Hopes that flights in and out of the UK could recommence soon have been dashed when it was decided that the flights ban would stay in place until at least 1am on Tuesday.
Making the ruling, air traffic control company Nats said conditions around the movement of the layers of the volcanic ash cloud over the UK "remained dynamic".
Nats said it was maintaining close dialogue with the Met Office and with the Civil Aviation Authority and that its next flight update would be made around 3pm.
Travel association Abta estimate around 150,000 Britons have been stranded abroad because of flight restrictions.Britain sent Royal Navy warships on Monday to rescue those stranded across the Channel by the volcanic ash cloud, and the aviation industry blasted European transport officials, claiming there was "no coordination and no leadership" in the crisis that shut down most European airports for a fifth day.
Airline industry group IATA criticized Europe's response to a volcanic ash cloud and called on Monday for urgent steps to reopen airspace after five days of closures that have cost airlines $250 million a day.
ATA head Giovanni Bisignani said authorities in Europe had "missed opportunities to fly safely".
"This volcano has crippled the aviation sector, firstly in Europe and is now having worldwide implications. The scale of the economic impact (on aviation) is now greater than 9/11 when U.S. airspace was closed for three days," Bisignani said, referring to the September 11, 2001 attacks in the United States.
"We must move away from this blanket closure and find ways to flexibly open air space, step by step," he told a news briefing in Paris.
European transport ministers are due to discuss the airspace crisis at 9 a.m. ET after a meeting of the European aviation control agency Eurocontrol, which said on Monday it expected between 8,000 and 9,000 flights to operate in Europe.
That would represent just 30 percent of normal flight traffic, and marks only a modest increase from Saturday and Sunday, when less than 25 percent of flights operated. Since Thursday at least 63,000 flights have been canceled.
Austria opened its airports on Monday but other countries kept no-fly decrees in place. Italy closed its northern airspace after briefly opening it on Monday.
The closure of most of Europe's airspace because of a huge cloud of ash from an Icelandic volcano stranded millions of passengers, and importers and exporters have been hit.
The crisis has had a knock-on effect across the world and its impact on everyday life in Europe has deepened. In Britain, companies reported staff had been unable to get back from Easter holidays abroad and hospitals said they were cancelling some operations because surgeons were stuck in far off places.
Britain's official weather forecaster the Met Office released a graphic predicting little movement of the ash plume over Europe on Monday, but saw it spreading toward the eastern seaboard of North America.
"The wind flow is staying very much the same through the day. Probably for the next three of four days the wind regime is not going to change terribly much," a Met Office spokesman said.
Bisignani called for urgent action to safely re-open airspace and called for a meeting of the International Civil Aviation Organization, the United Nations aviation body.
"We have to make decisions based on the real situation and not on theoretical models. They (the authorities) have missed opportunities to fly safely," he said.
A senior European Union official said on Sunday the current situation was not sustainable, as airlines called for a review of no-fly decrees after conducting test flights at the weekend without any apparent problems from the ash cloud.
"We cannot wait until the ash flows just disappear," said EU Transport Commissioner Siim Kallas, adding he hoped 50 percent of European airspace would be risk-free on Monday.
Dutch airline KLM, which has flown several test flights, said most European airspace was safe despite the plume of ash, and dispatched two commercial freight flights to Asia on Sunday.
Volcanic ash is abrasive and can strip off aerodynamic surfaces and paralyze an aircraft engine. Aircraft electronics and windshields can also be damaged.
RULE BOOK
Senior Eurocontrol official Brian Flynn said the International Civil Aviation Organization published rules that needed to be adhered to worldwide, and guidelines to interpret at continental level.
"One could say that the guidelines are interpreted slightly more rigorously in Europe than in the United States, when it comes to responsibilities of air traffic control agencies and pilots," he told Reuters.
Iceland's Meteorological Office said the erupting volcano sent further strong tremors throughout the surrounding area on Monday but the ash plume which has caused air traffic chaos has descended to an altitude of about 2 km (1.2 miles). It was as high as 11 km when it began erupting on Wednesday from below the Eyjafjallajokull glacier.
Businesses dependent on fast air freight, have felt the impact of the disruption. Kenya's flower exporters said they were already losing up to $2 million a day. Kenya accounts for about a third of flower imports into the European Union.
In export-reliant Taiwan, the island's two major international carriers China Airlines and Eva Air said they had canceled a total of 14 cargo flights to four European airports since Thursday.
Britain said it was considering using the navy and requisitioning merchant ships to ferry home citizens stranded abroad. The response to the crisis is threatening to become an issue in the campaign for Britain's May 6 election.
The British travel agents' association ABTA said it had a rough estimate that about 150,000 Britons were stranded abroad.
"At no time in living memory has British airspace been shut down and affected this many people," said a spokeswoman.
The crisis is having an impact on international diplomacy, with Pakistani Prime Minister Yusuf Raza Gilani becoming the latest leader to abandon a visit to Europe. A joint IMF and European Union mission to Greece was also delayed.
For travelers, businesses and financial markets, the biggest problem is the unpredictability of the situation.
Economists say they stand by their predictions for European growth, hoping normal air travel can resume this week.
But if European airspace were closed for months, one economist estimated lost travel and tourism revenue alone could knock 1-2 percentage points off regional growth. European growth had been predicted at 1-1.5 percent for 2010.
"That would mean a lot of European countries wouldn't get any growth this year," said Chatham House senior economic fellow Vanessa Rossi. "But the problem is it is incredibly hard to predict what will happen. Even the geologists can't tell us."
Disruption spread to Asia, where dozens of Europe-bound flights were canceled and hotels from Beijing to Singapore strained to accommodate stranded passengers. In Tokyo, Japan Airlines said it had canceled 44 European flights so far and All Nippon Airways put its cancellations at 27.
Many U.S. airline flights to and from Europe were canceled.
Russian airports remained open, routing planes to North America over the North Pole to avoid the ash cloud.
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