ICAO requires no IFR clearances into an area affected by volcanic ash.

My guess for no SVFR clearances, if that's happening, is because SVFR is a dispensation to operate in conditions that should otherwise require compliance with IFR.

Mind you just done a narrow route brief and there's no NOTAM that I saw closing the London Zone.

Swine flu, Polio, Diptheria, measles, dont think too many of them show up so what we going to do. Stay in until all are eradicated. Black ice is a bit tricky to spot but... Sandy fly has more than a sound point. There is a choice for all. Go fly and see things that we have had taken from us over the years, Heathrow, Gatwick, Manchester (well on the way) or sit at home and keep the dust off the wings. In a few days time the scare mongering amongst us will be revealed much as the flu epidemic clowns have (you recall Liam Donaldson and his millions of doses of flu vaccine?) Liam has gone, the vaccine is stored unwanted and the Icelandic ash will follow the same road. Good thing is there is a new Crime watch coming up soon, I imagine someone somewhere will see some of this evil dust. I did hear it was from the Arsenal Football trophy cabinet which Arsen had been seen dusting but ...

In that case I think I'd have flown in some dangerous and illegal conditions over the years.

It was a jolly pleasant evening flight over Kent; I think I'll contine to make my own decisions, right or wrong, having taken note of the information available.

This kind of crap really rips my knitting.

Completely unnecessary verbiage that will have absolutely nil effect on anything or anyone.

:ugh:

I couldn't agree more.

They could not come up with more obvious ar*e covering bollox.

Mind you, the more people one meets from the aviation regulatory agencies, the fewer of them turn out to have ever flown a plane (of any sort).

I cannot see why I should fly safely, anyway. When I go up, I always do all I can to fly as dangerously as possible.

You may be getting close there but today the Stansted ATIS, for example, was specifically saying the "UK FIR is closed to IFR and SVFR traffic". However the weather conditions at Stansted today did not require SVFR.

London (Heathrow) were turning away lots of SVFR requests, including police helos, (unless Cat A) and a cheeky pilot in a Cessan 172 asking for a cross country clearance via the Heathrow overhead at 1500 feet!

So can anyone explain why VFR is allowed but not SVFR?
UV

USGS datasheet on volcanic ash
 

Does anyone have a link to this ICAO policy that IFR flights are not allowed? I cannot see any difference between the risk to IFR and VFR when outside CAS, especially as in the UK it is now the ATC service that is being provided OCAS that is (IMO) more important than the flight rules.

And whilst we are at it, where does it say that the national ANSP is not to provide radar services outside CAS during such conditions? This is all I could find on radar services:
"Alert flights already within the danger zone and offer them vectors to expedite evacuation out of the area. Also, aircraft that are close to the danger zone should be vectored clear of the area. Tactically re-clear flights which would penetrate the zone onto routes that will keep them clear."

And the relevance to us is?

Guess there will be ash in similar quantities around the Icelandic Volcano and there was at the time around Mt St Helens. Not yet spotted the link.

Maoraigh you got any interesting links to the American football league?

Heathrow in London CTR (class A) so no VFR - SVFR or IFR only

I think one would be able to see if there was ash about on a clear blue day. It's a good enough risk for me anyway.

I agree, if the vis is bad, it may be difficult to tell the difference between your average industrial gunk and God's clean Iclandic stuff.

It appears that the nay sayers on here are the types who only fly on perfect zero wind cavok days after doing a risk assessment... The very ones who cant fly tight circuits, roll out the whole length of the runway when theres three other a/c behind them on finals, fly eyes glued to their maps and gps and generally cause chaos on warm bank holiday afternoons... if i believed everything I read on here, I would stay wrapped up in cotton wool and fly about 2 hours a year....

Low lever VFR was absolutely fine today. What I dont understand is why they didnt get much of the airline traffic out low level?

These types could also apply to work for sky news and try to over hype everything in the attempt to enrichen the lives of those wrapped in cotton wool who believe the bullsh*t and never go out

Well, I've viewed the sky from ground level a lot of times and seen only stark blue. Then went up in the aircraft to be confronted with a massive viz problem due to an inversion at, say, FL50. So I'm not a believer in "what I can't see isn't there". And if the Met Office says it's unsafe to fly I tend to stay on the ground. (Easy decision since I didn't intend to fly today or tomorrow anyway.)

But on the other hand, I find the methods that are employed by the met observers rather crude. Heck, even in the very official SIGMET straight from the VAAC specialists at the Met Office they define vast areas of airspace where a bit of the cloud may have ended up, and then write this:

Come on folks, for cloud, visibility and the like we have all sorts of norms and standards. But shutting virtually all of the Northern Europe airspace down because of an unknown concentration of ash? That sounds a bit last century to me. Are they really not able to specify/measure something along the lines of a certain number of grams of ash per m3, and are engine manufacturers really not able to tell what concentration is harmful to engines/windshields/paintwork and what concentration is not?

If this eruption, just like last time, is going to last for two years we are going to have to come up with something a little more clever than this.

Hi FISbang,

I think it was Glenn in SJEN, I was in the weightshift and exited at East Kilbride, so no point in giving you a call when Strathaven was three miles away and in sight. So went straight to safety.com.

I know Glenn lost two-way with Glasgow at one point since I heard their calls, but then that is not uncommon when at 2,000ft and below around their zone, as you know.

He may have gone to the microlight frequency 129.875 to see if Alan Marsh was about at Kip, I will ask today.

Quote: Cessna 172 asking for a cross country clearance via the Heathrow overhead at 1500 feet!


Love it... good boy :ok:

If you are referring to me then perhaps you should know I'm currently an instructor flying about 900 hours a year. I've ferried planes across the atlanic, across europe to the middle east and down through Africa in my past. I've flown in conditions some of you couldn't even imagine.

That said, if there is a rare event of a volcanic ash plume overhead with unknown density and the authorities have decided to close UK airspace I would use common sense and not fly myself. It has nothing to do with skill or experience, it would be reckless to endanger those people on the ground considering the advice from the Metoffice. By the time you would know of problems flying through ash it would be too late.

The ash plume you see on TV is a few hundreds metres across at the volcano. By the time it reaches the UK that has spread to a few hundred miles across. The contents of the plume are the same but why do some people on this forum still think you would see the ash when its spread that far apart?

Can I just stop you there, because you're on the verge of going overboard, and your next stop if unrestrained will be "All those moments will be lost in time; like tears in rain", and we'll have to assume you're sporting a monumentally dodgy mullet.

This is, however, the basis of homeopathy - take something potent, dilute it by so many orders of magnitude that the only means of detecting it is purely an act of faith, and convince the gullible that the act of dilution actually enhances the potency of the original ingredient.

how long will this last for?
 

I need to fly from Heathrow to New York on Wednesday next week......

am I stuffed?
should I be getting onto a liner now?

OTT reaction
 

It is hard to see the talk of errosion of paint (& props), the damage to the inside of engines being very well informed when directed to light aircraft flying at low levels when the "ash" is above FL100 or more likely FL200.

The small amounts of "ash" that might fall to earth are likely to be so small that it is likely to be pushed aside by stagnated air ahead of a slow speed aircraft.

As to the dust damaging the engine, just observing the differance between the dirt washed out of an air fliter in the summer vs the dirt from an airfliter in the winter will show just how much dust is floating around during the summer as well as how well the airfilters remove fine dust from the induction air. I have yet to see people on these forums recomending that we dont fly in the summer due to the dust!

So given the fact that there is very little volcanic ash at low levels, the aircraft has a good air filter and that the engine works in a diferent way to a turbine there is very little chance of engine dammage and no flight safety risk. In fact the flight safety risk is probably lower due to the lack of other air traffic.