New Delhi: The bad news: Icelandic volcanic eruptions have started impacting operations of Indian carriers with fears of a repeat of last year’s crisis looming large. The good news: it’s not all that bad — yet. Last year, the Eyjafjallajokull eruption had led to closure of European airspace for more than a week — the largest such closure since World War II.
On Saturday, Grimsvotn, Iceland’s most active volcano, erupted sending shivers down the spine of the aviation industry and flyers and putting Europe on high alert. Eyjafjallajokull had caused a loss of £2.5 billion (Rs18,000 crore) to the global aviation industry.
A Delhi-Chicago Air India flight had to take a detour on Monday due to flight restrictions over the European airspace. “As a result, we had to carry more fuel and had to offload some baggage,” said an Air India spokesperson.
Jet Airways has said it was a keeping a close watch on the situation in Europe.
“This is the peak travel period for Indians, both domestically and internationally,” said Kapil Kaul, South Asia CEO of Centre for Asia Pacific Aviation, an aviation consultancy and research firm. “So far, going by reports, it doesn’t look as if it would cause the kind of disruptions it caused last year.” He said aviation and meteorological agencies were “much better prepared” to handle the situation this year.
23/05/11 Tushar Srivastava/Hindustan Times
To Read the News in full at Source, Click the Headline
0 comments:
Post a Comment