Iceland's Eyjafjallajokull Volcano - Discussion Thread

[coldfingers]

A new ash zone is to be introduced, called 'time limited'. Apparently it will minimise flight disruptions.

In other words, they have pushed the goalposts further apart yet again.

Latest update

Scary isn't it. Soon they'll be able fly directly through the plume over the volcano.

I find it very frightening and very immoral. I will now be worried the whole time I am flying to Spain and I have never had a fear of flying before.

Totally disgusting!

Edited May 17, 2010 by coldfingers

[loobiloo]

Agree with others... and worry about the longterm impact on the aircraft??? Surely this is very short sighted (not to mention risky).

[coldfingers]

Agree with others... and worry about the longterm impact on the aircraft??? Surely this is very short sighted (not to mention risky).

Also very expensive even if the best scenario is they ruin the engines, even more expensive if a plane crashes, as people will sue the pants off the airline!

Also as you suggest, the long term risk is the biggest problem.

OK planes that previously flew through ash were one-off incidents, have they checked what happens when they do it regularly? I think the answer to that will be no.

Edited May 17, 2010 by coldfingers

[Optimus Prime]

I find it very frightening and very immoral. I will now be worried the whole time I am flying to Spain and I have never had a fear of flying before.

Totally disgusting!

Don't fly then.

[AtlanticFlamethrower]

Katla

[cyclonic happiness]

Wow!!! check out this link, it shows the ash blowing across the northern hemisphere and towards us over the last couple of weeks.

You can really see how dangerous it would be to fly atm, especially in this country...omg! what are the airlines thinking??

http://brunnur.vedur.is/pub/bolli/btd/

[LadyPakal]

Pretty sky tonight. The clouds are pretty in pink.

Saw an amazing rainbow earlier. It's the second time I've seen one like this - first time was around Easter.

It was a typical doubler - on the outermost part was a rainbow, then a gap, then inside was a bright rainbow. The bit I had not seen before was a repeating spectrum from red to blue to red to blue - a total of three adjacent rainbows, the outer one being the brightest.

Ha, gawd bless Wikipedia. What I saw was a supernumerary rainbow - also known as a stacker rainbow. Like this:

Rainbow

The bright glow in the Thoro cam - do you think it is the eruption glowing through in the hot part of the ash?

No, on second throughts looking at the Mulakot cam, I think it is the sun.

Edited May 17, 2010 by LadyPakal

[nightfire800]

I find it very frightening and very immoral. I will now be worried the whole time I am flying to Spain and I have never had a fear of flying before.

Totally disgusting!

Just drive there. I do and it's "only" 1900 Km's to Vinaros. -lol-

[coldfingers]

Don't fly then.

A pretty stupid remark from someone who is young enough to be earning enough money to pay for an alternative means of travel.

At 60 I do not have the financial security to travel any other way to visit family in Spain that I haven't seen for many years. I have also learned the wisdom of not expressing opinions that are not well thought out. You are obviously very 'black or white' in your opinions, sadly life is far more often shades of grey.

Edited May 17, 2010 by coldfingers

[Mondy]

Katla

What was the depth/magnitude?

[Mondy]

Wow!!! check out this link, it shows the ash blowing across the northern hemisphere and towards us over the last couple of weeks.

You can really see how dangerous it would be to fly atm, especially in this country...omg! what are the airlines thinking??

http://brunnur.vedur.is/pub/bolli/btd/

What a brilliant animation, best yet!

[AtlanticFlamethrower]

What was the depth/magnitude?

I don't know where the depth data is but the magnitude was no greater than 2, mostly likely 1. It might have been the one that was zero. So nothing necessarily to worry about, but obviously if it happens again and again, we need to keep watching it.

Edited May 17, 2010 by AtlanticFlamethrower

[Coast]

Airlines were struggling to return schedules to normal after plumes of thick ash drifted over the continent, closing major airports and leaving more than 1,000 flights cancelled.

Airlines, which have lost millions of pounds due to the ash alerts, condemned Monday's closure of airports and criticised the model used to predict the spread of the volcanic ash as "outdated and inappropriate".

Executives reacted with fury to what they argued were unnecessary restrictions introduced by overcautious safety watchdogs.

British Airways chief executive Willie Walsh led the criticism, labelling restrictions as "a gross overreaction to a very minor riskâ€.

www.telegraph.co.uk

Because it's losing them money? Is everyone now going to push this to the limit until an engine fails?

[LadyPakal]

Yep, they'll keep upping the limit until there is an accident and then back it down slightly. Find the breaking point, as it were.

That's if they have the cojones to admit that the ash was a major factor in the accident, of course.

Edited May 18, 2010 by LadyPakal

[Coast]

New measures to minimise the disruption to flights caused by volcanic ash clouds will be introduced from lunchtime today, the Civil Aviation Authority announced last night. The CAA said a Time Limited Zone (TLZ) had been agreed, which will allow planes to fly for short periods at higher ash densities than are currently permitted.

To operate in the new zone, airlines will need to present the CAA with a safety case that includes the agreement of their aircraft and engine manufacturers. UK airline Flybe is the first to meet the requirements and will be able to use the new zone from noon today.

The CAA said the move would open up areas of UK airspace that would previously have been closed, minimising flight disruption. CAA chief executive Andrew Haines said: “Unprecedented situations require new measures and the challenge faced should not be underestimated. “Firstly, because the standard default procedure for aircraft that encounter ash – to avoid it completely – doesn't work in our congested airspace.

“Secondly, the world’s top scientists tell us that we must not simply assume the effects of this volcano will be the same as others elsewhere. Its proximity to the UK, the length of time it is continuously erupting and the weather patterns are all exceptional features.â€

He added: “The answer can only come, therefore, from aircraft and engine manufacturers establishing what level of ash their products can safely tolerate.†Air traffic control company Nats said it was delighted that flying restrictions could now be eased. Nats said: “As a result of this change, there are no predicted restrictions on UK airspace in the immediate future.â€

Hundreds of UK flights were grounded yesterday morning when the latest pocket of dense ash to hang over the UK was deemed too dangerous to fly through. Heathrow, Gatwick, Edinburgh and Aberdeen were among the major airports affected. By 1pm, all but Orkney and Shetland airports were operating normally again as the threat moved away.

Neither Bond nor CHC Scotia were able to run fly helicopters yesterday, although Bristow said it managed to complete “selected flights†during a brief pocket of clearance. About 120 flights to and from Aberdeen were cancelled, with dozens more axed from airports in Dundee, Inverness, Orkney, Shetland and the Western Isles.

www.pressandjournal.co.uk

So has our 'acceptable level' criteria changed due to recent experience/data in Iceland or have the years of insisting we just don't fly when there's volcanic ash in the area, been swept away because we have re-assessed the risk in relation to revenue lost?

[The PIT]

www.pressandjournal.co.uk

So has our 'acceptable level' criteria changed due to recent experience/data in Iceland or have the years of insisting we just don't fly when there's volcanic ash in the area, been swept away because we have re-assessed the risk in relation to revenue lost?

I think the last bit of your sentence says it all. Now if aircraft engines start failing early or a plane crashes they'll be back peddling rapidly. It would be nice to get some engine reports I think they should be forced to publish them. If there isn't a problem they've got nothing to hide have they.

Any the old girl is chugging away steadily. No new earthquakes and tremor constant. I think we can safely say the supply of magma is probably matching the output so she'll probably chug for a while.

[Tom D]

It looks weird on the Hvol cam, the plume is going in the opposite direction to what it has been for so long and looks like it's smothering the Poro cam.

[The PIT]

Can't see anything right now ah well.

[coldfingers]

Can't see anything right now ah well.

Looking at the webcams I am begining to realise how dreadful it must be to be just partially sighted! It seems we have been straining our eyes to look through either fog or else ash for days now. Vodaphone cam working again but not much use at the moment although it is fractionally better than the Thorolfsfelli cam at the moment. I wonder if ash has scratched the lens on that one.

The lower picture on the vodaphone cam seems to show a little bit more water coming down the fan at the bottom of the glacier but certainly not a flood. I do wonder though if that means the lava is slowly coming down the glacier. May just be rain run-off.

Edited May 18, 2010 by coldfingers

[nightfire800]

Vodafone cam is back, but the wind seems to have changed. The Mulakot cam looks as if it's covered by ash.

Edited May 18, 2010 by nightfire800

[nightfire800]

Looks like there's something happening on the Poro cam now?

[coldfingers]

Looks like there's something happening on the Poro cam now?

Hi Nightfire, what are you seeing? The normal cam wont load for me at the moment although the thermal is showing quite a large heat source near the top.

Ah it has finally loaded, far too late for me to see what it was. Still the clouds seem to be slowly clearing from the top, let's hope that lasts for more that a few seconds!

And it is snowing. I am wondering if that is the problem with the Mulakot cam.

Edited May 18, 2010 by coldfingers

[nightfire800]

There were several bright white spots near the top and a broad dark smokeplume above them on the axis cam. On the left of that was a plume of white steam visible.

[LadyPakal]

I've just been scraping some of this non-existant ash dust off my car and not looking at it through a microscope.

My neighbour called me out to see his car - almost indignant as he had just washed it yesterday. It rained overnight & I suspect that is when most of it landed. You can see it is (sorry, is not!) in little rings - like puddle splashes.

[loobiloo]

I can't make out much on the cams at the moment - the weather looks pretty bad, with water (?) on the lens of the Mulakot camera. Sigh, I had some time to sit and watch tonight too...!

Back to the airlines saga, I understand their point that as more data is collected they can adjust the safety levels accordingly.... but the cynical side of me thinks that they are primarily motivated by revenue. When is a risk too big of a risk? When there's an accident??? And if the accident occurs outside of the ash zone, will they then say that ash had nothing to do with it? Who knows what accumulative effect it's having on the engines at the moment.