Huge volcanic ash cloud closes airports

I haven't seen anything on the news yet, where did this happen, and where was the volcano?
 

No, not a "peek into the future", but rather a simple snapshot of what happens when a volcano blows a plume of fine ash and dust 50,000 feet into the atmosphere. The grounding of flights has nothing to do with hot gas, but rather the interaction between the dust and the jet engines.
Spartacus, this Icelandic volcano has been spittin and spewing for about a month, and finally shot a big wad over the past couple of days :o!!

Iceland's volcanic ash halts flights across Europe

In this image made available by the Icelandic Coastguard taken Wednesday April 14, 2010, smoke and steam rises from the volcano under the Eyjafjallajokull glacier in Iceland, which erupted for the second time in less than a month, melting ice, shooting smoke and steam into the air and forcing hundreds of people to flee rising floodwaters. Authorities evacuated 800 residents from around the glacier as rivers rose by up to 10 feet (3 meters). Emergency officials and scientists said the eruption under the ice cap was 10 to 20 times more powerful than one last month, and carried a much greater risk of widespread flooding.ROBERT BARR
From Associated Press
April 15, 2010 12:08 PM EDT
LONDON (AP) — British airport operator BAA Ltd. says all flights at London's Heathrow Airport have been suspended for the rest of the day, causing travel chaos as ash clouds from Iceland's spewing volcano halted air traffic across Europe.

A BAA spokesman said Thursday that no further flights are expected to arrive or land at the airport, which is Europe's busiest.

Heathrow handles over 1,200 flights and 180,000 passengers per day.

THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. Check back soon for further information. AP's earlier story is below.

LONDON (AP) — Ash clouds from Iceland's spewing volcano halted air traffic across a wide swathe of Europe on Thursday, grounding planes on a scale unseen in years, as authorities stopped all flights over Britain, Ireland and the Nordic countries.

Thousand of flights were canceled, stranding tens of thousands of passengers, and authorities said it was not clear when it would be safe enough to fly again.

One scientist in Iceland said the ejection of volcanic ash — and therefore possible disruptions in air travel — could continue for days or even weeks.

Britain's Civil Aviation Authority said non-emergency flights were banned in all airports until at least 6 p.m. (1700 GMT, 1 p.m. EDT). Irish authorities closed their air space for at least eight hours, and aviation authorities in Denmark, Norway, Sweden and Finland took similar precautions.

The move shut down London's five major airports including Heathrow, a major trans-Atlantic hub that handles over 1,200 flights and 180,000 passengers per day. Shutdowns and cancellations spread to France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Denmark, Ireland, Sweden, Finland and Switzerland.

The volcano's smoke and ash poses a threat to aircraft because it can affect visibility, and microscopic debris can get sucked into airplane engines and can cause them to shut down.

It was not the first time air traffic has been halted by a volcano, but such widespread disruption had not been seen since a trans-Atlantic terror alert in 2006.

The National Air Traffic Service said all flights in British air space had not been halted in living memory, although most flights were grounded after the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks. Heathrow was also closed by fog for two days in 1952.

In Iceland, hundreds of people have fled rising floodwaters since the volcano under the Eyjafjallajokull (ay-yah-FYAH'-plah-yer-kuh-duhl) glacier erupted Wednesday for the second time in less than a month. As water gushed down the mountainside, rivers rose up to 10 feet (3 meters) by Wednesday night, slicing the island nation's main road in half.

The volcano still spewed ash and steam Thursday, but the floods had subsided. Some ash was falling on uninhabited areas, but most was being blown by westerly winds toward northern Europe, including Britain, about 1,200 miles (2,000 kilometers) away.

"It is likely that the production of ash will continue at a comparable level for some days or weeks. But where it disrupts travel, that depends on the weather," said Einar Kjartansson, a geophysicist at the Icelandic Meteorological Office. "It depends how the wind carries the ash
 

GPURS, thanks for the info and update. I guess they will have to divert all the flights to Paris and drive to London for a while.
 

spartacus53 said:
GPURS, thanks for the info and update. I guess they will have to divert all the flights to Paris and drive to London for a while.

Well Spartacus looks like you're SOL as French airports are closing too.
 

Alaska has a few active volcanoes that effect air traffic around Anchorage once in a while but not on this scale. Time to book a cruise and forget flying.
 

Thanks GPURS, Glad you can cut and paste. :wink:
 

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