Volcanic ash to force Berlin airport closures

A cloud of volcanic ash that has caused headaches for air travellers spread to Germany today, forcing the closure of Berlin's airport and threatening to disrupt European flights for days.

Some airlines complained the closures were an overreaction. The cloud forced the cancellation of hundreds of flights over Britain yesterday as winds blew the ash from Iceland's Grimsvotn volcano over Scotland, but British authorities said high-level densities of ash had cleared their airspace today and there were only scattered cancellations, mostly related to Germany-bound flights.

German air traffic control today said they would halt all flights to and from Berlin's Tegel and Schoenefeld airports, starting at 11:00 am (1430 IST).

Airports in Bremen, Hamburg and Luebeck, have already been closed for hours, causing hundreds of flights to be stuck.

While experts say particles in the ash could stall jet engines and sandblast planes' windows, many argue the flight bans are a massive overreaction by badly prepared safety regulators.

A British Airways test flight passing through the affected area was unaffected, said Willie Walsh, the chief executive of International Airlines Group, formed from the merger of BA and Iberia.

"We flew in the red zone for about 45 minutes at different altitudes over Scotland" and the north of England, Walsh told BBC radio. "All the filters were removed and will be sent to a laboratory for testing. The simple answer is that we found nothing."