Europe faces prolonged air chaos

Discussion in 'Miscellaneous' started by Ducky, Apr 16, 2010.

  1. Ducky

    Ducky Master of the Moos Moderator

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    Flights across much of Europe are being cancelled on a second day of massive disruption caused by drifting ash ejected from a volcano in Iceland.

    Hundreds of thousands of passengers are affected and severe disruption could extend into the weekend, including on flights to North America and Asia.
    Some 5,000 flights were cancelled on Thursday as airspaces from the Republic of Ireland to Finland were closed.
    The ash is not thought to pose a serious health risk to people however.
    [​IMG]

    Health officials in Scotland, where the ash was expected to start falling overnight, said the concentration of particles that fell was likely to be low, and effects on people with existing respiratory conditions were "likely to be short term".
    The UK's Met Office said any ash that did reach ground level would be barely visible.
    UK restrictions originally in place until 1300 (1200 GMT) on Friday have been extended until at least 1900 (1800 GMT), although some exceptions may be possible in Scotland and Northern Ireland.
    "In general, the situation cannot be said to be improving with any certainty," said a statement issued by the National Air Traffic Service.

    'Progressing very slowly'
    The European air traffic control organisation, Eurocontrol, said a lack of wind meant the ash cloud created by the volcano underneath Iceland's Eyjafjallajoekull glacier was "progressing very slowly eastwards" and remained "very dense".


    The airspaces of the UK, Irish Republic, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Finland, Belgium and the Netherlands closed their airspaces on Thursday.
    France shut down 24 airports in the north of the country, including the main hub of Paris-Charles de Gaulle, while Germany's Berlin and Hamburg airports were also closed on Thursday evening.
    Qantas, Japan Airlines, Korean Air, Singapore Airlines and Cathay Pacific were among long-haul airlines who have cancelled flights to Europe.
    "Our personal view is it may take until Sunday" for flights to resume, said Qantas spokesman David Epstein.



    If the disruption persists, there are fears in Poland that some world leaders will be unable to attend Sunday's state funeral of Polish President Lech Kaczynski, who was killed in a plane crash last Saturday.
    Several European monarchs were unable to attend 70th birthday celebrations for Denmark's Queen Margrethe, which began with a concert on Thursday.
    For want of a plane, Swedish Foreign Minister Carl Bildt was known to be driving home to Sweden from Brussels, the Associated Press news agency reports.
    'Days or weeks'
    The volcano began erupting on Wednesday for the second time in a month, hurling a plume of ash 11km (seven miles) into the atmosphere. A 500m-wide fissure appeared at the top of the crater.



    The heat melted the surrounding ice, and witnesses say two flows of meltwater started coming off the glacier on Wednesday.
    As many as 800 people were evacuated from their homes as water carried pieces of ice reportedly the size of small houses down the mountain. A road along the flooded Markarfljot river was also cut in several places.
    On Thursday, the flooding was reported to have subsided, but the volcano was still producing ash that was being blown towards Europe.



    "It is likely that the production of ash will continue at a comparable level for some days or weeks. But where it disrupts travel, that depends on the weather," Einar Kjartansson, a geophysicist at the Icelandic Meteorological Office, told the Associated Press.
    "It depends how the wind carries the ash."
    The last volcanic eruption beneath the glacier was on 20 March. The eruption before that started in 1821 - and continued for two years.
    Iceland lies on the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, the highly volatile boundary between the Eurasian and North American continental plates.

    Airspace closed:
    UK
    Republic of Ireland
    Norway
    Denmark
    Sweden
    Belgium
    Netherlands
    Finland

    Partial or planned closures:
    France (northern airspace)
    Poland (northern airspace)




    --
    Wonderful, some parts here also got ash. Heh, more cleaning. Thankfully I don't need planes until summer.
     
  2. Messers fan

    Messers fan Rookie

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    Lucky for you I'm in Budapest for the week and supposed to go back to Paris tomorrow I'm afraid I'm stuck in hongria for the WE:confused::confused:
     
  3. talkingtocactus

    talkingtocactus Coroner

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    my cousin's husband just flew from LA to london, only he got diverted to the south of france and then get a bus from there to london, so his journey ended up taking over 30 hours - ouch!

    but i'd rather big delays than risks to flight safety.
     
  4. Ducky

    Ducky Master of the Moos Moderator

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    Here, for now, we'll have closed airspace until Sunday.

    WE wait for new ash, as long as it keeps coming. Some say it may take a year until the volcano stops...
     
  5. _Hush_

    _Hush_ Winchester Inc.

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    It's official here. Brussels Airlines in Zaventem cancelled all their flights until atleast Monday 12PM, RyanAir in Charleroi atleast until Monday 1PM.

    We got several friends stuck in other countries, most of them in Spain. The first chance to get back for now is Thursday.

    We don't have ash over here, in fact there's a clear blue sky :D
     
  6. Messers fan

    Messers fan Rookie

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    Ok I'm officialy stuck here my only way of escape is a train tomorrow night I will spend 18 hours to go back to Paris:rolleyes: happy holidays everyone:lol::lol:
     
  7. Ducky

    Ducky Master of the Moos Moderator

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    Finns have got to Stockholm and ferries are full :p I am sure soon people will travel to north to cross border there and then get home.
    And in the news, longest trip that taxi of Stockholm had made...was to Barcelona :lol: :lol: In the news they interview some French group, who whined about Finnair not giving them food - I wonder why they don't try to take ferry to Germany and try to get to France by trains. I bet would be much cheaper than to stay in hotels until Wednesday.

    I read that some, who are stuck in e.g in Spain, look to buy cheap car and drive home (at least there was one interview about this group of young men)

    My country, trains are full (I assume they are full of every other country as well) and they've added some extra cars and trains.

    Yesterday there was ashclouds on the sky, I was rather excited :p

    Few people "who I know" are stuck in Canada.

    I've been wondering why people are so mad. Yes, it's frustrating, you have your lifee but they've stopped flying for safety reasons. And I do understand why airlines do not want to have extra cost.. why should they? It's not their fault that they cannot fly.
     
  8. talkingtocactus

    talkingtocactus Coroner

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    a year? wow... presumably it won't affect flights for quite that long. i hope not!

    well, ryan air cancelling is hardly bad news ;) ditto sleazyjet ;):lol::lol:
     
  9. Ducky

    Ducky Master of the Moos Moderator

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    Well not with this power, it was just in general and they say another volcano may wake up...
    I guess some relief will come next week, ash doesn't go so high anymore. it's just all depending on the winds, as long as it's coming from west, we are screwed :p

    I agree :lol: I've almost once flew with it, but there was rumours about bankrupcy, so we changed to another cheap...KLM (but I did get my luggage :lol: )

    Stupid RyanAir... I was planning this trip to Germany, with one group and they changed Finnair to RyanAir because "then our trip will be 400e cheaper" ...well then we saw another add by another company to same place, same trip only 100e more expensive than new price and flights by Finnair. Yes thank you :lol:

    Finnair is expensive but they are worth it <3
     
  10. Solitaire

    Solitaire CSI Level Two

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    Well I have been very lucky. I was on holiday in Barcelona, due to fly back at 6.20pm on Thursday, changing at Paris. Arrive at airport at 4pm, hadn't seen any news and was told on arrival that UK airports were all closed. I have to say, I know it is no-ones fault but the airline staff were rubbish. There was no announcements about what was happening, or what our options were and we were given a number to ring, with no area code. When I asked the code they said they didn't know! So after an hour and a half of queing we were told that we could either stay in Barcelona until the Monday or get our original flight to Paris, where check in was closing in 5 minutes, and we were on our own from there!
    So with only a couple of minutes to decide we went with Paris. We figured that it is much easier to try and get back to the UK from France-more options. Well, we definitely made the right decision. After a few tense hours in Paris of not knowing what on earth we would do, and geting very little help from the info desk there, we managed to book on the Eurostar for the next day. We were so lucky, because it had sold out til Sunday not long after that.
    We spent the night in the airport. I got interviewed for French TV looking suitably disshevelled! We got trapped in the toilets for a while, and spent ther whole night awake. It was an adventure, to say the least.
    I was so glad the following afternoon when we arrived in England. But there were quite afew people still at the airport and at the eurostar ticket office, desperately trying to get home. If we had decided to stay in Barcelona, or been in the queue longer and missed the flight, who knows how long we would have been stuck there?

    Now I have the mission of contacting my insurance providers!
     
  11. talkingtocactus

    talkingtocactus Coroner

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    yep, some things are worth paying a bit extra for i think and for me flying is one of those things - actually i'm not so bothered within europe, because it's not that far (although i've only done sleazyjet once and i doubt i'd ever do it again!) but if i'm going long haul there's no way i'd go with certain airlines *cough*british airways*cough* - they may be a bit cheaper but they're also crap :lol:

    oh i hate that! it's their job to keep customers informed - i know in a case like that info may be hard to come by even at the top levels but you'd think they could try to keep people reassured right? this is kind of unrelated but similar, i was driving through london from the south to tott court rd recently and the traffic was just horrendous, all the way from the river going north, it took me 2.5 hours to get from vauxhall cross to tott crt rd (which usually takes 20-25 mins), with at least an hour of that sitting on tott crt rd itself. i managed to get within 1 street of my destination when i got diverted the wrong way - grrr. anyway it turned out someone had been stabbed on tott crt rd so the police had closed a long stretch of it and half the surrounding area - but did they bother to put signs out further out to warn people coming in to try a different route? nooo.... that would've been too easy:scream::scream::scream::scream: [/ot rant]


    i'd have done the same, even if you'd had to stay in paris a while it's such a beautiful city, and i'm sure you could've claimed any costs back from someone somewhere. eurostar does start getting heavily booked this time of year but hey, a few impromtpu days in paris, never a bad thing :D

    you got trapped in the toilets? how?

    which french channel was it that interviewed you? and why did you stay in the airport all night? CDG (and orly for that matter) isn't the most inspiring of places! i'd have got the metro to paris, gone out drinking/sightseeing (depending on the time) and then slept on the train :D

    good luck with that. "your call is important to us..." so why the hell have i been on hold for 3 hours?! :lol:
     
  12. Solitaire

    Solitaire CSI Level Two

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    It was channel 6, I think. There was another guy asking for an interview a little later,I told him I had already done one, but turns out he was there for a different channel. I decided one interview was quite enough :)

    It was 11pm by the time we had sorted ourselves out. We dont know Paris, and didnt want to be wandering the streets in the dark trying to find a hotel. We decided the best bet was to stay where we were, where there were plenty of people around. It was CDG, and I have to say I will never fly to, or have a connection from that airport ever again! never want to see it again.

    Me and my friend went in the large disabled toilet, in order to freshen up. When we came out the main doors to the toilets had the shutter most of the way down. There was a guy there getting ready to clean the gents, we called to him, but he decided it was easier to look directly at us and then ignore us :rolleyes: We had to crawl, on our hands and knees, with our luggage, under the shutters!

    There seemed to be quite a few tramps living in the airport. One made us move seats, said they were his, and that he always sat there. Quite sad, really. Then he started to disinfect where we had been sitting. Took him 2 hours, poor thing.

    Yeah, its going to be a long phone call in the morning, methinks :rolleyes:

    Ohh, and I always imagined Eurostar to be really nice, all swish.WEll its not. My Transpennine train is nicer!
     
  13. talkingtocactus

    talkingtocactus Coroner

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    i can understand that, you wouldn't want to risk becoming a minor celebrity in france, you'd have sarko jumping your bones within days ;)

    oh, well that's fair enough, i don't know if the metro that far out runs all night, bits of it do i think but not all. although if there's one place that it's lovely to wander around late at night (or all night) it's paris, it's just sooooo beautiful at night. haha yeah i know what you mean, i've never actually been to CDG, but i've heard it's pretty soul-less. airports generally are really (although i'm one of those weird people that quite likes airports and i always check in really early so i can potter around).

    how charming of him! what a nightmare!

    oh yeah that's really sad, poor guy, but it must've been kind of annoying to have to move too.
    good luck with that!

    no, eurostar can be pretty scuzzy, it sometimes depends what time of day it is, sometimes the really early morning trains are better, sometimes they're not - the worst ones are the mid-afternoon ones which are always rammed and far too hot (they like to keep the heating on apparently and the windows don't open and it's horrible). hell, polish and russian trains are (significantly) nicer than eurostar! i think it must be down to the british involvement as french national trains are actually quite nice, and y'know british trains are horrible so i'm guessing there was more influence from our side of la manche than from theirs!

    it is nice and quick tho! when i went to Lille, i got from my front door in south london to my hotel in Lille (via st pancras, which is around a 45 min journey from my house in itself) in less than 2.5 hours! bingo :D
     
  14. Speedystokesgirl

    Speedystokesgirl Judge

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    I'm glad I don't live or am planning on traveling to Europe.

    I guess we're going to have go back in time and start using boats again. :lol:
     
  15. Jacquie

    Jacquie Ward Girl Moderator

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    Walking also works as well :lol: but I think the backlash will be for even North American planes. Planes that were scheduled to land somewhere in North American and then continue their destination domestically will effect domestic travellers as well.

    News from the European Union is saying that 50% of flights may resume on Monday is skies continue to clear. KLM and Air France have flown test flights without passengers to test the skies.

    EU says half of normal flights may run on Monday

    and for the performer that is dedicated to his job, John Cleese spent over 3,000pounds to travel from Oslo to Brussels so he could take the Eurostar back to Britisn so he could do his scheduled appearance on a talkshow. Cleese hired 3 drivers that work in shifts to drive him the 1750km journey.
     

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