Grrr, it's a distinct possibility. They're hoping the cloud dissipates so it's "closed until further notice" at the moment, and I'm hoping that by the evening everything will be back to normal as I was planning on being at Kors on Saturday. :/
Slightly OT, but... What a coincidence! The day I'm at NATS, there's a spokesman outside doing a piece to camera about a major event... How weird is that.
For any aviation "geeks" out there, it's interesting to see the effect this is having on North Atlantic tracks. The two images below from JetPlan show a normal day (yesterday, Eastbound) and tomorrow's plan (West, ash upto FL550):
It's a floating cloud of ash then it cannot be solid, so why do people think it will break windshields and shit? they protect the windscreens and engines from bird strikes, and from our own experience we all know a bird of any kind, is harder than ash.......
By some magical premise that the cloud of ash is holding the stones in the air, after 500km the cloud will have dispersed enough that the stones drop out the bottom. Either way it's aload of nonsense.
Using logic in your own home you can just blow sand out of the palm of your hand and it may be lifted by a gust of wind, but it will disperse very quickly and not pose a threat to anything in the air.
well not really when a number of aircraft have suffered near crashes in the past due to engine flame outs in volcanic ash. So please stop talking out of your arse.
Off topic my mum saw a really low helicopter today and I bet the ATC have really enjoyed not having any work load.
I dont know much more about volcanoes than a kid armed with a junior encyclopedia but I do know that volcanic ash is highly corrosive. You dont die of lava in a volcano erruption, you die of asphyxiation from the ash. And you want to fly through it?
Hey i'm missing out on holiday here but i'm quite happy to sit it out, this would be on account of the not being stupid part of me.
Hell maybe I got my facts wrong afterall I dont claim to know much about that subject that a 7 year old wouldn't know, but people cleverer than me are saying it's really bad to fly into a cloud of volcanic ash - and I am quite happy to believe them.
What's your conspiracy theory anyway? The government is staging an attempt at lowering our Co2 emmissions to hit EU targets or we're clearing the skies so that the alien mothership can meet the master moo cow?
Obviously also there are a lot of strong air currents in the upper atmosphere, lots of energy, easily enough to keep fine particles airborne for a long time.
Volcanic ash is nasty stuff, if it gets into your lungs it doesn't just asphyxiate you by clogging them, its very sharp and cuts them to shreds too.
Fragments of pumice could also get quite far seeing as its very light, but the Volcanoes in Iceland aren't the kind that produce pumice.
Ash alone won't break a windshield, but if theres enough of it it will give the aircraft surface a good sandblasting, with the BA 747 mentioned earlier the pilots had to land blind because ash had blasted and stuck to the windscreen.