Kingfisher Airlines and Jet Airways on Thursday cancelled their flights to London as airspace was closed over several North European airports due to drifting ash from a volcanic eruption in Iceland. However, Air India operated three of its flights, two from Mumbai and Delhi and one from London to Mumbai, before the volcanic ash disrupted flights.
Air India also flew its flight AI-111 from Delhi at 1445 hours for London, but this was likely to be diverted to Paris if the situation at Heathrow does not clear up by its scheduled arrival time of 1940 GMT, an AI spokesperson said.
While Kingfisher cancelled all its flights to London from Mumbai and Delhi for today, Jet cancelled two flights from the two Indian metropolises and one from London to Delhi, their spokespersons said. A British Airways spokesperson said the National Air Traffic Services has closed down the London airspace, as a result of which all airlines schedules had been impacted.
"We will therefore not be able to operate services after 11.30am from these airports (including Gatwick in UK) until further notice," the BA spokesperson said, adding that customers booked to travel on a cancelled flight can claim a full refund or rebook their flight for a later date.
The British Air Traffic Control has directed that it was prohibiting aircraft entering certain parts of airspace over the UK as flying ash compromised visibility and debris can be sucked into the engines of aircraft. Similarly, the flight of Virgin Atlantic (VS-301) was also cancelled.
Hundreds of flights from Heathrow and Gatwick were cancelled at 0700 hrs GMT. Flights were also suspended from the cities of Manchester and Birmingham as well as Northern Ireland's Belfast and the Scottish Airports at Aberdeen, Glasgow and Edinburgh.
The drifting ash clouds also paralysed all the airports in Norway, Finland and Sweden as the volcano under the Eyjafjallajokull glacier erupted yesterday again, for a second time in less than a month. PTI
