Yet somehow Polish air space is safe enough for Russian president Medvedev to fly directly to Krakov to take part in air crash victims burial. Huge political win for Russians, specially because Obama, Merkel etc. have cancelled their participation because of the volcanic ash. Interesting, what type of plane did he fly on.

I've been posting/reading/printing off the following forums

• AA - my original carrier
• BA - others stuck at LHR thread
• Community - Stuck at LHR
• UK & Ireland - seekiing advice on Eurostart
• France - trying to figure out how to transfer between train stations
• Iberia - are the flights going from MAD
• Europe - Need info how to get from the train station to MAD, how long etc
• Miles Buzz - now this one

in short
currently
Stuck at LHR

Planned
Wed Eurostar London to Paris
Thu RailEurope Paris to Madrid (overnight)
Fri Iberia MAD-IAD

looking for information, have questions on all of the above and its so time consuming go through all those threads, doing searches etc.

just remembered another question on the above

Do I need a visa to do the train/plane thing for France and Spain?

Also, does anyone have any concrete info on FCO?

I'm currently in Rome, but wonder if I should also be making my way to MAD. I can't get out of FCO without significant expense before Wednesday but would consider trying to get over to MAD if it looks like FCO is going down.

No visa necessary within the EU for US citizens.

Here is the map from nytimes.com this morning:

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2...tml?ref=europe

Reported elsewhere: ATL-FCO is cancelled (not sure if that is 17 Apr departure, 18 Apr or both). So I hope that your plan to get from FCO to MAD works out for you.

I am following this because of a co-worker stuck in Kenya. I am not the principal phone contact that he is updating in our group here in the US, but he (the traveler) is guessing that flights out of Kenya (to Europe, and thus across the Atlantic) will be pretty much totally disrupted for a week or thereabouts. Seems like a total guess (a week, plus-or-minus a month?).

Finding seats for the massive backlog of stranded passengers is going to be monstrous and only get worse this week, surely. If my co-worker were able to get out of Kenya to Dubai or Cairo or Johannesburg soon (each has daily nonstops from Nairobi), then there might be options in the next day or two.

Otherwise, I wonder if his options are going to need include returning EASTbound (via Asia, over the Pacific), or wait until much later (next week? beyond?)

Rex, an INfrequent FT'er
(mostly from the Europe forum of Fodors.com - - and not even that so much lately)

p.s. the discussion seems to have settled down for now, but add me to those voting "Yes" on the appropriateness of this sticky.

MXP is closed at least until tomorrow. If it doesn't open by Thursday I will be stuck visiting my girlfriend for a while.

I can live with that.

(I won't swear that she can.)

Interesting - German airports have just reopened for flights "to the east". Berlin, Erfurt, Leipzig, Hamburg and Hannover, until 20:00.

It may be a "huge political win," but I think that the fact that Medvedev was coming from the east and the others from the west was the actual, pragmatic reason for their cancellations.

See the posting by Quark999 just above this one.

HAM still closed, but FRA opend until 08:00 pm !!!

You may be best off staying at FCO. My unoffical word is that the southern europe flights (lisbon, barcelona, madrid, rome) will fly first and some US airlines are seeking permission from the euro powers that be to temp add some extra landing/depart over the next 7-10 days. ^

Hi folks,
I've found an article in "Pilot und Flugzeug" (pliot and plane), a GA/PP magazine. It reflects perfectly my personal opinion about the current situation in Europe.

Although the article is only available in German (and is actually way too long to translate), it might be useful (or at least entertaining...) for some of you.
http://www.pilotundflugzeug.de/artik...und_die_Folgen

anyone looking to fly between india & the US should look at 9w, ai & aa....all 3 seem to have come up with an alternative route that they are using temporarily....

The first DL/KLM flights from AMS (Amsterdam) landed this afternoon 4/20/10 at MSP(Minneapolis-St Paul).
The first DL/KLM flights from MSP to AMS have also taken off this afternoon and evening 4/20/10
Let's hope and pray that the flight traffic is not interrupted again.

Anyone in need of a coach seat on this flight ?

I hope you got back from FCO, it is probably the best airport to get out of... I just got back from there two days ago. Now I am trying to find a place where we can talk about any possibility of claims (although I am not putting my hopes up) - not against the airlines, but credit card companies if that is even possible?