Passengers stranded at Frankfurt airport
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European Union transport ministers are to hold emergency meetings to discuss what action to take to help the estimated 6.8 million air passengers stranded following flight cancellations because of the Icelandic ash cloud. And Cobra, the British government's emergency civil contingencies committee, is also set to meet about the crisis. The Transport Secretary, Lord Adonis,
rejected suggestions that the government had not done enough
to ease travellers' delays. He told Today presenter Justin Webb that EU transport ministers have been "talking daily". He added that there as been "a very significant increase" in the capacity of rail and ferry services from the continent to Great Britain but warned that aircraft manufacturers are still advising that it is too dangerous to fly. But Giovanni Bisignani, director general of the International Air Transport Association (Iata) said that the flight ban, which it estimates is costing airlines $200m a day, has criticised the handling of the crisis, which he says
is a "European embarrassment".
Travellers who have managed to make their way back to Dover have described
their often complex and expensive journeys across Europe.
According to the latest satellite images from the Met Office, the cloud is
sitting across much of western Europe and the Atlantic.
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