Aviation safety officials in Europe have defended the decision to close parts of the continent's airspace for six days in the face of claims by the airline industry that the shutdown was unnecessary.
The UK, home to the world's busiest international airport at London Heathrow, was among the last European countries to reopen its airspace Tuesday as safety concerns over the ash cloud caused by an Icelandic volcano eased.
That followed the issue of new guidelines by the UK's Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) raising the threshold of ash density in the atmosphere at which flying is deemed safe from zero to 0.002 grams per meter cubed per hour.
It said new data collected from test flights and additional analysis from manufacturers over the past few days had "helped to validate a new standard that is now being adopted across 
Europe."
But the CAA move prompted criticism on the one hand that safety officials had been overcautious and on the other that they had been "bullied" by an industry facing massive losses.
British Airways CEO Willie Walsh said earlier in the week that test flights carried out by airlines including BA had demonstrated that the ash cloud posed little risk to air travel.
The International Air Transport Association (IATA) also questioned the closure of European skies on Wednesday, claiming that the disruption, which it said had "eclipsed 9/11," had cost airlines $1.7 billion in lost revenue.
"Airspace was being closed based on theoretical models not on facts" said IATA Director General and CEO Giovanni Bisignani. "Test flights by our members showed that the models were wrong. Our top priority is safety. Without compromising on safety, Europe needed to find a way to make decisions based on facts and risk assessment, not theories."
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