I take it you never fly unless CAVOK :rolleyes:

Apparently Ryanair have canx all ops out of Belfast City for the rest of the day

No, I don't believe BDiONU flies at all. According to his profile he works for NATS, therefore I guess he is trying to justify the initial over-reaction of closing the airspace completely.

In southern Germany this afternoon even Gliders were no longer permitted to fly! :{ I would like to have someone to explain to me, what harm volcanic ash can do to a glider???
:confused:The DFS (German ATC) told me at the phone, the FIR Munich is a "NO FLY ZONE" today. :yuk:

AEST & Windytoo
 

Correct I'm not a pilot and there is no need for European ANSPs to 'justify' closing the airspace. The ICAO guidance was out for 3 years and IATA/Engine Manufacturers were content with the 'zero ash tolerance'. It wasn't until the volcano exploded and the ANSPs closed airspace, exactly in accordance with the guidance, that industry suddenly sat up, took notice and stopped ignoring the situation. Now a 'safe' ash tolerance level has been arrived at with the engine manufacturers and airspace closures made in accordance with it.

BD

Is it just me or the CAA, NATS and the Met Office have done a p**s poor job of making the relevant information ( i.e. where is the no-fly zone) available. Try go to any of the above web sites and use their Search function. Nada. The only reason I know about

http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/aviation...1273426758.png

and

Met Office: Icelandic volcano - Ash concentration charts

is because I found it on pprune.

In addition, if you look at the above two, the seem to show pretty different ash distribution. Any idea?

Sigh.

Hello JetII

Someone in the Ryanair thread is saying after inspections at BHD Ryanair, BMI and Easyjet have found traces of ash in the engines.

Intending to fly home from Texas the middle of next week, I'm wondering just where I'm going to find myself in a two engined aircraft, given that my great circle track is being bent out of all recognition. That's of course assuming I'm airborne at all.

Facts Please
 

Hi All

To answer a few of the points what I had hoped for were multiple flights across Europe to substantiate the predictions from the met office and others with hard data.

That frankly is the least that passengers and the airlines had a right to expect from governments who banned flying and shut down airspace.

Nice to hear that the RJ is well equipped but where was it today? How many flying hours? Where did it go? Who else is flying and gathering data?

As it happens, I flew to Belfast and back this afternoon and like last week saw blue skies and nice fluffy fair weather Cu.

Why I am sceptical of the met office and other academic predictions?

Well the met office bar b q summer predictions did not help and neither did the academic cover ups re global warming.

But what makes me most sceptical is personal experience. When flying the GR1 over Iraq c 1993/4 the vis around Dharan was poor and full of desert blown dust.

The RB199 engines were lasting about 300 hrs because of combat take offs and dust. But had we operated the aircraft back in Germany and made daily take offs at combat power we would have worn the engines pretty quickly anyway.

More recently I have spent over a year operating the Airbus to and from Morocco, typically Tangiers, Casa and Marakesh. The vis in the summer is often quite poor and the air contains desert blown sand and dust.

The "Bus" and the CFM engine seemed to have coped.

So is desert blown sand and dust that different from volcanic ash?

Maybe, but at the high temps found in the back end of a gas turbine both form a glassy material that blocks cooling ducts in blades. Not convinced its ok to fly in desert dust and a few km vis but not ok to enter dilute levels of volcanic that are not visible to pilots.

I remain sceptical of todays airspace closures and believe that we are being sold an over reaction from governments and regulators that may well ruin airlines and jobs.

Will HMG bail out UK airlines like it did the banks?

The ICAO guidance was out for 3 years and IATA/Engine Manufacturers were content with the 'zero ash tolerance'. It wasn't until the volcano exploded and the ANSPs closed airspace, exactly in accordance with the guidance, that industry suddenly sat up, took notice and stopped ignoring the situation. Now a 'safe' ash tolerance level has been arrived at with the engine manufacturers and airspace closures made in accordance with it. Where is the over reaction?


BD

Bigpants:
seems you may have missed some important parts of the thread form the beginning. Just in two short sentences:
(1) dessert sand is COMPLETELY different than volcanic ash: material, size, particle shape, melting temp
(2) sand does not usually melt since it has higher melting temp then the engines, volcanic ash unfortunately is melting in engine temps
details are available via search button in this very thread

Originally posted by Loose rivets:
My daughter flew home from Toronto to Glasgow last night and had a good view of the Icelandic volcano from her window seat as they flew North of Iceland and around the ash plume.

The only other route options appear to be well South depending on the extent of the ash cloud over Spain/Portugal.

North of Iceland seems to be the way that most trans-Atlantics are going according to RadarVirtuel.com, which I guess is why there are 4 hour+ delays on this route due to increased demand.

It's kicked off again: http://www.mulakot.net/images/myndavelar/14flugv.jpg

@permafrost_atpl

https://www.cfmu.eurocontrol.int/PUB...pec/index.html

It is all on here. Due to ajax it updates itself.

A good professional European ATPL should have seen this before.

Except that, in the mentioned case, France has not acted in accordance with the 'unsafe' ash forecast areas, while others have. Some operators have cancelled flights into/out of the region, others haven't.

I imagine a lot of pressure on the shoulders of a pilot who informs his operator that he doesn't wish to fly into an area of forecast 'unsafe' ash if the operator has decided to fly there as long as the airspace remains open.

Can any Icelandics comment on the current state of eruptions?

The Norwegian Met Office have a nice animation:

http://api.met.no/weatherapi/volcani...type=image/gif

News from the rock.

The eruption is steady and on going with now sign of letting up and has been steady in the last 3 day. Life here goes on as normal for most part of the country, the only affected area is to the south of the eruption. KEF is closed at the moment, Akureyri is being used for the to/from traffic, and Icelandair is using GLA as a hub.

Live feed both visual and thermal:
Eyjafjallajökull frá Þórólfsfelli
Eyjafjallajökull frá Hvolsvelli
Eyjafjallajökull frá Valahnúk

facts please
 

Bigpants,

>>>"Nice to hear that the RJ is well equipped but where was it today? How many flying hours? Where did it go? Who else is flying and gathering data?"

Tucked up in its hangar at Cranfield. Science and operational considerations have determined that the best flight opportunity for data is tomorrow (Monday). The FAAM website shows flight B528, the crew list and the sortie brief. You can even follow the aircraft track plot in flight from the website.

Continuous sampling flights are an inefficient use of limited aircraft and crew hours. The data from the flights are used to calibrate the computer models which produce the plots you see published. Fixing model calculations with in situ measurements in this way keeps the model under control. Each science flight requires significant preflight instrument preparation (typ 3hrs) and post flight data reduction (typ several hours) so it is impractical to operate with continuous in situ measurements, the model runs every six hours routinely. Occasionally back to back flights are flown but if this is done too frequently there is danger of a backlog of unprocessed data which is no good to anybody in the rapidly developing volcano situation.

Much of the work of the 146 is model validation, particularly for satellite measurements where the aircraft can fly profiles or drop sondes at times of satellite overpasses and so get in situ measurements down to the surface simultaneous with the satellite.

Jim