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All UK airports to open
Wednesday April 21, 2010 - Email this article to a friend
Following detailed consultations between the government, scientists, airlines and airports it has been decided to open British airspace following the volcanic eruption in Iceland. The 6 day shutdown has had an unprecedented impact.
The announcement was made by the Transport Secretary, Lord Adonis.
The airspace was opened at 22.00 on Tuesday night.
The airlines are now able to start flying but there will be days of problems ahead and it will be a long time before things return to normal.
It will be a phased re-opening of the airspace.
There are just a very few planes coming over the PlanetSKI UK office in Putney, West London, which is directly under one of the Heathrow flight paths.
Still clear over West London
Apparently planes are taking off to the west, but only a handful of arrivals are expected at Heathrow until later today (Wednesday).
The airport normally handles 1,250 flights per day. At the moment it is a fraction of that as the backlog and chaos is dealt with.
Overall 95,000 flights were cancelled across Europe since the shutdown began.
There will be many post mortems and enquiries into what has happened over the last 6 days to see if there was an over-reaction or if the shut down was justified.
“Making sure that air travellers can fly safely is the CAA’s overriding priority," the authority has said.
How long before flights to Alps back to normal?For those skiers and snowboarders hoping to travel at the weekend as the season draws to a close it is undoubted good news, but it remains to be seen how long it will be before things return to normal.
Much of the airspace over the Alps has already been re-opened with flights now running in Switzerland, Austria and parts of Italy and France.
For a look at how things developed on Tuesday see this related story on PlanetSKI and this one for tales of people trying to get home or out to the mountains.
"This solution has been reached as a result of the close working between the government, the Civil Aviation Authority, airlines and the manufacturers, and will allow the thousands of UK citizens stranded abroad to return home to their families," said the Prime Minister, Gordon Brown.
"We will of course continue to monitor the situation closely; as we have said throughout safety is our primary concern," he added.
We will be updating this story as we get fresh information so do check back.
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Neal Karlinksy, from ABC News, flew over the volcano just over 600 yards from the exploding crater a few days ago. His report gives an interesting accout of what conditions are like near the volcano. See the volcano video below.
The Eyjafjallajökull eruption is still pushing steam and volcanic debris high into the atmosphere.
Phreatic eruption with plumes of massive smoke with ash, chunks of rock and larva will continue as long as hot magma continues to react with the water from the glacier above.
Scientists are worried that nearby Katla may erupt which threatens an even larger phreatic reaction, with even larger plumes of smoke and ash and further glacial flooding from Katla’s glacier called the Myrdalsjokull glacier.
What do you think? Was it an over-reaction to close all airspace or a necessary safety measure?
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