An erupting Icelandic volcano that has shut down airline traffic over much of Europe for the past three days shows no sign of calming down, sparking fears that continued eruptions could hamper the continent’s efforts to struggle out of recession’s grip.

Southern Iceland’s Eyjafjallajokull volcano resumed erupting for the second time in a month last Wednesday, spewing ash several kilometres into the air, and leading to the cancellation of tens of thousands of airline flights around the world.

Life in Europe is fast becoming, in the words of one Parisian newspaper, “la grande pagaille” — the big mess.

Virtually every airport is closed in England, Scotland, the Netherlands, Belgium, northern France, Poland, the Czech Republic, Sweden, Denmark, Finland and much of Norway, Italy, Bosnia, Croatia and Slovenia.

Airlines are collectively losing more than $200 million a day. Kenyan flower and vegetable producers, unable to deliver to Europe, are watching their crops rot. In Italy, fresh-made Mozzarella cheese, highly perishable, can’t be shipped. And grocers used to ‘just in time’ deliveries of fresh dairy and produce fear empty shelves when current stocks run out.

FedEx, DHL and other shippers are grounded throughout much of Europe; FedEx alone has cancelled more than 100 flights since the volcano began belching again; the courier says it cannot fly to 15 European airports, including its Paris distribution hub at Charles de Gaulle airport.

Scores of U.S. military resupply flights for Afghanistan, many of which pass through European airspace, have been grounded or redirected, and combat casualties from the region, normally sent to the giant U.S. air base and hospital at Ramstein, Germany, were being flown directly to the United States.

For many, the pain is immediate, real and costly.

“If we are looking at the future, we cannot maintain the cost of all this forever,” said Geert Sciot, communications manager for Brussels Airlines, citing mounting costs for airlines worldwide that, by this week, are expected to exceed $1 billion.

“The longer it lasts, the more difficult it gets.”

But scientists aren’t holding out much hope of an immediate end.

“There doesn’t seem to be an end in sight,” Icelandic geologist Magnus Tumi Gudmundsson said yesterday. “The activity has been quite vigorous overnight, causing the eruption column to grow.”

That massive plume of volcanic ash has now spread over much of northeastern Europe, extending to northern Italy and east to Ukraine. The ash, composed of superfine particulate matter, can seize up jet engines, making air travel impossible anywhere in the ash plume.

As a result Eurocontrol, the European air navigation safety agency, closed airspace over 23 countries, including Poland, where the state funeral of Lech Kaczynski and his wife — killed in an air crash with 94 others in western Russia April 10 — is being held today.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper and U.S. President Barack Obama are among the international leaders who have cancelled plans to attend, citing the inability to get to Krakow, the southern Polish city where the funeral is being held. Other leades who have cancelled plans to attend include those from Mexico, Finland, Sweden, Spain, Japan, South Korea and India.

“With the safe conduct of flight operations a prime concern, Eurocontrol advises that clearance will not be issued for aircraft to penetrate contaminated airspace and airports,” Harper’s spokesman, Dimitri Soudas, said in announcing the prime minister’s cancellation yesterday.

It was no different for anyone else attempting to fly into or out of the affected zone, whether by presidential jet or commercial carrier.

At New York’s Kennedy airport, “it’s like a refugee camp,” said Rhiannon Thomas, who has been told it may be days before she gets back home to Birmingham, England. “At least we got beds,” said Thomas’ mother Pat, referring to the hundreds of narrow blue cots brought in to JFK’s Terminal 34. “Some people slept on cardboard.”

In Toronto more than 25 flights arriving from Amsterdam, London, Paris, Brussels, Frankfurt and other European cities were cancelled yesterday, and a similar number of departures for the region were scrubbed.

It doesn’t promise to be much better today — or, for that matter, tomorrow.

“It’s up to air traffic controllers in the U.K.,” said Trish Krale, a spokesperson for the Greater Toronto Airports Authority. “We’re watching it as well as everyone else is.”

Unlike JFK, Pearson wasn’t crowded with stranded passengers, Krale added, since air travellers to northern Europe either know they’re not going anywhere soon, or are checking with their airlines.

Air Canada has already cancelled today’s flights to London and Frankfurt.

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“This is unprecedented,” said Air Canada spokesperson Angela Mah, “and it’s clearly an exceptional condition where this many worldwide airports have been affected.

“It all literally depends on which way the wind is blowing.”

Most airlines, including Air Canada and Air Transat, have implemented “flexible rebooking,” enabling passengers to rebook without penalty.

In Iceland, heavy ash is settling onto fields southwest of the glacier, prompting farmers to shelter their animals from the fine, sticky dust, which contains fluoride that causes long-term bone damage, leading to broken bones and lost teeth.

“This is bad. There are no words for it,” said dairy farmer Berglind Hilmarsdottir.

But economists say that, no matter how bad the local pain, there’s no immediate danger to the world economy.

“If it really drags on another week,” disrupting global supply chains, “that could be really serious,” said Peter Westaway, chief economist for Europe at the Nomura investment bank.

Dutch geologist Edwin Zanen, who was able to fly within 25 kilometres of Eyjafjallajokull yesterday, described the volcano as “a real inferno.”

“We’re looking at a sun-soaked ice shelf and, above it is looming a cloud of ashes of, oh, 4 to 5 kilometres high,” he told Dutch state broadcaster NOS.

“There are lightning flashes in it. It’s a real inferno we’re looking at.

“There’s absolutely no sign that the thing is calming down,” Zanen said. “On the contrary, we can see that at this moment it’s extraordinarily active.”

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