Flights from Boston to Europe nearing normal levels

By Katie Johnston Chase, Globe Staff

European flights are operating at almost normal levels at Logan International Airport today.

-- Aer Lingus has canceled its Shannon, Ireland, service, but is flying in and out of Dublin and has added an extra departure there tonight.

-- American Airlines is operating all its flights to London and Paris, but has only one of its three normal arrivals scheduled to land, from London.

-- Air France is maintaining its Paris flights.

-- British Airways and Virgin Atlantic are fully up and running to and from London.

-- Delta Air Lines is on track with Amsterdam.

-- Lufthansa is flying in and out of Frankfurt and Munich.

-- Swiss International Air Lines is operating its regular Zurich flights.

-- Icelandair is operating all its Reykjavik flights and has added an extra arrival and departure tonight.

Meanwhile, airlines scrambled today to get stranded passengers home -- adding flights, bringing in bigger planes, even setting up special hotlines for diverted travelers. But some people who had been stuck in foreign cities for as long as a week waiting for the ash cloud from the Iceland volcano to clear took matters into their own hands.

Sophos, a security software firm based in Burlington, chartered a 737 from Vienna to Boston last night for 200 employees who had been stuck in Europe for nearly a week after its annual sales conference in Berlin. The sales team took buses from Berlin to airports in Frankfurt, Rome, and Amsterdam in hopes of finding flights out, and the ones who didn't make it out went on to Vienna.

"The cost that we're incurring for chartering this plane is almost going to even out," said Mike Haro, head of corporate communications, noting that airlines were offering refunds for flights they canceled. "But it's still expensive to keep that many employees in limbo."

One family of four flew from Los Angeles to Tel Aviv to Madrid, took an overnight train to Barcelona, then rented a car to drive to Toulouse, France, to attend a theater-on-ice competition, said Brett Snyder, president of Cranky Flier, an air travel assistance business. Snyder has been helping people find "crazy ways to go" during the major travel disruption, including travelers who started out in Moscow and went through Singapore and Tokyo to get to Los Angeles.

"They just went the other way around the world," Snyder said.

People trying to purchase tickets for travel in the next few days won't have much luck. Some airlines aren't selling tickets for this week in order to get all the stranded passengers home; Virgin Atlantic isn't making any new reservations for travel to the UK before April 30. There are virtually no seats available for travel today and tomorrow into big European hubs like London, Paris, Amsterdam, or Brussels, said Carolina Murillo, leisure district manager at Garber Travel.

"It's not looking good for the next couple of days," she said, but things start to open up on Saturday.