Flights resume

Lufthansa says it plans to fly 50 long-haul planes back home with a total of about 15,000 passengers on board. Lufthansa spokesman Jan Baerwald said Monday that the first flights would be from the Far East, with others following from Africa and North America.

He said the planes would start to get ready immediately and would fly to Frankfurt, Munich and Duesseldorf.

Lufthansa and the country's second largest airline Air Berlin have also restarted a limited number of shorter flights to popular holiday destinations, where thousands of people are still stranded due to grounded flights and closed airports as a cloud of volcano ashes makes its way across Europe.

The Lufthansa spokesman said the permission granted by the German aviation authority DFS allowed them to fly by so-called visual flight rules and at a lower altitude than usual. But as long as air traffic control maintains the restrictions on airspace, Baerwald said, "we don't have the chance to return to our regular schedule."

The DFS announced earlier on Monday that the country's airspace would remain closed until at least 2 a.m. local time on Tuesday, dashing the hopes of millions of passengers who had been stranded for days.

EU: unsustainable situation

The European Union has announced it would facilitate emergency aid for the airlines affected. EU transport ministers were scheduled to hold a telephone conference on Monday afternoon to assess the situation. "We cannot wait until the ash flows just disappear," Transport Commissioner Siim Kallas told a press conference in Brussels.

Meanwhile, Austrian, Czech and Slovak airspace reopened on Monday. The flight restrictions in place over Scottish airspace are to be lifted Tuesday morning, and civil aviation authorities say other British airports may also reopen soon.

About 30 countries had closed or restricted their airspace due to passenger safety fears, catching 6.8 million passengers in a global backlog, according to the international airports council ACI.

"More than 6.8 million passengers have been affected so far and European airports have lost close to 136 million euros (183 million dollars)," said Olivier Jankovec, ACI's European head. A total of 313 airports had been paralysed by the restrictions, he added.

db/dpa/AP
Editor: Susan Houlton