Florida benefits from volcanic ash

The ash cloud keeping Europeans away from Florida is also holding some here.

A group of British tour operators got tired of being stuck in Dallas waiting to return home when their flights were cancelled. So they decided to take a trip to the Tampa Bay area, much to the delight of D.T. Minich, the executive director of the St. Petersburg Clearwater Area Convention and Visitors Bureau.

“It's a volcano fam trip,” chuckled Minich. The tour operators visited Busch Gardens, which is offering a complimentary one-day pass to the park to any British, Irish or continental European stranded in Florida.

Fortunately, European travel to Florida usually doesn't pick up until summer. “We're not really in peak European business right now, so that's a good thing,” Minich says.

Meanwhile, officials at Tampa International Airport are watching developments carefully as flights from England were cancelled in recent days. “We're keeping our fingers crossed,” says Trudy Carson, the airport's director of air service development.

Carson has personal experience with volcanic interruptions. She was in Alaska in 1992 on her honeymoon when Mount St. Helens erupted and spent three nights sleeping in the Juneau airport.