Europe aims for a normal day in the skies

BRUSSELS (AP) — European airports sent thousands of planes into the sky today after a week of unprecedented disruptions, but shifting winds sent a new plume of volcanic ash over Scandinavia, forcing some airports in Norway and Sweden to close again.

The new airspace restrictions applied to northern Scotland and parts of southern Norway, Sweden and Finland, said Kyla Evans, spokeswoman for Eurocontrol, the European air traffic agency.

But nearly all of the continent’s 28,000 other scheduled flights, including more than 300 flights on lucrative trans-Atlantic routes, were expected to proceed. Every plane was packed, however, as airlines squeezed in some of the hundreds of thousands of travelers who had been stranded for days among passengers with regular Thursday tickets.

Airlines said there was no quick solution to cut down the backlog of passengers, for most flights were nearly full anyway, and no other planes were available.

Many trans-Atlantic planes flying between the United States and Europe were assigned flight paths above the ash cloud that still covered the area east of Iceland. Flying at over 35,000 feet kept the planes well above the current maximum altitude of the ash, which lingered at 20,000 feet.