Volcanic Ash Causing European Travel Problems

Rolfe said:
They got a flight off to Toronto this morning, and they're talking about running local flights within Scotland at low altitudes. I suspect they'll figure out that low-level air ambulance flights will have to happen, although I gather they weren't flying yesterday.
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I doubt Glasgow- Edinburgh flights get above 6000 feet at any time.
The turboprops from the regional airports & islands go between hills, not over them. And the RAF never seem to get above about sixt feet. They pick trainees who are scared of heights.
I think there's rather a lot of overreaction going on.

The burd was off to Florence tomorrow, with a pal. I'll get the blame. "You and your blooming volcanoes!"
 
Well, I've already booked to go on holiday the Germany in August on the Rosyth ferry. Though come to think of it, if this is still going on in August, we'll all have more to worry about than how we're getting to Bayreuth.

And who flies Glasgow-Edinburgh? It's 40 miles, dammit. I could drive it while you're queueing at security.

Rolfe.
 
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Rolfe said:
Well, I've already booked to go on holiday the Germany in August on the Rosyth ferry. Though come to think of it, if this is still going on in August, we'll all have more to worry about than how we're getting to Bayreuth.

And who flies Glasgow-Edinburgh? It's 40 miles, dammit. I could drive it while you're queueing at security.

Rolfe.
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Waaah! Rolfe's going to the Bayreuth Festival! No fair.


Pouting, Foolmewunz shuts down his office computer for the night.
 
Foolmewunz said:
Waaah! Rolfe's going to the Bayreuth Festival! No fair.

Pouting, Foolmewunz shuts down his office computer for the night.
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Parsifal and Meistersinger. I got 2 tickets for each, but since events have transpired that I'll be going alone, I hope to trade the spare tickets for other performances.

Rolfe.
 
Rolfe said:
Parsifal and Meistersinger. I got 2 tickets for each, but since events have transpired that I'll be going alone, I hope to trade the spare tickets for other performances.

Rolfe.
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Those pics on the 2010 site are dated July 09. Do you know if they're doing the same staging? It looks awesome!


Die Meistersinger...

 
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Almost certainly. So far as I know, they don't retire a production one year and mount a new one of the same opera the following year. Looks quite unusual!

Rolfe.
 
Andrew Wiggin said:
Glad they're taking precautions. Volcanic ash is pure poison to jet engines, and I can recall some crashes from that. No point in taking chances with the lives of a plane full of tourists.

A
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Exactly, they learned not to fly through ash clouds AKA clouds of microscopic jagged rock pieces the hard way. It grinds the engine down to useless as you are still flying.
 
The media coverage has been saying that while the ash chokes the engines and makes them cut out, they will re-start once the plane has flown out of the cloud. They said this phenomenom hadn't yet killed anyone.

Rolfe.
 
Do you want to be on the flight that puts that to the test?

ETA:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/8624464.stm

1344 Paul Taylor, in Hersham, Surrey says:
In 1989 we were flying on a brand new KLM 747 to Tokyo via Alaska when we flew into a volcanic cloud over Anchorage. All four engines stopped and we fell around 10,000 feet before the pilot got one engine working and another just before an emergency landing. Having been through that, I can see why Nats are not taking any chances.
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chillzero said:
Do you want to be on the flight that puts that to the test?

ETA:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/8624464.stm
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No, I totally don't. I heard the pilot's account of what happened, they were obviously bloody lucky. It's well understood the grounding is in order to avoid there being a first time.

I was merely querying Beerina's assertion that the engines would be completely destroyed, and Andrew Wiggin's that there had already been some crashes.

Rolfe.
 
Roll up! Roll up! Place your bets on whether tomorrow evening's flight from Denver will happen.

As we're not on the run from the mob, that movie's no help either.
 
MRC_Hans said:
On the bright side, we will at least defer some massive CO2 emissions ....

Hans
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But Hans, what our airplanes emit is peanuts compared to the greenhouse gases spewing out of that volcano. Doesn't this demonstrate the relative significance of natural events on climate compared with our activities?

(Footnote: I appreciate this is a whole other topic, but the point about plane emissions vs a great big volcano couldn't escape my notice)
 
A previous eruption in 1784 caused a poisonous fog over Britain that killed 20,000 people who breathed it in. It caused the deaths of a third of the Icelandic population from starvation as the crops failed then the animals starved.

There are fears that this activity may set off activity in another nearby volcano as well, and currently Iceland is flooding as the glaciers melt around the volcano. 1500 islanders have been evacuated.

The cloud that stopped air travel is still being fed, in pulses, so this situation is likely to continue a bit longer - dependant on prevailing winds - but we should maybe count ourselves very lucky if this is the worst we see in the coming months.
 
Couldn't some sufficiently large fans be strategically set up so as to disperse the clouds faster? Or a tarp over the volcano to keep the ash contained? I can think of several fairly low-tech solutions to the problem.

(My friends have rebooked their flight out of Prague for Sunday, so they're optimistic. Only time will tell.)

And Foolmewunz, have you ever actually been in Hilo? Ironically, the active volcano there has been affecting our breathing for the past couple of years, although not airflights, so far as I know.
 
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