No, its' actually not only at high altitude. In some places it is low down in others high up. For instance over Switzerland the cloud reached down to less than 10,000ft. And one of the problems is to nail down at what altitudes it actually.

Norway FIR opens, but W part may close this afternoon
 

Breaking news from CAA Norway @ 0900 LT: Norwegian airpspace is now open, except the north-easternmost part, including three local and one regional airport. Svalbard (Bodø OFIR) is also open. Forecasts indicate that the Norwegian part of the North Sea may close @1200Z, and the rest of southern Norway may close tonight.

Your only interest in 'scientific data' would seem to be to justify your own opinion that is perfectly fine to fly. This is a not an issue for science, its an business-engineering decision (and certainly not pilots).

Sunfish has give a very solid and precise explanation of why flying in the plume is bad for the engines and bad for the airlines economics, yet you and a lot of other posters simply don't want to listen to such inconvenient facts.

His thought processes obviously mirror what will be happening within airlines - how can they continue to fly and make a profit if engines have a life span as little as 100hours? Well they will have to charge nn times as much as previously to cover the overhaul and inspection costs on a vastly reduced schedule. This might doom the airlines in question with months if it wrecks the fleet.

Seems to have almost completely stopped now:

Eyjafjallajökull frá Valahnúk

I am no coward but I am not foolhardy either. Flying airliners involves making decisions that err on the side of safety. You always go for the safest option. If that means we sit on the ground for a few more days until more solid information is available then so be it.

When the engine and aircraft manufacturers say it is safe to fly their products in the conditions, then and only then will I consider getting into the air.

However I suspect aircraft will be grounded by airline's insurance companies. Until insurance companies give the OK, which airline is going to risk flying? A hull loss that isn't insured could bring an airline down.

For those who are so eager to jump in an airliner and go flying, and claim there is no problem with that as there have only over been the 2 publicised incidents, may I suggest you have a look at this information from Boeing:-
Aero 09 - Volcanic Ash Avoidance

Nevermind the pure economics, Sunfish made a very good point that we (we as the world) will be absolutely unable to produce enough spare engine parts to meet the demand created by shortening the engines' life span. No amount of money thrown on the problem will solve that.

So much for the society that got so obsessed with efficiency, streamlining and trimming that having spare capacity or plan B is considered to be unnecessary luxury.

Astonomy Picture Of The Day today. Gives a concise account of what has gone on. (Great site anyway for those not aware of it)

Astronomy Picture of the Day

extended...
 

Statement on Icelandic volcanic eruption: Monday April 19, 0830
Based on the latest information from the Met Office, NATS advises that the current restrictions across UK controlled airspace due to the volcanic ash cloud will remain in place until at least 0100 (local) on Tuesday 20th April.

Message from IATA
 

Re-Think of Volcano Measures
Governments Must Base Decisions on Fact Not Theory

Paris - The International Air Transport Association (IATA) sharply criticized European governments for their lack of leadership in handling airspace restrictions in light of the Icelandic volcano eruption and urged a re-think of the decision-making process.
“We are far enough into this crisis to express our dissatisfaction on how governments have managed it - with no risk assessment, no consultation, no coordination, and no leadership. This crisis is costing airlines at least $200 million a day in lost revenues and the European economy is suffering billions of dollars in lost business. In the face of such dire economic consequences, it is incredible that Europe’s transport ministers have taken five days to organize a teleconference,” said Giovanni Bisignani, IATA’s Director General and CEO.
“Governments must place greater urgency and focus on how and when we can safely re-open Europe’s skies. This means decisions based on risk-management, facts and utilizing operational procedures that maintain safety,” said Bisignani.
IATA criticized Europe’s unique methodology of closing airspace based on theoretical modeling of the ash cloud. “This means that governments have not taken their responsibility to make clear decisions based on facts. Instead, it has been the air navigation service providers who announced that they would not provide service. And these decisions have been taken without adequately consulting the airlines. This is not an acceptable system particularly when the consequences for safety and the economy are so large,” said Bisignani.
“Safety is our top priority. Airlines will not fly if it is not safe. I have consulted our member airlines that normally operate in the affected airspace. They report missed opportunities to fly safely. The European system results in blanket closures of airspace. I challenge governments to agree on ways to flexibly re-open airspace. Risk assessments should be able to help us re-open certain corridors, if not entire airspaces,” said Bisignani.
To assist governments in assessing risk, airlines have conducted successful test flights in several European countries. The results have not shown any irregularities or safety issues. Airlines are also exploring various operational measures to maintain safe operations. These include day flights, restrictions to specific flight corridors, special climb and descent procedures, and more frequent detailed boroscopic engine inspections to detect damage.
The scale of airspace closures currently seen in Europe is unprecedented. “We have seen volcanic activity in many parts of the world but rarely has it resulted in airspace closures - and never at this scale. When Mount St. Helens erupted in the US in 1980, we did not see large scale disruptions, because the decisions to open or close airspace were risk managed with no compromise on safety,” said Bisignani, who urged Eurocontrol to establish a volcano contingency centre capable of making coordinated decisions.
Bisignani called for an urgent meeting of the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO), the specialized agency of the UN, to define government responsibility for the decisions to open or close airspace in a coordinated and effective way based on real data and special operating procedures.

Interesting -and timely - article in New Scientist at the moment concerning the supervolcano Toba that exploded about 75k years ago.

What is relevant is that they give the amounts of magma ejected by more recent eruptions (all values in cubic km)

Mount St Helens (1980) 0.5
Mount Pinatubu (1991) 5
Krakatoa (1883) 12

(as an aside Toba was 2500 !!)

There are of course big differences - the eruptions above were explosive and dumped all their magma into the atmosphere in a relatively short period of time rather than a continual stream - but it gives an idea of scale.

Hello, media man/woman. Times? Telegraph? ITN? In answer, yes we could, if allowed to. However:

There appears to be ash traces down to quite low levels (7000').
If you fly a large jet low level it burns much more fuel.
If you are flying low level you might drop out of controlled airspace, and start mixing it with light aircraft and gliders.

Exactly Aslak
 

Aslak, You are right.
We now have Health and Safety at its ultimate - Stop All Activity. :ugh:
The judgment of those in charge is seriously questionable if only because they have never seen this situation before.
Safe operation is about managing risk, not avoiding it altogether.

Peter We:

If it is an "engineer-business" decision, then why not leave the decision to those directly affected, i.e. the airlines?

But to put your idea in a more logical wrapping: if you have to make decisions, you need data - statistically reasonably sound data. I repeat: there has been no concerted effort by the EU to collect and evaluate such data. Instead, the authorities are flying blind without instruments.

Al Fakhem,

They're not flying blind, they just use different instruments than us. See above

The problem here is that there is no quantified scale of risk and response associated with volcanic events. We have an ever-improving ability to monitor and detect atmospheric anomalies such as volcanic residue, but we don't have a recognised methodology for determining a factored 'safe' suspension of contaminants in the atmosphere. At the moment, because we have ancient and now demonstrably inadequate rules, the mantra is 'any volcanic dust, don't fly'. But that rule was instigated at a time when our only reliable way of detecting such residue was visual - so, if it could be seen, it was relatively simple and not too disruptive to apply a defined 'avoid' area, which included a buffer zone 'just in case'. That worked fine, and the many hundreds of volcanic eruptions where that rule has been applied and followed have not caused us more than temporary inconvenience.

Now we have a situation where we can not only see far more of the stuff, but we can use very powerful computers to estimate, extrapolate and give 'worst case' projections - to which we then apply the 'any dust, don't fly' rule. As we are beginning to realise, the regulatory tools just aren't up to the job. In tandem with our improved detection and prediction techniques, we need - and very quickly - a comprehensive analysis of what is safe, what is 'safe enough (but possibly expensive in engineering terms)', what is marginal, and what is a definite 'no go'.

Without that comprehensively revised regulatory matrix, we are stuck with VAACs saying 'there's potentially dust EVERYWHERE', rules that say 'you can't fly', and politicians unwilling to put their careers on the line to make some kind of pragmatic decision. In the meantime, economies, airlines, importers and exporters, and many millions of peoples occupations, go to the wall.

Safety is not an static absolute. It is always a dynamic compromise. It's time a few politicians woke up to that.

...and how predictable - the safety of people in the air is now being put under pressure by financial forces as the ban extends again. I appreciate how desperate the situation is, but you cannot, and must not allow aircraft full of people to fly through volcanic ash - no matter how much danger the airlines are in of financial ruin, regardless of how many days your family have been stuck in Mallorca. Everyone is desperate to get the planes in the air again, but some are advocating playing games with peoples' lives in order to get there.

It doesn't matter if the airlines do go bust, it doesn't matter if you end up having to cycle back from Turin - as undesirable as both scenarios are, they are infinitely preferable to the possibility of a single airliner dropping out of the sky with engine failure. Not just for the obvious loss of life reason, but also for the defence of the principle of 'safety first'. If we allow a fudge that permits an "acceptable level of risk" under commercial, governmental and popular pressure, - that sets a precedent that when the !!!! hits the fan (no pun intended !), it's ok to start bending the rules - and this is one industry where that cannot be permitted - under any circumstances. History is littered with disasters caused by safety being impinged by commercial pressures, and it's concerning me greatly that we could be watching another one unfold before us now.

The bottom line here is that almost everyone calling for the ban to be lifted isn't qualified to make the scientific and engineering judgements on what is safe and what isn't. They are arguing their corner from a commercial / financial or personal perspective - and that includes most people on here too.

For initial time make the air space non RVSM and more spacing between landings

The KLM 744 for starters...

I've just read the report from the Dornier 228 flight DCALM (possibly the only scientific flight thats been made, the BA and KLM political stunt flying doesn't count) and they had a definite bum sucking up seat cloth moment at 5000 feet 52.75N 002.38E.

We're still currently operating in an information vacuum as to what's really out there.

BD
P.S. I don't intend posting that report up here on a public website as, to quote the author, "I'm sure you'll be aware that this was written for internal use, so is a little rough around the edges, but it seems most appropriate to simply release you the unamended document.
This is regarded as being in the public domain, although given it's not really designed for public consumption so I'd appreciate it if it was kept between aviation or scientific professionals."

Lithuanian airspace is open (Vilnus FIR), and Riga FIR above FL200 is open from today (06:00 UTC, if I remember correctly).

I still don't feel coordinated approach....are the CAAs and ministries communicating well enough among each other? Or just looking up to the EU politicians and whatever Eurocontrol will come up with (or NATS, at worst)?

Re-Heat

KLM flew into a clearly visible ash plume, thinking that it was a cloud. No engines will survive that.

Dave

Why no word from the likes of GE,RR,Pratt amongst others as to their view on things? Have BA,KLM,Lufthansa done their engine boroscopes? and if so what were the results? I expect that when we eventually get flying again to start having problems with various pneumatic components,i remember when we were kids at the beach, no matter how carefull you were, you still ended up with sand in your sarnies.

So, we decide to fly again with volcanic ash in the atmosphere across our route- how is this going to work?

1. The Met Office/VAAC will continue to publish their best assessment of path and area affected by volvanic ash, as is their duty; it will be depicted on SIGWX charts, NOTAMS and in other pre-flight planning information.

2. Our Ops Manuals and Airplane & Engine OEM's advise that we must avoid flight into 'known' areas of volcanic ash. Commander's then have the dilema of deciding how to operate their flights in the face of a known hazard to flight. Will there be a derogation issued by our airlines and respective NAA's that pilot's can fly into 'known' areas of volcanic ash?

3. As a sound precautionary principle, after we do start flying en-mass, we will, at least for a period of time, require a check of each aircraft & engines inaccordance with the engine manufacturers procedures. This will be disruptive enough, as a previous engineering posts highlighted its not that straight forward. I don' think the few test flights that have been conducted are sufficient to say this isn't required.

What about engine/airframe warranty issues?

4. How will the leasing companies react to companies flying their aircraft into areas of known volcanic ash, and what agreements will be required to defer risk from the lessor to the lessee? Return conditions are the airlines responsibility I know, but I would think consultation is required.

5. Insurance? some agreement will presumably be required with our insurers on the above. If the airlines do accept the risk do they have sufficient capital in their business to do that for a large fleet of airplanes?

6. NATS/Eurocontrol?, a derogation will be required to permit IFR clearances to be issued into areas of know Volcanic ash.

7. And as EU operators how is this going to coordinated across Europe and a common approach established?

And I am sure there are many other issues I can't think of right now that are going to conspire against us in the coming days. Is there anyone out there that can tell us what's happening in the airlines, insurance, leasing companies and regulatory bodies regard to the above.

Tommoutrie in post #1320

Your point is?

One could equally ask:

Have you noticed how many of the 'it'll-be-all-right-on-the-nighters' and let's get back up there jockeys are pilots with no vulcanology or geology knowledge at all?

Having a pilot's licence doesn't make the holder an expert in everything.

I have various licences and qualifications that I have aquired during my 36 years as an aviation professional. None are pilot's licences, so do not qualify to appear in my profile.

Speaking as SLF, the airlines may decide to restart a limited flight schedule, do you really think that I would put my family or myself at risk, under the present conditions, just because you think it will be ok. The decision to fly must be a decision based on safety, not on economic necessity. If there was just one incident, that was attributed to volcanic ash, which the airline was aware of, the resultant fall out from the worlds press would be far more catastrophic. Having seen and read many comments and views from informed sources, I am left with the overall impression that we do not know enough about this situation to be able to safely operate aircraft. At the end of the day, you may be ready to operate the planes, it is up to us to get on them.

Hmmm, ...and when did this flight happen BDiONU ?






.

Low level piston commercial flights also grouned
 

Can anyone tell me why the CAA has "asked" operators to stop commercial low level operations in piston aircraft?

I have 2 photographic flights to do, one in a Cessna 172 and one in a Senneca both not above 2000 feet and both are banned but both aircraft are legal and currently active for Flight training.


It appears that if I climb in a Cessna for fun or training it is safe, but the moment I take my camera the aircraft is susceptible to volcanic Ash.

Have any universities done any scientific studies on the increase in abrasiveness of volcanic ash when in proximity to a Canon Camera? :ugh:

Cherokees, Comanches, Apaches - Indian Country. Dangerous.

no sig ........ beat me to it !! Precisely

Friday 16th April 1448 - 1734BST.

BD

- Tagsschau.de

My translation: " Since this morning aircraft are allowed to take off and land in Austria. Which flights are conducted and which destinations are approached lies within the responsibility of the airlines said a spokesperson of austrian ATC Austro Control. The current prognostic charts and the fact, that during testflights no damage to the skin or the engines of testaircraft have occured lets one conclude "that presently there is no danger given by ash- or dust particles."

Now, that's what I've been saying! Why do all the research, when the facts are already on the table!

Of course research should be done for the future, by engine manufactureres and it should be part of the proving airworthyness process in the future, but we need to save our industry now - if it's safe, and it obviously is.

Nic

We have data; government aircraft from several nations, including the UK have tested the air quality and stated that its is not good enough for aircraft to fly. You choose to ignore that, as well as ignoring the advice of engineers, engine manufactures and the experience of the many aircraft that have flow through similar concentrations of ash plumes.

Why not allow airlines to make the decision - well, its very obvious from the industries reaction that they will fly no matter what and use the "Gee-whizz who would have though that would happen" excuse to demand a bailout.

Have we forgotten there's an election in a couple of weeks?
No labour politician is going to risk ordering the reopening of airspace if it might mean losing votes.
The likes of Lord Mandelson and others have already been on television with ready sound bites like 'Safety is our primary consideration' which are obviously comforting to the majority of voters who dont really understand the concept of risk management when applied to aviation wich is still perceived in many eyes as 'dangerous' even though it is statistically by far the safest form of transport.
Maybe we will have to wait till the end of the election before someone wil have the guts to make a command decision!

As with so many things in aviation, "cut and dried" cannot be applied to this situation.
I have flow through volcanic ash that apparently fell "out of a clear blue sky".
After taking careful avoiding action well to the windward of a visibly erupting volcano, I was ambushed on final by ash falling out of a blue sky over 100 miles upwind of the volcano. It looked like the haze/Sahara dust which we are accustomed to. It did not last long and we left after a short delay. I understand later on it came back and coated the island with about 1/10 inch of fine white pumice type dust.
So "see and avoid" may not always deal with the problem. It is more complicated than that.

Yes, it obviously a vote winning strategy to close down the holiday business, strand 150k abroad, put major companies into bankruptcy and hundreds of thousands of people out of work, interfere with the export business and cause potential serious economic damage at the time of election.

Any political party would find that a good idea would it? Are you serious?

If you had bothered to read this thread, you would have se comment from GE specifically about the effects.

Why do so many people feel happy to make statement along the line of ' I know nothing about this subject, I haven't bothered to find any thing about it but on the basis of my lack of knowledge, even when its pointed out to me, my gut feeling is that they are all wrong'.

Vested interest.

Tosh.

The research aircraft returned safely, and nobody has released pics of their turbines. And the aircraft that did have problems in ash were in thick ash, not the traces we have in the atmosphere over N Europe.

I spy administrators, towing the established party line.



The point is that modern politicians are totally risk-adverse, and that Gordon Brown always goes AWOL when there are difficult issues to discuss and assess. Which means we will never get a rational decision.

European airspace may well be unusable, alternatively it may be absolutely fine, but we will never know until someone starts researching, assessing and making rational decisions.

At the moment, we have political rabbits caught in the headlights of an Icelandic eruption.

The D-CALM info is the only truly subjective info available in the UK at this time. As BDiONU states the rest are just publicity stunts. OK, BAW and KLM found no problems, but how thorough was the post-flight inspection? The Finnish Air Force seems to have drawn a different conclusion.

Safety and risk analysis is becoming more and more important these days, looking back I see many practices which were normal then that would reduce today's beancounters, regulators, SLF and crews today to tears.
OK the politicians have over-reacted, but at least on the side of safety. I would be more worried if they let themselves be pushed into opening the airspace and things going TU.

Ref. plans to fly pax into Italy and Spain then further overland, I wonder what the locals will have to say about increased number of flights, and a suspension of any night time curfews?


edited to add, Cool Guy there are no elections anywhere else so what relevance does your statement have?

Sorry is this is a 'repeat' of any earlier post (cannot cope with 75 previous pages on this subject!).

It seems clear to me that some proper and immediate research needs to be undertaken given this 'opportunity' as to what levels of volcanic dust can be 'tolerated' my modern jet engines without using crews/pax etc as 'crash test dummies'

For example, why cannot test pilots in a 4 jet engined aircraft take off, shut down 2 engines, and then fly a controlled profile at various levels/locations etc in this dust cloud to gather data that can also be supported by a stripdown of the operating engines once back on the ground. IF the 'low levels' of volcanic dust did cause an in flight shutdown, the 2 remaining donks would be available for use once clear of the area. Such a flight would carry minimal risk, but the data gained would be invaluable.

Flying in ashCLOUDS is definetely unsafe.

But the discussion is whether flying in contaminated air by ash is safe or unsafe.

The testflight Dornier did fly in clouds.
The KLM, LH, AF, BA testflights stayed VMC and had apparently no damage.

So why not open airspace during daylight and VMC only. ?
Climb VMC to FL200+++ and then overfly the contaminated air.

mystery flights
 

KL7451 and BLX616F on their way to Paris ?
KL7451 flew at 25000ft and has just landed in Paris.

There seems to be a fair number of people calling for re-opening of the airspace, so how about they all pop on board a BA 747, and go flying for a few hours in the ash and let the rest of us know if its alright?

Personally I find it worrying that in the face of extreme doubt, there appear to be people in positions of responsibility who are behaving like cowboys with regard to safety. Reassuring... Not.:(