A clear satellite image of the plume around noon today, stretching south from Iceland until it merges with an area of cloud, (lower centre of this rather large image),

2010/127 12:35 UTC - Terra/MODIS - Rapid Response System

As a maybe mindless side: why is Black bad and Red good? Is it political correctness?

Would you have been pleased or otherwise if they had used green?
:-)

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

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.

Volcanic Airspace Closure ? Spain, Portugal - 8th May

interesting...........anybody got any ideas??

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

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.

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

NATS
 

Do NATS close airspace when there is a TS?

No..................................

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...

Hello JetII

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

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?

:ugh: :ugh:

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

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'.

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 ..:(

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!

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

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.