April 19- Emirates Airline has lost a “significant amount of money” because of the cancellation of its flights to several European countries including the UK, the result of the volcanic ash cloud from Iceland, said the airline’s president on Sunday. “About 30 of our aircrafts are grounded which represents about a fifth of our fleet. I would estimate that somewhere in the region of 20 per cent of airline production has been affected by this,” he added.
“The affects are devastating at a time when Emirates was expecting seat factors of about 87 per cent due to the Easter holidays. If it had happened in May or June it wouldn’t have been so bad.” Till Saturday, over 40,000 passengers were affected by the grounding of flights.
Iceland’s Eyjafjoell volcano erupted Wednesday, sending ash drifting towards Europe at an altitude of about eight to 10 kilometres (five to six miles). Europe’s three biggest airports — Heathrow, Paris-Charles de Gaulle and Frankfurt — were closed Saturday, leaving passengers stranded across the world as a global flight backlog built up.
