano and allow flights
Air traffic in Europe will be restored in stages from today. This decision was made by the transport ministers of 27 EU countries at a video conference held yesterday. The authorities are under intense pressure from airlines, which are suffering huge losses and are demanding a speedy restoration of normal operations. The problem is that there is no agreement among scientists about what concentration of volcanic ash in the atmosphere can be considered safe for modern aircraft.To return fellow citizens stuck abroad, the authorities of some countries are taking truly decisive measures. The British government is sending warships to France, including an aircraft carrier. These forces must transport the British across the English Channel, unable to return home from France by air.
Russian airspace is still open, although Roshydromet reported yesterday the presence of ash in the atmosphere over a huge part of the country - from the Kola Peninsula and Yakutia to Tatarstan and the Krasnodar Territory. True, the area of ash distribution is still shrinking, Roshydromet clarified, and “the concentrations of suspended substances, sulfur dioxide and hydrogen fluoride in the atmospheric air do not exceed the maximum permissible limits.”
Aeroflot yesterday resumed flights to the “opened” points of Europe - Vienna and Prague, and also delivered more spacious aircraft to Kaliningrad to pick up Russians who will independently make their way from neighboring European countries to the Russian enclave.
However, the long arm of the Eyjafjallajokull volcano spoils the lives of Russian travelers even in such remote places where they cannot count on Aeroflot’s help. RIA Novosti reported yesterday that the Afghan company Ariana canceled the Kabul-Moscow flight, abandoning its passengers, including eight Russians, without any support. It’s a shame that the company’s representatives referred to the allegedly closed Sheremetyevo airport. This is not true, Sheremetyevo, like other Russian airports, was open yesterday. It’s even more offensive that Ariana operates the Kabul-Moscow flight once a week. According to RIA Novosti, the Afghans sent passengers to all four directions “without water, food or hotel accommodation,” advising them to “call the airline’s office more often and find out whether there will be a flight to Moscow in the near future.”
In total, 6.8 million passengers have already received advice to “call more often” due to the Icelandic volcanic eruption. This is how European authorities estimate the number of people whose air travel plans within Europe, from Europe to other parts of the world or from there to Europe have been disrupted since the middle of last week.
Yesterday, air traffic on the continent began to gradually recover after several days of almost complete paralysis. As reported by the European Agency for the Safety of Air Navigation (Eurocontrol), 8-9 thousand flights were planned for April 19, that is, about a third of the 28 thousand flights usually operated daily.
Some countries have begun to open their airspace for selected special operations. Thus, the German authorities allowed the Lufthansa airline to “return home” about 50 of its planes stuck in different parts of the world, and at the same time bring 15 thousand passengers who remained there. At the end of the day, Germany's largest airport, Frankfurt am Main, was open for normal flights. Of the Russian companies, Transaero made the first flight there.
Yesterday, transport ministers from 27 EU countries held a teleconference to combat the impact of the volcano on aviation. The very fact of organizing this event a few days after the problem arose, as well as the previous actions of the EU authorities, caused severe criticism from air carriers.
“This crisis is costing airlines at least $200 million a day in lost revenue and the European economy is losing billions of dollars. In light of such dire economic consequences, it is simply unbelievable that European transport ministers took five days to organize a teleconference,” Giovanni Bisignani, director general of the International Air Transport Association (IATA), said yesterday. He effectively described European aviation officials as over-insurers: “This means that governments have not taken on the responsibility to make clear, evidence-based decisions.”
German airlines also protested that decisions to ban flights in Germany were made on the basis of computer modeling. They demanded more precise physical research. Lufthansa CEO Wolfgang Mayrhuber said that based on test flights carried out yesterday, his company's specialists concluded that the content of volcanic ash in the atmosphere is insignificant and does not pose any threat to aircraft. Pilots from Air France, KLM and Austrian Airlines also conducted experimental flights with similarly encouraging results. But a senior Western diplomat, speaking on condition of anonymity, told the AP that four NATO F-16 fighter jets passed through the cloud yesterday, causing one aircraft's engine to be severely damaged by the glassy substance that formed inside it.
“There is currently no agreement on what constitutes an acceptable level of ash in the atmosphere,” said European Aviation Safety Agency spokesman Daniel Heltgen.
“We agreed to begin opening the airspace over Europe starting from 08.00 Tuesday in stages and to identify three corridors for air traffic,” Spanish Development Minister Jose Blanco said in Madrid after a video conference.