Check-in counters at the airport in Düsseldorf, Germany on Friday.
By ALAN COWELL, NICOLA CLARK and MARK McDONALD
PARIS — Air travel chaos across the globe deepened on Friday as a vast, high-altitude plume of volcanic ash from Iceland spread further across northern and central Europe, forcing authorities to close airspace and ground airplanes to forestall potentially catastrophic damage to jet engines.
By Friday morning, most of Europe’s major airports — key hubs for international travelers — were closed. Thousands of flights had been canceled since the massive disruption began on Thursday, stranding or delaying millions of passengers from North America to Asia.
“I’ve never seen such chaos,” said Erich Klug, 35 , a buyer for an auto parts company who spoke to a reporter at Frankfurt airport after it closed down on Friday and hundreds of people stood in line to buy train tickets for onward travel.
Aviation authorities said there was no prospect of a return to normal flights until Saturday at the earliest, raising questions about a wide range issues from the economy and business to family vacations and even to whether President Obama would be able to fly to the funeral on Sunday of the Polish president and his wife, killed in an unrelated air crash last week.
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