A helicopter flew over my house yesterday. It stood out like a sore thumb with absolutely no aircraft in sight all day.

Here, We have the house shake during the day sometimes, But then I live close to Ft. Irwin.

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The T1 Trust, PRR T1 Class 4-4-4-4 #5550, 1 of America's First HST's

Restriction extended yet further to 19:00 - I really can't see this shifting any time soon. A look at This Page or This Page shows the extent of the ash cover now.

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A FOXNews report says the airlines are losing about 200 million (I suppose they meant USD, article didn't say) a day! You know, it won't be long before that adds up to some REAL MONEY!

How long before the layoffs or other cost cutting measures begin?

Martin

A Finnish aircraft has flown through the ash and suffered engine damage

Iceland continuing to be hit by earth tremors and the eruption ongoing according to latest reports.

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A Finnish aircraft has flown through the ash and suffered engine damage

Iceland continuing to be hit by earth tremors and the eruption ongoing according to latest reports.

Sounds like the Volcano Finished off that Finnish aircraft. ;)

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The T1 Trust, PRR T1 Class 4-4-4-4 #5550, 1 of America's First HST's

On the plus side, all that ash in the air will help slow down global warming. :)

Only if there's enough to get the planet close to conditions like happened around 1814, But hopefully not as cold as back then, so as to not kill food crops or animals. Humans think they are all powerful still, They aren't, the forces of this planet and indeed our own sun are still many, many times greater. :D

Yes of course the ash has slowed down global warming. Anything which grounds aircraft will slow down global warming.

Actually, you have that the wrong way round. Aircraft also put particulates in the air that keep the temperature down. When all the aircraft were grounded during 9/11 the global temperature range went up by 1 degree.

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Reality Internet Personality

A FOXNews report says the airlines are losing about 200 million (I suppose they meant USD, article didn't say) a day!

Sunday papers say it's £130 million a day.

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flaming balloons

A FOXNews report says the airlines are losing about 200 million (I suppose they meant USD, article didn't say) a day!

Sunday papers say it's £130 million a day.

No matter what currency one talks about, That's pretty heavy stuff. Now where's the QEII and the SS United States when their needed?

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The T1 Trust, PRR T1 Class 4-4-4-4 #5550, 1 of America's First HST's

On the plus side, all that ash in the air will help slow down global warming. :)

Only if there's enough to get the planet close to conditions like happened around 1814, But hopefully not as cold as back then, so as to not kill food crops or animals. Humans think they are all powerful still, They aren't, the forces of this planet and indeed our own sun are still many, many times greater. :D

Yes of course the ash has slowed down global warming. Anything which grounds aircraft will slow down global warming.

Actually, you have that the wrong way round. Aircraft also put particulates in the air that keep the temperature down. When all the aircraft were grounded during 9/11 the global temperature range went up by 1 degree.

Well I didn't know that. Perhaps someone should put more of these particles in the air, then we can forget about global warming and stop spending billions on combating it.

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flaming balloons

A FOXNews report says the airlines are losing about 200 million (I suppose they meant USD, article didn't say) a day!

Sunday papers say it's £130 million a day.

No matter what currency one talks about, That's pretty heavy stuff. Now where's the QEII and the SS United States when their needed?

It's heavy if it lasts for maybe two months more as some predict. That volcano could even go on for another two years.

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flaming balloons

A FOXNews report says the airlines are losing about 200 million (I suppose they meant USD, article didn't say) a day!

Sunday papers say it's £130 million a day.

No matter what currency one talks about, That's pretty heavy stuff. Now where's the QEII and the SS United States when their needed?

It's heavy if it lasts for maybe two months more as some predict. That volcano could even go on for another two years.

Now that's a Disaster. :o

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The T1 Trust, PRR T1 Class 4-4-4-4 #5550, 1 of America's First HST's

Some European airlines have received permission to re-position aircraft around Holland and Germany, without passengers, and they are finding no ash in the air. Norway has opened at least one airport, on an hour-by-hour basis, and Germany is considering doing the same. The EU government, meanwhile, has decided to convene a number of experts real soon, who will decide how to form a committee that will look into the criteria to be used to re-open their airspace. Careful guys, wouldn't want to rush into anything.

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I've just seen two aircraft flying over, both single engined Cessna type. Maybe a sign that higher flights may be allowed soon.

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flaming balloons

Since the Milano Linate to Rome route passes directly over my home, I am not hearing any flight since yesterday, only some helicopters at low altitude.
Tullio

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I've just seen two aircraft flying over, both single engined Cessna type. Maybe a sign that higher flights may be allowed soon.

Flight in uncontrolled airspace was never cancelled, although most EU controlled airports were closed. Little neigbourhood grass strips were able to make their own decisions. I see that in the last few minutes parts of Europe are opening higher airspace, about FL250 in some places. This will help out aircraft still operating between North America and South-East Europe or the Middle East.

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This is troubling. While the airlines are pushing to get airspace re-opened: http://wsmweather.co.uk/?p=4577 - More planes suffer engine damage.

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This is troubling. While the airlines are pushing to get airspace re-opened: http://wsmweather.co.uk/?p=4577 - More planes suffer engine damage.

My sources say these aircraft were in eastern Europe, and the damage occurred mid last week, same time as the Finnish incidents. From the Finnish government web sites, the damage was detectable, and requires repair, but did not result in any power loss during the flight. This is a long way from the Indonesian incident several years ago where a 747 had to shut down all 4 engines, although the press keeps dragging that story up.

The problem is (according to other sources) that EU traffic control reacted to these early incidents, and forecasts of the ash distribution, and has not been looking at actual data on where the ash is right now, and how thick it is.

Any ash visible in your area Andy? I was living in BC when Mt. St. Helens blew up back in the 1970s, and for a few days we had traces of ash falling on everything.

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Good morning everyone. I heard on this mornings news That they are not sure how to collect the ash. or how much will cauise damage.
seems like they could run static tests and feed the engines ash and see what happens over time and amount of ash.

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Old James

The engine manufacturers will tell you that any ash is too much. It may not cause immediate problems, but it will decrease the useful life of the engine, and increase maintenance costs over the long run. It takes very large concentrations to shut down an engine, but the decision on whether or not to fly in very low concentrations is more economic than safety.

Ash is being collected right now in the air over Finland, Iceland, the UK and Ireland (that I know of). The aircraft being used are a mixture of military aircraft and government operated survey aircraft. The equipment needed is widely available, and has been in use and under constant development since at least the 1920s. The military gathering devices were first developed in the late 1940s to gather airborne radioactive material in extremely small amounts. The government aircraft are using equipment developed to track pollutants, and again they can find and quantify very small amounts.

Satellite tracking is being used to determine the spread rate of the clouds, but it cannot give accurate information on density of the ash. I'm not sure at what density value the satellite data loses the cloud, but you will need air samples to find the extreme edges of the cloud.

What I don't see (and I hope this is just lack of knowledge on my part) is any meaningful sharing of this information to provide timely maps of where the ash is, and at what concentrations. This is the information needed to give a go or no-go to the airlines.

With some of the previous eruptions over the Pacific and Indian oceans, it was relatively non-upsetting to just block off a large chunk of airspace for a few months, until all this data could be collected and analyzed. People just flew around it. Shutting down 25,000 flights a day over western and northern Europe is another thing all together. We will have to find a way to collect, process, and disseminate data in a much more timely fashion. Hopefully this will serve as a wake up call to all involved.

To show what "all involved" might soon mean, the Canadian government is forecasting shutting down airspace over Newfoundland soon, as a branch of the ash cloud spreads west. The US north-east is just a little farther.

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The engine manufacturers will tell you that any ash is too much. It may not cause immediate problems, but it will decrease the useful life of the engine, and increase maintenance costs over the long run. It takes very large concentrations to shut down an engine, but the decision on whether or not to fly in very low concentrations is more economic than safety.

Ash is being collected right now in the air over Finland, Iceland, the UK and Ireland (that I know of). The aircraft being used are a mixture of military aircraft and government operated survey aircraft. The equipment needed is widely available, and has been in use and under constant development since at least the 1920s. The military gathering devices were first developed in the late 1940s to gather airborne radioactive material in extremely small amounts. The government aircraft are using equipment developed to track pollutants, and again they can find and quantify very small amounts.

Satellite tracking is being used to determine the spread rate of the clouds, but it cannot give accurate information on density of the ash. I'm not sure at what density value the satellite data loses the cloud, but you will need air samples to find the extreme edges of the cloud.

What I don't see (and I hope this is just lack of knowledge on my part) is any meaningful sharing of this information to provide timely maps of where the ash is, and at what concentrations. This is the information needed to give a go or no-go to the airlines.

With some of the previous eruptions over the Pacific and Indian oceans, it was relatively non-upsetting to just block off a large chunk of airspace for a few months, until all this data could be collected and analyzed. People just flew around it. Shutting down 25,000 flights a day over western and northern Europe is another thing all together. We will have to find a way to collect, process, and disseminate data in a much more timely fashion. Hopefully this will serve as a wake up call to all involved.

To show what "all involved" might soon mean, the Canadian government is forecasting shutting down airspace over Newfoundland soon, as a branch of the ash cloud spreads west. The US north-east is just a little farther.

Ah crap, Now We're to be getting an unwanted Icelandic import? I still hope the weather will take care of most of It though.

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The T1 Trust, PRR T1 Class 4-4-4-4 #5550, 1 of America's First HST's