US plane lands in Sweden after airspace opened
A private business jet flying from the US has landed in the northern Swedish town of Kiruna after a corridor of airspace over northern Norway and Sweden was opened, Swedish LFV aviation authority said Sunday.
• Air traffic disruption: country-by-country
• Sweden and Norway open some airspace
"We have received an airplane from the United States. We gave it clearance to land, which it had asked for," LFV spokesman Carl Selling told AFP.
"It was a business jet. It landed at around 8:30 am (0630 GMT)," he said, adding that "we have opened (a narrow corridor of) airspace to Norway and the Norwegian Sea."
The Swedish civil aviation authority LFV has opened a flight traffic corridor which makes air travel to the northern city of Kiruna possible. Still, the rest of Swedish airspace remains closed Sunday.
On Sunday, as the vast cloud of Icelandic volcano ash that has paralysed air travel in Europe shifted, Norway opened a wide stretch of airspace from the central town of Kristiansund up to the northern region of Finnmark.
Along with Britain, Scandinavia was the region most affected by the colossal ash cloud slowly spreading over half of Europe and forcing the continent's biggest air travel shutdown since World War II.Norway, Sweden, Denmark and Finland all completely closed their airspaces on Thursday, gradually shutting zones as the ash cloud approached.
Norway and Sweden both temporarily reopened some airspace on Friday, and pockets in northern Norway remained open on Saturday.
Last Updated (Sunday, 18 April 2010 11:29)
