Flights across Europe and Russia are under threat from a new volcanic eruption in Iceland.
The Grimsvotn volcano began erupting on Saturday, emitting a plume of ash reaching 20km into the sky, although that plume has now shrunk to around 13km.
As a result of the ash plume, the Icelandic air traffic control operator, Isavia, has established a 120-nautical-mile no-fly-zone around the volcano, closed the country’s main airport, Keflavik, and cancelled domestic flights.
The UK’s Met Office said the ash cloud was expected to reach the UK mainland on Tuesday morning. It is expected affect parts of Scotland, Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland and parts of northern Russia.
It has also warned the ash could spread to parts of Spain and France later in the week, depending on how the weather develops.
But it added that, while the eruption does not necessarily mean there would be airspace closures, it does make flight disruption more likely.
Other experts said the weather was much more changeable than in April last year, when the Eyjafjallajökull volcano erupted, causing the closure of airspace across Europe for days, making it hard to predict what impact the Grimsvotn eruption could have.
The European organisation for the safety of air navigation, Eurocontrol, said on Sunday it did not expect there to be any disruption over the next 24 hours.
Richard Taylor, a spokesman for the UK Civil Aviation Authority, told a newspaper the eruption would have less of an impact because the airline industry had learned lessons from last year’s eruption.
He said: “You won’t see the wholesale closures that were implemented back then, unless the ash concentration gets particularly dense.”
Last year’s eruption was estimated to have cost airlines £130 million (US$209m) a day.
Damian Brett | Mon, 23 May 2011, IFW News