“BA says test flight evidence shows blanket restrictions on airspace are unnecessary” is what’s showing on BBC website

And a bit about their flight:
“BA’s 747 flew a 2hr 46min flight between London Heathrow and Cardiff.
It initially climbed to 10,000ft before conducting a staged climb – at intervals of 5,000ft, spending 5min at each altitude – until it reached 40,000ft, where it remained for an hour.”

When I saw it on radarvirtuel, it has a speed of 540kts. 5mins flying would be around 45 nautical miles?

Radarvirtuel looks interesting with Aeroflot having an A330 off to JFK and an A320 to Madrid, Condor with flights to Zanzibar, Varadero and Punta Cana, Martinair off to Bangkok and KLM off to Taiwan. Looks like some countries have eased restrictions!

Given that few problems have been reported after the test and repositioning flights, it’s not an unreasonable thing for them decrying “excessive caution”. After all, how much testing has really been done over European airspace? Radarvirtuel’s ash coverage shows it not over Scotland, the Irelands, Wales and northern England. Where’s the impediment for flying unless that coverage is inaccurate?

Why Italian? It’s not my computer. Lifted from image on another site. Oh, forgot to mention Jet2 is not operating till the 20th April at the earliest.

KL 737 PH-BGB has just done a flight up to flight level 410 and landed about 15 minutes ago (1950).

Lufthansa has repositioned quite a few aircraft from Muncih to Frankfurt during the course of the afternoon.

So there’s been 3 Thomsonfly services into Glasgow this morning. MAN has just had a Thomsonfly come in and there’s a Thomas Cook A330 also due shortly. MAN has provision for 6 services till 1300! First departure = Thomas Cook to Sanford

Weather paints a picture on radar so it’s easier to aim for a specific point to route round it. Don’t think volcanic ash does, so it’s not a case of saying “avoid this area here” – you’ve got to take into account the upper atmosphere winds and I’d much rather have nothing in the air than have a glut of aircraft simultaneously losing engine power in 1 or 2 engines.

AMS may well be closed from 5pm.