[Ram]

A volcano has erupted in Iceland.
The volcanic ash is very damaging to aircraft engines.

All British aircraft have landed and are waiting on the ground.
Hundreds of flights have been cancelled.

Airports in Scotland, England and N Ireland have been shut down.

There is no air travel in Denmark and Sweden.
And Belgium and Holland will soon do likewise.

Stop Press: All flights across Europe have been canceled.
People are traveling only by train.

[vivekiny2k]

whew, this will mean a lot of economic loss.

[Ram]

Originally Posted by vivekiny2k

whew, this will mean a lot of economic loss.

Yes vivekiny2k.
Remember the shutdown in US airspace immediately following September 11, 2001?
It's the only comparable recent event.

In a few days, lost business activity ran to hundreds of billions of dollars.
The economic fallout was that, ultimately the US government had to provide,
$10 billion of federal loan guarantees and
$5 billion of federal short term assistance
to resuscitate the US airline industry.

[bornin70s]

The first thing that came to my mind was this BA Flight over Jakarta. I had seen this on Air The pilots didn't get any warning and all the engines failed (which later started). The passengers could even see some light strobes of some sort outside their windows.

The funny thing is the ash made scratches all over the cockpit windscreen. The pilots flew and landed blind.

British Airways Flight 9 - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

[simply_sunny001]

Originally Posted by bornin70s

The funny thing is the ash made scratches all over the cockpit windscreen. The pilots flew and landed blind.

its not just ash but rather a mixture of silica ask,glass and so many other particles.

and more than 100 jetliners have been damaged due to this in last few years so this time nobody is taking any chances here and all flights in/out of UK are grounded.

[anekho]

Yep. The situation is really bad here :|

A friend in who lives here in Sweden is in Paris right now - decided to rent a car and drive back here! A 24-hour drive awaits! If the circumstances were different I'd ask for a travelogue

[Thad E Ginathom]

Originally Posted by bornin70s

The funny thing is the ash made scratches all over the cockpit windscreen. The pilots flew and landed blind.

Its called sandblasting!

When I last looked, a few hours ago, this affected Northern Europe (UK, Ireland and Scandanacia, roughly speaking) with the cloud spreading and France preparing to pull the plug on flights.

Has it indeed spread to other European countries already?

There are, by the way, some wonderful photos on the net: it's worth having a look around for them.

EDIT: I see Belgium and Netherlands is joining in the shutdown -->Link

[Nitin]

I guess the 'International Air travel & Airports' discussion thread needs to be monitored for those travelling internationally in the next few days. My mother-in-law's scheduled to take the LH flight from IAH back to BLR this Sunday, and I hope Frankfurt isn't on the list of airports shutting down for now.

[artofzen]

Latest update is that the shutdown will be till 1300 hrs 15 April 10. Eurostar is jampacked from London to Paris with people trying to get out of UK.

Funnily, Iceland airports havent shutdown because the ash is moving across to mainland Europe.

I need to travel out to DXB this sunday and just yesterday morning I paid a penalty to prepone my flight from 27th to 18th.I guess that was a mistake

[Nikhilb2008]

I'm planning a Europe trip in less than 2 weeks and now I'm totally stumped. To go ahead or not? I've been doing a lot of reading on this and I think the situation should become clear by Sunday or so as to how bad the disruptions are and if flights for the next 2 weeks are affected.

[Ram]

Frankfurt airport, Germany is now closed as of one hour ago 11:30 IST.
All flights halted indefinitely because of the volcanic ash threat.
No flights landing or departing from Germany's biggest airport.

[deky]

I happen to visit Iceland on one of my ship travels a few years back. There we also visited one of those thermal water bodies. Never knew such harmless looking things can cause such phenomenal problems disasters.





These water bodies are close to Reykjavik, hence I believe that they must be from the same volcanic plate.

[Khandelwal]

Schiphol Airport, Amsterdam is also closed down.

[pypkmsrikanth]

My brother is supposed to come back from Houston on Sunday night, looks like he is going to stay back until the situation turns back to normal, not to forget the back log of passengers this might create.

[vivekiny2k]

Originally Posted by deky

I happen to visit Iceland on one of my ship travels a few years back. There we also visited one of those thermal water bodies. Never knew such harmless looking things can cause such phenomenal problems disasters.

yellowstone park is also a potential disaster, but not everybody who visits is seems to understand.