Chris Weigl's Blog

May 28, 2010

Volcanic Chaos

Filed under: The Volcanic Nightmare — Chris Weigl @ 3:56 pm

Explosive eruptions shook two huge volcanos in Central and South America on Friday, forcing thousands of people to flee their homes and disrupting air traffic as ash drifted over wide regions.

Guatemala’s Pacaya volcano started erupting lava and rocks on Thursday afternoon, blanketing the country’s capital with ash and forcing the closure of the international airport. President Alvaro Colom declared a “state of calamity.”

“We thought we wouldn’t survive. Our houses crumbled and we’ve lost everything,” said Brenda Castaneda, who said she and her family hid under beds and tables as marble-sized rocks thundered down on her home in the village of Calderas. The family was waiting for rescueteams to take them to a shelter at a nearby school.

Television reporter Anibal Archila was killed by a shower of burning rocks when he got too close to the volcano, about 15 miles (25 kilometers) south of Guatemala City, said David de Leon, a spokesman for the national disaster committee.

The last images of Archila broadcast by Channel 7 television show him standing in front of a lava river and burning trees, talking about the intense heat.

De Leon said three children between the ages of seven and 12 were missing.

At least 1,600 people from villages closest to the volcano have been evacuated to shelters.

The volcano’s eruption lost some intensity Friday, though ash still rained heavily on nearby communities and constant explosions continued to shake the 8,373-foot (2,552 meter) mountain, according to the Central American country’s Geophysical Research and Services Unit.

The unit reported an ash plume 3,000 feet (1,000) meters high that trailed more than 12 miles (20 kilometers) to the northwest.

In Guatemala City, bulldozers scraped the blackened streets while residents used shovels to clean their cars and roofs, carrying out large garbage bags filled with ash into the streets. City officials pleaded with residents not to dump the ash into sewers.

The blanket of ash was three inches (7.5 centimeters) thick some southern parts of the city, and officials imposed limits on trucks and motorcycles to help speed up traffic.

The government urged residents not to leave their homes unless there was an urgent need.

La Aurora airport will be closed at least until Saturday as crews clean up said Claudia Monge, a spokeswoman for Civil Aviation. Flights were being diverted to the Mundo Maya airport in northern Guatemala and Comalapa in El Salvador.

Meanwhile, strong explosions rocked Ecuador’s Tungurahua volcano, prompting evacuations hundreds of people from nearly villages.

The National Geophysics Institute said hot volcanic material blasted down the slopes of the volcano, and ash plumes soared 6 miles (10 kilometers) above a crater that is already 16,479 feet (5,023 meters) above sea level.

Officials said that within a few hours, winds already had blown the ash over the city of Guyaquil, 110 miles (185 kilometers) to the southwest.

The eruption led aviation officials to halt flights out of Guayaquil and from Quito to Lima, Peru.

Institute researcher Sandro Vaca told Radio Sonorama that the eruption “seems to be growing rapidly.” But there were no immediate reports of deaths.

Television images showed fearful people in a village near the volcano weeping as they ran for help from soldiers and police who arrived to help in evacuations.

Eruptions at Tungurahua, 95 miles (150 kilometers) southeast of the capital, Quito, buried entire villages in 2006, leaving at least four dead and thousands homeless.

While the Guatemala eruption shut down local flights, it was not expected to affect airports in neighboring countries like Iceland’s Eyjafjallajokul volcano did.

The ash erupting from Pacaya is thick and falls quickly to the ground, unlike the lighter ash that spewed from the volcano in Iceland and swept over much of Europe, disrupting global air travel, said Gustavo Chigna, a volcano expert with Guatemala’s institute of seismology and volcanos.

The most active of Guatemala’s 32 volcanos, Pacaya has been intermittently erupting since 1966, and tourists frequently visit areas near three lava flows formed in eruptions between 1989 and 1991.

In 1998, the volcano twice spewed plumes of ash, forcing evacuations and shutting down the airport in Guatemala City

May 16, 2010

Volcanic Ash Returns to Europe

Filed under: The Volcanic Nightmare — Chris Weigl @ 7:38 pm
Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Europe’s busiest airport was set to close early Monday morning as a dense crowd of volcanic ash drifts across England from Iceland, aviation authorities said.

The airspace over London’s Heathrow Airport will be closed at 1 a.m. Monday (0000 GMT; 7 p.m. EDT), Britain’s National Air Traffic Service said in a statement late Sunday night.

The restrictions affecting Heathrow — as well as Gatwick, Stansted, and London City airports — will be in place until at least 7 a.m. Monday, the aviation authority said.

Airports across Britain and Ireland were closed for much of Sunday because of the drifting ash. The shifting of the no-fly zone southward will allow airports in northern England — including the key cities of Manchester and Liverpool — to reopen after 1 a.m.

But all airports in Northern Ireland, as well as some Scottish facilities, will remain shut.

In Ireland, Dublin’s international airport closed early Sunday evening until at least 12 p.m. Monday (1100 GMT, 7 a.m. EDT). Some airports in Ireland’s west were closed and will reopen at different times Monday, but Shannon and southern Cork were open “until further notice.”

The British air traffic agency said the ash cloud was changing shape and moving south, toward Oxford, England, 60 miles (100 kilometers) northwest of London. Britain’s weather service says the northwest winds should shift midweek, redirecting the ash away from Britain.

German authorities sent up two test flights Sunday to measure the ash cloud, one from the German Aerospace Center (DLR) and the other from Lufthansa, the country’s biggest airline.

The DLR plane flew to southern England then continued north, collecting data from between 10,000 to 23,000 feet (3,000 to 7,000 meters). The Lufthansa Airbus A340-600, equipped with special scientific gear, left Frankfurt to fly over northern Germany, the United Kingdom and parts of Scandinavia.

All the data from both flights was immediately sent to aviation authorities in the U.K, the Netherlands and Germany, said aerospace center spokesman Andreas Schuetz.

Ash can clog jet engines. The April 14 eruption at Iceland’s Eyjafjallajokul volcano forced most countries in northern Europe to shut their airspace between April 15-20, grounding more than 100,000 flights and an estimated 10 million travelers worldwide. The shutdown cost airlines more than $2 billion.

In southern Iceland, activity at the volcano fluctuated Sunday but did not get more intense, civil protection official Agust Gunnar Gylfason said. He blamed the closures on shifting winds.

“What really changes the situation is the weather pattern,” he said.

The Icelandic weather service said “presently there are no indications that the eruption is about to end.”

Airlines complained bitterly over the air space closures last month, calling them an overreaction. The European air safety agency last week proposed drastically narrowing the continent’s no-fly zone because of volcanic ash to 120 miles (190 kilometers) like the one used in the U.S. The proposal still must be approved.

Virgin Atlantic’s president, Sir Richard Branson, criticized British authorities for Sunday’s no-fly zone. British Airways agreed, calling the approach “overly restrictive and not justified on safety grounds” and saying airlines are best qualified to determine whether it’s safe to fly.

“The closing of Manchester airspace once again is beyond a joke,” Branson said in a statement. He said test flights have “shown no evidence that airlines could not continue to fly completely safely.”

A spokesman for Britain’s Civil Aviation Authority called Branson’s remarks “surprising” because airline representatives and engine manufacturers last week had agreed to find a way to ensure planes could fly safely in the volcanic ash.

“We as an organization can’t just say, ‘Oh, I’m sure it’s all right, go fly without evidence it’s safe,’” Jonathan Nicholson said.

British Airways, facing cabin crew strikes beginning Tuesday, said it had canceled a small number of flights out of Manchester. The airline’s chief executive, Willie Walsh, is to meet with British Transport Secretary Philip Hammond on Monday.

Eurostar, which runs trains between Britain and continental Europe, said it was adding four extra trains — an additional 3,500 seats — between London and Paris on Monday.

Eyjafjallajokul (pronounced ay-yah-FYAH-lah-yer-kuhl) erupted in April for the first time in nearly two centuries. During its last eruption, starting in 1821, its emissions rumbled on for two years.

May 15, 2010

Volcano Again Halts Flights Across Europe

Filed under: The Volcanic Nightmare — Chris Weigl @ 12:32 pm
Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

An ash cloud from Iceland’s spewing volcano halted air traffic across a wide swath of Europe on Thursday, grounding planes on a scale unseen since the 2001 terror attacks as authorities stopped all flights over Britain, Ireland and the Nordic countries.

Thousands of flights were canceled, stranding tens of thousands of passengers, and officials said it was not clear when it would be safe enough to fly again.

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 20,000 feet and 36,000 feet (6,000 meters and 11,000 meters), lies above the Atlantic Ocean close to the flight paths for most routes from the U.S. east coast to Europe.

With the cloud drifting south and east across Britain, the country’s air traffic service banned all non-emergency flights until at least 7 a.m. (0600GMT, 2 a.m. EDT) Friday. 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, a major trans-Atlantic hub that handles over 1,200 flights and 180,000 passengers per day. 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 canceling some 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 Sept. 11, 2001 terror attacks.

“There hasn’t been a bigger one,” said William Voss, president of the U.S.-based Flight Safety Foundation, who praised aviation authorities and Eurocontrol, the European air traffic control organization, 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 told The Associated Press.

In Iceland, hundreds of people have fled rising floodwaters since the volcano under the Eyjafjallajokull (ay-yah-FYAH’-plah-yer-kuh-duhl) glacier erupted Wednesday for the second time in less than a month.

As water gushed down the mountainside, rivers rose up to 10 feet (3 meters) 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 1,200 miles (2,000 kilometers) 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 Sept. 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 meters (yards) 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 travelers 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 U.S. 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 25,000 feet to 12,000 feet (7,500 meters to 3,600) 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.

May 8, 2010

More Volcanic Ash Delays

Filed under: The Volcanic Nightmare — Chris Weigl @ 9:06 am
Tags: , , , , , ,

Many flights between Europe and North America were either delayed or canceled on Saturday due to the spreading cloud of volcanic ash stretching across much of the northern Atlantic, the European flight control agency said.

Flights had to be rerouted north over Greenland or south over Spain to avoid the 1,200-miles (2,000-kilometer) -long cloud stretching from Iceland to northern Spain, Eurocontrol said. This will increase flying times by about an hour in either direction.

“We assume that basically most of the trans-Atlantic flights will have to be rerouted on Saturday,” Eurocontrol spokeswoman Kyla Evans said. “We expect substantial delays because of that.”

Approximately 600 airliners make the oceanic crossing every day. Around 40 percent will be rerouted southward and the rest will skirt Iceland from the north.

The plume of ash also forced the closure of 15 airports in northern Spain on Saturday and is expected to expand into southern France during the day, carried along by Atlantic winds. Spain’s main international airports of Madrid and Barcelona were expected to remain open.

Just over 100 flights were canceled at mainland Portugal’s three international airports on Saturday because of the ash cloud, the national airport authority ANA said.

Aer Lingus canceled flights from the United States to Dublin, citing the exceptionally circuitous routes to get around the cloud.

“During the day, the area affected by volcanic ash is expected to extend from Iceland, south to Portugal and possibly as far east as Barcelona and Marseille,” a Eurocontrol advisory said.

But relief appeared to be on the way, because meteorological charts showed that the area of high ash concentration was predicted to move westward into the ocean — away from the Spanish and Portuguese coasts — by Saturday night.

Until Eyjafjallajokul (pronounced ay-yah-FYAH-lah-yer-kuhl), the volcano in southern Iceland, stops its emissions, the key to the future course of Europe’s ash crisis will be the prevailing winds. The eruption of the glacier-capped volcano has shown no signs of stopping since it began belching ash April 13. It last erupted from 1821 to 1823.

Since the ash is reaching altitudes of up to 35,000 feet (10,000 meters), right in the path of most trans-Atlantic flights, it will effectively block the usual routes. Eurocontrol said this would cause significant congestion, particularly in the airspace over Spain and Portugal where many of the diverted flights are heading.

A trans-Atlantic trip from New York to Paris, which is normally about 5,800 kilometers (3,600 miles) long, could add on another 1,000 kilometers (600 miles) by being diverted over the Iberian Peninsula.

An Air France flight from Boston arrived in Paris Saturday with a delay of more than four hours.

Tracks across the Atlantic normally follow “great circles” — the shortest path between two points on the globe. They are determined each day by air traffic control centers on both sides of the Atlantic, generally depending on the jet stream from North America to Europe.

Planes flying the track system typically follow each other in 10-minute intervals and at altitude levels 1,000 feet (300 meters) apart, in order to maintain safety in airspace which is beyond the range of radar control.

May 7, 2010

Iceland Volcano Emits ‘Massive’ New Ash Cloud

Filed under: The Volcanic Nightmare — Chris Weigl @ 12:06 am
Tags: , , , , , ,

Iceland’s volcano has produced a 1,000-mile-wide (1,600 kilometer-wide) ash cloud off the west coast of Ireland that will force western Irish airports to shut down again Friday, the Irish Aviation Authority announced.

The authority said shifting winds, currently coming from the north, had bundled recent days’ erupted ash into a massive cloud that is growing both in width and height by the hour.

Eurocontrol, which determines the air routes that airliners can use in and around Europe, says the ash accumulation is posing a new navigational obstacle – because the cloud is gradually climbing to 35,000 feet (10,500 meters) and into the typical cruising altitude of trans-Atlantic aircraft. Until recent days, the ash had remained below 20,000 feet (6,000 meters).

The Irish Aviation Authority said the engine-wrecking ash would skirt Ireland’s western shores Friday, forcing a half-dozen airports to ground flights for much of the day. However, the airports in Dublin, Cork in the southwest and Waterford in the southeast will remain open.

“The restrictions are required as the increased level of recent volcanic activity has created a massive ash cloud stretching 1,000 miles long and 700 miles wide,” the authority said in a statement.

The latest alert came only hours after British and Irish authorities declared the all-clear after much of the same ash was blown southwest from Scotland through Ireland on Tuesday and Wednesday, closing airports all along the way. Those were the first European air closures since the initial April 14-20 crisis, when ash from Iceland’s Eyjafjallajokul (pronounced ay-yah-FYAH-lah-yer-kuhl) volcano forced authorities across Europe to ground 100,000 flights and 10 million passengers.

Britain’s Meteorological Office said that, given the direction of the winds, “the risk of the ash cloud affecting U.K. airspace in the next couple of days remains low.”

Eurocontrol, the continent’s air traffic management agency in Brussels, also announced Thursday it plans to reroute flights between Europe and North America to avoid flying over the ash cloud off Ireland’s west coast.

Until Eyjafjallajokul stops its emissions, the key to the future course of Europe’s ash crisis will be the prevailing Atlantic winds.

When they blow to the northeast toward the unpopulated Arctic – the typical pattern in springtime – the danger to aircraft is minimized. But when they shift southward, as is happening this week and in mid-April, airlines’ ability to land and depart safely is jeopardized.

The Irish Aviation Authority said trans-Atlantic aircraft using Irish air space were already giving the ash cloud a wide berth by shifting their flight paths south.

The volcano, about 900 miles (1,500 kilometers) northwest of Ireland, has shown no signs of stopping since it began belching ash April 13. The glacier-capped volcano last erupted sporadically from 1821 to 1823.

In Iceland, civil protection official Agust Gunnar Gylfason said the volcano’s eruption intensified Wednesday and it continued to emit that higher volume of ash Thursday. He said the ash plume’s maximum altitude was oscillating between 20,000 and 30,000 feet.

May 4, 2010

Volcanic Ash Closes UK Airspace

Filed under: The Volcanic Nightmare — Chris Weigl @ 12:53 am
Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Parts of the airspace over Britain and Northern Ireland will close on Tuesday and operations from Irish airports will be restricted because of the cloud of volcanic ash drifting south from Iceland that wreaked havoc on European air travel last month.

Britain’s Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) said it had imposed no-fly zones over parts of Scotland and will close Northern Irish airspace from 0600 GMT on Tuesday due to rising levels of volcanic ash in the atmosphere.

“Because ash concentrations exceed the levels agreed as safe by engine manufacturers, airspace over the Outer Hebrides was closed to all operations from 1800 …(1700 GMT on Monday) following Met Office (weather service) advice,” the CAA said on its website.

“Following the latest update from the Met Office, airspace over Northern Ireland will also be closed from 0700 local time…(0600 GMT on Tuesday),” it said.

The restrictions will close Belfast and Derry airports, it said.

Flights over Europe were hit by a six-day shutdown of airspace last month over fears of the effect on jet engines of ash from the volcanic eruption in Iceland.

The Irish Aviation Authority (IAA) said it would impose restrictions on all flights in and out of Ireland from 0600 GMT until 1200 GMT due to risk of ash ingestion in aircraft engines.

But overflights of Ireland from the United Kingdom and Europe will not be affected while flights in mainland Europe will operate normally, it said.

The IAA said information from the Volcanic Ash Advice Center suggested the no-fly zone would affect Dublin, Shannon Galway, Sligo, Ireland West, Donegal, Cork and Kerry.

The CAA and IAA said they would review the situation following the latest weather reports on Tuesday morning.

April 18, 2010

Cloudy With a Chance of Volcanos

Filed under: The Volcanic Nightmare — Chris Weigl @ 3:13 pm
Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

The shutdown of much of Europe’s airspace looked set to last into Monday as the geyser of ash from an Icelandic volcano continued to spew into the atmosphere Sunday, even as some isolated airports, such as those in Frankfurt and Berlin, cleared the way for a handful of flights heading east or north.

Britain’s National Air Traffic Services extended its ban on flights across its airspace until at least 6 a.m. local time Monday, prompting the country’s flag carrier, British Airways, to cancel all of its Monday flights. Air France canceled Paris-bound flights through 8 a.m. Monday. And across the globe, Cathay Pacific of Hong Kong, Qantas of Australia and China Airlines in Taiwan also canceled Europe-bound flights into Monday and beyond.

Eurocontrol, the Brussels-based agency that coordinates air traffic management across the region, said it expected 20,000 — more than 80 percent — of the 24,000 flights normally scheduled would be canceled Sunday. Since the ash cloud first appeared over European airspace Thursday, more than 63,000 flights have been canceled, it said.

But Germany began allowing some flights to take off from a few airports from 4 to 8 p.m. “A gap in an easterly direction has appeared in the ash cloud,” a spokeswoman told Reuters late Sunday afternoon. A few other countries, including France and Switzerland, opened at least parts of their airspace to allow flights above 35,000 feet. And major U.S. airlines, which canceled more than 130 Europe-bound flights on Sunday, said they were planning to operate some flights to and from Spain, Portugal and Italy, “conditions permitting.”

Still, airline officials were having a hard time hiding their frustration with the situation. On a conference call Sunday with Eurocontrol, one airline representative sharply chastised national civil aviation authorities for being inconsistent in applying flight restrictions and stressed that the flight bans were creating “a serious economic issue for us.”

With airlines eager to reposition aircraft and flight crews scattered across the region, some governments began allowing limited, low-altitude flights without passengers. Germany’s civil aviation authority said it had allowed several such ferry flights by Lufthansa, Air Berlin and Condor airlines overnight. Such flights are being operated under so-called visual flight rules, whereby pilots navigate by sight, rather than relying on their cockpit instrument panels.

Air France, British Airways and KLM also reported successful test flights on Sunday.

“I understand the requirement for safety,” said Dale Moss, the chief executive of OpenSkies, the Paris-based, all-business-class subsidiary of British Airways, in an interview Sunday. “But the level of frustration is painfully high” for both airlines and passengers, he said.

“We need some scientific data quick, so that we can start projecting and putting contingency plans in place,” he said.

Earlier, Lufthansa expressed frustration at what it suggested was excessive caution by the German authorities. But German officials defended their decision. “What’s more important, the safety of passengers or business?” asked Helmut Malewski, a meteorologist at the German Weather Service. “No one knows how to deal with this situation. We’re erring on the side of safety.”

Britain’s Met Office meteorological agency said that the eruption of Iceland’s Eyjafjallajokull volcano was continuing as of early Sunday morning “and possibly intensifying,” with the ash plume rising to 30,000 feet. The cloud had extended as far south as Spain overnight, prompting the closure of airspace in the northern part of that country, according to Eurocontrol.

While the closing of the airways has already laid waste to the immediate plans and business of industry, the arts and world leaders, the possibility that it could drag on for days, if not weeks, is raising concerns about the longer term consequences for public health, military operations and the world economy.

The disaster is estimated to be costing airlines $200 million a day, but the economic damage will roll through to farms, retail establishments and nearly any other business that depends on air cargo shipments. Fresh produce will spoil, and supermarkets in Europe, used to year-round supplies, will begin to run out.

But unless flights are disrupted for weeks, threatening factories’ supply chains, economists do not think the crisis will significantly affect gross domestic product.

“If it really drags on another week that could be really serious,” said Peter Westaway, chief economist for Europe at the Nomura investment bank. The air travel shutdown could affect productivity, he said, if hundreds of thousands of people miss work or are not able to do business because they are stuck in limbo somewhere.

On Sunday, London’s busy St. Pancras train station, where Eurostar trains leave for Paris and Brussels, was still crowded with people trying to get to continental Europe and elsewhere. Long lines formed in front of ticket counters and people waited patiently without knowing when the next available ticket might be.

Silvana Sobreira, sitting on a bench, wondered how and when she would be able to get home in Brazil. She and her husband were on a vacation trip across Italy, Austria and now Britain for the last 17 days but are now stuck.

“We’re hoping to get a ticket to Paris but it doesn’t look good,” she said. From Paris, the couple would then rent a car to Lisbon, Portugal, and then fly back to Brazil, she said — just as an announcement advised travelers that all Eurostar tickets to Paris were sold out for Sunday.

The shutdown has also affected American military operations. Military supplies for operations in Afghanistan have been disrupted, and a spokeswoman for the Pentagon said that all medical evacuation flights from Iraq and Afghanistan to Germany, where most injured soldiers are typically treated, were being diverted directly to Andrews Air Force Base in Maryland.

Within the European Command, some routine resupply missions and movement of personnel missions have been diverted or delayed, she said.

The World Health Organization issued an advisory saying that as long as the ash remains in the upper atmosphere, there is not likely to be increased health risk. So far, analysis of the ash shows that about a quarter of the particles are smaller than 10 microns, making them more dangerous because they can penetrate more deeply into the lungs, the W.H.O. said.

In Britain, where a layer of fine dust is already covering large areas of the country, the authorities are advising those with respiratory problems to stay indoors or wear masks out of doors.

But experts said most people had no reason to be alarmed. Dr. Neil W. Schluger, chief scientific officer for the World Lung Foundation, said people with asthma or lung disease could stay indoors or wear a mask to avoid irritation, but that there was little real danger, especially with the ash falling so far from the source.

“The bottom line,” said Dr. Ronald G. Crystal, chief of pulmonology at New York Presbyterian/Weill Cornell Hospital, “is there’s no long-term health effect from volcanic ash.”

The airline industry was the first economic casualty. Steve Lott, a spokesman for the International Air Transport Association, said that with the conservative estimate of a $200 million loss in revenue per day, “we could easily hit a billion dollars’ loss in revenue next week.”

“The bottom line is that it could not have happened at a more difficult time for airlines that are trying to climb out of the global recession,” he said. “It’s been that way, many airlines feel like they take one step forward, two steps back.”

The volcano, meanwhile, continued to defy predictions. Clive Oppenheimer, a volcanologist at the University of Cambridge, said the average span of a volcanic eruption is a month or two. In the case of this volcano, he said, scientists need to know more about how much molten rock is beneath it, but concluded, “We could see intermittent activity over the coming months.”

Cathay Pacific, for one, said it would not accept any new bookings for the next few days. But Leo Liao, a Hong Kong businessman who was stranded at the Frankfurt airport, was cheerful and philosophical. “It’s a natural issue,” he said. “Never complain. You can’t change this.”

April 17, 2010

Iceland Fallout: Why a Minor Volcano Causes Major Disruptions

Filed under: The Volcanic Nightmare — Chris Weigl @ 9:59 pm
Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

As volcanoes go, the eruption of Iceland’s Eyjafjallajokull volcano on Tuesday won’t make the science books. Though scientists haven’t yet been able to gather enough information on the eruption to give it a score on the Volcanic Explosivity Index – which ranks volcano events on a 1 to 8 scale – it’s unlikely to score very high. Eyjafjallajokull barely compares to major eruptions like Mt. St. Helens in 1980, which released 1.5 million metric tons of sulfur dioxide into the atmosphere, or the catastrophe of Krakatoa in Indonesia in 1883, which killed over 40,000 people and was felt around the world. During Eyjafjallajokull, by contrast, there have been no deaths, and just 800 people living near the volcano had to be evacuated.

But Eyjafjallajokull’s eruption has still had a major impact on the world, as the 7-mile-high plume of volcanic gases and silicate ash has spread across much of Europe, bringing air travel across the continent to a near standstill. Britain’s airspace is still closed, and authorities don’t expect to loosen restrictions until sometime Saturday at the earliest. On Friday two-thirds of European flights were cancelled, as were 180 trans-Atlantic flights. Delays and cancellations hit airports from Toronto to Tokyo, and the problems were costing the global air travel industry an estimated $200 million a day. Not bad for a distinctly minor-league eruption. (See a gallery of the eerie beauty of the eruption.)

Still, the havoc caused by Eyjafjallajokull is a reminder that in our globalized, interconnected world, it’s less the sheer power of a natural disaster than where and when it happens – and how prepared we are to respond. Eyjafjallajokull was at the right place at the right time to wreak maximum havoc on the air travel system. (Even relatively small amounts of volcanic ash high in the air can clog sensitive jet engines, shutting down ventilation and causing the machinery to melt down and fail.) If the volcano had erupted in the years before air travel became common, it wouldn’t have caused trouble for anyone but the people of Iceland.

The same goes for other kinds of natural disasters. The earthquake that hit Haiti in January killed some 230,000 people, yet the temblor only scored a 7.0 on the Richter scale – bad, but not that bad. In fact, the quake barely compared to the 8.8 temblor that hit Chile a little more than a month later, killing less than 500 people. What’s the difference? Population density – the Haiti quake struck the country’s dense capital of Port-au-Prince, while the Chile temblor missed big cities like Santiago – and preparation. Chile is a relatively well-off South American nation with a long history of earthquakes, so buildings are built to resist seismic waves and the government and people know how to respond to a disaster. Impoverished Haiti, by contrast, was helpless, and its people paid the price. (See how some people fought the ash to try and reach their destinations.)

As global populations grow and people crowd into risk zones – like earthquake areas and flood plains – the toll of natural disasters has grown as well. According to the Center for Research on Epidemiology of Disasters, the number of catastrophic events has more than doubled since the 1980s, while the Red Cross estimates that the economic damage from disasters rose fivefold to $629 billion between 1985 and 2005. That doesn’t necessarily mean that volcanoes and quakes are getting worse – rather that there are more of us living in areas where we might be affected by a disaster, and we have more to lose.

Fortunately global wealth and technology allows us to better prepare for and respond to natural disasters. In the case of the Eyjafjallajokull eruption, European air traffic controllers already had plans in place to deal with an ash cloud. Shutting down the continent’s airspace and grounding thousands of flights was expensive and inconvenient, but it’s much better than having planes falling out of the sky. And while the economic toll of such disasters may be rising, huge death tolls are far less common. In 1783 the volcano Laki in Iceland erupted on a massive scale, and threw so much ash and sulfur dioxide into the atmosphere that it led to a famine that killed half the livestock and 25% of Iceland’s population. An eruption of that size today wouldn’t likely cause nearly as dramatic a death toll – though it might well interrupt flyers for weeks or even months. (See why the volcanic ash is a health issue for air travelers.)

Authorities hope that Eyjafjallajokull will quiet down in the days to come and the ash cloud will disperse, allowing European air travel to return to normal – although its last eruption in 1821 went on for two years. Yet the volcano’s worldwide impact should not have come as a surprise, considering the fallout from Iceland’s economic collapse in 2008, which affected borrowers across Europe. In natural disasters as well as the financial system, what happens in Iceland doesn’t always stay in Iceland.

Volcano Grounds 16,000 More Flights

Filed under: The Volcanic Nightmare — Chris Weigl @ 9:03 pm
Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

A lingering volcanic ash plume forced extended no-fly restrictions over much of Europe on Saturday, as Icelandic scientists warned that volcanic activity had increased and showed no sign of abating – a portent of more travel chaos to come.

Scientists say that because the volcano is situated below a glacial ice cap, the magma is being cooled quickly, causing explosions and plumes of grit that can be catastrophic to plane engines if prevailing winds are right.

“The activity has been quite vigorous overnight, causing the eruption column to grow,” Icelandic geologist Magnus Tumi Gudmundsson told The Associated Press on Saturday. “It’s the magma mixing with the water that creates the explosivity. Unfortunately, there doesn’t seem to be an end in sight.”

An expansive cloud of grit hovered over parts of western Europe on Saturday, triggering extended flight bans that stranded people around the globe. Continued volcanic activity could produce more plumes if the weather patterns stay the same.

The Icelandic Meteorological Office said the amount of ash in the plume grew Saturday and that the vast ash cloud is continuing to travel south and southeast. Scientists had planned to fly over the volcano to see how much ice has melted to determine how much longer the eruption could spew ash, but the Icelandic Coast Guard said Saturday’s flight had been postponed.

Aviation experts say the volcanic plume has caused the worst travel disruption Europe – and the world – has ever seen.

“I’ve been flying for 40 years but I’ve never seen anything like this in Europe,” said Swedish pilot Axel Alegren, after landing his flight from Kabul, Afghanistan, at Munich Airport; he had been due to land at Frankfurt but was diverted.

Anxious passengers have told stories of missed weddings, graduations, school and holidays because of the ominous plume, which seemed likely to disrupt world leaders’ plans to attend Sunday’s state funeral for Polish President Lech Kaczynski and his wife Maria in the southern city of Krakow.

So far, delegations from India, Japan, South Korea, Mexico, New Zealand and Pakistan have canceled plans to attend the state funeral. President Barack Obama, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev and German Chancellor Angela Merkel still planned to attend. Slovenian President Danilo Turk decided to travel to Poland by car.

Most of northern and central Europe’s airspace has been shut down, affecting airports from New Zealand to San Francisco. On Saturday, the French prime minister extended the closure of airspace in northern France until Monday morning. British and German airspace is closed until at least 0000 GMT Sunday (8 p.m. EDT Saturday), and British Airways is canceling all short-haul flights to and from London airports Sunday. The Belgian and Swiss governments extended their ban until Saturday evening.

Stranded passengers reported the delays were causing financial hardships. Some had to check out of hotels and sleep in the airports.

“I have been staying in a hotel but have now checked out and do not know what I am going to do – I have limited financial resources here,” said Anthony Adeayo, 45, who was due to travel from Britain to Nigeria with British Airways.

Eva Macieyow, 33, said she had been due to depart for Germany with a friend.

“We are a little frustrated,” she said. “Last night we thought we had a flight … but now it has been canceled and we know nothing.”

Shoppers were warned Saturday that continued flight bans could spark shortages of imported fresh fruit and vegetables.

“There are no shortages yet, but we may start to see certain ranges affected if this carries on,” said Christopher Snelling, head of global supply chain policy for the Freight Transport Association.

Italian aviation authorities were closing airspace in northern Italy on Saturday until 1800GMT. Spain’s Iberia airline is canceling most of its European flights until further notice.

In the Nordics, air space in the central and southern parts of the region was expected to remain closed at least until Sunday afternoon.

At least 45 flights between Europe and Asia were cancelled Saturday. Australia’s Qantas canceled all flights to Europe, and passengers were being offered refunds or seats on the next available flight. The airline said it was not known when flights would resume. Cathay Pacific was already canceling some Europe-bound flights leaving Hong Kong on Sunday.

“The British Airways telephone message says check the Web site for updates but when you check the site it says call the customer services number,” said James Kirkman, 41, who was visiting family in Australia with his two kids. “There’s no information. The kids were due back at school on Monday.”

Southern Iceland’s Eyjafjallajokull (ay-yah-FYAH’-plah-yer-kuh-duhl) volcano began erupting for the second time in a month on Wednesday, sending ash several miles (kilometers) into the air. Winds pushed the plume south and east across Britain, Ireland, Scandinavia and into the heart of Europe.

Authorities told people in the area with respiratory problems to stay indoors, and advised everyone to wear masks and protective goggles outside.

The air traffic agency Eurocontrol said about 16,000 of Europe’s usual 28,000 daily flights were canceled on Friday – twice as many as were canceled a day earlier. U.S. airlines canceled 280 of the more than 330 trans-Atlantic flights of a normal day.

The International Air Transport Association says the volcano is costing the industry at least $200 million a day.

Extra trains were put on in Amsterdam and lines to buy train tickets were so long that the rail company handed out free coffee.

Train operator Eurostar said it was carrying almost 50,000 passengers between London, Paris and Brussels. Thalys, a high-speed venture of the French, Belgian and German rail companies, was allowing passengers to buy tickets even if trains were fully booked.

Ferry operators in Britain received a flurry of bookings from people desperate to cross the English Channel to France, while London taxi company Addison Lee said it had received requests for journeys to cities as far away as Paris, Milan, Amsterdam and Zurich.

The disruptions hit tourists, business travelers and dignitaries alike.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel had to go to Portugal rather than Berlin as she flew home from a U.S. visit. Norwegian Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg managed to get a flight to Madrid from New York but was still not sure when or how he would get back home.

The military also had to adjust. Five German soldiers wounded in Afghanistan were diverted to Turkey instead of Germany, while U.S. medical evacuations for troops in Iraq and Afghanistan had to be flown directly from the warfronts to Washington rather than to a care facility in Germany. The U.S. military has also stopped using temporarily closed air bases in the U.K. and Germany.

In Iceland, torrents of water have carried away chunks of ice the size of small houses. Sections of the country’s main ring road were wiped out by the flash floods.

More floods from melting waters are expected as long as the volcano keeps erupting – and in 1821, the same volcano managed to erupt for more than a year.

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. One of the worst was the 1783 eruption of the Laki volcano, which spewed a toxic cloud over Europe, killing tens of thousands.

April 16, 2010

Iceland Volcano Ash Shuts Down Europe Air Travel

Filed under: The Volcanic Nightmare — Chris Weigl @ 5:38 am
Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

An enormous ash cloud from a remote Icelandic volcano caused the biggest flight disruption since the 2001 terrorist attacks as it drifted over northern Europe and stranded travelers on six continents. Officials said it could take days for the skies to become safe again in one of aviation’s most congested areas.

The cloud, floating miles (kilometers) above Earth and capable of knocking out jet engines, wrecked travel plans for tens of thousands of people Thursday, from tourists and business travelers to politicians and royals. They couldn’t see the source of their frustration – except indirectly, when the ash created vivid red and lavender sunsets.

Non-emergency flights in Britain were canceled, and most will stay grounded until at least midday Friday.

Authorities in Ireland, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Finland and Belgium also closed their air space. France shut down 24 airports, including the main hub of Charles de Gaulle in Paris, Germany’s Berlin and Hamburg were shut Thursday evening, and several flights out of the U.S. had to double back.

Kyla Evans, spokeswoman for air traffic service Eurocontrol, said half of all trans-Atlantic flights were expected to be canceled Friday.

At London’s Heathrow airport, normally one of the world’s busiest with more than 1,200 flights and 180,000 travelers a day, passengers stared forlornly at departure boards on which every flight was listed as canceled.

“We made it all the way to takeoff on the plane. … They even showed us the safety video,” said Sarah Davis, 29, a physiotherapist from Portsmouth in southern England who was hoping to fly to Los Angeles. “I’m upset. I only get so much vacation.”

A volcano beneath Iceland’s Eyjafjallajokull (ay-yah-FYAH’-plah-yer-kuh-duhl) glacier began erupting Wednesday for the second time in less than a month, triggering floods and shooting smoke and steam miles into the air. Video showed spectacular images of hot gases melting the thick ice, sending cascades of water thundering down the steep slopes of the volcano.

About 700 people from rural areas near the volcano were evacuated Thursday because of flash flooding, as water carrying icebergs the size of small houses rushed down the mountain. Most evacuees were allowed to return home after the floods subsided, but more flash floods are expected as long as the volcano keeps erupting, said Rognvaldur Olafsson of the Civil Protection Department.

The ash cloud became a menace to air travel as it drifted south and east toward northern Europe – including Britain, about 1,200 miles (2,000 kilometers) away.

The ash plume drifted at between 20,000 feet and 36,000 feet (6,000 meters and 11,000 meters), where it could get sucked into airplane engines and cause them to shut down. The smoke and ash also could affect aircraft visibility.

Britain’s air traffic service said early Friday it was extending a ban on most air traffic until 7 p.m. local time Friday, but flights to Scotland and Northern Ireland, and North Atlantic flights to and from Glasgow, Prestwick and Belfast airports may be allowed until 1 p.m. local time.

The agency said Britain had not halted all flights in its space in living memory, although many were grounded after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks in the United States.

“People can’t remember a time when it has been on this scale,” said Patrick Horwood of the air traffic service. “Certainly never involving a volcano.”

Eurocontrol spokeswoman Evans said the ash had led to the cancellation of about 4,000 flights within Europe Thursday, and that could rise to 6,000 Friday.

Several U.S. flights bound for Heathrow, including those from Chicago, San Francisco, Denver, Las Vegas and New York, had to return to their departure cities or land elsewhere when London airports were closed. Canadian airlines also canceled some Europe-bound flights.

In Washington, the Federal Aviation Administration said it was working with airlines to try to reroute some flights around the huge ash cloud, which is hundreds of miles wide. Flights from Asia, Africa, South America, Australia and the Middle East to Heathrow and other top European hubs were also put on hold.

Australia’s Qantas airline said it had some 1,700 passengers grounded Friday from five flights — about 1,000 passengers stranded in Singapore, and 350 each in Hong Kong and Bangkok.

New Zealand’s national carrier Air New Zealand warned travelers flying to Europe to defer their plans Friday, as it canceled two flights through London and diverted a third to Germany.

Malaysia Airlines said that its flights from Kuala Lumpur to Paris, London and Amsterdam on Thursday and Friday were all postponed to Saturday and Sunday respectively, leaving hundreds stranded. A Kuala Lumpur-London flight that took off Thursday was diverted to Frankfurt.

In Britain, the closures curtailed some campaigning for the May 6 national election. Monarchs from Norway and the Netherlands traveling to a 70th birthday celebration for Denmark’s Queen Margrethe found their plans up in the air.

Swedish Foreign Minister Carl Bildt resorted to driving home to Sweden from Brussels. “We’ll arrive sometime tomorrow,” his spokeswoman Irena Busic said.

Eurostar train services to France and Belgium and Channel ferries were packed as travelers 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.

It was unclear whether the ash cloud would affect the arrival of 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.

The Icelandic plume lies above the Atlantic Ocean close to the flight paths for most routes from the U.S. East Coast to Europe, and over northern Europe itself.

Meteorologists from the AccuWeather forecasting service in the U.S. said the current ash plume will threaten air travel over Europe through Sunday at the least. Einar Kjartansson, a geophysicist at the Icelandic Meteorological Office, said the problem might persist for weeks, depending on how much wind carries the ash.

Explosive volcanic eruptions inject large amounts of highly abrasive ash – essentially very small rock fragments – into the upper atmosphere, the cruising altitude of most jet airliners. It can cause significant damage to both airframes and engines.

Health protection officials in Britain said some of the ash will fall to ground level overnight – starting in Scotland before moving south – although Britain’s weather forecasters said the public should not be concerned.

The U.S. Geological Survey said 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.

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 25,000 feet to 12,000 feet (7,500 meters to 3,600) 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.

Gideon Ewers, spokesman for the International Federation of Airline Pilots Associations, attributed the extent of the disruption to amount of air traffic in the area where the plume was drifting.

“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.

Ironically, Iceland’s Keflavik airport remained open Thursday. Flights to Europe were canceled but those to North America were operating normally.

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.

Blog at WordPress.com.