Madrid (Spain) / Rome (Italy), 10.05.2010 – Once again, the air traffic in Europe at the weekend by volcanic ash in Spain and Italy obstructed. The ash cloud, which on week start to disability in air traffic in the British Isles led, is still moved to the south.

In Spain and Portugal on Saturday had many airports are closed. In Spain, these were the airports Asturias, La Coruna, Barcelona, Bilbao, Burgos, Gerona, Huesca, Leon, Logrono, Pamplona, San Sebastian Sabadell, Santander, Santiago de Compostela, Vigo and Vitoria.

The ash cloud from affected airports was also in the southwest of France and Italy as well as six Scottish airports. The airport Porto in northern Portugal was also closed. Near the Pyrenees planes at an altitude of 35,000 feet (about 10,500 meters) reported ash. The deep layer cloud of ash also hindered the trans-Atlantic air traffic. In order to avoid this, do aircraft fly a roundabout way, so that many compounds the pond for hours of time are over.

The majority of Spanish airports have now been freed. The longest lasted for the closure of the airport A Corunna, Santiago and Vigo, where the resumption of air traffic on Sunday was scheduled for 11:00 EDT clock.

In Italy, on Sunday morning 8:00 clock all the northern Italian airport closed at – with the exception of the airports of Rimini, Trieste and Venice. The closure should last until 14:00 BST clock, the Italian ENAC. Of these deaths and the air traffic in Germany is affected. At Frankfurt airport Sunday morning were 15 incoming and eleven outgoing flights from the mostly links to Italy. In the Europe it fell from several hundred flights on weekends.

They were set on Sunday afternoon at 15:00 clock and the air in Munich, Augsburg, Memmingen and Stuttgart. The air traffic control authorities had informed that the flight ban on all flights, both in southern Germany after the instrument flight procedures and after the visual flight procedure applies. In Stuttgart, for three hours, the air traffic was suspended, in Munich to 23:00 clock. An hour earlier, was already Augsburg and Memmingen being flown in. The airports in Innsbruck, Salzburg, Linz and Vienna were also released at this time again. The meteorologists expect, however, that rain reduces the concentration of ash, in Germany and Austria Monday not with the expected disability is for.

One end of the eruption was not yet in sight, volcanologists said, although the amount of ash emitted was very much lower than in April, when the European air traffic was stopped completely for almost a week almost. The last historical eruption of the volcano in 1821 and 1823 lasted almost two years between.