Icelandic Eruptions May Disrupt Air Travel for Months (Update3)
By Alex Morales and Steve Rothwell
April 17 (Bloomberg) -- Volcanic eruptions in Iceland which this week caused thousands of flights to be canceled may continue for months, disrupting European air traffic as ash is sporadically blown above the continent’s busiest airports.
More than 20,000 flights have been grounded after an April 14 eruption of the 1,666-meter (5,466-foot) Eyjafjallajökull volcano sent dust billowing across thousands of miles of European airspace and closed terminals from Dublin to Moscow.
“It could go on for months,” Sigrun Hreinsdottir, a geophysicist at the University of Iceland, said in a telephone interview from Reykjavik. “From what we’ve seen, it could erupt, pause for a few weeks, and then possibly erupt again.”
Canceled flights are costing carriers about $200 million a day, theInternational Air Transport Association estimates. Restrictions over most of the U.K. will remain in place until 1 a.m. at least tomorrow, shutting London Heathrow, Europe’s busiest airport, flight-control authority National Air Traffic Services said today.
“It is most unlikely that many flights will operate today and anyone hoping to travel should contact their airline before travelling to the airport,” NATS said in a statement on its Web site.
Fine Material
Carriers throughout the Asia-Pacific region canceled flights on the routes to Europe, with Australia’s Qantas Airways Ltd. saying it didn’t know when service might resume. Cathay Pacific Airways Ltd., based in Hong Kong, canceled departures to London, Paris, Frankfurt and Milan and said it wouldn’t accept new bookings for the next few days.
Europe-bound flights from Japan, South Korea, China and India were stopped because of danger from the ash, with Air India and Singapore Airlines Ltd. also canceling some routes to North America.
“At this stage it’s highly unlikely things are going to return to normal for several days at least,” David Epstein, a Qantas spokesman in Melbourne, said today at a press briefing. “It may well be a week.”
Flights have been halted amid concern that the ash plume could damage engines or parts such as speed sensors. The finest material from the blast is formed of dust akin to glass, which can melt and congeal in a turbine, causing it to stop, said Sue Loughlin, head of vulcanology at the British Geological Survey.
Current Blast
Eyjafjallajökull last erupted in December 1821, with the event lasting until January 1823. The current blast has sent ash to as high as 7 kilometers (4.5 miles), according to Gudrun Larsen, a vulcanologist at the University of Iceland. The magma had to pierce 200 meters of ice before erupting, she said.
“We really don’t know if this eruption is going to last as long as the previous one, but we can’t say it’s not a possibility,” Larsen said by telephone.
Prevailing winds may provide some respite for travelers. Air streams over Britain come from the west or southwest 70 percent of the time and would carry ash away from the major hubs such as Heathrow and Amsterdam Schiphol, said Barry Grommett, a meteorologist at the U.K. Met Office, the government forecaster.
“We normally look to the Atlantic for our weather, so that’s going to move anything emitting from a volcano in Iceland away from us,” he said by telephone. “The predominant pattern would take the plume north-eastward from the eruption site.”
Blocking Pattern
The outlook this weekend is for westerly winds to pick up over northern Britain, shifting ash away from Scotland, while a blocking pattern may continue to keep it over England. The edge of the ash cloud was forecast to reach as far south as northern Italy and Romania and as far east as the borders of Kazakhstan as of 6 a.m. today London time, according to the Met office.
Because of the wind direction Iceland’s Keflavik remains open, with North American flights operating on schedule.
Hubs serving 2 million people and 48 percent of Europe’s air traffic have been affected by the disruption, the Airports Council International industry group said yesterday in a statement. The situation was changing “every few hours,” it said.
British Airways Plc, which halted flights from the U.K. from midday on April 15, said last night that no services to and from London will operate today. Its shares tumbled 3.1 percent in the U.K. capital yesterday, the most since Feb 12.
Ryanair Holdings Plc, the region’s largest discount carrier, canceled all flights to and from the U.K., Ireland, Scandinavia, Belgium, the Netherlands, northern France and Germany until 1 p.m. on April 19. The stock fell 2.5 percent in Dublin, the steepest drop since Feb. 5.
‘Economic Impact’
“This is a new situation for us,” Joe Sultana, director of airspace, network planning and navigation at Eurocontrol, which oversees the region’s flight paths, told reporters in Brussels yesterday. “We understand the economic impact to both the airlines and the European economy, but safety comes first.”
Air France-KLM Group, the region’s biggest carrier, canceled all services from both Roissy-Charles de Gaulle and Orly airports near Paris until 8 a.m. today and asked passengers not to travel to the terminals. Deutsche Lufthansa AGcanceled all flights to and from German airports until 8 p.m. CET tonight, it said in a statement on its Web site.
Denmark extended the shut down of its airspace for all flights until 2 a.m. local time tomorrow, according to the web site of Copenhagen-based Naviair, Denmark’s flight controller.
Switzerland and Belgium today extended closure of their respective airspaces to 8 p.m. local time, Agence France-Presse reported.
Lava Flow
The Icelandic eruption began on March 20 with a lava flow on the eastern flank of the Eyjafjallajökull volcano, according to the Institute of Earth Sciences at the University of Iceland. After a lull, it erupted again early on April 14, directly under the icecap that covers most of the mountain.
“The problem here is we have magma interacting with glacier ice and that leads to explosions,” Hreinsdottir said. “That causes the material to go much higher in the air.”
Mike Burton, a researcher at the Italian National Vulcanology Institute who has studied the ash from the latest explosion, said it presents more of a threat to aircraft than would the dust from a typical eruption.
“It’s likely that ash production will continue long after all the ice is melted in the volcano as this kind of magma can produce ash without water,” Burton said by telephone. “Fine ash is easier to transport long distances and goes higher into the atmosphere, so this is not good news for flights.”
To contact the reporters on this story: Alex Morales in London atamorales2@bloomberg.net; Steve Rothwell in London atsrothwell@bloomberg.net
Last Updated: April 17, 2010 03:50 EDT
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