I don't think this would be an end of check, running late, management driven stamp off. I think that it is a little too visible to suggest that contamination would be ignored.

I think all interested paries need to put financial interests aside and take advice from the Meteorology Scientists and Volcanic experts. They don't tell me how to fly and I won't tell them they are wrong.
Safety first....end of :ok:

Can I see ash at 800 km/hr? Well, irrelevant as that question may be, I can see waterclouds flying even faster. So...

Anyway, we were talking about the invisible stuff which may or may not affect the engine after a few months. Right?

Unless I've missed it, I'm surprised there has been no comment here on this report .... F-16 engine damage

update
 

BBC News - Volcano cloud as it happens: 19 April

This on the BBC live update page a few minutes ago
"1207 (GMT time) Nato fighter jets have suffered engine damage after flying through volcanic ash cloud, a senior US official has said. The official gave few details except to say that a build-up of glass was found in the jet engines."

"1209 The BBC's Lorna Gordon in Iceland says:
The top of the ash cloud reaching into the sky has lowered. It is no longer registering on weather radar and scientists estimate its maximum height is now around 3,000-4,000m. Mush less ash is now being released into the atmosphere compared to the beginning of this eruption and scientists say they believe the volcanic activity may now be entering a different phase.'

Too mush Brennivin or a particular kind of ash?



Mickjoebill

BBC news just reporting that "Western European" F16's suffered engine damage?

Anybody?

BBC news stating that the eruption is showing signs of abatement.

On a lighter note to quote BBC R4 at the weekend 'the lib dems winning an election debate and volcanoes erupting in the north. Surely two of three signs of the apocalypse'

Send the link to Willie Walsh, he might start to wake up to the reality and stop squealing about profits :=



I can't beleive he thinks this is some sort of scientific proof that it's safe to fly anywhere in the vicinity of the ash

Volcanic ash: Willie Walsh joins British Airways test flight | Public Sector Travel

Wait a moment. A US official talks about Western European F16's? Are you sure this 'yank' is not confusing it with the F18?

has there been any input from rolls-royce, CFM, International Aero Engines et al? surely their own in-house testing (if they have conducted any) should provide answer as to what the safe limit of dust ingestion is. This is assuming they have actually been asked...

Mark Pilling:
Statement from CANSO - some good news at last?

WELCOME NEWS FOR GLOBAL AVIATION: EUROPEAN AIRSPACE LIKELY TO RESUME OPERATIONS TUESDAY MORNING

CANSO, the Global Voice of ATM, has welcomed the decision by European air traffic control organisations to recommend resuming flights by 8am UTC Tuesday morning (20th April) as “welcome news for airlines and passengers around the world”.

CANSO Director General Graham Lake said: “Indications are that European airspace will start to reopen on Tuesday morning, which is welcome news for airlines and passengers around the world. But we should caution that it will take several days for operations to return to normal. The precise extent to which European airspace will be opened is also still subject to individual government approval.

Air traffic control organisations across the globe are working hard to resume flights as soon as practicable and we commend them for their efforts and cooperative spirit.”

Ireland's RTÉ has a bit more on the NATO story:

12.05 A buildup of glass has been found in the jet engine of a NATO fighter plane in Europe, a senior US official said.

'Allied F-16s were flying and they did find glass buildup inside the engines,' the official told reporters in Brussels, clarifying that the ash had affected one aircraft.


RTÉ News: LIVE - Travel Updates

AndoniP of course! According to our managers they are in continuous talk with CFM, the engine manufacturer and such.

F16 engines are not high bypass turbofans, so don't expect the to behave in a similar way.

Good point to which i have been berated for not trawling through pages of mostly drivel driven by people who know or dont know (depending on your view point).

I think you'll find the aircraft in question is actually D-CALM

NERC Airborne Research and Survey Facility - Aircraft

canceled flights out of St Johns Newfoundland
 

Flights were canceled today out of St Johns Newfoundland due to ash clouds there.

Atmospheric research Aircraft (ARA)
 

Anyone know if the BAe146-301 Atmospheric research Aircraft (ARA) has been involved in all this??

Directflight - Atmospheric Research

f16 or not all gas turbine engine have a similar core so high bypass or not ash will still react the same

The ash is forecast to reach the American east coast by 1800 GMT today, which might scupper any transatlantic flights

Can this aeroplane actually reach the sort of levels that most commercial activity takes place? I'm not familiar with the peformance of this aircraft. Unless of course they're just seeing if the turboprop regionals can get flying again.

Doc C

People

Saying that sending a BA 747 up is a publicity stunt is just daft.

The arguments against flying from all those that are allegedly in the know and all the "experts" that post here is the contamination on the engine blades. They bang on about the finnish airforce jet etc etc etc. Well precisely the reason BA, LH, AF and KLM are flying aircraft about presently is to see if there is any build up.

Rather than taking the scientists word for it, because even the scientists accept that they have no idea what concentration IS dangerous and what concentration isnt, the airlines have gone up and conducted flights. They have weighed up the risks and the worst case scenario is that one of them comes back with ash deposits all over the engine(s) and maybe they have to scrap the airframe. That is NOT a publicity stunt. That is helping the scientists validate and verify their current data.

If the Dornier that flew last week was able to detect a level of concentration and that level appears NOT to incur any ash damage on the engine, then we now have a starting point at which we can continue to validate so that in the future, we can tune that concentration level to get it as accurate as possible.

Working with the scientists on the ground, if the eruption characteristics change, we can get further air samples taken by the Dornier or any other measuring capability and compare it to the levels we have now so that airlines can be advised to shut down ops if they need to. And if this happens, the airlines can send up another series of flights to validate that concentration level.

No airline is going to put its aircraft in the air knowingly endangering the public, but they also appreciate that maybe a complete shutdown is not the answer either. Maybe, JUST MAYBE, the possibility exists that 000's of passengers are stranded unnecessarily. The airlines would also be the first to say that they have flown their aircraft and it simply is not safe to fly.

Sadly you will probably never see photos of any of the engines that have been flying about in the last 2 days but if you did, would the nay sayers now accept that maybe, it is ok to fly?

Obviously im talking about flying in clear air here....... not in the middle of the plume itself!!!!!!

Enjoy lunch

GW

So who would conduct an impartial inspection.. another airline ?

Vested interest in seeing operations commence ?

Manufacturer ?

Vested interest in reducing potential liability claims ?

Government body ?

Like the one that shut down airspace purportedly on one computer model ?

Like the one that doesnt even know what NATS does or that it is not the regulatory body ?

BA, in fact any operator, has about as much interest in seeing a catastrophic even for an aircraft with it's paint on the tail as the CEO would have in putting his balls through an industrial bacon slicer.

I've bough and sold a number of commercial jet engines over the past few years. One, off wing from a 737 had 9 T1 blades melted through, but you know what, the engine still made its EGT's in limits in the test cell.

There are, and always be contaminats in the air, many of these are destructive to engines over time and as such there are TBO limits on blades, disks, hubs, bearings, shafts etc becuase of this.

Shutting down an airspace over an unknown contaminant level, not knowing where it is, or even what levels are acceptable in terms of everyday exposure is simply crass and destructive to the industry.

Is North African airspace shut down due to dust storms which regularly sump sand over the UK ? do other countries which have regular volcanic activity shut down airspace completely?

We have ASHTAM's they should be used.

According to their website, it's having "blister mods" done:
Flying Programme

1201 Finland says it is opening its main Helsinki-Vantaa airport at 1200 GMT for at least eight hours after a hole opened in the volcanic ash cloud in its airspace.

From a licensed engineer perspective

I have never seen a maintenance manual task for inspection after ingestion of volcanic ash. until there is one in the manual or an approved inspection from the manufacturer, how are engineer supposed to close a tech log entry for this type of ingestion event.
it is the duty of the manufacturer to prove that this type of ingestion event is safe.not willy walsh or a BA boroscope inspector.
did BA ,LH KLM or any other of these 'test airlines' contact the aircraft manufacturer after there flight and look for an inspection procedure??
airlines will probably have to carry out extensive aircraft inspections after each flight.. will this be worth it, an AOG after each flight??

thankfully we have a sensible group(eurocontrol) that are not reducing their saftey standards for commercial interests.
and BTW i am stranded in Hungary.

The 6 flights put up prove nothing, as they are statistically insignificant.

The daily number of flights over Europe is around 24,000. If the chances of encountering a dense patch of dust sufficient to endanger the aircraft was only 0.01% then nearly 3 aircraft a day would have serious incidents. If it was 0.00% then it would be one aircraft every 4 days.

Try getting the airline insurance company to continue to provide cover if the airlines try and start flying again without scientific approval.

In the meantime, the Airlines are starting to request national and EU compensation in the same manner provided after 9/11.

BBC: BA seeks compensation for ash chaos

BA just announced they are loosing £20m per day. You can see why WW is keen to get going again.

Well, thanks for that. Have you considered that the core of the high bypass ratio engine works identically to the core of a low bypass ratio, turbo jet, turbo shaft or turbo prop engine, with similar materials and temperatures?

An there was Helldog demanding the RAF fly Tornados into the ash deliberately to collect data.:ugh: Have you any idea of the futility of that and of how overstretched and under-resourced the armed forces are?

Ground testing of engines with ash contaminants needs to be done, followed by air testing. I am not willing to be flying into unknown risk with or without passengers in a scenario that is going to affect all my engines, and I'm horrified at the arrogance and cavalier attitude of those who think this is all nothing and that we should get back in the air without proper scientific and engineering analysis. You bang on about your professionalism while showing anything but that, meanwhile you refuse to listen to experts in vulcanology, meteorolgy and engineering and refuse to believe the evidence of the several military aircaft affected in lod density ash areas.

So why is it not flying every hour of every day??

This airspace closure is really getting out of bounds with all notion of common sense...
This whole thing really confirms the inabillity of politicians and officials to make any rational decision to any major crisis that creep up on them. As it has been made clear here in previous posts that no real measurement to speak of have been made on air contaminants and all decision making has been based on computer modeling and on what seems perception.

I do not recall a comparable mass hysteria taking place in southeast asia when Mt Pinatubo erupted in 1991. That eruption acording to wikipedia was second largest terrestrial eruption of the 20th century, 10 times larger than the 1980 eruption of Mt St. Helens and the resulting plume circled the globe in a couple of weeks. In comparison makes the current activity in Mt Eyjafjallajökull seem like a fart in the wind...

It is totally unacceptable that authorities in Europe with all modern technologies at their disposal do not put more effort into real measurement on this ´fart´. The only sensible method IMO is to put aircraft up there and boroscope before and after the flights in oder to establish wheter flying is safe or not, obviously I am not talking about flying into visible ash clouds.

The tests that BA, LH and KLM carried out over the weekend showed with out a doubt that deposites in the atmosphere do not affect engines or other aircraft equipment. Even though commercial pressure made the beforementioned airlines send aircraft up there ´into uncharted territory´, they would not put their reputations on the line and deem the airspace safe to fly in if it wouldn´t be. These airlines are all regarded as higly professional outfits and are repected by aviation experts all over the world.

I would think that by now it would be safe to asume that the initial plume has dispersed enough to resume at least 95% of normal flying in the region.

Enoug is enoug since by now our jobs are at serious risk here by inability of politicians and lawmakers to make a rational decision.

airspace closure
 

scuse my ignorance peeps, but I thought that only the Govt could close airspace. Isn't it true that the airspace is still open but that NATS are rejecting IFR flight plans. Can commercial ops be flown VFR?

does anyone know why the regular flight testing facilities and the military outfits throughout europe aren't giving out some results on this? surely they're not just sitting around watching tv like the rest of us.
or is it secret maybe...

It is not Eurocontrol's decision to open or close airspace. As the guy from Eurocontrol made clear on CNN this morning, they implement any decision, but the decision is made by national governements.

But Gordon Brown has run for the hills, as is usual when a difficult decision has to be made, and so all we will see from the UK Parliament this week is a trail of dust from the heels of retreating ministers (volcanic dust, perhaps).

Who wanted the military to fly around and see what happened? :ouch:

NATO fighter jets land safely with volcanic ash damage

The Associated Press

BRUSSELS—A senior Western diplomat says several NATO F-16 fighters suffered engine damage after flying through the volcanic ash cloud covering large parts of Europe.

The official declined to provide more details on the military flights, except to say that glasslike deposits were found inside the planes’ engines after they patrolled over European airspace.

Last week, two Finnish Air Force F-18 fighter-bombers suffered similar damage while flying through the ash plume that has paralyzed air traffic over much of Europe. Both landed safely, but their jet engines will require expensive overhauls.

Volcanic ash tends to stick to a jet engine’s interior parts, such as the turbines, where it melts to form a glassy coating. This restricts air flow and heats up the engine, which can lead to engine failure.

In an earlier post, someone mentioned that if the UK was to adopt the FCC rules here, they would allow the flying of aircraft?

what is the difference between these rules that would allow this?

Here you go, "mate"

http://www.pprune.org/rumours-news/4...r-traffic.html

@Wirelock
Hungary FIR is now open again.

HEL is opening but prognosis might be less desirable.

New cloud of volcanic ash to arrive in Finland on Tuesday -FMI
from Domestic news by [email protected] (HT Assiabi)
According to a forecast by the Finnish Meteorological Institute (FMI) on Monday, another cloud of volcanic ash from Iceland is expected to reach Finland by Tuesday.

The ash cloud is to arrive in southern Finland Tuesday afternoon and spread northwards to cover the entire country at least until Thursday, the forecast continued.

(Source: STT)

Really? You think that no airline management ever makes a risky decision or allows un-necessary dangers to enter operations for commercial advantage? You can't be working in the industry, then.

I don't want to see this stretch out any longer than is necessary - I have lost five days' worth of flight pay now (at least I'm at home, unlike many less fortunate colleagues and pax), and I worry about the financial impacts on the industry and the economy as a whole, but I just don't know whether it's safe to fly or not. The impartial evidence suggests strongly that it isn't, while PR stunts by the airlines, who appear to have avoided flying in the more concentrated cloud over the UK, do nothing to convince me of the safety of flying at all. I'd rather be at home worrying about cash flow than airborne worrying about my engines failing with the additional problems of the airports and airspace being congested with other emergency traffic.