Air crisis: Back to normality as backlog clears
After almost a week of severe delays and cancellations, the vast majority of airports have resumed normal service. EUROCONTROL, the European Organisation for the Safety of Air Navigation, expects that traffic will be at normal levels (between 28,000 and 29,000 flights) today.
The body said there were 22,189 flights in European airspace yesterday -almost 80% of normal traffic levels.
At the current time, almost all European airspace is available, with a few exceptions in parts of Southern Finland, southern Norway, northern Scotland, and western Sweden.
The mail and express industry blew a huge sigh of relief as the flight ban was lifted.
DHL resumed most of its close to 100 regular intra-European express flights on Wednesday and ran regular night operations at its Leipzig Hub in Germany and main UK hub at East Midlands Airport, following the re-opening of most European air space.
Intercontinental air operations to Asia, the US and Middle East/Africa, including those of AeroLogic and DHL Air UK, are now back to normal.
“In those areas that are still affected by the closure of airspace DHL will continue to serve customers through an alternative and decentralised road-based network. Customers will thus receive their shipments at the earliest possible point in time. Should air space continue to be open, DHL Express will be able to also offer its standard express services within the next days,” a DHL spokesman said.
TNT has resumed flights to and from Europe, South East Asia, Hong Kong, Shanghai and New York JFK along with domestic flights in Europe.
Due to contingency plans put in place by TNT since 15 April, the company said there is little to no backlogs across TNT’s facilities in Europe. TNT said is doing its utmost to secure commercial uplift from Asia to Europe, along with its scheduled B747 freighters service between the two continents. The operator also said it will continue to truck air shipments to and from European destinations that cannot yet be reached by plane.
Gerry Power, managing director, TNT Express Worldwide, said: “In Malaysia, backlog shipments were shipped via TNT’s Asia Road Network (ARN) into our Singapore hub and transported to Europe on our 747EF freighters to our air hub in Liege, Belgium. Using the seamless air and road connectivity, the shipments will then be delivered from Liege to any of the 39 countries within Europe via the European Road Network (ERN). Even though Heathrow Airport is now open, in order to clear backlogs faster, many of the shipments destined to the United Kingdom will be transported to Liege and from there via road into London, based on a priority agreement with Eurotunnel. This is all because of our established Asia and Europe Road Network, our seamless and secure air and road connectivity combined with our sure we can attitude, scale and approach, we can quickly salvage the situation, mitigate the negative impact for our customers and resume normal operations.”
Have you been affected by the air crisis? Please comment below…
