Aviation officials closed airports in northern England, Scotland and Northern Ireland on Sunday due to a drifting, dense cloud of volcanic ash from Iceland. All airports in Northern Ireland shut down at 1 p.m. (1200 GMT; 8 a.m. EDT), along with others in northern England _ including Manchester and Liverpool _ as well as Prestwick in Scotland, AP quoted the National Air Traffic Service as saying. Airports in London _ including Heathrow, Europe's busiest _ were staying open for now. British and Irish aviation authorities could not say when or if other airports would have to close but expected London's airports to remain open until at least 7 p.m. (1800 GMT; 2 p.m. EDT) and Shannon, in western Ireland, to be open until 11 p.m. (2200 GMT; 6 p.m. EDT). Dublin was expected to stay open until at least early Monday. The German Aerospace Center sent up a test flight Sunday to measure the ash concentration, and the country's air traffic control said flights in Germany would not be affected by volcanic ash before Wednesday. Ash can clog jet engines. The April 14 eruption at Iceland's Eyjafjallajokul volcano forced most countries in northern Europe to shut their air spaces April 15-20, grounding an estimated 10 million travelers worldwide and costing airlines over $2 billion. In southern Iceland, activity at the volcano was fluctuated throughout the day but had not particularly intensified, civil protection official Agust Gunnar Gylfason said Sunday. He blamed the closures on shifting winds.
