Ashes halt air traffic

After yesterday's volcano eruption in Iceland, the Norwegian air space is totally empty today. Not a single flight.

I imaging it like putting sandpaper through the engines.

No, jet engines don't have filters. However the tolerances that they are made too are so critical. I used to supply a company that machined containment casings for Rolls Royce. They were made elliptical so that the weight of the engine hanging on the wing pulled them into round

Have a look here (takes a while to load).

As well as the long term effect of grinding away parts of the engines it also can have an immediate effect. It can extinguish the fuel burning in the engine.

This happened years ago when a 747 flew through a cloud of volcanic ash. All four engines shut down at well over 30000ft and when they managed to get them going again they were below 5000ft

I was due to fly to Aberdeen this morning - got to te airport and told it is not going.

Gatwick to Aberdeen was flying !

Also, the news reports that Heathrow is closed - well not according to BAA and the aircraft I can see taking off!

Some of it is a knee jerk reaction - cancel UK flights but let international ones fly.

There have been flights from Heathrow to Dublin, Copenhagen, Helsinki and N America - which if the news is accurate will pass through the ash cloud.

There is not a lot of activity at Gatwick at the moment - very quiet indeed.

...and sandblasting the windows.

Lunch time news says no UK flights until 18.00 at the earliest.

How's it going in Norway Terry?

News is wrong AGAIN.

Have a look at:

http://www.heathrowairport.com/portal/page/Heathrow%5EGeneral%5EFlight+information%5EHeathrow+departures/

and see how many are taking off at the moment ... around 40 in the last hour.

I was only stating what BBC are saying, even now at 13.00GMT

Looking into the future?

It is not 13:07 BST or 12:07 GMT

Seems the issue is not so much the ash, but what it contains - silica (glass).

Latest info from Avinor (the Norwegian authorities) is that air traffic will be stopped at least till tomorrow.

My husband was due to fly to Marseilles. First it was OK, then Eurocontrol closed the airspace over the Netherlands, Belgium and part of Germany. then they re-opened. So I though he'd gone.
I get a phone call to say he is in the train on his way home again. He was ready to board when he got a call to say the meeting was cancelled as half of those supposed to be attending couldn't make it due to the ash.
So he unchecked himself and came home.
His company will rebook it for next week now.
He says Schiphol was really busy and verging on chaos.
It is expected that it will be closed later today, and even if it isn't planes are in the wrong place so it is difficult to get flights out even to destinations unaffected.

Update- Dutch airspace will be closed from 19.00 European Summer time.

Mercifully I'm travelling to France by Road - albeit an overnight journey from 11pm tomorrow.

This morning started quite cool - we now have SUN

back to my packing