Europe hopes half of flights will operate Monday

BRUSSELS (Reuters) - European officials said they hoped half of flights would operate across the continent on Monday as they sought to ease four days of paralysis caused by a sprawling ash cloud from an Icelandic volcano.

The closure of most of Europe's airspace except for the eastern and southern rims has cost airlines and airports hundreds of millions of dollars, and these called on Sunday for a review of the restrictions. The closure has also stranded hundreds of thousands of passengers and hurt exporters.

The Dutch airline KLM, which flew a test flight on Saturday, said most European airspace was safe despite the growing plume of ash, and despatched two commercial freight flights to Asia on Sunday evening.

European Union Transport Commissioner Siim Kallas said he hoped 50 percent of European airspace would be risk-free on Monday, adding the current situation was not sustainable. "We cannot wait until the ash flows just disappear," he said.

"The forecast is that there will be half of flights possibly operating tomorrow," said Spanish Secretary of State for European Union affairs Diego Lopez Garrido. "It will be difficult; that's why we have to coordinate," he told reporters after a meeting at European aviation control agency Eurocontrol.

Italy and Austria said they would reopen affected airports on Monday.

Only 4,000 flights were estimated to be operating in Europe on Sunday, compared with 24,000 normally, Eurocontrol said. It said 63,000 flights had been cancelled since Thursday.

Volcanic ash is abrasive and can strip off aerodynamic surfaces and paralyse an aircraft engine. Aircraft electronics and windshields can also be damage

HOPE OF RELIEF

Weekend test flights with empty planes offered some hope.

"Lufthansa made 11 flights, KLM nine, Air France seven and the results show no impact in the area ... No impact coming from the ash cloud," Garrido said.

KLM said its inspections showed no damage to engines or evidence of dangerous ash concentrations. Its chief executive, Peter Hartman, was quoted by Dutch media as saying European airspace was safe "with the exception of an area in the north between Iceland and Russia."

Airline and airport groups called for the flight restrictions to be reassessed.

"The concentration of ash particles in the atmosphere is in all likelihood so small that it poses no threat to air transport," the association of Dutch pilots said.

Nevertheless, British Airways and Irish Aer Lingus cancelled all their flights for Monday. Ireland's Ryanair cancelled flights to and from northern Europe until Wednesday.

AROUND THE CLOUD

Sometimes travellers found a way round, if long and slow. Reuters correspondent Mark Meadows flew over two days from St Petersburg via Istanbul and Athens to Rome, then headed home to Milan by train.

The Spanish EU presidency called a video conference of EU transport ministers for Monday.

"We can examine the results of the test flights and look and see whether there is any updating of the regulatory structure which might make it possible for flights to take place despite the presence of the ash cloud," British Transport Minister Andrew Adonis told BBC television.

The clampdown poses a growing problem for airlines, estimated to be losing $200 million (130.6 million pounds) a day, and for hundreds of thousands of travellers stranded worldwide.

Weather experts said wind patterns meant the ash plume was not likely to move far until later in the week.

It was expected to become more concentrated Tuesday into Wednesday, posing a greater threat to air travel, but narrowing to affect a smaller area. A shift in jet stream winds from Thursday could flush it out of most of Europe.

"It's like a spray can of ash coming from Iceland," U.S.- based forecaster AccuWeather said. "As with a spray can, the plume of ash is not uniform. It becomes deformed and spreads out in different directions the farther from the source it gets."

For some businesses dependent on fast air freight, the impact has been immediate.

Kenya's flower exporters said they were already losing up to $2 million a day. Kenya accounts for about a third of flower imports into the European Union.

The disruption is the worst since the September 11 attacks on New York and Washington in 2001, when U.S. airspace was closed for three days.

U.S. President Barack Obama, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and others cancelled trips to Poland for the funeral of President Lech Kaczynski.

For travellers, businesses and financial markets the biggest problem remains the sheer unpredictability of the situation.

German flight controllers appeared to have seized on an 'opening' on Sunday when, for a few hours, they cleared flights from several cities.

ECONOMIC HAZARDS

Economists say they stand by their predictions for European growth, hoping normal service can resume this week.

But if European airspace were closed for months, one economist estimated lost travel and tourism revenue alone could knock 1-2 percentage points off regional growth. European growth had been predicted at 1-1.5 percent for 2010.

"That would mean a lot of European countries wouldn't get any growth this year," said Vanessa Rossi, senior economic fellow at Chatham House. "It would literally stifle the recovery. But the problem is it is incredibly hard to predict what will happen. Even the geologists can't tell us."

Disruption spread to Asia, where dozens of Europe-bound flights were cancelled and hotels from Beijing to Singapore strained to accommodate stranded passengers.

More than four in five flights by U.S. airlines to and from Europe were cancelled on Saturday. Freight company FedEx Corp said more than 100 FedEx Express flights headed to Europe had been rerouted, diverted or cancelled over 72 hours.

Russian airports remained open, routing planes to North America over the North Pole to avoid the cloud.

The volcano began erupting on Wednesday from below the Eyjafjallajokull glacier, hurling a plume of ash 6 to 11 km (3.7 to 6.9 miles) into the atmosphere.

(Reporting by London, Geneva, Dublin, Paris, Amsterdam, Brussels, Reykjavik, Washington, Frankfurt and Berlin newsrooms; Writing by Ralph Gowling and Ralph Boulton; editing by Kevin Liffey)

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