TORONTO - Canadian travellers eager to start a European vacation or hoping to return home from one will have to wait until at least Sunday as a plume of volcanic ash continues to clog European airspace.
Flights to and from northern Europe listed at airports across Canada were cancelled Saturday.
An erupting volcano in Iceland has been sending a massive cloud of ash into the sky for days, forcing the closure of airspace over Britain, France and the Nordic countries.
All departures and arrivals between Toronto, Montreal, Ottawa, Edmonton, Vancouver and northern Europe were listed as cancelled by at least either the airline or the airport.
The ash has forced the closure of such travel hubs as London's Heathrow Airport and the Frankfurt Airport, where flights often connect to go on to Africa and Asia. That has left not only Canadian passengers trying to travel to or from Europe stranded, but has also cancelled flights routing through there to locales such as India.
The massive ash cloud also scuttled Prime Minister Stephen Harper's plans to attend Sunday's state funeral for Polish president Lech Kaczynski and his wife in Krakow, Poland.
European airspace restrictions due to the dangerous ash cloud, which can stall jet engines, have made Harper's flight "not possible and not advisable," his spokesman said Saturday.
U.S. President Barack Obama also cancelled his plans to attend the funeral.
At airports across Canada the arrival and departures boards listed cancellations of flights to and from Frankfurt, Munich, London, Vienna, Warsaw, Paris, Zurich, Geneva, Brussels and Amsterdam.
The scores of cancellations may persist through the weekend.
A geologist in Iceland tells The Associated Press that the volcanic activity was "quite vigorous" overnight and shows no sign of abating. And forecasters say light prevailing winds in Europe mean that the situation is unlikely to change in the coming days.
Many European countries have closed their airspace until at least Sunday as the lingering volcanic ash plume forced extended no-fly restrictions over much of Europe.
All airspace in the United Kingdom and Germany is closed until at least Sunday at 2 a.m. ET. Paris airports and about two dozen others in northern France will remain closed until at least Monday morning.
Southern Iceland's Eyjafjallajokull volcano began erupting for the second time in a month on Wednesday, sending ash several kilometres into the air.
Winds pushed the plume south and east across Britain, Ireland, Scandinavia and into the heart of Europe.
