What if they threw a film festival and nobody could get there?
That almost certainly won’t happen with this week’s Cannes Film Festival, but new clouds of volcanic ash from the Icelandic volcano Eyjafjallajokull have caused flight delays and cancellations over the last couple of days, making the trip to the seaside French town a trickier, longer process than usual.
A massive cloud of ash that spread over the North Atlantic closed down some airports and caused airlines to divert traffic around the cloud. Most of the closures and cancellations appeared to take place on Sunday, when about 20 Air France flights into Nice (the closest airport to Cannes) reportedly were canceled, along with hundreds of other flights into and around Europe.
Most of the traffic was resuming on Monday, though rerouted flights were still caused problems for festival-goers:
- Universal Pictures, the studio releasing “Robin Hood,” the opening-night presentation, reported having flights canceled on Sunday, but staffers were expecting to get out on Monday.
- Roger Ebert’s flight was canceled – although, according to Ebert, the airline said the problem was “equipment difficulty” unrelated to the volcano.
- Entertainment technology consultant and Showbiz Sandbox podcaster J. Sperling Reich reported that he made it to Nice seven hours later than originally scheduled, after delays caused him to miss a connecting flight in Paris.
- Jeffrey Wells of Hollywood Elsewhere, critic John Powers, and Anne Thompson and Eric Kohn from indieWIRE, among others, had their industry-heavy Delta flight from New York to Nice delayed by four hours.
- Sasha Stone of Awards Daily endured a five-hour layover in Chicago, and another four-hour one in Zurich.
- James Rocci of the Rocci Report missed his connection because of delays and was told the next open flight wouldn’t leave for three days, though British Airways eventually saved him with what he tweeted was an “epic rerouting.”
And while the Los Angeles Times speculated that events might have to be rescheduled as stars including Russell Crowe and Sean Penn are delayed or even unable to attend, so far the volcano does not appear to have affected any marquee talent.
On Monday afternoon (U.S. time) Crowe, in fact, tweeted a nonchalant “Packed for Cannes, boys asleep. 5am start. ‘night john boy.”
James Rocci, meanwhile, summed up the adventure that is a trip to Cannes for many less stellar attendees: “I didn’t do anything to that Icelandic volcano, so I don’t know why it has to mess with me.”
(Getty Images photo by Sean Gallup)
