Volcanic Eruption In Iceland Hits The Airline Industry Hard

According to a report by the Wall Street Journal, the Icelandic volcano eruption has not only continued to frustrate air travelers but it has also inflicted a heavy financial cost on airlines. The flight disruptions are causing airlines more than $200 million daily in loss of revenues. Meanwhile, some people in the industry have questioned the rationale behind the shutting down of so much airspace.

As the ash plume from the volcano, under the glacier known as Eyjafjallajokull, drifted south and east across Europe on Friday, there was no end in sight to the flight disruptions. 16,000 of Europe’s 28,000 flights were cancelled on Friday. After the eruption of the volcano on Wednesday night, 8,000 flights were cancelled on Thursday. Meanwhile, of the total 300 transatlantic flights, only 100-120 flights arrived in Europe. The International Air Transport Association, a trade group representing 93% of scheduled international flights, expects the bill for grounding the air traffic to be enormous, as apart from losing $200 million in daily revenues, airlines will also have to deal with the extra costs of repositioning their staff and aircrafts and caring for stranded passengers in the largest aviation shut down since the second world war. IATA spokesman said, “Even if this lasts only another day, we're still going to see the ripple effect of this for at least another week.”

In Britain alone, more than 50,000 travelers have been grounded each day, and millions more are expected to suffer due to the eruption from under a glacier that had been dormant for nearly 200 years. As planes and crews are out of place, getting back to normal schedules when flights resume will take days. Whereas, limited airspace was reopened in Scotland, Ireland, and Sweden, air-traffic controllers kept the airspace shut down in Belgium, the Netherlands, Denmark, Norway, Finland, Estonia, Sweden, England and Wales. Some portions of Germany, Poland and the Czech Republic were also affected. Parts of French airspace were also affected as all the Paris airports were shut.

Flight disruptions affected German Chancellor Angela Merkel as she was stranded in Lisbon after her flight from the U.S. was diverted to Portugal’s Capital. The flight disruptions also grounded about half of the daily cargo volume between Asia and Europe. According to an Asia-based aviation analyst’s estimate, around 7,000 tons of goods are flown daily on average from Asia to Europe and an additional 4,000 tons from Europe to Asia.