What an Ash hole!
Posted on 04/16/2010 7:08:05 AM PDT by darkside321
Flights across much of Europe will be severely disrupted well into Saturday because of drifting ash ejected from a volcano in Iceland, officials said.
Much of the airspace across northern and western Europe has been closed, and air control officials said some 17,000 flights would be cancelled on Friday.
Hundreds of thousands of passengers in Europe and around the world have been affected.
Scientists say the volcano is still erupting but producing less ash. Europe's intergovernmental air control agency, Eurocontrol, said it "expects around 11,000 flights to take place today in European airspace. On a normal day, we would expect 28,000."
Of about 300 transatlantic flights that would usually arrive in Europe in the morning, no more than 120 made it over, the agency said.
"Forecasts suggest that the cloud of volcanic ash is continuing to move east and south-east and that the impact will continue for at least the next 24 hours," it said in a statement on Friday morning.
More countries have moved to close their airspace, joining eight - the UK, Irish Republic, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Finland, Belgium and the Netherlands - which banned flights on Thursday.
France shut down 24 airports in the north of the country, including the main hub of Paris-Charles de Gaulle, while Germany had closed most of its airports by Friday morning.
At Frankfurt's airport, camp beds were laid out for tired travellers waiting for flights to resume.
The Baltic states of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia also closed their airspace. Poland closed most of its airports on Friday, including Krakow in the south, where foreign leaders had planned to arrive for the state funeral of President Lech Kaczynski, who was killed in a plane crash last Saturday...
(Excerpt) Read more at news.bbc.co.uk ...
On the other hand, if they attempt to fly they could be grounded into very small pieces....
My wife’s boss was going to go to Paris for his 25th anniversary today, but that looks unlikely.
I’m wondering if this could go on for weeks or months. That volcano doesn’t look like it’s going to stop belching anytime soon.
That volcano put more pollution in the air than mankind could ever hope to. It also will contribute to global cooling.
Another volcano in Iceland from 1700 or so was much stronger and was bad enough to cancel all flights for 6 months if it were to happen today.
That said, business could be conducted via the Internet anyway.
The only thing really that couldn’t be done online would be tourism.
This volcano could have some drastic effects on weather, worldwide, too
In the early 18th century, a major volcanic eruption occurred in Indonesia. The volcano spewed so much ash that it messed up weather for months. And, during the summer, it snowed in the US southeast.....there was a noticeable global cooling that summer
I wonder if we have a repeat
No, this eruption is quite weak compared to those that have impacted weather.
It will have only a minor effect at most.
And visiting family. It’ll hit some of those areas hard though. Tourism is a huge industry.
I suppose you could do train, boat, car, like people use to do. Airline industry would be hurt. Can they fly the other direction? Or is it all flights?
I just say, SUE ‘EM, ICELAND needs to be taken to the World Court and a law suit, for 300 trillion dollars, I can hear the roar coming from the EU. It’s THERE FAULT, and they need to pay. (sarc)
Well, unless the eruption gets worse, which could happen. Who knows.
The UK can’t import (or export) much by internet either, can they?
Re 1700: Wait until Katla blows. Not if, but when according to history. It will be a cold summer in the USA when it does
My wife’s boss was going to go to Paris for his 25th anniversary today, but that looks unlikely.
What an Ash hole!
AL Gore is going to sue that volcano in an EU court.
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