Air chaos returns as ash cloud moves to North

CHAOS and confusion has returned to airports in Britain as the Icelandic volcanic ash cloud wreaks more havoc with flight schedules.

Disruption is expected to continue today with passengers set to depart or arrive at airports in Scotland, Ireland, Wales, the South West and the North of England being advised to contact their operator to ensure services are running.

Travellers in Scotland and Northern Ireland were left stranded yesterday by the cancellation of hundreds of flights and passengers were left unsure which airports were open.

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Airspace above Scotland, Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland remained closed all day and airports in the North of England were also disrupted.

Leeds Bradford Airport cancelled flights to and from Dublin and Belfast, where both airports were affected as well as London- derry to the north.

A flight to Glasgow was re-routed to Edinburgh before its airport too was hit by the latest no-fly restrictions.

Ryanair, Bmi, Aer Lingus and Flybe were among the airlines that axed services. Flybe's cancellations including some from Manchester, Liverpool, Luton and Cardiff airports.

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Increased concentrations of volcanic ash in the atmosphere saw renewed restrictions imposed over Tuesday night, which caused early-morning uncertainty at Dublin airport with a number of passengers arriving for flights only to find there were no services.

At Belfast International and Belfast City airports, where the no-fly ban was not introduced until 1pm, some passengers failed to turn up, unaware airports were operating during the first part of the day.

Among the victims of the renewed chaos was Scottish football club Ross County which had to scrap plans to fly from Glasgow to Marbella in southern Spain to train ahead of their Scottish FA Cup final against Dundee United on May 15.

Ross County's director of football George Adams was philosophical. "We were looking forward to it but you get on with life. Lots of people have been disrupted with the volcanic ash and we're no different from anyone else."

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The Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) has urged passengers expecting to fly today to contact their airlines to check whether flights are operating.

But it added it did not expect airports in the South-East of England, including Gatwick and Heathrow, to be affected. Edinburgh Airport reopened at 7pm yesterday with the first planes airborne just minutes later.

CAA chief executive Andrew Haines said: ""Scientists are tracking the cloud's movements constantly but its location changes frequently, depending on the strength of eruptions and prevailing winds.

"When the ash level exceeds that agreed as safe by the industry we have to restrict flights accordingly.

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"This decision is not taken lightly and we appreciate the huge inconvenience and disruption this causes to the many people and businesses affected.

"Ash is likely to continue to disrupt UK air travel for the foreseeable future and our advice to passengers is to listen to updates and contact their airline before leaving home if they are concerned their travel plans may be affected."

The National Air Traffic Service (Nats) said: "The no-fly zone imposed by the Civil Aviation Authority continues to move further south and west in line with the high density area of the volcanic ash cloud."

It said that although Edinburgh had reopened other airports within the no-fly zone, it would have to remain closed until at least 1am.

'Vague details' added to problem

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Scotland's First Minister Alex Salmond hit out at the Civil Aviation Authority for adding to the disruption by failing to give clear advice on which airports would be affected. "Unnecessarily, some flights were cancelled, particularly into Edinburgh, because of the vagueness of the press release they (the CAA) put out.

"That can't be allowed to happen again. It's really, really important, where there are difficult messages, that Press statements must be clear and not cause confusion."

Mr Salmond added that the CAA had since apologised.

A CAA spokeswoman said last night: "At the time of the CAA's external state-ments...the information issued was based on our best predictions at that time."