Volcanic ash halts Europe air travel

Last updated 22:40 16/04/2010

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Volcanic ash affecting New Zealanders

Iceland volcano eruption intensifies

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Travel agents are flat out after a huge cloud of ash from an Icelandic volcano forced the cancellation of up to 5000 flights in Europe, affecting thousands of New Zealand travellers.

Air traffic across Europe has been paralysed by the imposition of a massive no-fly zone amid fears the ash from the Eyjafjallajokull volcano could be sucked into aircraft engines, causing them to fail.

It was the first time "within living memory" a natural disaster had caused Britain to close its airspace, a spokeswoman for the National Air Traffic Service said.

The disruption could last at least two days and a leading volcano expert said the ash could present intermittent problems to air traffic for six months if the eruption continued.

Air New Zealand is tonight telling people trying to get to Europe “don’t fly.”

Two Air New Zealand flights are leaving tonight for London, one via Los Angeles and one through Hong Kong.

The planes were departing tonight but may not get any further than Asia and the US.

“For people heading to London, our strong recommendation is ‘not to travel’,” spokesman Mark Street told Stuff.

He said if people were insistent on trying and they were halted in Los Angeles or Hong Kong they would have to cover their own accommodation costs.

Reports from Asian cities say hotels are almost all fully booked with stranded travellers.

Communications manager for Auckland airport Richard Llewellyn said flights from Auckland International Airport to the Northern Hemisphere have been departing but airlines were advising passengers heading to the UK to defer because of a high probablility that services would terminate at the stop-over point.

"Obviously with the British airports closed still, flights are getting as far as the stopover point be it Dubai, Hong Kong or Los Angeles and either going no further or being diverted to another airport."

Passengers were advised to get in touch with the airline or check its website for updates.

Meanwhile, travel agents throughout New Zealand have been flat out with customer inquiries.

House of Travel spokeswoman Jo Wedlock said about 4500 clients had been affected.

The agency was contacting clients whose flights may be affected in the next few days, and discussing their options.

Flight Centre spokeswoman Marie Pilkington said its travel consultants had not dealt with so many inquiries since the H1N1 swine flu pandemic last year. "They are busy at the moment dealing with clients, and also getting lots of updates (from airlines)," she said.

"This is quite big, but it's one of those things where we really need to wait and see what happens. It could all blow over in a couple of days, which would obviously be the ideal situation for everyone.

"The people affected are obviously people leaving today and in the next couple of days, but we're telling people not to panic if they are travelling in the next couple of weeks - just sit tight, and talk to your travel consultant if you have any concerns."

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All clients who arranged travel insurance by today would be covered, and airlines were generally lenient with fees and penalties, Ms Pilkington said.

Air New Zealand said passengers should check the airline's website, call 0800 737 000, or check with their travel agent for up-to-date information.

CLOUD OVER IRELAND CLEARS

Civil aviation authorities in Ireland say they are lifting the restrictions on most of the country's airspace and reopening airports in Dublin and Cork to air traffic.

The Irish Aviation Authority says in a statement released Friday that the ash cloud caused by a volcanic eruption in Iceland had moved away from the country's southeast and Irish airspace was open except for a block off the south coast.

They have not ruled out further restrictions if weather patterns change.

FIRST TIME IN LIVING MEMORY

An aviation expert said it was the first time in living memory that an ash cloud had affected some of the most congested airspace in the world, while a scientist in Iceland said the ejection of volcanic ash - and therefore disruptions in air travel - could continue for days or even weeks.

"At the present time it is impossible to say when we will resume flying," said Henrik Peter Joergensen, the spokesman for Copenhagen's airport in Denmark, where some 25,000 passengers were affected.

The ash plume, which rose to between 6000m and 11,000m, lies above the Atlantic Ocean close to the flight paths for most routes from the US east coast to Europe.

With the cloud drifting south and east across Britain, the country's air traffic service extended a ban on most air traffic in England until 1200GMT (midnight NZT) Friday, but flights to Scotland and Northern Ireland may be allowed to resume.

Irish authorities closed their air space for at least eight hours, and aviation authorities in Denmark, Norway, Sweden and Belgium took similar precautions.

The move shut down London's five major airports including Heathrow, Europe's busiest airport which said 840 out of 1250 flights on Thursday were affected, disrupting around 180,000 passengers. More than 120,000 other passengers were affected at Gatwick, Stansted and Glasgow.

Airport shutdowns and flight cancellations spread eastward across Europe - to France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Denmark, Ireland, Sweden, Finland and Switzerland - and the effects reverberated worldwide.

French officials shut down all flights to Paris and 23 other airports.

Airlines in the United States cancelled more than 100 flights to Europe and delayed 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.

The highly abrasive, microscopic particles that make up volcanic ash pose a threat to aircraft because they can affect visibility and get sucked into airplane engines, causing them to shut down.

The ash can also block pitot tubes, which supply vital instruments such as air speed indicators, or latch onto engine blades, forming a glassy substance that may cause engines to surge or stall.

Ash will also damage all forward-facing surfaces on an aircraft, such as the cockpit windshields, the wings' leading edges, the landing lights and air filters for the passenger cabin.

It was not the first time air traffic has been halted by a volcano, but such widespread disruption has not been seen the September 11, 2001 terror attacks.

"There hasn't been a bigger one," said William Voss, president of the US-based Flight Safety Foundation, who praised aviation authorities and Eurocontrol, the European air traffic control organisation, for closing down airspaces. "This has prevented airliners wandering about, with their engines flaming out along the way."

Gideon Ewers, spokesman for the International Federation of Airline Pilots Associations said it was a unique event.

"Normally, these volcanic eruptions affect air travel in areas of thin traffic such as the Aleutian islands in Alaska, or in Indonesia and the Philippines," he said.

Bill McGuire, professor at the Aon Benfield UCL Hazard Research Centre, said if the volcano continued erupting for more than 12 months, as it did the last time, periodic disruptions to air traffic could continue.

"The problem is volcanoes are very unpredictable and in this case we have only one eruption to go on," he said. "And a lot depends on the wind. I would expect this shutdown to last a couple of days. But if the eruption continues - and continues to produce ash - we could see repeated disruption over six months or so."

It was unclear whether the ash cloud would affect the arrival of US President Barack Obama and other world leaders planning to attend the state funeral Sunday of Polish President Lech Kaczynski, who died in a plane crash.

Polish authorities banned flights over part of northwestern Poland late Thursday, the country's PAP news agency reported. The funeral is to be held in Krakow, in southeastern Poland.

ICELAND EVACUATIONS

Emergency officials in Iceland are evacuating hundreds more people as new flash floods endanger farms in the area near the volcano.

The Civil Protection Department says officials are evacuating about 700 people from rural areas near the volcano.

Hundreds of people have already 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 3m by Wednesday night, slicing the island nation's main road in half. The eruption was at least 10 times as powerful as the one last month, scientists said.

The volcano still spewed ash and steam Thursday, but the flooding had subsided, leaving new channels carved through the Icelandic landscape. Some ash was falling on uninhabited areas, but most was being blown by westerly winds toward northern Europe, including Britain, about 2000km 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 ash."

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 September 11. Heathrow was also closed by fog for two days in 1952.

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 metres Thursday, he said, and farmers were told to keep livestock indoors to protect them from eating the abrasive ash.

Eurostar train services to France and Belgium and cross-Channel ferries were packed as travellers sought ways out of Britain. P&O ferries said it had booked a passenger on its Dover-Calais route who was trying to get to Beijing - he hoped to fly from Paris instead of London.

The US Geological Survey says about 100 aircraft have run into volcanic ash from 1983 to 2000. In some cases engines shut down briefly after sucking in volcanic debris, but there have been no fatal incidents.

Kjartansson said until the 1980s, airlines were less cautious about flying through volcanic clouds.

"There were some close calls and now they are being more careful," he said.

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 7500 metres to 3600 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.

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.

If the volcano keeps erupting, there's no end to the flight disruptions it could cause.

"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."

Iceland, a nation of 320,000 people, sits on a large volcanic hot spot in the Atlantic's mid-oceanic ridge, and has a history of devastating eruptions.

The worst was the 1783 eruption of the Laki volcano, which spewed a toxic cloud over Europe with devastating consequences. At least 9,000 people, a quarter of the population of Iceland, died, many from the famine caused by the eruption, and many more emigrated. The cloud may have killed more than 20,000 people in eastern England and an estimated 16,000 in France.

- with Reuters, NZPA, AP

- AP

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