Airline losses total $1.7 billion

LONDON, April 21 (UPI) -- As European flights resumed in skies clouded with volcanic ash Wednesday, an industry group put airlines' losses at more than $1.7 billion.

Airlines warned it would take weeks for operations to return to normal -- and to get some of the millions of stranded passengers home.

The International Air Transport Association said the $1.7 billion in lost revenue extended through Tuesday and that lost revenues had hit $400 million a day at the height of the crisis that began last Wednesday.

The disruption of flights "eclipsed Sept. 11 (2001) when U.S. airspace was closed for three days," said Giovanni Bisignani, IATA's director general and chief executive officer.

"For an industry that lost $9.4 billion last year and was forecast to lose a further $2.8 billion in 2010, this crisis is devastating," Bisignani said.

Since shortly after the cloud following last week's volcanic eruption near southern Iceland's Eyjafjallajoekull glacier blew in and then settled over Europe, airlines have campaigned hard to resume flights. Some of them have questioned the validity of government predictions and warnings.

More than 8 million passengers have been affected and more than 300 airports closed, Brussels-based Airports Council International Europe said.

Britain followed other European countries Tuesday night when it removed a ban on air traffic and reopened U.K. airports. The airspace over Norway, Belgium and Ireland has reopened, and German and Danish airspace was expected to reopen Wednesday, CNN reported.

Wolfgang Mayrhuber, chief executive officer of Deutsche Lufthansa AG, said European airlines will talk about pursuing government aid to pick up some of the losses due to the flight ban, The Wall Street Journal reported.

The IATA's Bisignani blamed governments for closing airspace "based on theoretical models, not on facts" when "test flights by our members showed that the models were wrong" and said the airlines deserve government compensation.

"Europe needed to find a way to make decisions based on facts and risk assessment, not theories," he said in a statement.

Bisignani noted the U.S. government compensated airlines for financial losses after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

"This crisis is not the result of running our business badly," he said. "It is an extraordinary situation exaggerated with a poor decision-making process by national governments. The airlines could not do business normally. Governments should help carriers recover the cost of this disruption."