We need to know who took the decision to shutdown ALL (I stress ALL) British commercial aviation and the reasons for doing so. No whitewash will be acceptable. This is far too serious a threat to the British airline industry.
Why this sudden demand for trial by media in realtime? Let the professionals at NATS / CAA / Met Office do their job, and consider after the event.
We have seen the real damage on the Finnish aircraft...
The difference is surely that Heathrow, where the airspace is closed, is approximately 1000 miles from Eyjafjallajoekull and any ash will be heavily diluted whilst the BA009 flew close to Mount Galunggung where the density the ash cloud was relatively very intense. It will be interesting to see the analysese of ash densities when they are published.
One of the links on the thread suggested 5-20x denser than the plume that hit the NASA DC8.
Different volcano...different silica content...pick up the geography textbook...
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Vodafone.is - Eruption in Iceland 2010 Friday 16th April 2100-2105hrs GMT. Certainly erupting a lot still.