Some Flights Resuming Despite Volcanic Ash
T.J. HOLMES, CNN ANCHOR: All right. Time for me to hand this thing off to the clipboard carrier himself, to Ali Velshi.</s>ALI VELSHI, HOST: You are too good to me, my friend. Good to see you, as always. Have yourself a great afternoon. We'll talk to you soon. I'm Ali Velshi. As T.J. says, I'll be with you for the next two hours today and every afternoon, every weekday afternoon. I'm going to try and take every important topic that we cover and break it down for you. Give you a level of detail that's going to help you make important decisions about where you travel, how you spend your money, what you earn, and what you put out on the Internet. Let's get started. Here's what I've got on the rundown. What if I told you your kid was on heroin? You would be shocked. Now, what if I said your kid texts too much? No shock there. What if I told you there are similarities between being hooked on heroin and hooked on texting? You've go to hear this. Plus, Title IX, it's supposed to give equal opportunities to female college students and athletes. But some schools are allegedly finding a way to skirt Title IX. This hour the Obama administration is doing something about it. We'll tell you about it. Also, we look back on the life of civil rights pioneer Dorothy Height, and we look ahead to who might fill her shoes. Who will the next crusader be? All right. Over to our top story. If you're stuck in an airport, a city, a continent thousands of miles from home, the two most beautiful words in whatever language you happen to speak are "progressive resumption." Progressive resumption. You heard me right. Those words appeared on a flight departure screen at Charles De Gaulle airport in Paris today. The best day for European travel since that pesky Icelandic volcano erupted last Wednesday. Roughly 14,000 flights or just over half of the usual weekday traffic. Here's the big picture. This sweeping red blob is the danger zone. You can see it extends all the way to Newfoundland in Canada right now. This is where volcanic ash is rampant. Planes are far and -- few and far between. Now some airlines claim the danger is being greatly exaggerated by civil aviation authorities. The blue lines here, see those? That's normal transatlantic air routes. These ones here. They haven't been normal for six days now. You can see most of southern Europe, most of it, except for this, is in the clear. Most of France, all of France is in the clear. Scotland is actually OK today. Spain is where a British warship has picked up 300 stranded civilians today along with 300 British troops on their way home from Afghanistan. This is an issue. Wounded troops or troops coming home can't get back either. Germany looks pretty much socked in, but planes there are being allowed to take off and land under visual flight rules, which means if you can see the runway, you can take off, not using your instruments. Lufthansa was hoping to get in more than 300 flights today. Travelers in Frankfurt are ready, but they're not celebrating yet.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We checked in through the Internet late last night, at 1 a.m., and I found my name confirmed, and my seat and everything. So I'm taking a chance.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: What are you going to do? I mean, it's a volcano. Someone can say when it's going to stop, when it's going to start. That would be great. But you have to roll with it if you're going to fly international. There's going to be things that come up, and you have to be ready for it. So...</s>UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I hope that it go well. I've got to get home.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: How do you feel about this whole ash cloud stuff that's going on?</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: What can you say? Ashes to ashes.</s>VELSHI: Ashes to ashes. At least he's got a sense of humor about it. OK. Here's what you can't see on the maps. A lot of the ash right now is below 20,000 feet, between the ground and 20,000 feet. We've showed you buildings here to illustrate the point. Most of it's clear, above 20,000 feet, which means the ash is sinking. It's got some density to it; it's sinking. Which means there are a lot of airports that are closed, but the airspace above it is open. The U.K., for instance, in Denmark, are examples of that. Way over on the western side of this graph. Take a look over here where the air traffic is heavy. Well, let's go all the way over here. If you zoom right into that, you will see CNN's Richard Quest, who is at Newark Liberty Airport in New Jersey. Yesterday he was at JFK. As many of you know, Richard is based in London. And it appears to me he is just airport hopping to try and see if he can get a flight back home. And if you are one of those people like Richard who did have a booking to get back home, you might actually wait longer than you think you're going to wait after flights resume. Right, Richard?</s>RICHARD QUEST, CNN INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: What we are seeing here -- good afternoon from Newark, Ali. What we are seeing here is the story, as the crisis moves into the next phase. It says passengers whose flights have already been canceled are now trying to either be wait-listed or confirmed on new seats. Now, look behind me. This is a group of people who have been waiting for Jet Airways, which flies from India via Brussels up to New York. What has happened, of course, is that over the past few days, they've been flying via Athens instead. Now, these passengers have been here for some four days. They're starting to get extremely testy. Voices are being raised. But, of course, it's understandable, Ali. They've been waiting four days. Jet is now flying again via Brussels, so planes will be leaving. If we go down to the far end of the terminal, there you see SAS. You see Lufthansa. You see passengers checking in. And what we understand, particularly from Lufthansa, is that they have so far managed to accommodate all the passengers who were booked and who were waiting. The issue becomes, of course, are they -- well -- well, don't get too excited, Ali. The issue becomes as more passengers now know the airports are open, so they start to come to the airports. Will they be able to?</s>VELSHI: Right.</s>QUEST: And finally, British Airways, poor British Airways, three flights to Heathrow, three flights canceled. Virgin Atlantic on the departure board has one flight it's hoping to get out to tonight. This is a crisis that is now starting to really focus and drill down on the</s>U.K. VELSHI: All right. So here's the issue. If I have a paid ticket that has not -- I've not missed my flight. Let's say it's for this weekend, for Saturday or something like that. As they try and catch up with all those people like you who have missed their flights, I'm actually going to get priority over you. In other words, people who have current tickets who haven't missed their flights are going to be able to get out there and travel. And guys like you have missed their flights, have got to wait for the first available seat?</s>QUEST: That is it in a nutshell. Confirms go first. That's the way it has to run. After the confirms, you get those people who are wait- listed and standing there. But the order in which you are wait-listed depends on a variety of issues. It depends on what class you're in, business or economy. It depends on the strength of your ticket. Ultimately, everybody is going to get home.</s>VELSHI: Sure.</s>QUEST: That's what the airlines are very keen to tell me. But a friend of mine who's just waiting to get back to Europe was told, "Well, if you want to be confirmed back to Europe, you're going to wait until next week. However, come to the airport tomorrow or the next day and we'll probably get you out." I couldn't afford, Ali, to keep coming back to the airport every day, so I've chosen to take a confirmed seat on Sunday. I'm going back via Frankfurt.</s>VELSHI: If while we're talking somebody taps you on the shoulder and says, "Mr. Quest, we have a seat for you," I bet you you're going to leap. Like, in the middle of a conversation I bet you you'll get on that plane and go back to London.</s>QUEST: Ali -- Ali, if somebody says to me, "Mr. Quest, we have a seat for you," I can't stop. Excuse me, nice to see you. My bags are down there. See you later.</s>VELSHI: That's Richard Quest, hopefully on his way back to London. All right. We will check in with that. We'll continue on that story as it develops. We'll keep you posted on -- as those flights start to take off. Now, President Obama is sharpening his rhetoric. Congress is investigating. Wall Street titans are on the defensive. This is a critical week for financial reform. Christine Romans and I are going to dive right into it at the other side of this break.