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GENEVA — Airlines canceled hundreds of flights across Europe and added hours to trans-Atlantic journeys Sunday as planes were diverted around a large plume of ash spewed by an Icelandic volcano and stretching from Greenland to Portugal.
So far, the weekend cancellations have been a fraction of the flights nixed two weeks ago when jittery European air traffic authorities closed down much of the continent's airspace for fear the volcano's abrasive ash could harm jet engines. But the possibility loomed of continuing eruption, and rising costs to airlines from ongoing disruption.
The bulk of the cloud, measuring 2,100 miles long and 1,400 miles wide (3,400 kilometers by 2,200 kilometers), stretched over the North Atlantic, according to the Irish Aviation Authority. It ordered Ireland's five westernmost airports to close Sunday afternoon but allowed the country's three biggest airports in Dublin, Shannon and Cork to stay open.
Airlines diverted their trans-Atlantic traffic north and south of the cloud, causing congestion as planes tried to squeeze through remaining routes. Some connections were canceled entirely because of an offshoot of the main cloud that was snaking its way from Portugal through Spain, southern France and northern Italy, then up to Germany, the Czech Republic and Austria.
Eurocontrol, the Brussels-based agency that coordinates air traffic control centers throughout the continent, warned airlines to plan on taking on more fuel for the longer flight around the North Atlantic no-fly zone.
It said there would be approximately 24,500 flights within the European area Sunday, about 500 below average for this time of year. It said the ash cloud hovering over the continent was expected to dissipate and that most of the closed airports were likely to reopen later Sunday.
Daniel Gerstgrasser, a meteorologist with Switzerland's national weather agency, said rain would help wash out the cloud by Monday morning and no further ash drifts were expected to reach the continent in the coming 24 hours.
Longer-term forecasts were less clear. Meteorologists say that until Eyjafjallajokul (pronounced ay-yah-FYAH-lah-yer-kuhl), the volcano in southern Iceland, stops erupting, the future course of Europe's ash crisis will depend heavily on the prevailing winds. The eruption of the glacier-capped volcano has shown no signs of stopping since it began belching ash April 13. It last erupted from 1821 to 1823.
Irish airline Aer Lingus apologized to its customers for a string of flight cancellations since Tuesday, when the ash threat returned to Irish air space after a two-week break. Its trans-Atlantic services to Boston and New York were operating Sunday subject to delays.
The Spanish economy, for all its troubles, came out of the recession last quarter, according to the Bank of Spain (PDF), with the country’s gross domestic product posting growth of 0.1 percent on the previous quarter and ending an 18-month contraction, shrinking 3.6 percent last year.
Spain needed some good news, after announcing last week that unemployment figures had surpassed 20 percent. But the bank report highlighted the fragility of the recovery, saying the impact of certain stimulus measures — like those encouraging household spending — was diminishing.
The figures were released a day after Jean-Claude Trichet, head of the European Central Bank, met his fellow bank governors in Lisbon. The countries of the Iberian peninsula have caused significant worry — alongside Greece — because of their debt burdens and slow growth.
While all members of the euro zone have to address their economic prospects together, “Portugal and Greece are not in the same boat,” Mr. Trichet said at a press conference.
He added that the longer the government postponed decisive measures, the greater the risks it would run — but he denied that Greece (and by extension any other euro zone member), would default, a certainty that is not held by the markets. (Mr. Trichet also gave a speech at the University of Lisbon, outlining his vision for the role of finance, that bugbear, in the real economy.)
Portugal’s troubles are large enough to lead its most important daily, Diario de Noticias, to interview two former finance ministers about the possibility and consequences of leaving the euro (the answers were “small,” and “huge,” respectively). The ex-ministers evoked a bankruptcy similar to Iceland’s, if the country exited the single currency.
While Lisbon wants to count on growth to end all doubts about its credit quality, Peter Boone and Simon Johnson, who write for the Times’s Economix blog as well as their own Web site, The Baseline Scenario, argue that Portugal should restructure its borrowings preemptively, rather than go through the tumult of a Greeklike scenario, which you might call, well, a fate worse than debt.
Go to Statement from Bank of Spain (PDF) »
Go to Item from The Baseline Scenario »
Go to Article from Diario de Noticias (in Portuguese) »
Go to Related Article from The New York Times »
