Granted

But, was the BA flight in the ash affected area for more than an hour? Is this a good test bed for “sustained” periods of flying within the affected area? For instance, we fly from Exeter to Edinburgh, 1hr 10mis airborne, this would be completely inside the affected area.areas.

So, as a pilot would you be happy to conduct that flight with a ceiling of FL180 if that was deemed safe? I somehow, in my uninformed mind, think that’s where the answer to this is.

Is it just me or are more members coming over to my original point of view that this is an over-reaction and almost got thrown off the forum for?!:dev2::diablo:

The BA 747 did fly into an ash cloud many miles from the actual volcano, not an eruption. (Or else they’d not have survived, an eruption contains thousands of tons of rock!). No pilot in their right mind would overfly an erupting volcano!

Oh right, I was under the impression the aircraft overflew the volcano and flew right into the dense ash cloud a few thousand feet above the eruption as it was dark and the crew were unaware the volcano was erupting!

Or is this the new, refreshed, turned-over-a-new-leaf EGPH? If so, welcome!:)

Thank you, I’m trying to make amends!

EGPH.
No.

Bits of the Ash will be at (Say) 16k, other bits at 14, others at 22 etc. etc.
Then they all swap with the swirls of moving air. So, one can never state with accuracy at what level the ceiling is. Some ash is actually falling, look at your car. It’s finer than talcum powder. Rinse it off, DON’T WIPE it.
As for staying low then giving it some wellie when past Ireland, if this could be done I’m sure they would have. Apart from the aviation problems of keeping low when the weight is at MTOW, there is probably a noise issue. The engines would have to be on full bore in order to maintain enough speed to keep the heavy beast up. That’s noisy, not only from the E-flux but from the Blades (In a lot of circumstances, more noise comes from the spinning blades hitting still air than from the hot end.) That’s why the interior of an inlet is acoustically treated with a Septum layered honeycomb (Or two layers) and a face sheet which is drilled with 500,000 million 0.060″ holes. Noise goes in the oles, bounces off the honeycomb and hopefully stays there.

Thanks for your reply, I was aware that the ash’s altitude could not be predicted with any great accuracy but just thought if there was an altitude that was definitely safe it could be done. I am sure some of the experts have said that only a very small minority of the ash cloud will fall to earth.

I think something must really be done if this is to go on for much longer, are national express/train operators in the UK planning to add on any extra long distance services?

Also while I am here, I saw in the paper yesterday that at BFS they are putting protective film on all the jet engine intakes of planes on the ground, is this happening in many other airports?

Just to add to Ship 741’s post and kind of apologise for comments I have made in the last few days that have been made with bad information.

With the ash cloud now well and truly over the UK I am not saying that any flights should operate in the short term, to the south or otherwise. The comments I made on Thursday were made with the information that the ash cloud was on its way from Iceland and had not actually penetrated UK airspace at that time. I later realised that the ash cloud entered the airspace over Scotland much sooner than I had realised at the time. I was simply saying that to minimise flight disruption any flights that could escape before the volcanic ash got over Britain should hurry up and depart. At no point was I suggesting that airliners should attempt to fly through the ash cloud once it was over Britain.

However, I would now like to put another proposal to the forum to be ripped to shreds. With the volcanic ash now showing no signs of stopping and flight disruption probably going into after the weekend should NATS be looking at all possible ways to get any flights that are possible in the air?

What I mean by that is, should we send a number of research planes up to study the affected areas at 5,000, 10,000, 15,000 feet and higher to see whether or not there is usable airspace UNDER the ash cloud. Some sources seem to suggest that flying up to 16,000 ft in the affected areas may not be so dangerous as the ash at those altitudes is negligible to non existent. What I would propose is that domestic flights or flights of under 1 hour or so in duration should be allowed to fly as long as they agree to observe a height restriction of whatever the experts believe. Of course no flights could be done over the Pyrenees or Alps or any other area with high terrain however if experts deemed very low altitude flights safe in the affected area would they be practical? Of course if the ceiling would be under 10,000 ft that may not be the best idea but I am saying if we had a max altitude of over 14,000.

Another idea that could also be explored if the aforementioned idea works is sending long haul from LHR and the like if it would be practicable for them to adhere to an altitude restriction for as long as they were in (or rather under) contaminated airspace, then just like Concorde and her speed restrictions, once they are clear of the ash, fire up the engine and climb to FL350 or whatever.

Just an idea!!! Flame/criticise away 😀

Go on admit it you are doing this has a joke.
You must be?
If you are not, then you really need to do some reading up about Ash does and how it affects aero engins.
.

Anything is possible if you put your mind to it. Seeing my idol Martin McGuinness shake hands with Ian Paisley proves that nothing is impossible. I am sure if this happened more often we would turn our back on jets and devise a completely new type of propulsion, maybe even powered by biofuel. 😀

I take it Deano’s cute Dash Deltas are basically jets with a prop stuck on?

That last post was actually meant in sarcasm but really, a few days of disruption OK but if this ash cloud is still over us on Monday or Tuesday, something is going to have to be done!