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Airports across Europe began reopening Wednesday, six days after ash from an Icelandic volcano forced the shutdown of airspace and stranded thousands of passengers around the world.


The airspace over most of the United Kingdom, Norway, Belgium, Ireland and Germany was open again, and Danish, Swedish and Finnish airspace was expected to reopen fully later in the day, air traffic authorities said.

French authorities said all long-haul flights were leaving from Paris airports, along with 60 percent of short-haul flights.

A British Airways flight from Vancouver was the first to land at Heathrow Airport late Tuesday, and a total of 25 mostly long-haul flights had landed by the morning, the airport said. There were a handful of takeoffs Wednesday morning, but the airport warned that not all flights would operate right away.

Manchester Airport said flights were both taking off and landing Wednesday. That raised hope for a team of British cheerleaders who were trying to fly Wednesday from Manchester to Florida for the World Cheerleading Championship this week, though team member Georgina Evett said she wasn't holding her breath just yet.

"I think when we land down in America, then we'll know we're there. But at the minute, we're a bit cautious," Evett told.

Passengers arriving on the Vancouver flight to Heathrow late Tuesday said they circled over Ireland for a couple of hours before getting approval to land in London, which prompted a big cheer in the cabin.

"It was pretty harrowing," said one woman who was aboard the flight. She told she had a "dizzy, kind of sickly feeling" in her stomach as they circled.

The crisis began after the volcano beneath the Eyjafjallajokull glacier erupted Wednesday and sent a cloud of ash into the atmosphere. By the next day that cloud had reached Europe, where authorities quickly shut the airspace over safety fears.

Volcanic ash can have dangerous consequences for flights by shutting down engines and electrical systems and damaging a plane's windscreen.

By Tuesday, however, airlines had started to complain that the measures were too restrictive. Ash levels in most parts of Europe, they said, were low enough to allow the safe operation of flights.

On Wednesday, British aviation regulator CAA issued revised its guidance on flying through volcano ash clouds. Previous guidelines recommended a total ban on flights through ash, but the new rules allow airlines to conduct their own risk assessments and require them to report any ash damage to the authorities.

The International Air Transport Association (IATA) estimated Wednesday that the Icelandic volcano crisis cost airlines more than $1.7 billion in lost revenue through Tuesday. Between Saturday and Monday, when disruptions were greatest, IATA said lost revenues reached $400 million each day.

"At the worst, the crisis impacted 29 percent of global aviation and affected 1.2 million passengers a day," said IATA Director-General and Chief Executive Giovanni Bisignani. "The scale of the crisis eclipsed 9/11 when U.S. airspace was closed for three days."

Scientists in Iceland said Wednesday the volcano has decreased its ash output by 80 percent compared to the first day of eruption, April 14. Armann Hoskulsson, a volcanologist at the University of Iceland, told a briefing that the volcano's output is now "insignificant," though it will continue to be active for a while.

That reduction in volcanic activity appeared to be the main reason that flights resumed operating in Europe on Wednesday, along with European countries relaxing their restrictions on flight, according to a spokeswoman for Eurocontrol, the intergovernmental body that manages European air travel.

In Britain, the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) issued revised guidance on flying through volcano ash clouds, allowing airlines to conduct their own risk assessments and requiring them to report any ash damage to the authorities.

The 27 countries of the European Union also agreed with Eurocontrol to split the airspace into zones based on their ash content and to allow flights in the unaffected areas, said Spanish Minister of Public Works Jose Blanco.

"Airspace was being closed based on theoretical models, not on facts," said Bisignani, of IATA. "Test flights by our members showed that the models were wrong."

He said the EU's decision to categorize airspace based on risk was a "step in the right direction," but that Europe still needs uniform rules on air travel to avoid the chaos of the past week.

The Daily Telegraph newspaper in London ran a a banner headline asking, "Why was ban ever imposed?" British Airways Chief Executive Willie Walsh, who had pushed for airlines to be allowed to fly, told Sky News that lessons could be learned about how the situation was handled, and that authorities should sit down and examine "what could have been done better."

However, NATS, the air traffic authority in Britain, said it was confident it had made the right decision in restricting flights.