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The World’s Matthew Bell reports on some of the global knock-on effects of the volcano air travel disruptions.

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MARCO WERMAN:  In the meantime, five days of flight cancellations are having a ripple effect throughout the rest of the world.  The World’s Matthew Bell takes a look starting in Boston.

MATTHEW BELL:  Not too far from our newsroom, the Boston Marathon got underway this morning but hundreds of qualified runners didn’t make it to the starting line because of canceled flights.  Hans Peter got one of the last flights out of Munich, but his running partner was stuck back home.

HANS PETER:  My colleague, and my friend who was training all the time with me, he couldn’t make it and so he’s sitting now in Germany and I’m going to run a little bit for him too you know.

BELL: Luckily for organizers, nearly all of the elite marathoners arrived before ash clouds grounded planes.  In Europe getting to big sporting events on time can mean settling for a slower form of transportation.  Fans of the Barcelona soccer team watched their beloved striker, Leo Messi, and his teammates climb onto two buses.  The lavishly paid superstars are on a two day over land trip to play inter-Milan.  A team official has complained to the league that making his players travel by bus gives the opposition an unfair advantage.  It’s tough to quantify the economic impact that five days of flight cancelations will have on the global economy, but take the fresh flower industry as an example.  Stephen Mbithi is Chief Executive of Fresh Produce Exporters Association in Kenya.  Producers there are sitting on stacks of picked flowers ready to ship.  They won’t last long if the flight ban isn’t lifted soon and that means temporary workers could be let go.

STEPHEN MBITHI:  Farms are stopping anybody who is coming in for picking.  So all temporary staff that are employed to come and pick will be stopped and that means laying off hundreds of thousands of workers’.

BELL: In France, grocers like Frederic Moulin at the main produce market south of Paris are improvising.  Moulin says he’s forced to make do with produce that comes in by truck or by ship.  That means problems getting things that come from places like Peru or Africa, he says, especially mangoes and string beans.  Prices of all kinds of goods are being affected.  Of course the airlines in Europe are taking the biggest hit, but Germany’s economy minister, Rainer Bruederle says the pain could spread.  The ash clouds from the volcano have certainly had an impact on the economy he said.  When flights are stopped, transport companies are affected, marketing opportunities are disturbed and even interrupted. That’s why, he said, the ministry has put together a special task force to deal with the situation.  On the personal level, the situation has added insult to injury for Charlie McKinney.  He’s an American contractor who left Iraq recently and got held up in Germany on his way to North Carolina.

CHARLIE MCKINNEY:  I was pulled out of Iraq, for an injury, appendicitis, ruptured appendix and I was in the hospital for 17, 18 days in the military hospital in Ramstein.  I had to get my passport redone and everything else and so I get all that together, get my plane ticket, they drop me off and guess what?  This happens.

BELL: And it could happen to just about anyone.  Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has canceled an upcoming trip to Finland.  Canadian rocker Bryan Adams had to the miss the 39th Annual Juno Awards held in Newfoundland last night, while countless tourists and business travelers did what they could to get where they needed to go.  At the port in Calais, France, a British man and his companion told the BBC about their convoluted journey home from Turkey.

MALE VOICE 1:  Mad dash to Istanbul train station for the 10:00 departure to Bucharest.  Twenty hours later arrived there.  Managed to get a ticket on another sleeper to Budapest.  Then amazingly met somebody else, whose name I can’t remember, but thank you, who sold us a ticket from Budapest to Zurich, Zurich to Paris, Paris to here and it’s 10:00 and that whole thing over land, eat your heart out Agatha Christie, has orange expressed us here in three days and 12 hours.

BELL: But that volcano obviously is operating on its own schedule.  For The World, I’m Matthew Bell.

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