Germany continues extending airspace ban

BERLIN, April 20 (Xinhua) -- Germany air safety agency DFS continued extending its airspace ban to 2 a.m. Wednesday considering the impact of volcanic ash.

The previous ban lasted to 8 p.m. Tuesday. Since late Monday, DFS has kept extending the deadline of the ban.

Even the ban was going on, special permissions have offered to airlines to carry on flights at low altitudes, named as "visual flight."

Up to 800 flights, equal to about 7 percent of the normal air traffic will be granted special permissions, DFS spokesman Axel Raab said.

As the flights must observe the rule of visual flying, we can only granted limited permissions, Raab added.

The outlook for the ban lift is still not clear, as the evaluation of the impact of the volcanic ash looks quite different.

German Aerospace Center announced that it has successfully completed a four-hour survey of the volcanic ash cloud over Germany on Monday with a "Falcon 20E" aircraft equipped with special measuring devices.

It said scientists can see a clear brown tinge in the clouds from the volcanic ash with the naked eyes, reported by local radio Bayerischer Rundfunk on Tuesday.

Airbus also released its evaluation of two test flights, which took off on Monday with relative equipments. It said no damages have been observed from volcanic ash Tuesday.

Airbus spokesman Tore Prang was quoted by local news agency DPA, saying "On the two test flights, no noticeable problems appeared at all."