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Not a bad place to be stranded

Red Deer City Councillor Lorna Watkinson-Zimmer was in an English village on Monday anxiously awaiting word of when she can come home.

Red Deer City Councillor Lorna Watkinson-Zimmer was in an English village on Monday anxiously awaiting word of when she can come home.

Watkinson-Zimmer was among hundreds of thousands of travellers stranded around the world when a massive cloud of ash thrown up by an erupting Icelandic volcano hovered over Europe, forcing airlines to cancel nearly all flights.

The local businesswoman and long-time city councillor was supposed to be back in Alberta on Friday. However, her flight from London, through Amsterdam and on to Calgary, was scratched.

While Watkinson-Zimmer has had a place to stay with a cousin in the West Sussex village about an hour’s drive from London, the uncertainty of when she can go home has been getting to her, she said in a phone interview.

“I’m anxious. I’m very agitated every morning. We go for a wonderful long walk in the beautiful countryside and I feel much better.”

She and her sister have been glued to the television looking for any updates and Watkinson-Zimmer even looked into booking passage on a freighter. She found they usually require two months notice.

By Monday, it appeared there was some relief in sight. Manchester Airport was scheduled to open this afternoon and other airports were to follow a few hours later.

Watkinson-Zimmer said there is still much confusion and it isn’t clear when she and other passengers whose flights were cancelled can be squeezed on to future flights. Travellers are being warned not to head to airports until notified by their airline.

“I truly don’t think we can rush to the airport because I just think it’s going to be bedlam. It’s going to be awful. I think it’s just going to be standing in line for hours.”

Her sister who is with her tried to check Air Canada’s website on Monday and it had already crashed.

The lack of information has been an ongoing theme since flights were first cancelled on Thursday.

“What our big bugaboo is, when this started, there was no information,” she said, adding that television news channels were reporting airline officials were scarce. KLM, which is the airline Watkinson-Zimmer is flying with, later apologized on its website and promised daily updates.

She hopes to get on a flight by the end of the week.

Watkinson-Zimmer isn’t the only local official left scrambling to find a way home.

Chinook’s Edge School Division superintendent Jim Gibbons was stuck in South Africa when connecting flights through London were cancelled. Gibbons is expected to hop on a flight today and will work his way back home with a connecting flight in South America so he can back in time for Wednesday’s school board meeting.

Chinook’s Edge board chairman Ian Taylor has also been stranded in Great Britain. There is no word yet on when he will be returning.

Vicki Raines, AMA Travel manager in Red Deer, said some clients are patiently waiting to begin their vacations, but there has been no word on when the next seats will be available.

“They’re just booking another day ahead, another day ahead.”

Some AMA offices reported a small number of trips had been cancelled, but mostly people are choosing to reschedule.

A group planning to go to Israel got no further than Toronto recently and another group has not been able to fly back from Israel because connecting flights have been cancelled.

Raines said the air carriers have been very easy to deal with considering all of the scheduling headaches. “The airlines have been absolutely exceptional.”

pcowley@www.reddeeradvocate.com