Europe Flights Chaos Continues

As we reported yesterday, halt to flights in Europe is likely to continue into the weekend.

The ash cloud is moving south and east, moved by north northwest winds. Thus, Norway reopened part of their air space in the morning, Scotland and Northern Ireland will reopen their air space today at 18:00 GMT, and Sweden is reopening air space starting this afternoon.

But situation elsewhere is quite bad, with northern France still under full closure of their air space, and airports in Eastern Europe and Central Europe being shut down today. All major airports in Germany and Poland (where world leaders are expected for the funeral of President Lech Kaczynski, who was killed in a plane crash last Saturday) are now closed; Czech Republic is also limiting flights over the country; Hungary and Romania are doing the same; Finnish airports will remain closed until Saturday. Swiss airports will close at 22:00 GMT (midnight local time), and Austria will close theirs at 16:00 GMT.

At the time of this writing (sources:BBC.co.uk,CNN.com)

Closed Airspace
Belgium
Czech Republic
Denmark
Estonia
Finland
Hungary (from 1700 GMT)
Latvia
Lithuania
Netherlands
Slovakia
Switzerland (from 2200 GMT)

Partial Closures
Austria
France (northern airports, including Paris airports)
Germany
Norway (limited flights in north)
Poland
Republic of Ireland (most airspace opened Friday)
Sweden (northern airspace opened Friday)
UK (near-total closure)

Additionally, Italian newspaper Repubblica is reporting through their website that air space might be closed also in northern Italy. The country has experienced widespread disruption in international flights, like Spain and basically any other country in the world with flights coming to and from countries affected directly by the ash cloud. Anyhow, Italian authorities have not issued any official announcement, thus all airports will stay open for the time being.