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Ash clouds threaten air traffic

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Ash clouds threaten air traffic

Old 7th May 2010, 22:53
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Has this mountain just exploded never seen a pic like this one its really bad now. Also in the last hour Aer Lingus has cancelled flights to Northern Spain and Portugal today.

http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/attac...0&d=1273269658
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Old 8th May 2010, 03:19
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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.
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Old 8th May 2010, 03:52
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Volcanic Airspace Closure ? Spain, Portugal - 8th May

interesting...........anybody got any ideas??
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Old 8th May 2010, 05:05
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or do they know something nobody else does?
We took a southern route out of Heathrow yesterday - over Lands End and turned north around 40W for the rest of the crossing. At the time, the "black & red" areas were in the area you mention and in the area we were flying but no ash was indicated above FL200.

That changed late yesterday as we see.

June 18th is a very long time away - relax and closer to departure keep in touch with the airline and, for exactly the reason behind the question you ask, ignore the ash charts, it'll bring better peace-of-mind, ;-) . PJ2
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Old 8th May 2010, 08:45
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As much bad luck as we (European airliners) had three weeks ago, there was great luck this week, that the winds were not north-westerly. The cloud moved onto the Atlantic and stayed there for the last 4 days. When the wind direction will change over the weekend Europe may run into a difficult situation again.

Later in the weekend weather patterns are set to change and may bring the ash cloud back into parts of UK airspace toward the end of the weekend and into next week.
For the first time the plume is clearly visible on sat pictures. The worst is not over.

Realtime satellite images of ashclouds from Eyjafjallajokull volcano
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Old 8th May 2010, 09:02
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NATS

Do NATS close airspace when there is a TS?
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Old 8th May 2010, 10:28
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No..................................
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Old 8th May 2010, 11:02
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They don't because you can see a thunderstorm with either your eyes or a wx radar. Not really the case with volcanic ash. To be fair...
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Old 8th May 2010, 11:26
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Hello JetII

Last edited by Nemrytter; 30th Oct 2017 at 15:14.
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Old 8th May 2010, 11:47
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Originally Posted by sabenaboy
It looks like there's going to be a lot of problems in NE Spain by 1200Z tomorrow.
Looks like Spain and Portugal are now affected by the plume. If the wind backs to a northerly on Monday (as predicted) then UK could be affected again.

Ash Cloud: Airports Hampered In Spain, Portugal And France As Volcano Plume Threatens UK And Ireland | World News | Sky News
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Old 8th May 2010, 13:12
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Am I wrong in supposing that there are a least a few scientific test aircraft and/or military aircraft now flying over N.-Spain and S.-France? Also the FAAM 146 is surely flying in or near the "black" ash concentrations to find out how necessary (OR NOT) the actual limitation of 2000 micrograms/m^3 is, isn't it? Surely there must be some aircraft there now to compare the real ash concentrations versus the forecast values we're using now as a base to close that airspace and airports?

No, aren't there any? Not even G-LUXE? What? Really? Not one?

Amazing!!! WHY NOT?

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Old 8th May 2010, 13:52
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Janspeed, thanks.
You forgot to mention both visible and FLIR are webcams, hence basically "live" (there is a date/time stamp on the FLIR image). Impressive.

Simonpro,
"This is a slightly better, and less fiddled, sequence"
What do you mean? That's an mpg from three days ago, so not current.

The link from threemiles is to the sat24.com site, which is "realtime" (sequence over the last few hours). That particular sequence has been added by sat24.com after the eruption, and the only thing "fiddled" is that they've added a legend and a pointer indicating the volcano to the map overlay.

CJ
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Old 8th May 2010, 20:16
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Does anyone else find it frustrating that, given the potential insurance problems, we have either to:

a) trust our luck to rediculously small charts (Met Office*) or totally out of date reasonable-size ones EuroControl) or

b) commit staff to plotting the advisory co-ordinates for ourselves, every six hours ... assuming we have the spare staff to do so.

Why* in God's name can't the regulator(s) and/or various Met Offices come up with something definitive, and useable?

*Sub-"why"s: Why do the two available charts not match and why the hell aren't they produced at the same time from the same data? Don't tell me it can't be done - no, really, don't - as we can apparently be expected to do it from the available data (advisory co-ords)...

EASA has, to my mind, demonstrated at the first real pan-European safety hurdle that the system is at best impotent and at worst incompetent. I wonder if we ought to start thinking about performing an audit or two upon the 'regulators'.
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Old 8th May 2010, 21:31
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Anyoe have any views on whether Czech airspace will be closed tomorrow?

Extrapolating from the 0600 and 1200 maps, it doesn't look great at present ..
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Old 8th May 2010, 21:43
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Originally Posted by Ranger1
The airlines will not push to fly if they feel it is unsafe
Absolutely!

What if their feelings about unsafety get a bit unreliable? Or if their lawyers confidentially confirm that there is "We couldn't possibly know" escape clause, if worst case & least chance situation materializes?

Anyway, I have used up my vacation and looking at VAAC charts, seemingly a lot of test flying awaits me tomorrow.

Yeeeeee-haaaaaaw!
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Old 9th May 2010, 00:11
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Spain apparently figured out it would be embarrasing to have GA in the air while grounding the big iron so they just closed all airports the govt controls today

http://www.aena.es
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Old 9th May 2010, 00:57
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By closing facilities to GA under these circumstances Spain is displaying the same level of aeronautical intelligence as earlier The Netherlands. Mind you, the UK had left GA undisturbed.
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Old 9th May 2010, 05:13
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Simonpro,
"This is a slightly better, and less fiddled, sequence"
What do you mean? That's an mpg from three days ago, so not current.
Which thereby proves threemiles wrong when he says that this is the first time the ash is 'clearly visible' to the satellite.

That particular sequence has been added by sat24.com after the eruption, and the only thing "fiddled" is that they've added a legend and a pointer indicating the volcano to the map overlay.
Not true. They have also normalised the pixel spacing. Something that, when you get as far north as Iceland, has a significant effect upon the data. It'd be interesting to know if the London VAAC normalise in a similar way, or whether they increase accuracy by using other sources of information.
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Old 9th May 2010, 05:19
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Well now I am confused

Well looking at the latest London VAAC charts it looks to me as if this morning GLA and EDI should be closed due ash and later today this is likely to affect MAN, BFS and LPL so I don't understand why the associated flights and airports aren't closed?

Can someone explain to me as a pilot why they're still operating within the red zone?

Desk-pilot
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Old 9th May 2010, 05:24
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Desk Pilot,

you're probably looking at the wrong charts. It's the black areas on these charts that indicate the no-fly zones:

Met Office: Icelandic volcano - Ash concentration charts
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