Air Malta said today that it will operate extra flights to Rome, the only major European airport on its network which has not been closed because of the volcanic ash cloud currently extending from Iceland, to the UK, Scandinavia and central Europe.

Air Malta yesterday was forced to cancel all its flights except those to Rome, Catania and Tripoli.

Subject to airspace restrictions, Air Malta said it will today 10 flights out of its scheduled 50.

Air Malta will be operating:

Air Malta will also be operating tomorrow the following flights:

Air Malta is offering its passengers free re-booking on any of its scheduled flights or full refund of ticket. For any re-booking or re-routing enquiries clients can contact Air Malta’s International Call Centre on +356 21662211. The call centre will remain open until midnight and will open again for business at 0500hrs (local time).

EXPERIMENTAL FLIGHT

Air travel across much of Europe remains paralysed for a fourth day today, but Dutch and German test flights carried out without apparent damage seemed to offer hope.

Many countries said their airspace will be closed at least until this evening or tomorrow, leaving tens of thousands of passengers stranded worldwide, and weather experts said wind patterns meant the cloud was not likely to move far until later in the week.

They said the plume floating through the upper atmosphere from Iceland could become more concentrated on Tuesday and Wednesday, posing an even greater risk and threatening to compound airline losses running at more than $200 million a day.

The no-fly rulings have been imposed because the dust of pulverised rock and glass particles can paralyse jet engines and damage airframes but the test flights yesterday prompted some optimism from airline officials.

KLM, part of Franco-Dutch Air France-KLM, said it flew at the regular altitude of 10 kilometres (6 miles) and up to the 13 km maximum. Germany's Lufthansa said it flew 10 planes to Frankfurt from Munich at altitudes of up to 8 km.

"We have found nothing unusual, neither during the flight, nor during the first inspection on the ground," KLM chief executive Peter Hartman, who took part in his airline's test, said in a statement.

"If the technical examination confirms this image, we are ready tomorrow to fly back our seven planes from Duesseldorf to Amsterdam. We then hope to get permission as soon as possible to partially restart our operations."

The air travel disruption is the worst since the Sept. 11 attacks on New York and Washington in 2001, when U.S. airspace was closed for three days and European airlines were forced to halt all transatlantic services.

European aviation agency Eurocontrol said no landings or takeoffs had been possible for civilian aircraft in most of northern and central Europe on Saturday because of the ash spewed out by the Icelandic volcano, which was still erupting.