By Michael Holden
LONDON (Reuters) - A huge ash cloud from an Icelandic volcano spread out across Europe on Friday causing air travel chaos on a scale not seen since the September 11 attacks.
About 17,000 flights were expected to be canceled on Friday because of the dangers posed by volcanic ash from Iceland, aviation officials said. Airports in Britain, France, Germany, and across Europe were closed until at least Saturday.
"I would think Europe was probably experiencing its greatest disruption to air travel since 9/11," said a spokesman for the Civil Aviation Authority, Britain's aviation regulator.
"In terms of closure of airspace, this is worse than after 9/11. The disruption is probably larger than anything we've probably seen."
Following the September 11, 2001 attacks on Washington and New York, U.S. airspace was closed for three days and European airlines were forced to halt all transatlantic services.
Vulcanologists say the ash could cause problems to air traffic for up to six months if the eruption continues, but even if it is short-lived the financial impact on airlines could be significant.
The fallout hit airlines' shares on Friday with Lufthansa, British Airways, Air Berlin, Air France-KLM, Iberia and Ryanair down between 1.3 and 2.2 percent.
The International Air Transport Association said only days ago that airlines were just coming out of recession.
"LIMITED COMMERCIAL SIGNIFICANCE"
The flight cancellations would cost carriers such as British Airways and Lufthansa about 10 million pounds ($16.04 million) a day, transport analyst Douglas McNeill said.
"To lose that sum of money isn't a very pleasant experience but it's of limited commercial significance as well," he told BBC TV. "A couple of days like this won't matter too much. If it goes on for weeks, that's a different story."
The volcano began erupting on Wednesday for the second time in a month from below the Eyjafjallajokull glacier, hurling a plume of ash 6 to 11 km (4 to 7 miles) into the atmosphere.
Officials said it was still spewing magma and although the eruption could abate in the coming days, ash would continue drifting into the skies of Europe
Volcanic ash contains tiny particles of glass and pulverized rock that can damage engines and airframes.
In 1982 a British Airways jumbo jet lost power in all its engines when it flew into an ash cloud over Indonesia, gliding toward the ground before it was able to restart its engines.
The incident prompted the aviation industry to rethink the way it prepared for ash clouds.
Of the 28,000 flights that usually travel through European airspace on an average day, European aviation control agency Eurocontrol said it expected only 11,000 to operate on Friday while only about a third of transatlantic flights were arriving.
PLUME DRIFTING
The British Meteorological Office showed the cloud drifting south and west over Europe. Eurocontrol warned problems would continue for at least another 24 hours and an aviation expert at the World Meteorological Organization said it was impossible to say when flights would resume.
"We can only predict the time that flights will resume after the eruption has stopped, but for as long as the eruption is still going on and still leading to a significant eruption, we cannot say," said Scylla Sillayo, a senior official in the WMO's aeronautical meteorology unit.
Aviation officials said airspace was closed in countries across northern European from Britain and France to Slovakia and Poland.
Polish officials said if the disruption continued, it might force a delay in Sunday's funeral for President Lech Kaczynski and his wife who were killed in a plane crash last Saturday.
Airlines across Asia and the Middle East have also canceled or delayed flights to most European destinations.
The air problems have proved a boon for other transport firms. All 58 Eurostar trains between Britain and Europe were operating full, carrying some 46,500 passengers, and a spokeswoman said they would consider adding more services.
London taxi firm Addison Lee said it had taken requests for journeys to Paris, Milan, Zurich and Salzburg in Austria.
In addition to travel problems, health officials warned that the volcanic ash could also prove harmful to those with breathing difficulties.
"Any particulate matter that is deposited, breathed into the lungs is dangerous to people so we are concerned about that but we don't have details yet," Daniel Epstein, spokesman for the U.N. World Health Organization told a briefing.
However a Scottish expert said ash landing on Britain was unlikely to pose a significant risk.
(Reporting by London, Geneva, Dublin, Paris, Amsterdam, Brussels, Reykjavik and Berlin newsrooms; Editing by Ralph Boulton and William Maclean)
