2011-05-25 17:32:23
Xinhua
Web Editor:
Gong
Three German northern airports were suspended for safety reasons on Wednesday, May 25, 2011, as a cloud of volcanic ash from Iceland was spreading toward continental Europe. [Photo: Reuters]
Three German northern airports were suspended for safety reasons on Wednesday as a cloud of volcanic ash from Iceland was spreading toward continental Europe, German air traffic officials announced.
All flights were grounded in Hamburg airports after 6 a.m. local time on Wednesday, while Bremen airports were shut down earlier at 5 a.m., German Aviation Safety Agency said, fearing that particles in the ash would choke jet engines and sandblast planes' windows.
In capital Berlin, two major airports, Tegel and Shoenefeld, would stop operations 11:00 a.m., officials added.
However, German Transport Minister Peter Ramsauer told public television ARD that the situation in the air would get better later in the day, and the flight ban could be removed by the afternoon.
Germany's Frankfurt and Munich airports, two major hubs in the south, were left open. Only flights to Bremen and Hamburg were cancelled on Wednesday morning.
German airline Lufthansa said that it will cancel about 150 flights as the ash cloud were floating over several European countries, such as Britain, Norway, Denmark, and Ireland.
Grimsvotn volcano, the most active one in Iceland, began to erupt on Saturday, raising fears that it would trigger major disruptions to air travel in Europe.
However, experts said it would cause less trouble than the one in April 2010, when Iceland' s erupting Eyjafjallajokull volcano spewed millions of tons of ash and smoke to the sky and led to a large-scale airports' closure across Europe in six days, ending up with 1.7 -billion-dollar losses to airline companies.
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