Hundreds of thousands of air -passengers were stranded all over Europe and Asia including India for the third day in succession as massive drifts of volcanic ash blanketed European airspace shutting down major airports, like London, Berlin, Paris and Frankfurt.
As many as 17,000 flights were cancelled as the airspace remained totally empty over northern Europe and scientists warned that the volcanic activity had increased in Iceland which could cause more disruption.
The air-traffic agency Eurocontrol said 17,000 flights out of Europe's usual 28,000 daily flights were cancelled twice the number as yesterday.
The grounding of major airliners was costing the industry at least $200 million a day, according to an IATA spokesman.
The flying ash also affected US airlines which cancelled 280 out of the 330 transatlantic flights.Air traffic control officials said they still were not sure when the flights would return to normal.
As chaos prevailed at all European airports, an Iceland geologist warned that activity from the erupting volcano had increased causing a rise in ash plume. But he said that flights over the volcano would be undertaken today or tomorrow to determine how long the eruption would last.
All 16 international airports in Germany were shut down until 1400 hrs on Saturday.
Munich airport operated till Friday evening as the only German airport not affected by the flight ban, but there too all incoming and outgoing flights have been cancelled till Saturday afternoon.
A spokesperson for the German air traffic control said it could be possible that the flight ban could be extended on Saturday.
This would mean more flight cancellations on Saturday, it said.
At the Frankfurt airport, the largest airport on the European mainland, all flights including the four daily Air India flights to and from India were cancelled since Friday morning.
Over a thousand stranded passengers spent the night at the airport on camping beds provided by the airport authorities.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who was returning home after attending the nuclear security summit in Washington, made a stop-over in Lisbon on Friday as her plane could not land in Berlin.
A German government statement said she will try to return to Berlin on Saturday.
