Companies Scramble To Accommodate Travelers Under Volcanic Cloud

Forty thousand HRG customers have been stranded by the grounding of all flights across much of Europe since the Eyjafjallajokull volcano in Iceland started erupting last Thursday, according to the mega travel management company, as travel managers work frantically repatriate travelers and rearrange trips and conferences postponed by 63,000 cancelled flights.

An end to the chaos appeared to be in sight this afternoon when Germany's aviation authority gave permission to Lufthansa to start flying 15,000 passengers on 50 aircraft from long-haul destinations to Dusseldorf, Frankfurt and Munich tomorrow. The United Kingdom, France and Belgium also gave the go-ahead for limited resumption of flights as Eyjafjallajokull started to emit ash at lower altitudes, which are less likely to affect European aviation.

The first parts of U.K. airspace to open at 7 a.m. tomorrow will be Northern Ireland, Scotland and northern England in a line from Blackpool on the west coast to Teesside on the east. BA said it hopes to resume flights to and from London airports starting at 7 p.m. tomorrow for long-haul services scheduled to depart after 4 p.m. and short-haul services scheduled for departure after 7 p.m.

"The priority for most clients at the moment is to repatriate their travelers and, as a result, some are introducing temporary bans for any journey that has not already commenced," said HRG chief executive David Radcliffe. "To help them achieve this, we have been arranging ground transportation services across Europe and routing clients into southern Europe [which has not been affected by the ash cloud] on flights from and into intercontinental airports. If appropriate and available, we have chartered aircraft to meet client needs.

"Where repatriation has not been possible, HRG has secured and extended hotel rooms for clients whose travelers are having an enforced extended stay, and we have also guaranteed payment on behalf of stranded clients where credit card values and ceilings have been exceeded," Radcliffe said. HRG added that 300 staff voluntarily worked overtime to deal with the crisis and that its 24-hour crisis center has handled 25,000 emergency calls.

The Association of British Travel Agents estimates 150,000 Britons have been stranded overseas by the crisis. Many of those who were in continental Europe attempted to return home by ferry or by Eurostar, which has added 33 trains since Thursday and carried 50,000 passengers more than originally booked.

Long-haul travelers have had fewer options but even some of them found ways home. Sabre senior vice president for Europe, the Middle East and Africa Martin Cowley told BTN this afternoon that a group of his company's executives are flying to the United States this evening from Madrid after the U.K. travel management company Portman Travel organized Eurostar tickets and a mini-bus to transport them from Paris to the Spanish capital. Carlson Wagonlit Travel has also been chartering buses for corporate clients.

According to Eurocontrol, which coordinates air traffic control across Europe, countries that banned air traffic today included Belgium, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, parts of France, Germany, Hungary, Ireland, the Netherlands, northern Italy, Poland, Romania, Slovenia, Switzerland, parts of Ukraine and the United Kingdom. Seventy percent of all scheduled European flights were affected.