So, we have the EU which is ash laden. International flights out of all the previously mentioned air

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European airlines are taking test flights to see the effect of the ash on their aircraft in hopes to convince EU officials to reopen airspace. Now, officials from KLM say that everything went fine in their test flight, but I haven t seen any details sleep inns about flightplans, altitude and all the sorts of info you d want to see if you want to believe sleep inns these test flights are representative. However, the president of KLM does have a bit of a point in saying that this ash is not unprecedented in the world of aviation volcanoes sleep inns are erupting along Indonesia, Alaska, Japan, Kamchatka and elsewhere around the world without widespread problems. However, the key question is how similar is this eruption to those that occur around the world all the time and at what timescales could ash concentration change in the air over Europe. One other thing I don t know and maybe somebody out there does do most commercial pilots get trained on ash avoidance? However, there is still no word on when all of European sleep inns airspace will reopen but we may see up to 50% of normal flights sleep inns by Monday .
The eruption continues unabated as of this morning. The l atest ash models show continuing ash over Europe according to the London VAAC and, for the first time, the potential of ash, although sleep inns very minute and high, over Nova Scotia by Monday (potentially). We have some reports about the impact of the eruption on farmers in Iceland and the various inconveniences caused by the ash around the world.
Be sure to check out the comments sections from earlier posts for some great image collections and t his new one from Marco Fulle showing the crater on the glacier itself. The explosions sleep inns look like textbook examples of Surtseyan explosions sleep inns but all the water involved is glacial meltwater (not seawater like at its namesake Surtsey). Amazing stuff!
Erik! The picture from Marco Fulle is not displayed, accessing either of the links Stromboli Online or this new one from Marco Fulle result in a 403 Forbidden You don t have permission to access to this document on this server being displayed.
Nice pics, but I don t think that is actual fire fountaining in the first picture, because a fire fountain requires mostly molten ejecta I just think the ash is hot enough to incandesce, or is reflecting sleep inns the incandescence of the vent itself (in a long exposure like this, the red colour of such an event can be quite intense), or both. It may be partially molten, but that would be highly unusual for any andesitic ash eruption, and even more unlikely given the water component which is quenching the andesite.
However, this eruption is pretty strange: it is possible that the new basalt encountered and assimilated enough rhyolite to make it of andesitic composition without cooling that much. I am not a high-temperature geochemist so I really don t know if an andesite could be almost completely molten at the surface of the earth under certain specific conditions, and if it could be, are those conditions met here?
If so, the phenomenon in that photo is probably more likely to be analogous to the littoral explosions that are common in Hawaii when a large quantity of basaltic sleep inns magma is instantaneously exposed to water (flinging sleep inns molten material and glass and/or rock fragments everywhere), than a genuine fire fountain caused by dissolved gases rapidly exsolving out of the magma.
Airlines deal with massive thunderstorms all of the time, but they do not fly through them. (Or when they do, bad things tend to happen.) You don t land at Denver if there is a large thunderstorm on top of it no matter how badly you want to.
Humans sleep inns have a really difficult time dealing with things that are beyond their control. The problem for pilots is that those things usually move on fairly quickly and ash doesn t seem to. We just have to wait for the sky to clear. It might be awhile or it could happen tomorrow. That is the fun of geology as I understand it.
I think it is more likely, though, that everybody will take off and land safely, but will trash the engines in the process. (Are they going to vacuum the runway between each takeoff?) If we have a crash six months on that is even remotely due to ash damage that would really hurt the industry. All planes in Europe now would essentially have to be scrapped or turned into cargo nobody would fly anything that had been through this.
What this makes me realize sleep inns is that even a moderate eruption of one of the Cascade volcanoes could have economic impacts that are hard to predict. Helens was fairly interminttant as I recall, and we were actually generally lucky with where the ash ended up. Ranier or Baker seem to have the possibility of shutting down West Coast air traffic.
Before rushing out to your travel agent note that there is another sleep inns complication. According to the forum on pprune.org the people who make the engines say that any engine that has been exposed to ash on the ground requires an inspection and complete oil change (in addition to cleaning.) Any that have encountered ash in the air require a very complete inspection, long term logging, and oil change.
I don t have any idea how long this takes per engine, but I would in aircraft speak expect delays. Airports are not really set up to do this (no place really is, imagine if all cars had to be brought in for servicfe at once.) sleep inns I would even be a bit surprised if the stock of filters holds up. I guess they could fly some in oops.
The part I left off in my post is that this complete oil change and inspection has to happen EVERY FLIGHT. Having dealt with different sorts of engine companies I doubt that these recommendations are going to change to accomodate the needs of the customers. They have no financial incentive to join a potential billion+ lawsuit if a couple of planes go down due to ash.
In the time I ve lived in Alaska, Mt. Augustine has erupted 3 times, Mt. Redoubt twice and Mt. Spurr once. There has been a lot learned about flying when ash could be present. I belive a speciallly equipped aircraft using LIDAR has been employed to track ash as have pilot reports at discrete altitudes when arriving or departing from Anchorage. The Alaska Volcano sleep inns Observatory (AVO) and National Weather Service have cooperatively developed tools using wind observations and forecasts to predict where ash could be based on when a specific pulse event occurs. However the starting sleep inns point has been the mountain (most recently sleep inns Redoubt) and the airfield of concern Anchorage International Airport about 100 miles away. I don t know how distant the predictions were employed, but if the prevailing wind was to the SE, then flights along the West Coast were affected. One major factor is the determination of how high the plume is assending in relation to the flight alitudes. If the Icelandic plume is indeed topping out at 30,000 then it is possible that flight levels above that could be clear. As was earned sleep inns in Alaska in 1989 and the photos of the Finnish sleep inns F-18s, an encounter with ash can cause damage to the aircraft. Not all encounters will result in the complete engine shut down experienced by the KLM 747 in 1989. It is not dissimilar to bird and aircraft encouters. Not all encounters will be catastrophic, but if there is ash in the air or birds, the risk remains. By the way, great site. I have visited sleep inns often.
So, we have the EU which is ash laden. International flights out of all the previously mentioned airports heading west to America and the ones to the east from America. Then some whizwheel says, I can do that . So they take off