Europe flights suspended,travel plans in ashes

Several international airlines,including Indian carriers,have either cancelled or rescheduled their flights to north European destinations following volcanic ash clouding the flight path,said Pune-based Captain Pramod Kohli,member of the national committee of the Travel Agents Federation of India.

“There have been huge cancellations on almost all the flights for the next three days while 35-40 passengers have re-booked their flights,” said Kolhi.

For filmmaker Rajdeep Fernandes (name changed) who was to fly back to Canada on Saturday night,the natural calamity has made his travel plans go haywire. “I was on an assignment to India for making a documentary film. My work has just completed and I was set to travel on Saturday night by Jet airways from Mumbai to Vancouver via London. But now I don’t think I am going to take a chance and go to the Mumbai airport on Saturday with almost all flights being cancelled till Sunday,” said an irritated Fernandes who has to extend his stay in Pune by another two days.

The cloud,floating miles (kilometers) above Earth and capable of knocking out jet engines has also wrecked travel plans of several corporates,said Shalak Naik,an agent with Time Travels. “Flights via Frankfurt,Zurich and Paris have been disrupted till Sunday and till everything is sorted out,not many are taking chances,” said Naik. He,however,hopes that the problem will get resolved by the time the actual vacation season kicks off by April end.

According to Payal Barnecha of Tata Capital Travel Services,a sizeable section of corporates have been affected. “While local offices of airlines have been asked to call up and inform passengers every two hours,the websites are not updated. We had to personally call the passengers who were travelling from Pune to Mumbai to return as flights to New Jersey and New York had been cancelled,” she said.