Page 14 - Tom Aspell News Today : Breaking News, Live Updates & Top Stories | Vimarsana

Thank you. >> reporter: okay. after a week of grounded flights planes are in the skies over europe and it's bus eight europe's busiest airport, heathrow, in london. planes are lined up and taking off and landing but some people are still getting back to britain the old fashioned way. still taking the bus. these stranded tourists are heading home from madrid courtesy of long distance coaches provided by the british government. >> i saw a british flag on one of those little jackets. hey! i wanted to hug the man. >> i'm not looking forward to this really long journey but it will be good to get ...

Volcano in iceland. planes lining up to take off and land at heathrow airport. the first flight landed yesterday afternoon from canada. the passengers on board certainly were relieved to say the least. >> where did you come from. >> vancouver. first to land. excited beyond belief. there were cheers, clapping. it was wicked, i was high-fiving the guy next to me and loving it. >> tom aspell from london, tom, if all goes well, how long before they clear up the backlog of people still waiting to be out? >> reporter: tamron, that could be days, could be weeks. there are literally hundreds of thousa...

The rest of europe, normally 28,000 flights a day in european air space. today about 21,000. all of this is going to cost the airlines -- they're estimating they've lost about $1.7 billion so far and they say it'll take at least three weeks for things to get back to normal, for those aircraft to get back into their normal patterns, the crews in the right place, and the backlog of passengers to be cleared. there's a lot of recrimination going on about how the european governments waited and kept the no fly ban in place too long and the airlines have just lost too much money. everybody is quite ...

But there are many more to come. british airways alone estimates there are 150,000 stranded british passengers all over the world waiting to come home. but europe is up and running, as you say. on a normal day, europe will handle 28,000 flights inside european airspace. today they think they will probably get about 21,000 flying. not quite at capacity yet but the airlines doing the best they can. all the big ones, british, klm, air france, lufthansa all trying to get long hall flights first, to try to bring back their passengers from the further rest corners of the earth. now the argument star...

The u.s. treasury, another $1.1 billion to the canadian government. the company says this repayment is a sign that they are on the rebound. earlier this month gm announced it lost $3.4 billion during the second half of '09 but the automaker says it will turn a profit this year. again, they got about $52 billion total from the u.s. government. so still a lot ahead in terms of repayment but they say this is a good sign for gm. right now major airports across europe have planes taking off and landing as airlines race to get people moving again. air travel in europe you know was virtually paraly...