Operations Near Volcanic Dust

[captmu2]

Hello All,
A quick question on procedures.

When flying in a region with vocanic dust, what are the procedures to be used and what are the hazards other than the obvious of loosing your engines. (dust ingestion)

Thanks in advance.

[Roger Turbojet]

You would allso get your windscreen sandblasted, so it would bee like looking out through bathroom window, landinglights will suffer same thing, pitot system would need a huge overhaul, whole aircraft would need cleaning, new paintjob...



[This message has been edited by Roger Turbojet (edited 16 January 2001).]

[18Wheeler]

I flew in & out of a small dirt runway in Papua New Guinea in a Citation just after Rabaul erupted, and the simple rule was: DON'T fly through cloud, as you can't be sure if it's dust or water vapour.
Only really works during the day, of course, but that's all we flew in.

[tom775257]

Hi,
Boeing go into some detail about effects of volcanic ash on planes, avoidance and recovery stratergies etc at this address:
http://www.boeing.com/commercial/aeromagazine/aero_09/volcanic_story.html

Regards, Tom.

[static]

In general, when you get in a volcanic ash cloud, the trick is, to get out as soon as possible (obvious), and to keep the engines running.
To keep the engines running, you need to get the temperature down inside the combustion chamber and turbine, and make the engine less succeptable (hope I spelled that one correctly) to stall. The way to achieve this is to get the thrust levers to idle, and extract as much bleedair as you can from the engines, in other words, WAI on, TAI on and the packs in "high".

Regards

[captmu2]

Thanks to everyone for the feedback, that helps a great deal.

[HugMonster]

Based on altitude and distance from the volcano as well, if you get too close there is a significant danger of fire. After a pyroclastic eruption, much of the debris thrown out is superheated - several hundred degrees Celsius. It can also cool fairly slowly. Throw lots of that all over your paintwork, possibly allowing it into wheel wells, and you could torch your aircraft.