Vulcanic ash crippling European Air Traffic.

Some of you might be aware of this already, but it's certainly interesting to follow the recent developments.

The Volcano in Iceland that erupted a couple of weeks ago has changed and is now a sub-glacial eruption which is 10-20 times larger. Air traffic has been restricted because of ash. Volcanoes under glaciers create a huge amount of ash.

Vulcanic ash can bring down an aircraft if it flies through it, due to the clogging up of the engines and ash can scratch the windshield so much that it would be impossible to see anything at all. Flight BA009 is a very famous example and you can read the story here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Airways_Flight_9

To give you a little teaser, the aircraft had to have looked something like this when it hit the ash:


Currently, the ash cloud is being carried from Iceland to mainland Europe.
Today at 12:00Z (UTC) time, the picture would have looked something like this:


The red area is up to 6km.
The green area is 6km to 9km.
The blue area is 9km to 15km.

As you can see, Scandinavia is already covered, which subsequently led to the fact that there is currently no air traffic in those regions. The whole UK airspace has been closed aswell, Belgian airspace will close partially at 13:30Z and full closure of Belgian, Dutch, Luxemburg and German airspace is expected to commence at 15:30Z. Many flights have returen to their homebase/airport of departure and other have diverted to nearby airports.

On http://www.flightradar24.com you can track a lot of Western European flights, look how empty the airspace in the UK and Scandinavia is! (he website might be a slow load due to a lot of visitors).

If you'd like to follow the European developments and have updates on what going on in the air, visit http://www.airliners.net/aviation-forums/general_aviation/read.main/4776564/. This thread on another forum that I am on provides some excellent info and will also give you a few links to images/video feeds.

There is no telling when the ash clouds has blown over, it could take as long as a few days. And in aviation terms that's a lot!

Anyway, I realize many of you think this is boring and are not interested, but if you have time to spare and/or are bored, give it a read.

I can add something to it:

This is an actual satpicture (12z) 12.00 utc



Next link shows the clouds, Dust is barely seen but It shows the way it gets blown to europe:
http://www.sat24.nl/Eyjafjallajokull-volcano.aspx

i looks like a flying diament ;D lol

Nice topic,

I just heard that Hollands airtraffic is down yeah, A friend of my dad gone to Leeuwarden [ airport ] to spot some incoming plane's, but nothing got into the air :O.

and isn't schiphol completely closed?

Jup, the Frisian Flag exercise at Leeuwarden has been cancelled and the Dutch airspace will be fully closed as of 19:00 local time.

The airport will ofcourse be open, but there will be no aircraft flying.

Amazing post Quick ^^
The aircraft seems unreal, hard to believe it's real o.O

Necro wrote:The aircraft seems unreal, hard to believe it's real o.O

QuickSilver wrote:the aircraft had to have looked something like this when it hit the ash

But quick, i'm not a traffic man but all the plains are on the ground in europe right now?
Mother nature still own.

umax wrote:

Necro wrote:The aircraft seems unreal, hard to believe it's real o.O

QuickSilver wrote:the aircraft had to have looked something like this when it hit the ash

But quick, i'm not a traffic man but all the plains are on the ground in europe right now?
Mother nature still own.

More and more planes will be grounded yes, and as of 19:00 local time, there will be no aircraft in the air in Belgium, Germany, Luxemburg and The Netherlands (plus the aformentioned countries like the whole of the UK and Scandinavia.)

Some say it could even take up to a week for the ash to clear in regions like Scandinavia. I hope not, because then a lot of people and companies will be in deep sh*t.

Here's another interesting satellite image btw:

US President Barack Obama will attend the funeral of his Polish counterpart Lech Kaczynski, killed in an air crash in western Russia on Saturday.

The leaders of Russia, France and Germany are also due to attend the burial in the city of Krakow on Sunday.

80 planes with VIP's are going to land in Cracow on sunday. I wonder if it will possible when this ash is in the air.

The predictions for tomorrow morning don't like very hopeful! Look at the lower right screen, the date + tyime indicates tomorrowmorniong the 16th at 06:00Z. Look how far the ashcloud goes inland.. It's going to be a VERY quiet morning in the skies I suppose :O

http://www.weerwoord.be/uploads/174201015355.png

Edit: I just found a Norgwegian forecast for saturday morning at 02:00Z. (That's more than 24h from now!)

Gothenburg's airport Landvetter, also down. We get the ash cloud to night, 18~19:00, the time when they said that the ash cloud is coming in over Gothenburg.

Kempa wrote:Gothenburg's airport Landvetter, also down. We get the ash cloud to night, 18~19:00, the time when they said that the ash cloud is coming in over Gothenburg.

holy, you mean we will be able to see some huge ashclouds ?!
and if most airports around upper europe is getting closed,
doesnt that mean there wont be any "gas speeding up the global warming" for a couple of days whatsoever ?
(dont know how to say it more precisly.)

Uhh.. what a danger!

smileftw wrote:

Kempa wrote:Gothenburg's airport Landvetter, also down. We get the ash cloud to night, 18~19:00, the time when they said that the ash cloud is coming in over Gothenburg.

holy, you mean we will be able to see some huge ashclouds ?!
and if most airports around upper europe is getting closed,
doesnt that mean there wont be any "gas speeding up the global warming" for a couple of days whatsoever ?
(dont know how to say it more precisly.)

No. We wont be able to see some hude ash clouds, maybe some falling ashes from the sky.. But no hude ash clouds, to high up to see. But here in nödinge ( fail city T_T) its falling black ashes from the sky o.o

Necro wrote:Uhh.. what a danger!

Sorry but.. whats the danger?

smileftw wrote:

Necro wrote:Uhh.. what a danger!

Sorry but.. whats the danger?

The danger is, the airplanes wont be able to see. The paint / windows on the airplanes will be damaged, same with the engiene ( typo). If the engiene gets to much ashes w/e it can stuck.. And wont run = airplane crash = like 180 ppls= dead = danger.

Kempa wrote:

smileftw wrote:

Necro wrote:Uhh.. what a danger!

Sorry but.. whats the danger?

The danger is, the airplanes wont be able to see. The paint / windows on the airplanes will be damaged, same with the engiene ( typo). If the engiene gets to much ashes w/e it can stuck.. And wont run = airplane crash = like 180 ppls= dead = danger.

is that it? I thought it was something else, since that was well eplained earlier on o.o

I think people highly underestimate this ash, because when they think of ash they think of thesame ash that comes from wood.

Wood ash is a very soft material that is hardly any harm to anything.

However, vulcanic ash is highly corrosive, due to their sharp and pointy structure.
So you can see the differance, here's a microscopic view of vulcanic ash:


And here is regular (wood) ash:


This means that vulcanic ash basicly is a microscopicly small knife. You wouldn't want to run into a knife at a high speed, so would a plane not want to fly into bilions of microscopic small knives.
The ash enters the engines and either rips the inside to shreds, or just completely block the engine.


To show the danger of vulcanic ash: Breathing in this ash has a pretty significant chance to cause internal bleeding (a small percentage of this ash is small enough to be taken up into the blood stream)

How wise you are Marksel ^^
I will use the first image as wallpaper

Necro wrote:How wise you are Marksel ^^
I will use the first image as wallpaper

Haha I just find vulcanos fascinating :>

And indeed, it's a pretty sweet picture.

I have to tell you, somehow I heard nothing from this issue in portugal, thanks so much for it.
I dont know if you are able to answer me, but why did the vulcano change his behavior, if the ashes are doing any damage and what is the prediction for the ashes cloud course
sorry for the questions but I have few free time

I heard that the vulcano was 400 years 'sleeping'.
But nothing is for ever, so it began to eject lava (don't ask me why because I don't remember)
I saw an amazing image where you could see the lava above the ice in Iceland

Good topic Quicksilver even better than the Swedish nub newspappers, My local airport was closed 12.00 today (Sturup airport) 40-50 km from CPH, And i also read about a meteorologist who warned people with heartproblem and asthma to stay out of the clouds since it's not clean, Normal people should also stay out if it since there are some substances which aren't good for the peoples health,

I must say Iceland got some good shit, maybe US will plan an attack

Just heard it on the news in swedish Television.
Can this ash hurt our health by inhale it?

pn wrote:
I dont know if you are able to answer me, but why did the vulcano change his behavior, if the ashes are doing any damage

It did not exactly 'change' its behaviour.
Iceland is a vulcanic island, its high ground consists out of mainly solidified lava. Over the middle of Iceland is a big 'crack' which is the border between 2 tectonic (no clue how to spell this) plates, these plates move away from eachother and every time there is an opening between these 2 plates, lava spews out, solidifies, and iceland grows.

Major eruptions like this simply happen once every while (wouldn't know specificly about this one how frequently this happends), duo to a massive build of pressure between the two plates.



As for the ashes doing damage (also in response to what emziek said), unless you live in Iceland (which you don't) don't worry about breathing these ashes in, IF you breath it in (which is VERY unlikely you'll, since the ashes are high up in the sky) it is in such low quantities that it cannot hurt a person's health significantly (maybe a bit of coughing at max)

Inhaling ashes is not a problem unless you are within a phew kilometers of the eruption