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Volcanic ash shuts air space across Europe

04.15.2010

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LONDON - An ash cloud from Iceland's spewing volcano halted air traffic across a wide swathe of Europe on Thursday, grounding planes on a scale unseen since the 2001 terror attacks as authorities stopped all flights over Britain, Ireland and the Nordic countries.

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

In a sobering comment, one scientist in Iceland said the ejection of volcanic ash — and therefore possible disruptions in air travel — could continue for days or even weeks.

With the cloud drifting south and east across Britain, the country's air traffic service banned all non-emergency flights until at least 7 a.m. (2 a.m. EDT) Friday. 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.

Irish authorities closed their air space for at least eight hours, and aviation authorities in Denmark, Norway, Sweden and Finland took similar precautions. In France, the aviation authority said Paris' main airport and nearly two dozen others would be closing due to the volcanic ash.

Airlines in the United States were canceling some flights to Europe and delaying others. In Washington, the Federal Aviation Administration said it was working with airlines to try to reroute some flights around the massive ash cloud.

Flights from Asia, Africa and the Middle East to Heathrow and other top European hubs were also put on hold.

'Significant threat'
The volcano was sending up smoke and ash that posed "a significant safety threat to aircraft," Britain's National Air Traffic Service said, as visibility is compromised and microscopic debris can get sucked into airplane engines, causing them to shut down.

It was not the first time air traffic has been halted by a volcano, but such widespread disruption has not been seen the Sept. 11, 2001 terror attacks.
"There hasn't been a bigger one," said William Voss, president of the U.S.-based Flight Safety Foundation, who praised aviation authorities and Eurocontrol, the European air traffic control organization, for closing down airspace. "This has prevented airliners wondering about, with their engines flaming out along the way."

At Heathrow, passengers milled around, looking at closed check-in desks and gazing up at departure boards listing rows of cancellations.

"It's so ridiculous it is almost amusing," said Cambridge University researcher Rachel Baker, 23, who had planned to meet her American boyfriend in Boston but got no farther than Heathrow.

"I just wish I was on a beach in Mexico," said Ann Cochrane, 58, of Toronto, a passenger stranded in Glasgow.

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

Second eruption
In Iceland, hundreds of people have fled rising floodwaters since the volcano under the Eyjafjallajokull glacier erupted Wednesday for the second time in less than a month. As water gushed down the mountainside, rivers rose up to 10 feet 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 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

The ash cloud did not disrupt operations at Iceland's Keflavik airport or caused problems in the capital of Reykjavik, but has affected the southeastern part of the island, said meteorologist Thorsteinn Jonsson. In one area, visibility was reduced to 150 yards Thursday, he said, and farmers were advised to keep livestock indoors to protect them from eating the abrasive ash.

At Copenhagen's international airport, spokesman Henrik Peter Joergensen said some 25,000 passengers would be affected.

"At the present time it is impossible to say when we will resume flying," Joergensen said.

Volcanic ash is formed from explosive eruptions. Particles as hard as a knife blade range in size from as small as 1/25,000 inch to 1/12 inch, the Geological Survey says. Ash can melt in the heat of an aircraft engine and then solidify again, disrupting operation.

No fatal accidents


The U.S. Geological Survey said about 100 encounters of aircraft with volcanic ash were documented from 1983 to 2000. In some cases engines shut down briefly after sucking in volcanic debris, but there have been no fatal incidents.

Last month's eruption at the same volcano occurred in an area where there was no glacial ice — lessening the overall risk. Wednesday's eruption, however, occurred beneath a glacial cap. If the eruption continues, and there is a supply of cold water, the lava will chill quickly and fragment into glass.

"When there is lava erupting close to very cold water, the lava chills quickly and turns essentially into small glass particles that get carried into the eruption plume," said Colin Macpherson, a geologist with the University of Durham.

"The risk to flights depends on a combination of factors — namely whether the volcano keeps behaving the way it has and the weather patterns. We're sitting in the north wind at the moment," he added.

Norway's King Harald V and Queen Sonja — who had planned to fly Thursday to Copenhagen for the Danish queen's 70th birthday — were looking to take a "car, boat or train" after Norway shut its airspace.

In 1989, a KLM Royal Dutch Airlines Boeing 747 flew into an ash cloud from Alaska's Redoubt volcano and lost all power, dropping from 25,000 feet to 12,000 feet before the crew could get the engines restarted. The plane landed safely.

In another incident in the 1980s, a British Airways 747 flew into a dust cloud and the grit sandblasted the windscreen. The pilot had to stand and look out a side window to land safely.