DELAYED flights to and from the Asia-Pacific region from Europe were again aloft yesterday as pressure on European authorities induced them to open airports after airlines expressed a willingness to fly despite warnings that Iceland's volcanic ash clouds might befoul engines.

After test flights showed nothing untoward, several northern European airports re-opened, including Frankfurt, Paris and Amsterdam, reported London's International Freighting Weekly.

Lufthansa, with the Max Planck Institute, undertook a more detailed test flight on the concentration of volcanic ash in the air over Europe with a CARIBIC climate research container aboard. But results were not yet available.

Air France carried out five test flights to obtaining information about the impact on aircraft operations. No irregularity was observed. KLM and British Airways had the same experience. Fifty per cent of flights scheduled yesterday in Europe would go ahead, over 75 per cent of the continent.

Hong Kong's Cathay Pacific airways announced that flights delayed from April 15-6 would depart and flights from the April 21 would leave in the early hours of Thursday, April 22.

But all flights to and from Amsterdam, Frankfurt and London on April 21 remain cancelled, said the statement, adding that some scheduled flights on April 22 had been cancelled too.

Singapore Airlines, which has 25 flights a day to Europe, said it would have three flights to London yesterday while nine others would go to and from Amsterdam, Paris, Zurich, Rome, Barcelona, Moscow, Copenhagen and Houston on Wednesday and early Thursday.

Air China resumed some scheduled flights to Europe yesterday, but will continue to monitor the situation.

Australian flag carrier Qantas said that it was resuming flights between Australia and London on Thursday, April 22 and would resume some flights between Singapore and Europe on Wednesday and will operate two flights to London and one to Frankfurt out of Changi Airport.

British Airways said it would try to resume more flights in and out of London.

Air France had five freighters return to Paris. The aircraft, three B777-200Fs and two B747-400ERFs, have been grounded since last Friday and had since flown in from Houston, Nairobi, Mexico City, Shanghai and Hong Kong.

Air France-KLM said it was losing EUR35 million (US$47 million) a day - 25 per cent of total European air transport losses. Globally, the International Transport Association said the crisis cost the industry US$200 a day.

In Kenya, exporters in the country's huge floral shipping industry burned 400 tons of flowers because they could not get flights to Europe and the produce was beginning to rot.

DHL Global Forwarding north Asia chief Charles Kaufman said now that air space is re-opened, it would take "some time" to move delayed shipments, even if the situation improves.

United Parcel Service (UPS) has started flying Europe-bound shipments from Asia to Istanbul for onward road haulage. FedEx had stopped accepting deferred international shipments bound for Europe, Dow Jones Newswires reported, but has since resumed flights.

The Paris-based arm of air cargo trucker Jan de Rijk France said business was off by 40 per cent. Paris-Orly-based forwarder Setcargo, whose main product lines is perishable freight in the form of medicines, vaccines and human blood supplies, said that since the airport closures, it had been able to store shipments in its temperature-controlled facility.

FedEx resumed flight operations at its European hub in Paris as the carrier and other express airlines began to work on clearing out the shipping backlog left by the shutdown of airspace under a cloud of volcanic ash, reported Newark's Journal of Commerce.

TNT also brought freighters that had been grounded around Europe back into its Liege base, said the report, which added that it expected to resume its air operations within Europe and internationally pending inspection of aircraft engines by authorities.

The Huntsville Times in Alabama reported that Panalpina, with one daily flight to Luxembourg, had resumed service after a three-day delay. Panalpina diverted its normal Huntsville to Luxembourg flight via southern Spain.

Air China resumed some scheduled flights to Europe yesterday, but will continue to monitor the situation in Europe and keep in close contact with the relevant aviation authorities, said a statement issued yesterday.

Source: www.schednet.com