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| The British authority reopens its airspace from 10:00 p.m. on Tuesday, and a plane of British Airways has landed in the Heathrow Airport in London just around that time.(Xinhua/AFP Photo) |
BRUSSELS, April 23 (Xinhua) -- Flights in Europe returned to normal Thursday, one week after an Icelandic volcano eruption caused the continent to almost completely shut down its airspace.
But some parts in the Scandinavia, including Iceland, were closed due to high levels of ash cloud, which continues to spew out of the Eyjafjjoell volcano.
The airline industry, facing high costs of passenger refunds, continues to question the governments' decision of the shut-down, while observers have begun to analyze the aftermath of this historic air traffic chaos.
All the continent's major air centers were running at close to full capacity Thursday, with some airlines even adding more flights in a rush to clear up the backlog of passengers.
The European air safety coordination body Eurocontrol hoped "almost 100 percent" of scheduled flights would take off or land on Thursday.
"At the current time, almost all European airspace is available, with a few exceptions in northern Scotland and western Sweden," Eurocontrol said in a statement.
"Today Eurocontrol hopes that traffic will be at normal levels of between 28,000 and 29,000 flights," it said.
The airspace in southern Finland, southern Norway, northern Scotland and western Sweden had to be closed again Thursday, as a change in the wind direction brought volcanic ash from Iceland back into Scandinavian skies.
