French airports shut until Saturday

Updated at: 2200 PST, Friday, April 16, 2010
PARIS: French airports in Paris and across the north of the country will remain closed until at least 8:00 am (0600 GMT) Saturday because of a volcanic ash cloud from Iceland.

The DGAC civil aviation authority made the order as thousands of extra passengers swamped Eurostar London-Paris high-speed train services on Friday, the eve of school holidays in many parts of France.

Paris's Charles de Gaulle airport, France's main international hub, and other airports in the capital, will remain closed until 0600 GMT on Saturday, a DGAC spokesman told a foreign news agency.

Airports north of a line running from Brittany in the northwest to Strasbourg on the border with Germany were also to remain shut.

Some planes were allowed to land at Charles de Gaulle and the other main Paris airport Orly, until 1600 GMT on Friday.

"Some very limited exceptions" would be made for take-offs from these two airports before 1600 GMT to enable some passengers who have been blocked there to travel, it added.

The DGAC statement listed at least 20 airports that would be shut until Saturday morning.

At Charles de Gaulle passengers slept on the benches of cafes or gathered in confused groups.

"We haven't had any news since last night. Our flight was expected at one o'clock, but it seems to have been cancelled," complained Elisabeth Lindley, trying to get back to Manchester, England.

"We heard that the flights were suspended, but I'm not going north, we're going south, so I thought I could take the plane," sighed Fatima, taking her granddaughter to Casablanca, Morocco, and stranded since dawn.

The Eurostar cross-Channel rail service laid on three extra Paris-London trains but places rapidly filled up and passengers were building up in the Gare du Nord station.

The company said that 10,000 more passengers than usual had attempted to book Eurostar seats out of Paris on Friday, almost a third more than would normally have been expected.

A strike on the French national network forced the cancellation of one high-speed TGV in 10, a fifth of regional trains and more than a third of local services, operator SNCF said.

The disruption came as families in the Paris and Bordeaux region prepared to begin spring school holidays.

Experts have warned the fallout from the Eyjafjallajokull volcano in southeast Iceland could take several days to clear.