Volcanic Ash: Latest Travel Information
(25th May 2011)

Thousands of passengers across Europe face flight cancellations because of drifting ash from an Icelandic volcanic eruption.

Here is a list of current disruptions:

German air traffic control said it will close Bremen and Hamburg airports from 5am and 6am, and warned that Berlin could face similar restrictions

Ryanair:

All flights to and from Bremen, Lubeck and Magdeburg airports cancelled until 2pm local German time (1pm BST).

The flight from Las Palmas to Bremen departing at 4.45pm local time (3.45pm BST) has also been cancelled.

British Airways:

Three cancellations so far - one flight inbound and two outbound out of Hamburg.

easyJet:

Passengers traveling from either Edinburgh, Glasgow, Newcastle, Amsterdam, Dortmund, Berlin, Copenhagen or Hamburg are urged to check with them before going to the airport

KLM:

Cancellations going to and from Glasgow, Edinburgh, Aberdeen and Newcastle, plus other routes in Norway, Sweden and Germany, to its main hub in Amsterdam.

FlyBe:

Operating as normal.

Loganair and Eastern Airways:

Displaced staff have caused Loganair to cancel two flights and Eastern have cancelled three.

BMI:

Oerating as normal, with a just a cancellation from Heathrow to Hanover and Berlin this morning.

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Flights cancelled as ash cloud heads towards UK
(24th May 2011)

Flights in and out of Scotland have been cancelled as a volcanic ash cloud from Iceland heads towards the UK.

BA, KLM, Easyjet, Flybe, Aer Lingus, Loganair and Eastern Airways have cancelled services on Tuesday, and some flights over the Atlantic were delayed.

The Met Office forecasts the ash cloud will reach northern and western Scotland overnight, and will clip northern parts of Northern Ireland early on Tuesday. None of England is likely to be affected.

A Met Office spokesman said it was difficult to forecast the cloud's direction beyond that because weather systems were changing so rapidly.

A number of airlines are choosing not to fly through Scottish airspace on Tuesday:

- British Airways is not operating any flights between London and Scotland until 1400 BST
- KLM cancelled flights to and from Aberdeen, Glasgow and Edinburgh, as well as some to Newcastle
- EasyJet cancelled flights to and from Edinburgh, Glasgow, Inverness and Aberdeen scheduled for between 0500 and 0900 BST
- Flybe cancelled flights to and from Aberdeen and Inverness
- Aer Lingus cancelled a number of its flights between the Republic of Ireland and Edinburgh, Glasgow and Aberdeen
- Glasgow-based Loganair has cancelled 36 flights. Only inter-island routes in Orkney are unaffected
- Eastern Airways will not be operating any services in or out of Scottish airspace

Transport Secretary Philip Hammond told BBC Two's Newsnight that "most, if not all, flights into and out of Glasgow and Edinburgh and airports to the north will be stopped" on Tuesday morning.

But he said services should resume from Glasgow and Edinburgh by about lunchtime, and in other airports by Wednesday morning. Any disruption later in the week should be "limited", he added.

Earlier, Mr Hammond said there had already been "modest delays" to flights, particularly those crossing the Atlantic.

"Clearly, this is a natural phenomenon which we cannot control, but the UK is now much better prepared to deal with an ash eruption than last year."

A spokesman for Edinburgh Airport said it was anticipating disruption to many services on Tuesday.

In a statement on Monday evening, he said: "Only Ryanair is intending to operate a full service from Edinburgh Airport. Passengers should not travel to the airport without checking with their airline first regarding the status of their flight."

Andrew Haines, chief executive of the Civil Aviation Authority, said he hoped to avoid a repeat of last year's travel chaos, but he admitted it was still unclear how badly flights would be affected.

"We know so much more about the volcanoes. We have an improved model.

"We have better measuring equipment and we have better relationships with airlines so it should be much better but we're still at the hands of both the weather and the volcano; those are the two uncertainties."

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-13498477

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Travel sector relief over Iceland volcano ash cloud
(23rd May 2011)

The travel industry heaved a sigh of relief yesterday as experts said ash from Iceland's Grimsvotn volcano was unlikely to lead to the widespread travel disruption caused by last year's Eyjafjallajokull eruption.

The Icelandic authorities closed the country's main airport yesterday after a plume of smoke 12 miles high rose from the volcano, but there was no disruption to other international flights.

Magnus Tumi Gudmundsson, a geophysicist at the University of Iceland, said the eruption was "much bigger and more intensive than Eyjafjallajokull" but that the disruption would not be as widespread as last year because there was not as much wind to spread the ash.

And he added that the ash from this eruption was much coarser than last year's, which is causing it to fall back to the ground quickly rather than floating long distances.

Eurocontrol, Europe's air traffic control organisation, said: "There is currently no impact on European or transatlantic flights and the situation is expected to remain so for the next 24 hours. Aircraft operators are constantly being kept informed of the evolving situation."

A spokesman for ABTA, the travel agents' trade body, said it was keeping a "close eye" on events, but said it looked like the ash cloud "would not be a repeat of last year'".

However, last night some experts suggested that there is a small chance that the ash cloud might drift towards Scotland by Tuesday.

The eruption of Eyjafjallajokul, last April, led to the largest closure of European airspace since World War II and cost travel companies billions of pounds in lost revenue and compensation payments.

It left an estimated 10m travellers stranded as more than 63,000 flights to or from 23 European countries were cancelled.

The disruption is estimated to have cost the global airline industry £130m a day.

In the UK, 13 travel companies that collapsed during the summer of 2010 blamed the ash cloud.

By Rupert Neate - The Telegraph - 6:00AM BST 23 May 2011

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