Seven flights currently over the UK, 2 mins after airspace restrictions were lifted
Flights can begin to operate from Manchester Airport as soon as our airlines are ready although this could take several hours of organization
Seven flights currently over the UK, 2 mins after airspace restrictions were lifted
Flights can begin to operate from Manchester Airport as soon as our airlines are ready although this could take several hours of organization
Music Czar
Does that mean that she's gonna go up before the rest of us as a reward for her patience, or that she'll be last because she's on dial "up?"Originally Posted by ngraham
Poor Cocopea. No wonder she thinks she's gonna be first in line to see the Lord.... she has to have a head start since she's on dial up!
"Oir is leatsa an rioghachd, agus an cumhachd, agus a gloir, gu siorraidh, Amen." ("For Thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, forever, Amen" -- Scots Gaelic)
European skies open but airline schedules scrambled - http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE63E1TM20100421
(Reuters) - Europe's skies were open for business on Wednesday, but with so many planes having been grounded by the pall of volcanic ash spreading from Iceland it could take days, or weeks, to clear the backlog.
Britain, a major global air hub as well as a busy destination in its own right that has been squarely under the ash plume, reopened its airspace on Tuesday night, giving a huge boost to travelers and air freight.
Britain's Civil Aviation Authority made clear that scientists and manufacturers had downgraded the risk of flying in areas of relatively low ash concentrations.
"The major barrier to resuming flight has been understanding tolerance levels of aircraft to ash. Manufacturers have now agreed increased tolerance levels in low ash density areas," CAA head Deidre Hutton said.
Air France plans to run all long-haul flights on Wednesday, Poland will reopen its airspace from 0500 GMT, and the Dutch allowed night flights from Tuesday after taking the lead in allowing passenger flights on Monday.
Germany, with the major Frankfurt hub, kept its airspace largely closed until at least 0000 GMT, although some 800 flights operated on Tuesday, all on visual take-off and landing.
Britain had lagged its European neighbors in downgrading the threat to airplanes from the ash, which can potentially scour and even paralyze jet engines.
In 1982 a British Airways jet lost power in all four engines after flying through an ash cloud above the Indian Ocean.
Recriminations about what took governments so long to give the green light to an airline industry losing $250 million a day from the shutdown are likely to follow -- especially since carriers had flown successful test flights for several days.
The Association of European Airlines, representing 36 major commercial and freight carriers, criticized Britain on Tuesday for not reopening its skies sooner.
"Other people look to the UK and say 'Why are they still cautious when we are thinking of opening up?,' and of course this can influence judgments," David Henderson, AEA manager of information, told Reuters before Britain lifted its no-fly zone.
LESS VOLCANIC ACTIVITY
Icelandic officials said late on Tuesday there was less activity from the volcano under the Eyjafjallajokull glacier, which has been erupting for almost a week, but strong winds could still leave Europe at the mercy of the cloud.
Raymond Benjamin, secretary-general of the International Civil Aviation Organization, said that authorities were able to declare that the danger had passed.
An expert from the World Meteorological Organization said in Geneva that a low pressure weather system moving into Iceland should help clear the ash cloud within days.
For the airline industry, which said its losses from the shutdown were worse than after the September 11 attacks on the United States, freeing up the flights is a welcome relief. But with aircraft and crew scattered where they were grounded on Thursday, timetables will be wrecked.
"To get back to normal levels of operation from an (airline) industry point of view will take weeks," British Airways chief executive Willie Walsh told BBC television.
Steve Ridgway, chief executive of Virgin Atlantic, said: "Whilst the reopening of airspace is good news both for passengers and the industry as a whole, it is likely to take several days to get everyone who has been affected to their destinations."
PASSENGER RELIEF
The progressive reopening, after the European Union agreed on Monday to ease the rules, offered stranded passengers relief after days of frustration.
But for some who have faced epic journeys and huge financial outlay since no-fly zones were imposed on Thursday, the decision came too late.
For Meg Newman, 31, a speech and language therapist, and Harry Speller, 30, both of London, New York was the last leg of a three-month tour through India, Nepal and Malaysia after Speller lost his accounting job.
Each budgeted 3,000 pounds ($4,600) for their travels, and Speller estimates the extended stay in New York will cost at least another 1,500 pounds.
"New York was our five-day treat," Newman said. "We weren't expecting it to be 16 days. Now we haven't got the money."
New York itself is losing about $3 million a day in reduced spending, according to city officials.
The European aviation control agency Eurocontrol said about half of scheduled air traffic in Europe had been expected to operate on Tuesday: about 14,000 flights, up from a third on Monday..
"We know there are still a lot of problems for passengers on the ground," Helen Kearns, spokeswoman for the executive European Commission, told a briefing.
"We are faced with an unprecedented crisis. The disruption will continue over the week."
The economic impact of the cloud, already hitting parts of the supply chain, could increase sharply if air travel is disrupted into a second week -- potentially denting the fragile recovery from the global recession.
PricewaterhouseCoopers estimated a week of disruption could destroy around 0.025-0.05 percent of annual British GDP, and the same would probably be true of other European countries.
Luxury carmaker BMW said it was stopping production at some German plants due to a lack of electronic component deliveries. Nissan Motor Co is halting production on three lines in Japan.
Humanitarian flights were also affected.
The U.S. military is evacuating war-wounded from Afghanistan to a base in Iraq, instead of sending them to Germany. A polio immunization campaign in West Africa has had to be delayed because the vaccines are stuck at French and German airports.
Zero, did the thread about the other earthquake erupting, but was a false alarm get moved in here or deleted do you know?
Hey
You mean volcano?
Crazy world..
Yeah, it was merged with this thread.
Which brings me to something that I thought about earlier today...if worse comes to worst, and Katla or maybe even Hekla erupts, do you (members of this board in general following the story) think we should start a new thread for that specific volcano, or maybe keep all of it in this thread and ask a mod to change the title to "Icelandic Volcano Eruptions" ?I'm not sure. It was just a thought that came to me earlier. I'm kind of leaning more towards the separate thread, but...who knows. We might have to get a moderator's input on what we should do.
Hey
You mean volcano?
Yeah, it was merged with this thread.
Which brings me to something that I thought about earlier today...if worse comes to worst, and Katla or maybe even Hekla erupts, do you (members of this board in general following the story) think we should start a new thread for that specific volcano, or maybe keep all of it in this thread and ask a mod to change the title to "Icelandic Volcano Eruptions" ?
I think we should keep the threads separate for each volcano and title it that volcano. For one, as you say another eruption of either will result in lots of posts no doubt...and lots of pictures. And for my personal reason on this thread each time I go back if it is a page with those pics on it, it takes forever...one thread with three possible earthquakes would be way too long. But I say, we wait until it actually blows for a new thread and maybe just discuss it in this thread until then...
BTW, I think I just coined a new phrase "earthquake eruption"...
Yeah, I agree. and it was just one of those "just in case..." moments, gotta be prepared...
I think we should keep the threads separate for each volcano and title it that volcano. For one, as you say another eruption of either will result in lots of posts no doubt...and lots of pictures. And for my personal reason on this thread each time I go back if it is a page with those pics on it, it takes forever...one thread with three possible earthquakes would be way too long. But I say, we wait until it actually blows for a new thread and maybe just discuss it in this thread until then...
Today was a relatively "quiet" day...
Take cover!
BTW, I think I just coined a new phrase "earthquake eruption"...
Take cover!
I'm telling you...with all the news...everything is starting to mesh together....next I will be saying "the volcano was a magnitude 4.5, and is producing a lot of earthquake ash....it's not Bush's fault and we don't know where Obama went while it was erupting"......
Scientists find it difficult to predict volcano behavior - http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...042005301.html
The year of the earthquake has suddenly become the year of the volcano.
The eruption in Iceland is not large as volcanoes go, but the cloud over Europe has shed light on the awkward overlay of human commerce and a hot, churning, unpredictable Earth. It raises the question of what governments can do to prepare for -- and adapt to -- wild-card geological events that not only affect airliners but can also potentially alter the planet's climate for years at a stretch.
The volcano with the difficult name of Eyjafjallajokull is not powerful enough to change climate -- it has ejected material only as high as about 20,000 feet, and would need to launch the ash at least 33,000 feet to have global climatic effects, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).
Now airports are beginning to open again in Britain and the Netherlands, but no one can be entirely sure what will happen next in Iceland. Eyjafjallajokull could potentially incite an eruption of its larger neighbor, Katla, which hasn't erupted since 1918 and might be ready to rumble. In all three historically recorded eruptions of Eyjafjallajokull -- in 920, 1612 and 1821 -- Katla erupted soon thereafter.
"The eruption that's going on right now is small in comparison to what we expect Katla would be like," said Jay Miller, a volcanologist at Texas A&M University.
Events in recent days have demonstrated the inherent uncertainties of volcano science. Although volcanoes are far more predictable than earthquakes, they remain quirky, with each one having its own personality. Scientists rely primarily on past performance to predict future activity for any given location. The Iceland volcano initially produced little ash, but a new vent opened beneath a glacier and the situation turned explosive. What precisely happened is still being researched, but it appears that meltwater and magma produced steam quite suddenly and the volcano popped its top like a shaken soda bottle.
No one knows how much material will be ejected, or how high into the atmosphere it will travel. Scientists with computer models are frantically trying to track plumes of ash that become widely and chaotically dispersed even as new plumes shoot from the volcano. No one knows whether the ash will reach the airspace over the United States and affect domestic travel, though that doesn't seem to be an imminent threat. The ash has reached the eastern portion of Canada, however.
"I think there might be some nicer sunsets by the end of this week over North America," said Stan Benjamin, director of NOAA's Forecast Research Branch of its Global Systems Division.
One National Weather Service scientist, Gary Hufford, told reporters in a conference call Tuesday that it can be difficult to tell with satellite imagery how much ash is in the air and whether the airspace is safe for jetliners.
"The volcanic ash science still has many limitations," he said.
Asked whether he would be comfortable flying in Europe, Hufford paused and said, "I would be cautious."
The lengthy shutdown of many European airports continues to surprise travelers and scientists.
"It is kind of amazing. I imagined this in a big eruption. I didn't imagine it in a small eruption," said John Eichelberger, head of the U.S. Geological Survey's Volcano Hazards Program, who is stranded in Paris, where he had attended a meeting on volcanoes.
On Tuesday, the British Civil Aviation Authority revised its position to say that commercial jets could fly though areas that have low levels of ash. One top travel lobbyist said he suspected that officials had overreacted.
"Are we all certain that we're using the best scientific evidence? Are we aware of the economic impact of these decisions?" said Geoff Freeman, senior vice president of the U.S. Travel Association.
Air travel is particularly vulnerable to these geological events because the shortest international routes in the Northern Hemisphere take planes near Iceland, which seethes with volcanoes, and the many cauldrons that line the Pacific "Ring of Fire." The booming economies of Asia are also putting more planes over volcanoes in Indonesia, Papua New Guinea and the Philippines.
"Volcanic risk is actually rising, not because we're not doing our jobs, but because people are putting themselves nearer volcanoes, particularly with air travel," said Marianne Guffanti, a geologist with the USGS.
Said volcanologist Michael Rampino of New York University: "We live under the constant threat of some geological hazard. The more we all become technologically dependent upon others in other parts of the world, the more the problem shows up."
Chris Waythomas, a USGS volcanologist based in Alaska, said it is easy to detect when a volcano is active, but much harder to know what it will ultimately do, how long an eruption will continue and how big it will be.
"There are surprises. Mount St. Helens, 1980: No one expected a major flank collapse to occur," Waythomas said. That collapse depressurized the magma chamber below and caused the mountain to explode laterally.
The United States has 169 volcanoes, most of them in Alaska, the Aleutian Islands and in territories in the Pacific Ocean (scientists will brief the Congressional Hazards Caucus on Wednesday). Geologists warn that scenic Mount Rainier, near Seattle, is one of the most hazardous.
One of the planet's largest volcanoes is the huge caldera that feeds the hot springs and geysers of Yellowstone. Although it has been restless in recent months with hundreds of small earthquakes, there is no sign of the kind of dramatic doming of the ground that would indicate a major surge of magma and a potential eruption. The caldera last had a full-blown, catastrophic explosion about 640,000 years ago. The last significant eruption, known as the Pitchstone Plateau lava flow, took place 70,000 years ago. Jacob Lowenstern, the scientist in charge at the USGS Yellowstone Volcano Observatory, said tourists shouldn't stay away for fear of what's happening below.
Volcanoes can be mass killers. The relatively small eruption of the Nevado del Ruiz in Colombia in 1985 created a mud flow that buried more than 23,000 people in the town of Armero. Hot gas and ash from Mount . Pelée on the island of Montserrat rolled down the slopes and incinerated 30,000 people in 1902.
Vesuvius, the volcano that buried the Roman city of Pompeii, is widely viewed as another disaster waiting to happen. It erupts about every 400 years, and hasn't had a large eruption since 1641, Rampino said. Hundreds of thousands of people live beneath it and could be hit with what are known as pyroclastic flows -- extremely fast-moving, dense clouds of hot ash and rock that flow down the mountain.
"They'd have 15 minutes' warning," Rampino said. "It would destroy everything in its path. It's like an ash hurricane that's 800 degrees Celsius."
Does that mean that she's gonna go up before the rest of us as a reward for her patience, or that she'll be last because she's on dial "up?"MIHH
You know I blew my chance for a patience reward long ago.., but being one of about-- what like 3 folks here with dial up, I most likely will get a sympathy reward......the Lord is indeed merciful to those that suffer...and the first shall be last and the last first.......it took so long to download those pictures, I think I did meet the Lord.....
Reward for what patience?Does that mean that she's gonna go up before the rest of us as a reward for her patience, or that she'll be last because she's on dial "up?"
I wuvs ya Coco!
I do agree with Coco. We should start a separate thread if there is another volcano eruption. It's easier for the dial up people to get through the threads without so many pictures to wade through.
Reward for what patience?
I wuvs ya Coco!
You know only in a volcano thread can we dare even have this much explosive fun.....(no she didn't just say that).....
You know only in a volcano thread can we dare even have this much explosive fun.....(no she didn't just say that).....
yep, she just said THAT
This is a particularly disturbing report from Yahoo News.
Lengthy eruption would put economy under a cloud
By ARTHUR MAX, Associated Press Writer – Tue Apr 20, 3:48 pm ET
AMSTERDAM – Even as Europe's dormant airports sputter back to life, prudent travelers and businessmen should ask: What if Iceland's volcano erupts again? Because it might. Over and over again, for weeks, perhaps months, scientists say.
The last eruption from the Eyjafjallajoekull volcano in 1821 lasted off-and-on for 13 months — but back then there were no jet engines to get clogged by ash.Europe's recovery from the economic recession likely would be set back to zero. Banks and governments, worried about runaway inflation, could tighten credit. Railways and roads would be overloaded with freight and people needing more reliable means of travel.
National railways are enjoying a boom, with extra trains running from Moscow and Madrid and all points in between. Eurostar added 33 trains since the weekend carrying 165,000 passengers from Britain to the continent, or 50,000 more than usualEconomically, however, the picture would be generally grim.
Travel and tourism account for up to 5 percent of Europe's economic output. Even if the number of travelers drops by just one person in five, Europe would have to scrap its hoped-for return to growth this year, said economic analyst Vanessa Rossi of the London research institute Chatham House.
African agricultural exports, a big chunk of national economies, face potential collapse unless air freight could be replaced with refrigerated shipping containers. Kenya, which exports 1,000 tons a day of fresh goods, threw away 10 million flowers — mostly roses — since the eruption began April 14. Asparagus, broccoli and green beans meant for European dinner tables was fed to Kenyan cattle because storage facilities were filled to capacity.
To read the entire article CLICK HERE
Oh Linda, you crack me up....
Scary, that I understand it though......
Allons-y!
Wow Yogi! You know, a bunch of students are going to France next fall. I was also going to go on the trip, but I backed out a few months ago (for various reasons). Well, I think if a natural disaster disrupts the trip, then the students don't get their money back.If this volcano keeps erupting (or worse, if Katla goes off) then the trip will probably be canceled. I'm glad I'm not going.
Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. Hebrews 11:1
In the event of darkness, depression, sadness, or loneliness, your Bible can be used as a flotation device.
dead in Christ rise first
Coming in a little late here...
I think that's a good idea to have different earthquake and volcano threads.Way easier to find the latest info on each significant occurrence.
What will you do about all the mini earthquakes that are occurring (cocopea, I almost said "erupting"
Rom. 8:19 For the anxious longing of the creation waits eagerly for the revealing of the sons of God.
Rom. 8:28 God causes all things to work together for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to His purpose.
Oh Linda, you crack me up....
Scary, that I understand it though......
I like that idea, but depending on how many states start to quake, the Mods might not. And while I'm thinking about, lets thank them and acknowledge that we know all the activity is making them work harder. I mean the Ecology & Economic Forum use to be pretty quiet....boring even. So thanks Mods!Coming in a little late here...
I think that's a good idea to have different earthquake and volcano threads.
What will you do about all the mini earthquakes that are occurring (cocopea, I almost said "erupting"
And Yogi, I read somewhere that pineapples and Tuna is not being delivered too.
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