BA288 Flightpath and Ash
I'm scheduled to fly with my wife to London from Phoenix June 18th on BA 288, Phoenix Sky Harbor to London Heathrow. I don't know how accurate "flightaware" tracking site is but I followed that flight online yesterday and noticed that it's projected flight path goes in a large arc north of the over what looks to be northern Iceland and then drops down south to intercept the British isles over Scotland and thereafter straight down the length of England to Heathrow.
However I noticed yesterday that once the flight reached the east coast of Canada it appeared to deviate on a much more southern track across the Atlantic far south of Iceland. I'm watching today's same flight which has just taken off from Phoenix and it's projected flight path now puts it's transatlantic route way south of Iceland similar to the path followed by yesterdays flight.
Obviously this makes sense if the intention is to avoid ash except that according to the projections provided by the charts based on the Icelandic Met office information (the red and black ones) it would appear that this flight path takes them directly thru some of the densest parts of the cloud. What's going on here? is the flight aware tracking completely off, are the red/black cloud projections wrong or do they know something nobody else does?
- Peter.