Icelandic Volcanic Eruption - Significant Disruption to UK Flights

I'm stuck in the UK, I wouldn't usually mind but I stupidly took my work laptop with me so I don't have an excuse to not do work, DOH!
I'm more hacked off about possibly missing a date on Thursday.
 
I've just been sent home from work. UK airspace is officially closed until midnight UTC but the unofficial word is that unless the government puts pressure on the airlines to fly in the current conditions, there will be no likely change until Friday at the earliest when a forecast south westerly wind will take effect.
 
Well, this sucks. But at least if its restricted until Friday theres hopefully time for the gf to get back from Poland, and it means theres no chance of her missing her flight tomorrow and then us being told our flight to Canada is still go go go for Wednesday.
 
Scuzi said:
I've just been sent home from work. UK airspace is officially closed until midnight UTC but the unofficial word is that unless the government puts pressure on the airlines to fly in the current conditions, there will be no likely change until Friday at the earliest when a forecast south westerly wind will take effect.
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Blimey, that is quiet some delay.
 
Quote from pprune:

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.
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anticonscience said:
Blimey, that is quiet some delay.
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Indeed. And IF the situation does improve on Friday, as long as the volcano continues to erupt, the moment we get another north westerly wind we can expect the same disruption time and tme again until the eruption halts. Frightening.
 
n111ck said:
Just read on other forums that:

1 - we are at war with an unamed nation and the volcano is a cover story to protect British air space.

2 - the volcano is a cover story to hide a mass miltary operation related to some new world order super government.


Also the cloud is supposed to hit America at 6pm today which presumably will add Iceland to the axis of evil?
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So the giant vomcano in Iceland was made to chunder everywhere by us deliberately? lols

Some people will use anything as an excuse to come out with some serious drivel. Stupid people.
 
Begbie said:
Few mates have been stuck in Dubai/Cyprus coming back from Afghan.

Pretty unlucky really, but hey at least they get a few more days sunshine! :p
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HMS Albion to the rescue! :)

Scuzi said:
I've just been sent home from work. UK airspace is officially closed until midnight UTC but the unofficial word is that unless the government puts pressure on the airlines to fly in the current conditions, there will be no likely change until Friday at the earliest when a forecast south westerly wind will take effect.
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I just wish they'd come out and say that - rather than just moving the goalposts every six hours. Even an indication that flights are unlikely before Friday would be something.
 
Over Clocker said:
clv101 said:
Urm, tourism is a drain on the UK economy. People mostly leave the UK rather than come here. Reduced tourism is good for our trade deficit.
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You are being absolutely ridiculous!!

The UK is the 6th most popular holiday destination in the world. We welcome 30 million tourists a year! It is worth around £120 Billion a year or around 8% of GDP, employing over 1.3 Million people.....
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No, I'm not being ridiculous. Your number may be right - but they don't refute my point. Tourism is a net drain on the UK economy. More money is spent by British people abroad (an import) than foreign people spend here (an export). The UK economy would be in better shape with less tourism overall.

The UK tourism balance of payments showed a deficit of £20 billion in 2008-09. Spain had a surplus of £24bn, France a surplus of £8.6bn and the US a surplus of £17.9bn.

See this:
http://www.theyworkforyou.com/wrans/?id=2009-06-12c.277471.h
 
Scuzi said:
the unofficial word is that unless the government puts pressure on the airlines to fly in the current conditions,
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From the media reports I thought it was the airlines that wanted to fly and were putting pressure on the government to allow them to? Have the test flights shown it to be worse than the airlines thought?
 
Berserker said:
HMS Albion to the rescue! :)



I just wish they'd come out and say that - rather than just moving the goalposts every six hours. Even an indication that flights are unlikely before Friday would be something.
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One thing has been prevalent throughout this crisis - nobody in a position of responsibility has the balls to make a judgement call. As the quote from PPRuNe above says, we have state of the art equipment to detect volcanic ash where before we wouldn't have known about it - but the rules, regulations and procedures for making decisions base on that data are still in the dark ages .

Right now we need leadership and people in power willing to make decisions. We have neither.
 
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freebooter said:
From the media reports I thought it was the airlines that wanted to fly and were putting pressure on the government to allow them to? Have the test flights shown it to be worse than the airlines thought?
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The airlines want to fly. The government wants the airlines to fly. The aviation authorities want the airlines to fly. Pilots want to fly. Passengers want to fly.

Everyone who wants to fly wants someone else to make the call that flying should be allowed. Nobody is going to stand up to make that call out of fear or because they perceive such a judgement to be above their salary.
 
Scuzi said:
The airlines want to fly. The government wants the airlines to fly. The aviation authorities want the airlines to fly. Pilots want to fly. Passengers want to fly.

Everyone who wants to fly wants someone else to make the call that flying should be allowed. Nobody is going to stand up to make that call out of fear or because they perceive such a judgement to be above their salary.
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Or the fact they'll be hung out to dry if a plane falls out of the sky.
 
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