Frustrated travellers stranded overseas are struggling to find alternate routes home, after dozens of airports were closed by a dangerous cloud of ash from an Icelandic volcano.
Flights via Rome, Athens and Madrid became the new hot ticket at many international airports on Sunday - but after three days of travel disruptions, the backlog of passengers meant many faced waiting lists of days, even weeks.
"We'll take any flight to Europe," said Dirk Maertens, 52, slumped against a railing at Bangkok's international airport alongside his wife and 16-year-old son.
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The Maertens slept on plastic seats at the airport Saturday night after their flight home to Belgium was cancelled. They planned to camp out again Sunday on the off chance that seats on the already-overbooked Thai Airways flight into Rome might open up.
"When there is a flight, you have to be quick - you have to get on it, you can't be too far away," said Claire Maertens, 49, explaining why the family won't leave the airport.
Weddings, holidays missed
Modern Europe has never seen such a travel disruption. Millions of passengers have had plans foiled or delayed.
Around the world, anxious passengers have told stories of missed weddings, business deals and holidays because of the ominous plume, which could damage airplane engines.
Some carriers, like Qantas, put passengers up in hotels, but many did not, offering instead only to refund tickets or exchange them for later flights.
Qantas has confirmed that all its flights to European destinations will be cancelled until at least Tuesday afternoon - extending the massive travel disruption into its fifth day.
Qantas said passengers booked on flights this week should prepare for significant disruptions as 59 flights have already been cancelled, affecting about 12,500 customers.
Airlines hit hard by shutdown
About 1,500 Qantas customers were stuck in Singapore, Bangkok and Hong Kong, spokeswoman Emma Kearns said.
A further 100 international passengers stranded in Australia were being accommodated in Sydney hotels because of the volcanic eruption.
Passengers booked onto Europe-bound flights from Australia were also being warned not to fly to their stopover destinations to wait for their connecting flights to open.
Dubai-based Emirates airline, the Middle East's biggest carrier, said it was losing $US10 million ($A10.85 million) a day, including an estimated $US1 million a day just to provide hotels and meals to more than 5,000 passengers who were in transit when flights were cancelled last week.
Tim Clark, the airline's president, estimated it will take about 24 hours to get its schedule back to normal once flights resume.
"The scale of this crisis is unlike anything I have experienced in my career," Clark said in a statement.
Journeys rerouted, cancelled
Russia's Foreign Ministry was organising round-the-clock consular services to arrange 72-hour visas for foreign passengers stuck at Moscow's three airports, Transportation Minister Igor Levitin said in a televised meeting.
While some airlines in Europe resorted to temporarily laying off staff to cope with lost revenue, Asian companies tried to find ways to keep as many flights as possible running.
Thai Airways, which said the disruption was costing it 100 million baht ($A3.25 million) per day, was encouraging passengers whose flights from Bangkok were cancelled to travel instead to airports in southern Europe that are still open.
The airline scheduled extra flights to Rome and Madrid starting Monday after indefinitely cancelling flights to nine other European destinations.
India's Jet Airways rerouted its flights to New York and Toronto via Athens. It was not servicing its routes to London or Brussels, according to airline official AK Sivanandan.
