I made it back to LHR as rebooked on BA on Friday 23rd, on the daylight flight from Boston. My fears of unbridled applause on touchdown at Heathrow were a great exaggeration. There was none.
Many large official notices at passport control in Heathrow that "there are long delays here today due to Volcanic Ash". This just seemed a ridiclous excuse. There were indeed large queues, but as we all know Heathrow is normally at full runway capacity, and there is therefore little scope for additional flights. Load factors seem little different, and there are stories of some flights very lightly loaded. There also seemed proportionately less overseas visitors than normal compared to UK residents (very few Americans in the flight from Boston), so they will be easier to process.
No, the main reason for the long queue at T5 seemed that a large number of immigration desks on the right hand side were unstaffed. So it seems that many UK residents have been stuck overseas, some in desperate circumstances, but the Home Office staff can in no way organise overtime or similar arrangements to speed their flow. After all, it's not as if they have been rushed off their feet in the last week, is it ?
Let us move on from the world of the bureaucrats to real engineering. As we cruised along I was looking at the various dirt marks back across the wing. Now if there is any impact of ash in the atmosphere this must surely show up in additional external dirt accumulation, and the need for additional demineralised cleaning of airframe exteriors. Has anyone noticed the need for this ?