Volcanic Ash Causing European Travel Problems

As one of those actually stranded, an update:

Sitting in Hong Kong with a colleague. We were to leave very early Saturday morning, but, of course, no joy. Still our regular flight is canceled, but our company, which has some 100-200 people stranded around the world is looking to charter planes to take employees to Europe (from where land transport will supposedly be arranged).

Hong Kong is a nice place to be if you must be stranded, but ......

Hans
 
Airspace in Scotland, Northern Ireland and parts of northern England is due to reopen on Tuesday after days of travel chaos caused by a volcanic ash cloud.

The air traffic control body, Nats, said from 0700 BST on Tuesday airspace as far south as a line between Teesside and Blackpool would reopen.

It added that mainland Scottish airports would be open.

Nats said restrictions to airspace above the rest of England and Wales could be lifted later on Tuesday.
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http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/8630455.stm
 
Darat said:
Apart from those in the industry, those whose business relies on air freight, people expecting documents from abroad, people meeting, contracts being signed the list goes on and on. Flight is tightly woven into how the modern world works.
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Yup. It's cancelled my project's meeting with the honchos from Paris. Means we have 10 people geared to deliver something to them Thursday, but they won't be here. Requires rejigging schedules and perhaps doing a tele-meeting, which are always inferior.
 
And another aircraft damaged:
A senior Western diplomat said Monday that several NATO F-16 fighters had flown through a cloud of volcanic ash and that that one had suffered engine damage.

The official, who could not be named under standing regulations, declined to provide further details on where or when the incident happened. He said only that glasslike deposits were found inside the plane's engine after a patrol through European airspace.

But Bo Redeborn, an official of the European air traffic agency, said later that the F-16 belonged to the Belgian Air Force.

http://www.mymotherlode.com/news/world/955221/NATO-F16-fighters-damaged-by-volcanic-ash.html
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SnidelyW said:
Actually, Travis, the transcript of the cockpit communication of KLM 867 says differently.
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gumboot said:
I think he's talking about BA Flight 9, which was another 747 that suffered failure of all four engines after flying through volcanic ash. The crew were oblivious of the ash cloud, and even as they descended they had no idea why the engines had stopped.

Worth noting that the aircraft didn't fall 10,000ft as someone previously mentioned. They put the aircraft into a glide and started to calculate a good ditching spot, but when the oxygen masks deployed one of the aircrew's masks was broken so the pilots increased their rate of descent to get them down to a safe breathing altitude more rapidly.
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I was referring to the BA flight. It actually lost power twice because, not knowing it was there, they ascended back into the ash cloud after their engines restarted. The ash was from a volcano in Indonesia I think. This thread is actually the first time I'd heard of the KLM flight.
 
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My sister somehow got off the canary islands and is now in Madrid hoping to make her way back to London from there. I have no idea how she got off but she said that her office was trying to work something out so maybe that came through. She's in the media business so they do a lot of travel...

The magnitude of this is pretty amazing. Mother nature sure has the powa.
 
NewtonTrino said:
My sister somehow got off the canary islands and is now in Madrid hoping to make her way back to London from there. I have no idea how she got off but she said that her office was trying to work something out so maybe that came through. She's in the media business so they do a lot of travel...

The magnitude of this is pretty amazing. Mother nature sure has the powa.
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There is a weekly ferry route from the Canaries to Cadiz, she might have pretended to be a truck or a car.:)
 
Pictures from the Finnish Air Force F18: http://www.flightglobal.com/article...engine-check-reveals-effects-of-volcanic.html. I believe a NATO F-16 went up over the weekend as well, and it too sustained damage to its engines.

Travis said:
The ash was from a volcano in Indonesia I think. This thread is actually the first time I'd heard of the KLM flight.
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Mount Galunggung. It also provided the name for the club for passengers and crew to keep in touch: Galunggung Gliding Club.

The captain of that flight provided probably the best public announcement ever:
Ladies and gentlemen, this is your captain speaking. We have a small problem. All four engines have stopped. We are doing our damnedest to get them under control. I trust you are not in too much distress.
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:cool:
 
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Travis said:
I was referring to the BA flight. It actually lost power twice because, not knowing it was there, they ascended back into the ash cloud after their engines restarted. The ash was from a volcano in Indonesia I think. This thread is actually the first time I'd heard of the KLM flight.
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Noted. Sometimes we can be rather North American centric on this side of the 'pond' as it were.

In an earlier post I provided a link which stated scores of aircraft had been affected by volcanic ash, and the British Airways flight was mentioned there, but I assumed the KLM flight had been the most widely publicized to date.

Thanks for the clarification.
 
Travis said:
I was referring to the BA flight. It actually lost power twice because, not knowing it was there, they ascended back into the ash cloud after their engines restarted. The ash was from a volcano in Indonesia I think. This thread is actually the first time I'd heard of the KLM flight.
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correct, the youtube link I posted earlier was for the Aircrash investigations ep about BA 9 ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Airways_Flight_9 ). As it was at night, and the plan radar only shows water content, they never saw the ashcloud, and then it only showed to them as ST-elmos fire around the plane (Infact this was the paint being scraped off)
 
Well, Stephen and Jenna are staying in Scotland for another week. They were scheduled to leave Aberdeen at 6am Aberdeen time today, but got bumped back to next Monday. Luckily, Stephen's the kind to buy all the insurance stuff when booking tickets, so they each have $500 towards their extended stay. So, although homesick as any 23 and 21 year olds on their first trip without any family can be, they're going to make the most of it and do more sightseeing until Monday.
 
Mmmmm, leaving Hong Kong very early tomorrow to catch a plane in Beijing, going to, hopefully Stockholm, from where there is easy and convinient land-transport to my hometown, Copenhagen.

Love HK, but......

Somebody in our travel depardment flashed our gold frequent flyer statuses, it seems, hehehe.

Hans
 
The TV news said Amsterdam Airport again had some flights. It was quite a chaos, because people just went to the airport without knowing if they actually could get a flight; also people from trans-Atlantic that just flew to Amsterdam in the hope to catch a transfer flight to elsewhere in Europe.
 
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