Flights cancelled due to volcanic ash cloud from Iceland, Eyjafjallajokull

[sn26567]

OO-SSG coming back from Vilnius now over Poland. With its regular flight number BEL2372!

[tolipanebas]

OO-SSG coming back from Vilnius now over Poland. With its regular flight number BEL2372!

FWIW, this plane is actually defying the entire mathematical model of NATS, since it will be flying for more than 3 hours right in the hart of the "danger zone", which now stretches from east of Moscow till halfway down the Atlantic already, if one is to believe the computers...

Will be very interesting to see the results after it gets home.

[Acid-drop]

Malgré la fermeture de l’espace aérien allemand, la compagnie Air Berlin ramène des passagers depuis Palma Majorque vers Munich, a-t-elle fait savoir. L’appareil transportant 170 passagers est attendu vers 15h45 dans la capitale de la Bavière. Il s’agit d’un vol contrôlé à vue pour lequel une exception a été faite. La compagnie Condor ramènera, elle, des vacanciers depuis Majorque, le Kenya et les Caraïbes vers l’Autriche. Enfin, la compagnie néerlandaise KLM doit ramener des passagers depuis Curaçao et le Surinam vers l’Europe, aujourd’hui également.

Some companies seems to do whatever they want, despite the european ban ...
So, either a plane will come down, or all companies will start the same within a few hours.

[andorra-airport]

I was looking at http://www.flightradar24.com/ and strangely it seems quite "busy" in the air.... (look at scandinavia...)

[sn26567]

A JetairFly aircraft (JAF113) has just departed from Brussels to Tenerife. The idea is to bring back stranded passengers to any airport on the continent from where they can continue their return trip to Brussels by coach.

[TUB023]

all i was saying is, if you don't have the planes here, you can't maintain them.

[MKAirlines]

MAG-223 DC8-63F Meridian Airways just landed at EBOS routing MSE-OST

[Desert Rat]

KLM also operated 2 Boeing 747 flight to Sharjah (Freighter), .

I saw the bird...

[LAGPanoramic]

At which flight level are those ferry flights operated?

And if it is at a low, safe level, why not use them to bring back some stranded passengers?

[Propwash]

Lufthansa haalt 15.000 passagiers terug

Deutsche Lufthansa will (within a few hours) pickup passengers from South America, Asia and Africa and fly them back to Germany.

Approximately 50 (fifty) planes will be aloft and back in Germany by Tuesday morning.

[tolipanebas]

The SN flight from VNO returned at FL380 and is now descending inbound to BRU, using all flight levels from top till bottom.....

[sn26567]

At which flight level are those ferry flights operated?

At the regular level, up to 41,000 feet for JAF113 to from BRU to TFS.

[fcw]

Another military plane, F 16, landed with engine damage due to the ash!

[LAGPanoramic]

I will probably be wrong, but there are reports of ash damage on a F16, on Finnish F18, but not on a single commercial plane, while several ferry flights have been or are operated right now.

Are military jets more sensible to ash, or is it just bad luck?

[grnkg]

I will probably be wrong, but there are reports of ash damage on a F16, on Finnish F18, but not on a single commercial plane, while several ferry flights have been or are operated right now.

Are military jets more sensible to ash, or is it just bad luck?

The reported damage was on the engines in both cases.
In general, military turbofan and/or turbojet engines operational limits are much higher than for engines on commercial transport aircraft. For example, the TIT (turbine inlet temperature) is several 100 degrees higher.

What this does to vulcanic ash when it's ingested, I don't know, I'm not an expert on the subject. But obvioulsy the ash will be melted to a higher temperature, which could make it stick on the turbine blades more easily.

Kind regards,
GR.

[tolipanebas]

It looks like the airlines have taken over from the government in organizing things to get real factual data on this ash cloud as well as to take the needed measures to return back to normality.

After the first few test flights (widely labelled as irresponsible), they managed to twist the arms of the governments to allow them to operate ferry flights (under own risk), which then set loose an unexpected stream of repositioning flights all over Europe (SN alone did 10 of them today) serving as obvious demonstration nothing is wrong really and now LH has even announced it is to operate no less then 50 special long haul flights tomorrow to pick up 15,000 stranded pax of theirs in South America, South Africa and Asia!

I mean, the airlines have basically FORCED the government to look at the situation in a pragmatic way, based on factual evidence, rather than in a purely academic way, based on mathematical models.

Good show of them, this joke has been going for way too lang already, now were are those feathers and tar again... some people rightfully deserve it!

Let the scientist look at their computer model and wank off over just how incredibly powerful their latest mathematical model is in calculating the stream of every single ash particle all over the world throughout our atmosphere and let the professionals who operate in the skies on a daily basis decide themselves when and where it is safe to operate, because if you let scientists advice politicians on this, then you end up being grounded for nothing for almost 5 days in a row!

[airazurxtror]

BRU, which previously was announced as closed until 2000 this evening, is now closed "until further notice" ...

As a result of the volcanic activity in Iceland and the ash cloud over Europe, Belgian airspace remains closed until furhter notice. This means that all passenger air traffic to and from Brussels Airport is suspended.

[Airbus330lover]

and if you look at http://www.flightradar24.com/
you will see a test flight from Airbus with aA346 callsign F922 from TLS to.... with multiples altitude change

[Vosje]

A thought: it might be a smart idea to employ the smaller less busy airports such as Ostend, Wevelgem and Antwerp to help digest the incoming traffic, giving the bigger airports breathing space to resume regular schedules as good as possible, once bans are eased or lifted. Busses can be arranged, so can trains if need be.

[Propwash]

Governments should limited their actions by providing information ONLY

Not by banning or closing airspace.

Again: it's the Pilot In Command (PIC) who is the final arbiter on the go or no-go decision and not the Government!

I think, common sense will celebrate and most major Airlines will fly again soon (today or tomorrow).

Last but not least, lawsuits against the incompetent Governments and/or non €urocontrol 'Charge' payment will start soon