Asia-Pacific

Volcano ash grounds more flights to NZ

(Agencies)
Updated: 2011-06-16 17:25

SYDNEY - Virgin Australia joined other airlines in grounding flights between Australia and New Zealand on Thursday as ash from a Chilean volcano settled to a lower altitude between the two countries.

But Qantas announced that it would resume some service to the island nation on Friday - the first time in nearly a week its planes would cross the Tasman Sea. Jetstar and Virgin had not yet decided on their Friday schedules.

The eruption of the Cordon Caulle volcano has wreaked havoc on flights in the southern Pacific, stranding tens of thousands of passengers since the weekend, when Qantas and Jetstar first began canceling flights. New Zealand has been largely cut off since Sunday, and service to the Australian cities of Melbourne, Adelaide, Perth and Hobart in Tasmania has periodically been suspended.

On Thursday, nearly 70 flights to, from and within New Zealand were canceled, adding thousands of passengers to those already affected. It was unclear how many people were still waiting to fly Thursday.

But Australia's domestic service was back to normal Thursday. Extra flights were going into and out of Perth, the gateway to the remote west, to clear a backlog after Wednesday's cancellation.

Many passengers on national carrier Qantas and its budget subsidiary Jetstar have grown frustrated with cancelations to New Zealand, especially since Virgin and Air New Zealand kept most of their planes in the air, saying they could fly around the ash cloud. Ash can damage jet engines, causing them to fail.

But on Thursday, Virgin said it could no longer maintain service to New Zealand because the ash was just too low. A graphic from the Volcanic Ash Advisory Centre showed the cloud hovering as low as 13,000 feet (4,000 meters) between the two countries.

The airline has also canceled some flights to island countries in the South Pacific.

Air New Zealand briefly suspended some domestic flights because of ash but was flying again by Thursday afternoon.

Qantas said it would resume most flights to Auckland, Wellington and Queenstown on Friday.

The thick column of ash boiling into the above the volcano has also been drifting east toward Argentina and Uruguay, though airports in their capitals were able to reopen on Wednesday.

Soccer officials are worried that the ash could delay the July 1 start of the Copa America, South America's championship. "We hope that within five or six days the problems with the ash will not exist," Argentine Football Association President Julio Grondona told Argentine broadcaster Radio 10.