Volcanic Ash: The fallout

All smiles up at City Airport this morning with passengers happy just to be getting on planes.

The decision happened so quickly last night it nearly caught the airport by surprise.

The blame game's now in full flow.

British Airways say the airspace didn't have to be fully closed all of the time and have said NATS overreacted.

Now old hacks sometimes say every story needs a scapegoat, but in this case it might be worth pointing out 41% of NATS is owned by The Airline Group.

And who's one of the main shareholders?

Yup. British Airways.

UPDATE: 16.40PM:

I've just been told by BAA at Heathrow that they're going to be allowed 32 night flights tonight instead of the normal 16.

It's a serious crisis and exceptional circumstances, no doubt, yes.

But will those living under the flightpath like it? Will anti-expansion campaigners? I doubt it...

A DfTspokesperson said:

"The events of recent days have clearly been exceptional and our priority is to get people home as quickly as possible. In order to achieve this we have agreed that those airports where night flight regimes are controlled by the Government can run extra flights tonight. The situation will be reviewed on a daily basis depending on the needs of passengers."

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