BA and air traffic control seem to be in some sort of mad stand off

[OhYouBadBadKitten]

According to bbc news BA are insisting on landing 10-12 planes at Heathrow despite NATS/ ATC saying airspace closed.

His test flight was three hours.
The longhaul planes last night were in the air much longer.
They even circled in a holding pattern for two, in the ash, in addition to their regular time.
That would be much longer and therefore riskier that his test flight.

Of course I realise that this will have occured to brighter people than me ,but ...won't the ash build up in/on the plane as it completes more flights ?

fortunately violetqueen a lot of the ash has left the airspace if you look at the current metoffice map. By the weekend it should be pretty much cleared out as the weather pattern changes.
However, ash does have long term impacts on engine life as well as the short term problems. (this is roughly dhs field)

His test flight was up there once in a clean plane and then he got off and went home.

I really don't think that every single plane that lands is going to have it's engines looked at and cleaned before taking off again, I am not expecting planes to fall out the skies on the way here, I'm thinking more of after a few trips picking up stranded people.

Yes ban cars as well for one day a week, I'm old enough to remember the sunday trading laws and think it would be nice if for one day a wekk everything stopped (no planes, no cars, shops shut etc) so we can all relax and stop being so capitalist.

(Oh why can't I edit posts)

Lets see if Katla goes up now, I'd love to see Willies moaning if that happened.

They are checking the planes.
At least that.

Willie walsh flew west to Cardiff when the problem was actually to the east at the time he flew. Do you really think his test flight was anything more than a publicity stunt?

Of course the airlines want to fly again, I have every sympathy for them (my brother works for BA and wants to keep his job), but I'm glad the government didn't apply any pressure at all on the authorities to get planes flying earlier. That would have been outrageous, can you imagine if they had done?

Theresa Villiers is completely out of order trying to make a political point out of this, at least Nick Clegg has the decency to say the government did what it should have done.

The papers are now reporting that the airlines have been under pressure for some time to agree a safe limit for ash but didn't want to. Funnily enough they did this week when they had to. www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/apr/21/airlines-flights-ban-airspace

Look at the info on levels and the current ash map, all looking good. Scaremongering doesn't help those of us with family in the air as we speak.

The only members of my immediate family without a ticket for one of last nights BA flights were myself and the dog.
I don't feel exactly cheerful, tbh.

dh ahs met a bloke today working for BA who has had 2 ours sleep since they reopened airways

he is sorting all the IT stuff
absolute nightmare dh says

We are due to fly to Middle East next week...am in two minds as to what to do..ok the ash may have cleared but have awful visions of propellers or whatever it is that gets clogged up (non mechanical mind!) and failing mid fligh!

In which case, this post will form the glowing tribute led by MNHQ with virtual links of Jimmy Choo shoes..in black of course and I will finally make the round up

Not scaremongering Mrs C2010 - the engineers interviewed about it said the ban was justified; I think they probably have more engineering nous and expertise than Mr Walsh.

brockwyg ,I was trying to make sense of a newspaper article ( Guardian 21 April ) about aviation reps refusing to participate in earlier efforts to agree safe ash levels .
It said that once they set a figure to it " the lawyers would have a field day ".
Don't ompletely understand this but think I see one of the diffuculties in what I imagine is a complex situation.

MrsC is right in that most of europe is clear and it looks to be remaining a good situation through the weekend.

However I still maintain that the action taken by ba on tuesday evening was utterly unnecessary (to put it mildly)

Badkitten (excellent nickname btw!)

What do you think re us flying on Thurs? Are we mad or??

I think that if conditions don't change you'll be fine are you heading europe way or US way?

Middle East so fly over Europe...is that good or bad? I think it was heading to Canada wasn't it??

yes, Europe is good, weather patterns nice and helpful this weekend and volcano is less grumpy now.

will post any changes if they occur.

How do you know all this Kitten??

You do realise though, if you are Michael Fish in disguise I won't be taking anymore notice of any predictions?? ha ha

lol!!
A combination of looking at model outputs via wetterzentrale (and looking at weather forums), looking at the latest met office ash forcast, looking at volcano news reports and webcams.

I still get loads of stuff wrong, so if you die please don't sue me!

updating in this thread if you want to keep an eye on things. You can see how it is now starting to shift more northerly (west of Iceland is almost completely clear now as the stagnant air clears)

i've heard that since the airports re-opened there have been at least 6 aircraft found to have engine damage due to ash...

Jerin - seriously???!!!