
Flights across the whole of the UK have been grounded once again amid worsening forecasts of the threat the volcanic ash cloud could pose to aircraft.Restrictions had been lifted in Scotland and Northern Ireland on Friday evening but were reapplied overnight.
At the same time, the continuing ban on flights in England and Wales was extended from 1300 BST until 1900 BST.
Officials have warned the cloud from Iceland could continue to disrupt European airspace for several days.
Hundreds of thousands of passengers have been stranded in the UK and abroad by flight cancellations.
Restrictions in the UK have been in place since 1200 BST on Thursday because of fears particles in the ash from an eruption in Iceland could shut down plane engines.
Air travel across Europe has been severely affected, with a raft of countries from Belgium to Switzerland completely closing their airspace, while others like Austria, Germany and Poland have enforced partial closures.
Air traffic control body Nats said airports in Manchester and Liverpool had been offered a six hour window to operate some flights between 0400 BST and 1000 BST on Saturday, but the changing conditions meant that was later revoked.
Nats is due to make its next statement at 0900 BST.
Meanwhile, BBC weather forecaster Nick Miller warned the situation may worsen.
"As the weekend goes on there is a risk that prevailing winds will keep volcanic ash in the air above parts of the UK, and may even bring it back to those parts from which it has cleared," he said.
'Significant disruption'
On Friday, Transport Secretary Lord Adonis warned passengers there was likely to be "significant disruption" for the next 48 hours.
European air traffic control organisation Eurocontrol said about 60% of flights within Europe had been grounded on Friday, representing about 17,000 services.
More than half of the normal 300 trans-Atlantic flights had also been cancelled. It warned of "significant disruption" of European air traffic on Saturday.
The Civil Air Navigation Services Organisation (Canso), a global association of air traffic control companies, said the knock-on effect would probably disrupt European airspace for several days. "Traffic will have to be reorganised and rerouted and flights re-planned, all on a dynamic and quite unpredictable basis," it said in a statement.
In other developments:
British Airways cancelled all its flights to and from London airports on Friday and SaturdaySwitzerlandsaid it would close its airspace from midnight (2200 GMT) and Romania is to close its airspace over the north-west from 0300 BST (0000 GMT) on Saturday Ryanair cancelled all flights to and from northern Europe until 1300 BST on Monday. It will keep running in southern and central Europe, although flight restrictions are being imposed in Hungary and Romania The Jet2.com airline cancelled all its flights on Friday and Saturday, adding additional flights for Sunday and Monday P&O Ferries said it had dealt with 30,000 calls on Friday - the most it had dealt with on one day in its history. It said it would be unable to accept any further foot-passenger bookings Eurostar trains reported a complete sell-out of its services to Brussels and Paris for the second day on Friday. It has warned customers without bookings not to come to St Pancras because they will not be able to travel Experts say the tiny particles of rock, glass and sand contained in the ash cloud could jam aircraft engines, as has happened in previous incidents of planes flying into plumes of volcanic ash.
The last eruption of the Eyjafjallajokull volcano system that is creating the problems was on 20 March, when a 0.5km-long fissure opened up on the eastern side of the glacier at the Fimmvoerduhals Pass.
The eruption prior to that started in 1821 and continued intermittently for more than a year.
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