People Features

Fame no guard when volcano upends travel plans

By Lennart Simonsson Apr 16, 2010, 15:28 GMT

An overhead view as barely a handful of passengers walk through the deserted concourse of Gatwick Airport 16 April 2010. EPA/GERRY PENNY

Oslo/Stockholm - Volcanic ash has little respect for name recognition, celebrities and top politicians have learned this week in the face of a volcanic ash eruption blocking air traffic across most of Europe.

Across Europe, all kinds of people - from a pensioner planning a vacation to a monarch planning to attend a birthday party - were forced to rethink or cancel their travel plans as the plume of ash from an Icelandic volcano continued.

Some stranded travellers hunkered down at airports or were lucky to get hotel rooms offered by airlines and travel operators. Others have resorted to alternative travel means, resulting in jam-packed trains, buses and fully-booked rental car services.

And then, there were the big names who found ... extravagant ... ways to get around the problem.

British comedian John Cleese, who had been visiting Oslo, Norway, for a talk show, opted to take a taxi in order get to Brussels in time to catch a Eurostar train to London on Saturday, Norwegian newspaper Dagbladet reported.

The taxi trip fron Norway to Belgium was estimated to set Cleese back by 30,000 kroner (5,100 dollar).

'Iceland can't control their volcanoes or banks,' Cleese quipped according to the newspaper.

His was only one of many stories that might get Hollywood types to consider a sequel to the 1987 classic comedy Planes, Trains Automobiles that starred John Candy and Steve Martin trying to get home despite a variety of transportation problems.

For everyone else, Dagbladet and another daily, the VG, offered readers tips on hitchhiking, and referred people to use the social networking service Twitter to connect with people needing a lift.

But that information was of little help to a slew of international names stuck far from home, some of them literally up in the air.

Several top politicians were also affected, among them German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who has been in the US all week. On Friday it was not clear where her plane could land as intercontinental flights were also affected by closures, sources in her delegation said.

Ministers from seven of 27 European Union countries missed a meeting Friday of EU finance ministers in Madrid because of travel disruptions.

In Britain, Camilla, the Duchess of Wales, was forced to abandon plans Friday to pay tribute to the victims of the Polish air crash.

The wife of Prince Charles was unable to fly from Scotland to London, where she was due to sign a book of condolences at the Polish cultural centre, the royal palace said.

Spain's King Juan Carlos and Queen Sofia were forced to cancel a trip to Copenhagen where they had been due to attend a dinner to celebrate Danish Queen Margrethe on her 70th birthday, palace sources said.

The Swedish king and queen opted to travel by train to Denmark to celebrate with Queen Margrethe.

Norwegian Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg, who, like Merkel, also attended the nuclear summit in the US was delayed a day in New York, and arrived Friday morning in Madrid.

At midday Friday, Stoltenberg was still in Spain and missed out on a regular cabinet meeting in Oslo.

Swedish Foreign Minister Carl Bildt flew from the US to London, and took the Eurostar to Brussels Thursday, but arrived to find that flights from Brussels were cancelled, he wrote on his blog.

Bildt continued by car and spent the night in Luebeck, northern Germany, before continuing via Denmark to western Sweden, he wrote.

Meanwhile, Portuguese President Anibal Cavaco Silva was stranded in Prague with a delegation, Portuguese news agency Lusa reported.