I'm pretty sure that unless one flies through the plume of the volcano, flying through the dispersed cloud won't be a safety-of-flight issue. It's a maintenance issue, and so IO540's right - once the cost of lost business is greater than the increased cost of extra maintenance, the airlines will want to get flying again. Guess that's what KLM and Lufthansa have been up to this weekend.

Is VFR still possible in France/Belgium?
 

I may have to rescue a couple of mates stranded in Europe tomorrow. Is VFR flight still permitted across to say Lille or Kortrijk?

Pffff they closed the Brussels FIR at 0630Z this morning, until 1800Z.

Pffffffffffffff!

Sam.

Have NATS / The Met Office / Eurocontrol got it horribly wrong?
 

Simon Calder, travel editor of the UK newspaper the Independent, says the airline Ukraine International is planning to resume flights at 1000 BST as they believe "the skies are safe". They have reportedly carried out a test flight and are happy with the results.

KLM Royal Dutch Airlines says it has already carried out a test flight from Amsterdam to Dusseldorf and plans eight more throughout the day.

"I got a call from somebody, a very senior figure in the British travel industry - saying the only time aircraft have actually suffered is when they've basically flown right through a volcanic plume as the volcano was erupting."

Is there a growing suspicion that the risk may have been misunderstood?

Most definitely - yes :ugh:

Well there is an upside to all this. Yesterday (and probably today) Gatwick were letting anyone fly along the runway at 400 feet!

It's all a storm in a teacup. It has now gotten so far out of hand that they won't admit they were wrong.

Still it has been amazing flying for us over the last few days!!

Eruption safety.
 

I should say, definitely not.

The essential thing about an eruption is that it is UNPEDICTABLE.

The amount of gunk it is spewing out at this moment may indeed be minor, (although I don't think I should like this stuff flowing through MY engines and sand-blasting their insides,) however at a moment's notice it could decide to erupt big-time again, when aircraft are actually in the air not too far away.

I suppose they could reduce the size of the no-fly zone to some extent. But I feel it is safest to let it die down completely, because only then will we have any reasonable certainty that it will remain safe.

Broomstick.

SOAP stands for Spectromatic Oil Analysis Programme. Its a system where by oil samples are taken from engines and checked on a regular basis to predict wear and/or imminent component failure. I used it in the FAA on Lynx engines.

The present generation of GA light aircraft pilots were probably in their cradles when stubble burning was in vogue a couple of decades ago. For weeks at a time any high pressure system trapped the products of combustion below the inversion level which could go up to FL100 on rare occasions. Visibility in the murk was miserable and there was much solid material in the form of ash that coated the surface of any aircraft whether on the ground or in the air. We endured and survived our excursions into the murk. Why not now.....?????
I fear the current risk averse society and ridiculous H&S legislation brings the need to warn of the danger we are exposed to by being alive never mind getting into the sky in a light aircraft.
Ashes to ashes, dust to dust. If the CAA does not get you then EASA must.

Cheers,

Reaper 69
:mad::mad::=:mad::mad:

PS - I renewed my DA on Thursday in a Magister at Old Warden and flew a low level aerobatic display practice last evening at Leicester in our Skybolt. Sheer unadulterated pleasure.

Seems VFR is now allowed again in France

NUAGE DE CENDRES : Les aéronefs légers à nouveau autorisés en vol, actualité Société : Le Point

but that their website is overloaded and info about the French Aviation authority can only be had through foreign websites such as the FAA

Enjoy!

This is a volcano, not a garden bonfire. The last time it erupted it lasted 2 years........

This is a massive over reaction.

bose-x
 

I agree, especially for low level flights. Went to Pwk from Reading area and return yesterday, VFR of course. Managed to get up to FL 100 for short time (SE turbo-Prop).
Not a cloud or sniff of ash to be seen.
As for the refusals of S/VFR in the London Zone, it defies logic! No ash, no airlines, no cloud and unlimited vis. Health and Safety gone mad.

G-Kest, bad comparison. The ash you're talking about is essentially soot - material that has already been burned and won't burn again easily. And if it burns it burns rather clean.

What comes out of the vulcano now is SiO2, which is very akin to glass. It will not burn, but rather melt under high pressure and temperature, and when it cools down it will form a glass-like layer on the inside of your engine.

It's a totally different kind of animal.

And as such, it would be very wise not to be within say 150 miles downwind and 50 miles other directions as it might beltch up a think cloud ... but this cloud needs to disperse, and over a moderately long distance it is going to be the wind (predictable) and diffusion (slow). You are not going to be surprised by a sudden cloud of ash over Surrey!

It is a stupid lawyer-ish over-reaction. I am sure there is zero risk to any aviation anywhere in Europe - so long as the plume coming out of the volcano is avoided (which is easy; everybody knows where that is).

The amazing thing is that the airspace owners have been able to shut everything down without having evidence of the risk to aircraft and without even making an apparent effort to find out. I reckon they are going to get sued big-time by the airlines. I hope they do get sued.

Indeed, but how can you get significant harmful particulates when the horizontal vis is tens of nm?
Oil analysis is done by most higher-end GA owners. I do it too. It's a good tool but I wouldn't say it forecasts imminent component failure - for that you look in the oil filter and if you find 10% of your camshaft in there.... :)

Precisely the point made by an NECN reporter this morning, as they were flying within a couple of hundred feet of the Volcano, in a helicopter.

It's more of an insurance issue.. Revenue protection by the insurance companies no doubt.:ugh:

IO540 - the problem is, if they get sued, then who pays for it? The taxpayers do. The airspace owners have a blank chequebook of our money, and zero accountability (or, it seems, intelligence).

Dutch airspace now open for VFR. Pirep mandatory.

RAC B)18 APR 2010 13:24 UTC C)18 APR 2010 23:59 EST (A0463/10)
E) DUE TO VOLCANIC ACTIVITY IN ICELAND AND THE RESULTING ASHCLOUDS IN THE AMSTERDAM FIR, ALL CIVIL IFR OPERATIONS ARE PROHIBITED. VFR FLIGHTS ARE ALLOWED AT OWN DISCRETION. AFTER COMPLETING EACH VFR FLIGHT A PILOT REPORT SHOULD BE FILED IMMEDIATLY TO VULKAAN(AT)KNMI.NL CONTAINING FOLLOWING INFORMATION: ROUTE, ALTITUDE, DATE AND TIME OF FLIGHT IN LOCAL TIME, OBSERVATIONS REGARDING (ASH)CLOUDS. EVEN WHEN NO OBSERVATIONS HAVE BEEN MADE A PILOT REPORT IS MANDATORY. WHEN EMAIL IS NOT AVBL A PILOT REPORT CAN BE MADE TO LOCAL ATC BY RADIO OR AIRPORT AUTHORITY. ALSO, CAA-NL STATES THE PITOT TUBE SHOULD BE CHECKED CAREFULLY BEFORE AND AFTER EACH FLIGHT AND ALSO INCREASED MONITORING OF FLIGHT SPEED AND HEIGHT INDICATION AND WINDSCREEN TRANSPARENCY DURING FLIGHT IN THE RISK AREA. POLICE, SAR AND HEMS FLIGHTS ARE EXEMPTED. SFC/FL245.)

Norway/Denmark
 

If you are able to fly in UK you are lucky. I have just spoken to the duty officer at the Danish CAA and they said the only thing flying in Denmark are the birds.
I flew round the cloud VFR on Thursday fron BIRK and was in severe clear all the way to Danish boundary but was forced to divert.
Been sitting under clear blue skies ever since. Can see my destination! Totally unjustifiable overreaction. Problem is they can't backtrack now without being seen to be alarmist. Bird Flu, Salmonella, Mad Cow disease, WMD all come to mind.
Director of safety at Danish CAA not working today as it is Sunday.
Who are these guys?

Katamarino - what would they get sued for?

In aviation, the #1 cornerstone is that the PIC (the "Captain" if you like ;) ) is the final arbiter on the go/no-go decision.

He has sat 14 exams teaching him every piece of crap including the name of some wind blowing in Hong Kong. And then some more when doing the Type Rating. And he has flown through all kinds of sulphuric acid muck; any large 3rd world city is just fine for that.

He is perfectly capable of making a decision.

Volcanoes have been going off all over the place since long before aviation, so there is a big body of knowledge on this.

In this case, the airspace owners seem to have hung their coat on an ICAO recommendation that IFR in CAS should be pulled if there is volcanic ash there. But this isn't binding.

What the airspace owners (the NAAs) definitely can get sued for is if they ban aviation without a good reason supported by data. "Caution" is not a good reason. The economic loss is running at about 1M/hour. And you can sue for an economic loss, for sure.

IMHO, the NAA lawyers need their heads examined.

One way to proceed - until data is collected and analysed - would be a ban on night flight in the relevant airspace. What you can't see can't do any harm. And with the high pressure around now, there isn't going to be much IMC; well not if your rate of climb is +5000fpm ...

Good timing, Dutch CAA; permit VFR again right at the end of a perfect flying weekend, when everyone will be going back to work.

IO540 - you're the one who mentioned suing. If they get sued for banning aviation, as you're saying, the money still comes from our pockets.

Perhaps we in piston GA should keep quiet about how stupid "they" are, let them get on with it. All the time this goes on there will be less restrictions on airspace for us puddle jumpers.
If airlines go bust there may be less traffic about, they may even see a little sense in reducing CAS. Correction, I doubt that.

IO540

Yeah, fair point IO, but I guess that would be the view from the GA perspective.

While the PIC in commercial operations will pay with his job and perhaps his license if he makes the wrong call utlimately it is his employer who are responsible for the SOPs and for carrying the can when it all goes horribly wrong - corporate liability and all that sort of thing.

and the trouble is it would be a brave operator who sactions the flight when the Met Office has rung the alarm bells, if if they could get aircraft into the system (which presumably they cant).

In one sense the Met Office / NATS has made it easy for the airlines by closing our airspace. If they had left the decision to the operators it would have been interesting to see what would have happened.

What gives Eurocontrol the authority to refuse to give clearances is another interesting debate, or perhaps it is some other authority that ultimately holds the keys? One suspects it must be each individual sovereign state that makes the decision but who, I am not certain. Presumably if we wished to open our airspace we could and although we couldnt launch aircraft into Europe perhaps we could launch to the Americas, although even then Eurocontol would have to "open up" the UK block.

PS I was just reading the our very own Gordie has now weighed in - you can imagine that when the full financial impact dawns on our not so bright leaders ways will be found to get the airline flying again. The volcano may continue ejecting ash for some time, but I have a feeling our airpsace will not be closed for the same length of time - then again I could be horribly wrong. :}

Biggin had this today.
EGKB 181050Z 29002KT 9999 VA NSC 14/02 Q1015

volcanic ash ?
 

How about this for overreaction. Farnborough radar will only give Basic service. No Traffic service. NATS advise that if the controller gives you a turn to avoid another aicraft you could be turned into ash and could then sue NATS! OK to have an air to air then.
Why is it deemed SAFE to fly in the Gatwick Zone but UNSAFE to fly in the Heathrow Zone. Less ash in the Gatwick Zone? Madness

Might be the wrong thread to post this but there we go?
A special thanks must go to all the controllers that have been very nice and let us GA types fly over/around (sometimes low) there airfields. I'm sure there are a lot of photos out there. Post here?
We did Birmingham today, a nice friendly controller on duty today. And I hope the girl with the dirty conservatory will have it cleaned soon!

The Met Office [renowned for its ability to incorrectly forecast our weather] is covering its grubby arse. They are terrified they might be sued if they dared to transgress the present concept of 100% safety [which is simply not possible]. Let the Captain of each commercial aircraft make the go -no go decision. They are the ones who are at the sharp end not the grey faces of the EU/UK Health and Safety madness.

aviate1138 - that's absolutely ridiculous - commercial pilots operate to their company's standard operating procedures - the idea that you let every one of them make a different decision just beggars belief!

The authorities are between a rock & a hard place on this one - if they allowed flights to continue and a large jet, full of passengers fell out of the sky then the lawyers would have a field day (and rightly so!), I can't see how anyone can object to them taking a precautionary approach to this.

Not sure if this is correct, but according to the CEO of Germany's second biggest airline (Air Berlin), ALL predictions of ash dispersal and therefore airspace closures rely on one (yes - one) computer model run by none other than, you guessed it - the Met Office !

How anyone can trust ANY prediction from these muppets is beyond me. How you can base decisions such as closing most of Europe down on them beggars belief.

Again, not 100% sure of the veracity of the statement.

Evidence
 

Let's have some examples of piston engined aircraft being damaged flying VMC in the vicinity of a volcanic eruption/ash vs those not damaged flying in the vicinity of.

Damn pleased I was to, always fun to report different weather.

We had a call from thames advising that a thick layer of Volcanic Ash was reported north of Gatwick, approx 5000ft, verified by the met office (I dont know how either)

The metman suggested we stick that on the metar

barton flyer

I think you missed the point. I would rather rely on a Captains decision than wait for the faceless wonders decision in Europe to press the green light.

It is all to do with the threat of litigation and little to do with safety.

Made it to Oban from Prestwick today, Scottish Info sounded fairly busy with GA. Was slightly surprised that the only other aircraft there then we arrived were 2 others from our club (and the Hebridean Islander). Thought it may have been a bit busier, although there were a few other movements while we were parked. A D-reg Seneca arrived as we were preparing to leave, apparently touring. Don't know when they left Germany, wonder if they are stuck here or if they managed to get out of mainland Europe around the restrictions.

Weather around Glasgow was pretty murky, so we sadly didn't manage to take advantage of the lack of commercial traffic :*.

Fisbangwallop.. thanks for the usual great service, although I think we were on frequency for a whole 20nm in the end (we were G-BOAH). Unusually, 119.875 started to break up before Lochgilphead even at 2,500ft, so didn't get the chance to say thanks! I am sure we can blame it on the 'ash'!

Coolbeans, Glad I was not flying out of Biggin Today - I did smell a weird smell this morning, was really hazy aswell.

So, have any Dutch pilots managed a low pass over Schiphol tower? Any photos, interesting PIREP's?

Ask, and ye shall receive! :ok:

http://sphotos.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-..._6949513_n.jpg

http://sphotos.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-..._6154431_n.jpg

http://sphotos.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-..._8113882_n.jpg

Excellent, congratulations Katamarino! I wanted to do touch and go's there during my lesson in the Super Cub yesterday. I'm glad at least someone made it. :ok:

Anything out of the ordinary up there? (Except from the lack of Boeing's in the air.)