Nine days after the Eyjafjoell volcano erupted into life, a change in wind direction meant that Reykjavik-Keflavik airport was forced to halt its operations for the first time as ash clouds swirled towards the capital.

Although the airport is little more than a hundred kilometres from the epicentre of the Eyjafjoell, it had previously escaped its impact and been able to open for business to trans-Atlantic flights throughout the crisis.

Despite the blazing sunshine and clear blue skies over Reykjavik, the Isavia airport authority insisted the restrictions were necessary.

"The wind has changed and brought the ashes to Reykjavik and Keflavik," Isavia spokeswoman Hjordis Gudmundsdottir told AFP.

"The main issue is the ashes in the air. You don't see them, but they are in the air, in the zone where the planes fly."

The closure order was initially due to be lifted at 1200 GMT but Isavia later announced that it would remain in force at least until 0600 GMT Saturday.

Overflights at an altitude of over 20,000 feet (6,000 metres) remain authorised, the spokeswoman added. Incoming flights would be rerouted to other airports in the east and north of the country.

Experts have said the volcano is losing intensity but that it is impossible to predict exactly when it will stop erupting.

"Last night there looked like there was an increase in ash for a while but now it's mostly steam as it was yesterday," a spokeswoman for Iceland's civil protection told AFP.

Eyjafjoell's eruption last Wednesday, which sent columns of ash towering into the air before being scattered across much of northern and western Europe, triggered the biggest disruption to aviation since World War II.

The airline industry's umbrella body, IATA, says the shutdown cost carriers some 1.7 billion dollars (1.3 billion euros) and wants governments to pick up at least part of the cost, furious at their handling of the crisis.

Now the World Tourism Organisation says the cost to its industry is even bigger, putting the overall losses at 1.72 billion euros.

Without even taking into account the cost to the industry outside Europe, daily losses were about 400 million dollars (300 million euros), the organisation's secretary general Taleb Rifai told a news conference in Madrid.

All major airports have now reopened and the number of flights is back at normal levels.

"The news is encouraging. For the second day in a row we are expecting 28,000 flights in European air space," said EU Transport Commissioner Siim Kallas, a figure that reflects the average for a normal week day.

However tens of thousands of European travellers still remain scattered across the globe with airlines scrambling to get them to their destinaiton.

Belgium's foreign ministry for example said that more than 5,000 of its citizens were still stranded, including 2,000 in Tunisia and a similar number in Egypt.

The Irish lowcost carrier airline Ryanair initially said it would only refund passengers for their tickets but later said it would comply with EU regulations and reimburse customers for accommodation and food after an outcry.

Meanwhile the Spanish presidency of the European Union on Friday announced a special meeting of EU transport ministers on May 4 in Brussels to discuss ways to further integrate air traffic control in Europe.

The past week of air travel chaos has "laid bare the need for common reflection in order to improve the way Europe responds" to such situations, Spanish Transport Minister Jose Blanco said.

Several proposals will be put before the transport ministers, "including speeding up the timetable for putting into place a single Europe sky" -- eurospeak for an EU-wide air traffic control system.

burs/co/br

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