Volcano cloud grows grounding thousands more flights

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LONDON, Apr 16 (AFP): A huge cloud of volcanic ash from Iceland spread over half of Europe Friday, forcing the cancellation of thousands more flights in the continent's biggest air travel shutdown since World War II.
Europe's air traffic control centre predicted 17,000 flights would be cancelled Friday. And as the giant no-fly zone grew, Poland said it may delay the funeral of President Lech Kaczynski on Sunday because of the cloud threat.
Experts warned the fallout from the Eyjafjallajokull volcano in southeast Iceland could take several days to clear and aviation authorities refused to say when the skies would clear again.
The cloud now extends from the Atlantic to the Russian capital and from the Arctic Circle to Austria. Thousands of people were stranded in airports around the world as a global flight backlog built up.
All of Europe's three biggest airports -- London Heathrow, Paris-Charles de Gaulle and Frankfurt -- were closed by the ash, which is a threat to jet engines and pilot visibility.
Eurocontrol, the European air traffic control group, said only 11,000 of the daily 28,000 flights in the affected zone would take off Friday. It said at least half of the 600 daily flights between Europe and North America would be cancelled.
About 6,000 flights to and within Europe were cancelled Thursday.
Poland, Britain, Austria, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Belgium and the Netherlands shut down all or most of their airspace.