EU Decides It's Safe to Fly: Skies and Airports to Reopen in Europe

April 20, 2010 — -- Flights are resuming across northern Europe today for the first time since a massive volcanic ash cloud grounded hundreds of planes and stranded thousands of passengers nearly a week ago.

Eurocontrol, Europe's aviation safety organization, reported it expects half of the scheduled flights to take off today including transatlantic flights. But not all planes will be taking off and one of Europe's largest hubs, London's Heathrow airport, remains closed in the face of a second wave of ash that has settled over it's airspace.

"It's difficult to say when we will be back at full capacity," Eurocontrol's deputy head of operations Brian Flynn told "Good Morning America" today. "A good expectation [is] that in about two days time we would return to very near normal situation."

The volcano in southern Iceland is still spewing smoke and lava, but the ash plume is lower than it previously was, posing less threat to high-flying aircraft.

Upon returning from a helicopter trip over the volcano's crater, one of Iceland's top scientist said today there's reason to hope the worst is over.

"What I can say about the situation now is that the activity is now much lower than it was on Saturday," Magnus Gudmundsson of the University of Iceland told ABC News of the ash-producing crater. Gudmundsson said scientists "cannot be sure" the situation will continue to improve.

The sound of jets taking off was music to the ears of stranded passengers.

"We were in the hotel having breakfast, and we heard an aircraft take off. Everybody got up and applauded," said Bob Basso, 81, of San Diego, who has been staying in a hotel near Charles de Gaulle since his flight Friday was canceled.

The Eurocontrol said it expects 13,000 flights over Europe to go ahead today, a marked improvement over the last few days. The organization predicted that by the end of the day, a total of 95,000 flights will have been cancelled since Thursday.

The volcano in southern Iceland that created the ash cloud is still spewing the potentially dangerous combination of dust, glass-like debris and ice into the air, but Eurocontrol said it coordinated with meteorologists from across the continent to establish safe flying zones.

Ash that had drifted over the North Sea from the volcano in southern Iceland was being pushed back over Britain today by shifty north winds, Icelandic scientists told the Associated Press.

"It's a matter of wind directions. The volcano's plume is quite low actually, still below 3 kilometers (1.8 miles) near the volcano," said Gudrun Nina Petersen, meteorologist at the Icelandic Met Office.