Ash clouds threaten air traffic

[rp122]

Met Office update

There's a bit of news from the Met Office. They did a test flight over the North sea and found some volcanic ash.

They are reporting three layers, with large particles down at 8000ft.

Is the fact that they sampled in this region down to the likelyhood that this will be the most probable route to maintain transatlantic traffic for the next few days?

[Homer_J]

Heres a few points I'm thinking about.....



a lot of fruit and veg is flown in to the UK in the cargo holds of aircraft....hence the carbon footprint of a kiwi fruit...


Since there arn't any flights at the moment, and since theres a finite stick on the UK at what point do the supermarkets start to run out of the more exotic fruit and possibly simple things like orange juice?

and....what about the resturants if this is the case.

any thoughts folk?

[Biggles78]

Chicken Little was right.......the sky is falling!!

As to the future of companies going tits up, it may/probably will happen but remember that the customers are still going to be there. People will still need to fly from A to B and presumably back again. For each company the goes under, a new one will rise from (excuse the pun) the ashes and quite likely fly their old (or not so old) aircraft.

While this is a very big issue for you guys up north, at some stage the eruptions will stop and hopefully a nice bit of rain to quickly wash the air clean. The industry will recover as it has after past disasters. You just have to wait for the short term pain to pass.

[tirpitz]

I see from NOTAMS earlier today that the Isle of Man have gone one step further....it seems that when the Island is in the forecast area they are promulgating Restriction of Flying Regulations making it illegal to fly over the Island or within the territorial waters (12 miles I think) - applies to VFR as well!

[wendyg]

homer_j: I was wondering similarly about postal mail, which still carries a lot of important stuff. The US discontinued non-air services a few years ago.

wg

[HEATHROW DIRECTOR]

<<Heathrow Director,Anthony GA's & others suggestions that a/c fly into the ash cloud over the UK >>

Not me - I think it's verging on the insanity.

[22 Degree Halo]

Latest London VAA chart has the plume heading towards the eastern seaboard of North America

http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/aviation...1271508253.png

[SigloVPWK]

pullupterrain: airseb is talking about NATS (what used to be UK National Air Traffic Services) not the North Atlantic Track structure.

[INNflight]

What news agency released this info?
Are you referring to this flight of A320?

http://img693.imageshack.us/img693/9727/cap1f.jpg
http://img411.imageshack.us/img411/3660/cap2n.jpg

This one was diverted over the Poland and returned back to Russia (I guess)...
Note the FL190.

Austrian news agency ORF reported it first, the Airbus 321 (not the one you are referring to) is sitting idle at VIE as I type this.

[XPMorten]

Latest forecast animation from Norwegian Institute of Air Research.

Forecast Animation AVI

XPM

[Churchillian]

Smell of Sulphur

Just completing a shift providing ATSOCAS in the southwest of England. Three separate pilots operating in the band 3 to 5000ft have reported a smell of sulphur. The unit has given a service to over 130 aircraft today of which at least 3 have been jets in one form or another.

[Aslak]

Finnair just informed few days ago all of its staff that if no change in 14 days, no more salary...

Just looked at the latest MET office situation chart and the forecast for tomorrow morning.
It still totally blows my mind to watch the video of the actual volcano with the smoke coming out of it and compare that smoke with the poluted area.

I am no way saying that flying into the ash cloud would be smart thing to do, but almost entire Europe, half of the Russian and most part of the Central Asia?

Really reminds me of the recent Swine Flu hysteria...

New economical recession, here we come, again...

[udachi moya]

Please tell me boredom has hit in........... someone just said KL and LH are going to conduct low level test flights later........

[windshear-a-head]

Interesting, the Norwegian animation shows pretty much clear over the UK and the majority of Europe on Monday - I'm guessing though it doesn't show the stagnant air that still has ash particles present???

[hetfield]

Didn't this happen to a British Airways 747-200 some time ago.

YouTube - Flight BA-009(Falling from the Sky) - 1/3

Don't know how realistic the movie is.

[FlyingVisit]

According to David Learmont on SKY News a while ago he said it's impossible to predict when this eruption will stop, and he also said it's a very real possibility its bigger and more damaging sister volcano could erupt at any time. He said there would be no flights within the next 5 days, and the only reason he couldn't predict further ahead is that no-one can be accurate on 5 plus days forcesats.

What he did say, though, was that the worst possible secenario of the volcanoes erupting for the next 2 years is a very real possibility, and yes, we will be in terrible trouble if that's so.

[deltayankee]

KLM just tweeted "Before dawn KLM is planning to make at least 1 test flight at a lower altitude to make sure it's safe to fly." Is there someone from Schiphol who can perhaps explain what sort of test this is?

[Low Flier]

I faithfully promise that this image has not been photoshopped, nor was the data filtered. This is reality, really.

I captured it with a simple screengrab within the last hour.



Just 72 hours ago I would not have believed this to be a remote possibility.

We are cursed by that thing of living in interesting times.

[pullupterrain]

airseb is talking about NATS (what used to be UK National Air Traffic Services) not the North Atlantic Track structure.

Oh ok thank you

[BDiONU]

Low flier

What your image doesn't show are all the GA buzzing around. Shoreham was like flies around a turd today.

BD