Volcano ash from Iceland hits UK & European flights

Flights restarted yesterday with the oprening of all Uk and many European airports.

They say flights with be back to normal today, though there will still be the backlog of thousands of passengers which will take many days to clear.

Hi,
After reading on some forums of people complaining about the British Gov. over reacting about the flight ban over U.K. due to volcanic ash. I watched a prog. on T.V. this afternoon, in LOS, called air investigation. This was about flight 9 to Perth in 1982. After passing over Jakarta on the way to Perth they lost all four engines on their 747 at 39,000ft. They decided to try to get back to Jac.. It was not until 14,000ft. that they got the engines restarted, one failed after about 2 mins. This was due to vol. ash. Also resulted in loss of oxygen and cabin pressure. Flight radar, then, only picked up moisture or rain clouds, vol. ash is dry. So they did not "see" it.
When they landed in Jac. they sent three of the engine back to South Wales for detailed checks. If you seen what the vol. ash did to the engines, windows and the paintwork of the plane you would not say the gov. overreacted. I suppose that these people who complained, and something happened to there flight, would be the first to complain that they should have canceled the flight.

If you read this article you might have a different opinion?

In a nut shell, the ash over the UK was 1/20th of the safe flying limit.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article ... -down.html

I would suggest compared to the Sun and the News of the World, the Daily Mail does indeed have quality.

I think an important point with the article in the Mail online is to note the sources of their various pieces of information.

I wouldn't disbelieve that there was an over-reaction or undue/unnecessary caution, due to lack of information or should I say their ability to interpret the information and determine the implications, and all against a background of safety being paramount.

jackspratt wrote:Based on the very small sample of what I have read from the Mail Onlying, I would tend to believe the opposite of everything they write.

At least the Sun and News of the World don't pretend they have any quality or credibility.

So I take it you didn't read the article as it was all lies. If you bothered to read the article you would have seen that it had some interesting information in it.

Instead we get yet another meaningless negative comment from you.

Problem was, no safe limits have really been set and no one in europe was prepared for this event. Also lack of ability in europe to properly monitor the levels. As far as danger goes, can only say that on 2 occaisions my car did have a noticeable layer of dust on it, which was dark grey in colour, a bit gritty and when washing off produced a milky suspension. i have not had this before (had the usual Saharan dust, but that is reddish) and i am pretty certain it was the volcanic ash. Also, there were the military jets which picked up ash.

The outcry was because of the economic cost, also it shows just how important air travel now is. hopefully lessons have been learned and instead of the usual cost cutting on preparation for various 'acts of God' the realisation now exists that plans are needed for ALL possible situations, even if they are one in a 100 year events.

Well having got to LOS safely by a gnat's whisker, (flew out on 2nd), the bloody thing has set off again, Now I just have to hope I can get home to the UK.
Whilst I actually think the authorities were correct to ground flights until they had more info on the damage the ash could cause to engines, I also wonder why no such plans were already in place, these eruptions have been going on for ever, and as Douglass pointed out, there have been problems in the past. Seems like some overpaid civil servant has been taking too many tea breaks and not doing their job.

There are worse places to get stranded Mally, half your luck

There was a Qantas jet years ago flying over Asia, that had all 4 engines choked with ash from Philipine or Indonesian volcanic ash.

Had a free fall and restarted them....

It was a code share flight then !