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Air Travel Chaos Deepens Into Weekend

Passengers camped out as they waited for the resumption of air travel in Frankfurt on Friday.Credit...Torsten Silz/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

This article is by Alan Cowell, Liz Robbins and Nicola Clark.

PARIS — The menacing cloud of ash from a volcano in Iceland moved eastward across Northern Europe on Friday, expanding an already massive transportation gridlock and throwing weary travelers into an anxious limbo.

Scientists were uncertain when the cloud would dissipate, as its repercussions rippled far beyond the flight boards at shuttered airports in Europe.

Opera singers and musicians were stranded while trying to make their performances, and perishable foods were stuck in warehouses. Thousands of people unable to travel by air jammed train stations or hired long-haul taxis in a desperate search for alternative ways to reach their destinations. Recreational runners in Europe grew worried they would not be able to reach Boston early Monday in time for the start of the Boston Marathon.

From business meetings to long-planned high school trips to world diplomacy, the ash cloud affected many facets of life. The state funeral of the Polish president, Lech Kaczynski, and his wife was likely to take place as scheduled on Sunday, according to Polish authorities, but it was unclear which international dignitaries would be able to get there.

“I’ve never seen such chaos,” said Erich Klug, 35, a buyer for an auto parts company who was in the Frankfurt airport when it shut down on Friday. Hundreds of people stood in line there to buy train tickets, while others slept on cots as they awaited news of a resumption of air service.

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Smoke continued to billow from the volcano in Eyjafjallajokull, Iceland on Friday.Credit...Ingolfur Juliusson/Reuters

Many of Europe’s major airports — crucial hubs for international travelers and cargo — were still closed on Friday evening, although some airports in Western Europe began to ease restrictions on flights as the volcanic cloud shifted away from them to the east.

The International Air Transport Association, based in Geneva, said Friday that a conservative estimate of the financial damage to the airline industry by the disruptions included more than $200 million a day in lost revenue, and that it did not yet know how much more airlines had spent to re-route planes, care for stranded passengers and park grounded aircraft at airports.

Airlines are under no obligation to provide food or lodging to passengers stranded at airports in the United States or Europe. Of course, that did not ease the frustration of passengers, many of whom were upset that their air carriers were issuing infrequent updates.

At mid-afternoon on Friday at Miami International Airport, the line to the British Airways counter was moving slowly and people were well aware of the dislocation caused by the volcano’s eruption on Wednesday in Iceland.

“It’s safety first, but what can we do now?” said Tracey Hamilton, 40, a schoolteacher from Scotland. She was trying to return home with her sister and parents from an 11-day Caribbean cruise. British Airways was putting the family up for one night in a hotel, Ms. Hamilton said, but she was worried that they might not be able to be on a flight until next week. “We don’t have the pounds to stay another week,” she said.

At Kennedy International Airport in New York, a group of 32 high school students and their chaperones from Fall River, Mass., had been ready to take a 10-day trip to Zurich, Vienna, Venice and Paris. Instead, their tour operator and SwissAir offered them other destinations unaffected by the ash cloud: Spain or Costa Rica.

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The plume of smoke, in gray, as seen over the volcano on Thursday spreading southeast.Credit...NASA, via Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

More than 30 hotels in New York City offered 15 percent discounts for people who could not obtain hotel vouchers from their airlines, Mayor Michael Bloomberg announced, The Associated Press reported.

Scientists and meteorologists said there was no way to know how much longer the volcano would continue to spew out the ash that has thoroughly disrupted global air travel. Meteorologists in Iceland said the volcano was continuing to erupt and that the prevailing winds were still pushing the plume of ash to the south and east, toward Britain and Europe.

Airports in Scotland and Northern Ireland resumed full operations late on Friday, Britain’s National Air Traffic Service said, because the path of the plume had moved to the east.

British Airways on Friday diverted a half-dozen flights from the United States bound for destinations in England to airports near Glasgow, the airline said on its Web site.

It was unclear when airports in England would be able to reopen. Most English airspace was expected to remain closed at least until early Saturday afternoon.

One airline, Cathay Pacific, warned passengers to postpone all nonessential journeys to Europe until next month because its flights were already completely booked and the airline expected routes throughout Europe to remain congested for some time after normal operations resume.

The ash from the volcano, Eyjafjallajokull (pronounced EY-ya-fyat-lah-YO-kut), was reported to be drifting at 18,000 to 33,000 feet above the earth, the altitudes commonly used by civilian jetliners.

In Geneva, the World Health Organization said if the volcanic ash started to fall to the ground, people with respiratory problems should “limit their activities outdoors or stay indoors.”

Still, it remained largely invisible from the ground on Friday afternoon. In Paris, London and Frankfurt, the skies were blue and mostly clear.

“When you see sunshine like that, it’s difficult to understand,” said Dominique Spiesser, 54, a chemical engineer from Switzerland, who was stranded in Frankfurt.

Nonetheless, the plume represents a severe threat to aircraft. Volcanic ash is primarily made up of silicates, akin to glass fibers, which when ingested into a jet engine can melt, causing the engine to flame out and stall.

Travelers who sought alternative transportation by train were often disappointed. People trying to reach Britain converged at the Gare du Nord in Paris, hoping to purchase tickets on the Eurostar high-speed line. By early Friday afternoon, the trains were fully booked through the weekend, though three extra trains had been added.

Some travelers took drastic measures to return home. John Cleese, the British comic actor who was part of the Monty Python troupe, found himself stranded in Oslo. He hired a Mercedes taxi to drive more than 900 miles from Oslo to Brussels, where he hoped to get a train to London, said one of his agents, Dean Whitbread. Three drivers took turns at the wheel and the fare came to about $5,000, he said.

Alan Cowell and Nicola Clark reported from Paris, and Liz Robbins from New York. Reporting was contributed by Mark McDonald and Bettina Wassener from Hong Kong, Nicholas Kulish from Warsaw, Jack Ewing from Frankfurt, Scott Sayare from Paris, Catharine Skipp from Miami, and Nicole Higgins and Mick Meenan from New York.

A version of this article appears in print on  , Section A, Page 6 of the New York edition with the headline: Air Travel Chaos Deepens as Iceland’s Volcanic Plume Spreads. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

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