Volcanic eruption closes down UK/Scandinavian airports

[eion]

Rom, the main thing you're forgetting is that the rise of Nazism occurred in a crippled Germany beset upon by the other European nations and picked clean after WWI through the Treaty of Versailles.

That hasn't happened here. Now while we might see anti-immigrant movements it will be spread amongst all of Europe rather than concentrated in one area so an IntraEurope war is highly unlikely. Likewise some of the worst hit countries, Greece for example, are getting some of the biggest help from their European neighbors.

You just can't whip out the Nazis and not expect people to overreact. It sucks all the oxygen out of the room.

[Broomstick]

No argument there, however, not many people are eager to be guinea pigs.

Fair enough. I wonder, what about a partial lifting of the flight ban, allowing cargo flights to go ahead but limiting or outright blocking passenger flights?

There's some merit in that idea, but we need to move people, too. The other problem is that, even if we're willing to risk losing a cargo flight and its crew there is the problem of where the airplane is going to slam into the ground. Having a disabled airliner of any size land on a neighborhood or city would be a Bad Thing.

Right now, if I understand correctly, the authorities are divvying up European airspace into three levels of risk, and I think that's a step in the right directions. They're also changing the altitudes fly at to minimize dust exposure. It also looks like they're running more VFR flights - why that's safer in some respects may not be obvious. The thing is, if the pitot-static system quits you lose your altitude and airspeed indicators. Those are vital to flying on instruments. If, however, you can look outside and see your surroundings then you've got a decent chance to avoid obstacles and make a safe landing based on estimated/eyeballed altitude and speed. This does, however, require that you can actually see what's outside - which means no flying in clouds and not so much flying at night. In this case, flying at night is particularly bad because you'll notice a window that's fogging up MUCH quicker in daylight, and if that window is fogging over from ash abrasion then you need to find a place to and before you can't see out again.

So, minimizing ash exposure and flying in conditions and under rules where ash damage, even when it causes significant damage, is less likely to cause catastrophe, are both good ideas.

[folti78]

Why airlines resisted setting safe dust level for flights – until now

David Adam and Dan Milmo
The Guardian, Wednesday 21 April 2010

Last night's reopening of the skies over the UK followed intense lobbying from an airline industry that for years has resisted efforts by regulators to set a "safe" level of volcanic ash at which it is considered that flights can continue, the Guardian can reveal.

What airlines had been afraid of was the potential damage to their reputation and finances in the event of one of their planes being lost due to dust after an all-clear had been announced, with a fear of legal actions arising from the deaths of all those who had been on board.

Unwillingness to grasp this nettle hampered what had been continuing discussions on the dust issue prior to the Eyjafjallajokull volcano erupting.

However, faced with losses running into hundreds of millions as the effect of Eyjafjallajokull spread and lingered into a sixth day, it was the airlines who began to call for the regulators to determine and set such a safe threshold, to avert the severe financial consequences of planes idle across Europe and passengers claiming refunds for cancelled journeys.

A source at the International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO) said of the history of the failure of efforts to agree a safe level: "The bottom line is that there is a huge liability issue for the industry here, so they have been super cautious on providing information. If they say it is safe, and there is an accident, they will get slaughtered."

The organisation has been trying since at least 2008 to get airlines and manufacturers to help establish a consensus on a safe concentration of volcanic ash.

In an indication of the pressure now put on air safety bodies, British Airways said hours before the UK's flights resumed that it hoped the UK's Civil Aviation Authority now had all the data necessary to lift the flight ban. Pointedly referring to the relaxation of restrictions by states such as Italy and the Netherlands, BA had said: "Despite the fact that airspace over most European countries is open, UK airspace remains effectively closed. We hope that on the basis of the data provided by the industry, the CAA will be in a position to direct National Air Traffic Services (Nats) to reopen UK airspace."

Airline sources said that a meeting this morning between the CAA, Nats, airline executives and the transport secretary, Lord Adonis, was "constructive" as safe flight corridors through the ash were discussed.

This week BA, easyJet and Virgin Atlantic have demanded a greater say in decisions on flight bans and air safety.

The perceived inconsistency of various European states' approaches to the volcano cloud has been one of the biggest complaints from airlines.

Ryanair, Europe's largest short-haul carrier, became the latest to reveal the scale of its losses, £5m a day, while the Emirates airline of Dubai warned of an "implosion" if restrictions were not lifted.

"Unless the states ... come in and bail these companies out, there won't be many carriers left," said Tim Clark, Emirates president. "You simply can't afford to shut down something the size of Europe."

Asked on BBC Newsnight about how much pressure the government had come under to lift the flight ban, Adonis said "They've obviously wanted to be able to fly their planes - of course they have - but that has not been the issue … the issue is the assessment of the safety authorities as to what is the safe way in which planes can fly when there is a presence of ash.

"The fact which has changed in the last week is we have had a volcanic eruption, and having to assess safe levels of ash within which planes can fly has been an urgent issue which the safety authorities have had to deal with. That's been what's changed over the last five days - it's not been pressure from the industry which has caused [it]."

The crucial change came when Nats announced that safety tests had shown aero engines "had increased tolerance levels in low ash density levels".

Nats spokesman Alex Bristol told Sky News: "We don't feel we have been under pressure from the government. Where the pressure has come has been to better understand the safety implications. Our first priority has been safety, and the reason we didn't simply lift the restrictions was because of our desire for safety."

According to the International Air Transport Association (Iata), the crisis had cost carriers $200m (£130m) a day – most of it for European operators. A group of those airlines, including the association of budget airlines, urged the European Union to waive consumer legislation which imposes costs, including hotels for stranded passengers, during prolonged disruption; it was turning "a crisis into an economic catastrophe".

Going back into the history of attempts to set a safe level of ash, minutes of a Paris meeting in 2008 show the industry at odds with regulators. The ICAO meeting concluded that improved measurement techniques should allow progress "with regard to the definition of the lower limit on safe ash concentrations".

The ICAO complained it had "proven difficult to get formal aviation representation" at workshops on the issue organised by the UN's World Meteorological Organisation. It suggested "input of the aviation industry to this problem may have to be sought" through its sub-group on volcanoes, which has industry representatives. It asked several groups, including the International Air Transport Association, Iata, representing 230 airlines, to prepare reports for the volcano group's next meeting at Lima in Peru last month.

Minutes for that meeting show the industry did not deliver. "Iata informed the group about the strong efforts made in order to get representation from the industry ... but unfortunately these efforts had not been successful, to the disappointment of the group."

Herbert Puempel, chief of the WMO aeronautical meteorology division, who sits on the ICAO group, said the industry's reluctance was "fully understandable". "They have found it very difficult to come back with a single answer. If they have one number then it would be very low," he said. "The moment you set a limit then the lawyers will have a field day."

Iata said: "At the end of the day we are dependent on the airframe and engine manufacturers and their experts. We have encouraged them to participate." However, an aerospace industry source told the Guardian that any attempt to blame aircraft and engine makers was "passing the buck".
guardian.co.uk © Guardian News and Media Limited 2010

Bolding mine. Delaying more refined regulation due to fear of lawsuits and PR disasters, then try to bully the authorities who enforce the current regulation, when it costs too much.

P.S: Dartzap IIRC only Controlled Airspaces has been closed in the UK, outside of them there were no banning of flights. Too bad, all of your civilian airports sitting inside of said zones.

[The Romulan Republic]

Rom, the main thing you're forgetting is that the rise of Nazism occurred in a crippled Germany beset upon by the other European nations and picked clean after WWI through the Treaty of Versailles.

That hasn't happened here. Now while we might see anti-immigrant movements it will be spread amongst all of Europe rather than concentrated in one area so an IntraEurope war is highly unlikely. Likewise some of the worst hit countries, Greece for example, are getting some of the biggest help from their European neighbors.

You just can't whip out the Nazis and not expect people to overreact. It sucks all the oxygen out of the room.

I agree its not going to be a carbon-copy of any past historical event. All the same, I would not call an increase in xenophobia throughout Europe a good thing. Which is my point here. Economic crash=political unrest. What exact form that unrest take is open to debate.

As for violence, it might not mean an interstate war in Europe, but I see a potential spike in hate crimes and harasement of foreigners, with a retaliatory spike in race riots and terrorist incidents.

[eion]

I agree its not going to be a carbon-copy of any past historical event. All the same, I would not call an increase in xenophobia throughout Europe a good thing. Which is my point here. Economic crash=political unrest. What exact form that unrest take is open to debate.

As for violence, it might not mean an interstate war in Europe, but I see a potential spike in hate crimes and harasement of foreigners, with a retaliatory spike in race riots and terrorist incidents.

I agree, none of that is a good prospect, but the point is the violence and xenophobia would be spread amongst the European states, rather than concentrated as it was in post WWI Germany. If that is the case it is combatable by the government so long as it remains below a revolutionary threshold.

[Darth Yan]

my father would have been coming back today were it not for the damn things. The rest of us got back just in time.

[Broomstick]

Relevant article on how Alaska Airlines copes with volcanic ash (Alaska and Washington being two US states with significant volcanism. Hawaii has a lot, too, but the eruptions there tend to be more lava and less ash). From the Wall Street Journal. Emphasis added by me.

Alaska Airlines knows volcanic ash. Its decades of experience navigating around volcanic eruptions in Washington and Alaska could prove useful as airlines return to Europe's ash-plagued skies.

Among the lessons: Pilot training, computer modeling to accurately predict ash trajectories and regular testing of the skyways when eruptions occur are crucial to maintaining safety and keeping planes flying. The Alaska Airlines experience suggests a volcanic eruption in Iceland doesn't have to ground all flights in Northern Europe—there are ways to work around it.

Planes took to the skies across much of Europe on Tuesday, five days after the volcanic eruption under the Eyjafjallajokull (ay-yah-FYAH'-tlah-yer-kuh-duhl) glacier in Iceland grounded thousands of flights and caused massive travel disruptions. It isn't clear whether flights could have resumed sooner. But that's mainly because government officials, weather experts and airlines didn't put their heads together to determine where the ash was, and where it wasn't.

Instead, the Iceland crisis resulted in a blanket closure of a huge swath of airspace, rather than a more targeted, scientific approach in which some routes are found to be clear of ash and left open. Governments were slow to understand the world-wide impact of the shutdown and based decisions to close airspace on theoretical models with little data collected or few tests done, complained Giovanni Bisignani, director general and chief executive of the International Air Transport Association, a Geneva-based airline-industry group.

Once tests were started, he said, some airspace that had been closed proved to be clean of ash. Had tests been run earlier in the crisis, large-scale flight operations could have continued, according to IATA.

"Nobody called for help," Mr. Bisignani said.

European authorities say they acted cautiously out of safety concerns. "Whatever we do, our safety standards and responsibility for safety cannot be deteriorated," Siim Kallas, the European Union Transport Commissioner, said in response to criticism from airlines. And Andrew Haines, chief executive of the United Kingdom Civil Aviation Authority, said the best guidance air-traffic authorities received was to avoid ash no matter what.

"When you are dealing with people's lives it is not enough to say, this guidance looks a bit restrictive, let's just make up a less restrictive one. You have to agree on new safety guidelines that are evidence-based," he said in a statement Wednesday.

Around the world, airlines, travelers and governments are already tallying the many lessons learned from the crisis. We have all been reminded how much more dependent the world is on air transportation now than even 20 years ago and how easily Mother Nature can upend modern technology. Some travelers have learned the limitations of travel insurance and the high cost in dollars and discomfort of being stranded unexpectedly.

Many have newly learned about an old danger to jet aircraft—volcanic ash. Although it has never caused a major airline disaster, volcanic ash has come close to downing big jets.

In 1989, for example, a KLM Royal Dutch Airlines 747 encountered an ash cloud while descending through 25,000 feet towards Anchorage, Alaska. The pilots added power to try to climb out of the cloud, but that only made engine damage worse. The wide-body jet lost all four engines and about half its instruments failed. Pilots restarted engines just one minute before impact and landed safely.

In 1982, a British Airways 747 near Jakarta, Indonesia, flew through an ash cloud at 37,000 feet from the Mount Galunggung volcano. All four of its engines choked on ash and flamed out. The 747 glided for 13 terrifying minutes. Ash filled the cabin through air vents and the cockpit window was severely scratched. At 12,000 feet in altitude, pilots were able to restart three of the four engines and land in Jakarta. One month later, a Singapore Airlines 747 lost two of its four engines and was forced to land in Jakarta because of an ash encounter.

Alaska Airlines's turning point with volcanic ash came before those scares—when Mount St. Helens erupted in 1980 not far from Alaska's home base at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport. The airline, which encounters volcanic ash in Alaska every couple of years as well, was crippled for days by Mount St. Helens. The company, a unit of Alaska Air Group Inc., decided at the time to try to develop procedures that would minimize volcano disruptions in the future. More resources were added in 1989 with establishment of the Alaska Volcano Observatory, a public/private project, after the KLM near-accident.

"You've got to find a way to work around it," said Ken Williams, Alaska Airlines's fleet captain.

One unbendable rule: Alaska's planes never take off, fly or land in ash. It's just too dangerous. Even taxiing at an airport with ash on the ground can clog air-condition systems and take a plane out of service for 36 hours. But that doesn't mean you can't find safe sky for flight.

A collaboration of aviation and weather experts created computer models that predict the trajectory for volcanic ash in Alaska or elsewhere in the Pacific Northwest. Whenever there's an eruption, the airline scrambles off-duty pilots in empty airplanes—some in Alaska Airlines's Boeings and others in smaller private planes—to take temperature and wind measurements at various altitudes. The data help validate satellite projections and computer forecasts.

"The more data you have, the more surgical you can be," said Capt. Williams.

It doesn't always work, of course. If Alaska Airlines can't stay at least 35 miles away from ash, it doesn't fly. And if it's nighttime and pilots can't see or if the airline isn't sure of the actual winds aloft, it won't operate. Last year when Mount Redoubt erupted again in Alaska, the airline couldn't get its aircraft out of Anchorage early enough and ended up canceling flights and shrink-wrapping planes to keep ash from contaminating instruments and engines.

Ash is such a threat that Alaska Airlines puts all 1,400 of its pilots through an ash encounter in recurrent training. In a cockpit simulator, engines suddenly flame out and the "aircraft" loses pressurization. Pilots, wearing smoke goggles and oxygen masks, must figure out how to restart them and return to an airport.

"Even though they all know it's coming in the exercise, everyone says it's eye-opening how big an event it is when it happens," Capt. Williams said.

Scientists have no standard for what concentration of ash is safe and what is a danger to aircraft, but ash cloud does scatter enough with time and distance to not threaten jets. Fallout from Mount St. Helens actually circled the globe three times before fully dispersing, but flights were grounded only within a couple hundred miles of the source.

Capt. Williams thinks Europe will follow much the same path Alaska Airlines did after Mount St. Helens and establish procedures to collaborate quickly on drawing paths around ash whenever volcanoes erupt.

"It's got to be more flexible," he said.

Volcanic observatories exist in London and Toulouse, France. But it wasn't until Tuesday that a specially equipped Lufthansa A340 was sent out to collect data on the concentration of ash in European skies in cooperation with Germany's Max Planck Institute, a scientific research center. The flight, five days into the crisis, was the first wide-scale measurement in European airspace. Government officials in Europe have promised more collaboration and data collection.

"In light of the unprecedented disruptions to air traffic, it is clear that more effort needs to be undertaken to establish a global safety risk framework for routinely determining safe levels of operation in airspace contaminated by volcanic ash," the International Civil Aviation Organization, a United Nations-chartered agency that sets rules for international flying and established a system to track volcanic ash in 1987, said in a statement late Tuesday.

[Admiral Valdemar]

Remember Eyjafjallajökull?

The eruption is mixed, with the lava-producing phase being larger than the explosive phase. During the last 2-3 days, the plume has been darker and wider than in the preceding week. Tephra fall-out in the vicinity of Eyjafjallajökull has increased. Dark grey ash clouds are observed over the eruptive site. White steam plumes are rising from Gígjökull, north of the eruption site. The elevation is 4-5.4 km (13-18,000 ft). Clouds of ash at lower elevations were observed drifting south-east of the eruption site. Moderate ash-fall was reported in the village of Vík at noon, Sunday, located 40 km south-east of Eyjafjallajökull.

From the location of the steam plume over Gígjökull, lava has advanced over 3 km north of the eruption. Steam plumes over the glacier edge from 19:40 GMT suggest that lava may have advanced even further. A rough order-of-magnitude estimate of lava volume can be obtained from the dimensions of the ice canyon. This estimate gives a lava production rate of-the-order 20 m3 s-1 (i.e. 50 tonnes s-1). The explosive phase may be 10-20 tonnes s-1.

Largest eruption plumes were observed at 5-5,5 km height (17-18,000 ft) estimated from the Icelandic Coast Guard (ICG) flight at 14:30. The plume rises higher after large explosions. It is heading east-south-east to south-east from the eruption site.

London VAAC will get some new charts uploaded any minute now. Ireland is being hit and the NW UK.

[Serafina]

So the volcanoe is at it again? Greaaat

Why can't it just be an hawaiian volcanoe with mild, lava-rich unexplosive erruptions?

[Broomstick]

Wouldn't fit in with the current "interesting times"/Armageddon theme we have going these days.

[Admiral Valdemar]

As of the VAAC analysis from the Met Office at 0000 Zulu.

[CaptainChewbacca]

And that's just today. Give it 24 hours, and europe will be on lockdown again.

[Admiral Valdemar]

Quite. This looks like how it started only a couple weeks ago. The prevailing wind doesn't help with this. What I want to know is, will they lockdown, or will they see this as another overblown issue which was proven false, and keep flying? We can't afford to have a repeat of the chaos of that week.

I'm trying to find the seismograph link again, but apparently Katla is awakening.

[CaptainChewbacca]

I'm trying to find the seismograph link again, but apparently Katla is awakening.

I'd be interested to look at that if you have a link, I havn't seen anything indicating Katla is becoming more active.

Fun Fact: in the early 19th century, Eyja erupted off and on many times for a two-year period.

[Broomstick]

Quite. This looks like how it started only a couple weeks ago. The prevailing wind doesn't help with this. What I want to know is, will they lockdown, or will they see this as another overblown issue which was proven false, and keep flying? We can't afford to have a repeat of the chaos of that week.

You can't afford to have airplane crashes either - it's not a good situation and I am SOOOOO glad I'm not the one having to make decisions on that one!

I hope what does happen is that they come up with better monitoring and sampling.

It occurs to me that unmanned drones, preferably small ones, perhaps small enough to be electrically powered, might be the thing for that work. The technology certainly exists, but no such network or methodology.

[Sky Captain]

Few moments ago I heard on radio the airspace over Ireland and Scotland is closed because of increased ash concentration.

[CJvR]

Im a bit surprised at the amount of thrash these volcanoes produce. I thought the Icelandic volcanoes were relatively clean since they are an extension of the mid-Atlantic chain rather than the ring of fire.

[CaptainChewbacca]

Im a bit surprised at the amount of thrash these volcanoes produce. I thought the Icelandic volcanoes were relatively clean since they are an extension of the mid-Atlantic chain rather than the ring of fire.

Iceland has the unique quality of being a hot-spot (i.e. Hawaii or Yellowstone) that sits on a spreading center, so the volcanics there are like no other place on earth.

[[R_H]]

Damn. I fly on the 27th, and come back middle of August. Hopefully that won't be a problem by then (especially August, I really do not want to have to miss the beginning of the semester).

[CJvR]

Well at least Katla still seems to be snoozing...

http://en.vedur.is/earthquakes-and-volc ... es/nr/1884

[Sky Captain]

According to webcams volcano is gushing thick plume of ash again so if the wind keeps blowing it towards Europe it's likely there will be new flight restrictions.

http://www.vodafone.is/eldgos/en

http://eldgos.mila.is/eyjafjallajokull- ... orduhalsi/

Notice a white plume of steam where lava is melting ice.

[Sharp-kun]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/scotland/8660841.stm

Looks like we're shutting down again.

[Happy Boy]

The pictures of the nozzle guide vanes posted, was that the result of a direct encounter with a dense volcanic plume? Do you know how long the particular engine was exposed to volcanic ash and what the approximate density of the ash concentration was?

Thanks

[Admiral Valdemar]

The volcano just went into overdrive. Were it not for the winds, everything would be grounded in the UK. My dad has just flown out to Spain this evening, whether he can get back...

[CaptainChewbacca]

The pictures of the nozzle guide vanes posted, was that the result of a direct encounter with a dense volcanic plume? Do you know how long the particular engine was exposed to volcanic ash and what the approximate density of the ash concentration was?

Thanks

Nobody knows the density, but it looks like that was about 30 minutes in the ash cloud.