Volcanic Ash Heading Towards North America 338
chocomilko writes "St. John's International Airport, the easternmost airport in Canada, has begun canceling flights due to worries of ash from Iceland's Eyjafjallajokull volcano, leaving travelers stranded after the weekend's Juno awards festival. Early reports stated that there was a 30% chance ash would reach the island by early Monday; Air Canada has issued an all-day travel advisory. A thick blanket of fog currently covering the city isn't helping matters, either."
A word of advice (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:SIGH (Score:5, Insightful)
I think we here in the US have had that experience not too long ago. Not to be overly grim here, but the week after 9/11, there were no planes flying in the skies above the US. Not hearing the planes landing and taking off at a near-by major airport nor seeing them high in the sky flying into other airports in the region was pretty odd.
Re:SIGH (Score:2, Insightful)
Finally. All Canucks & Americans who laughed at us Europeans now get to experience how nice it is: no hassle, quiet skies, no contrails, stay-at-home and work -- or be stranded in interesting cities at your bosses' expenses !
We remember that all too well from nine and a half years ago. - 2001/09/11
Re:UK MET-OFFICE (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:SIGH (Score:5, Insightful)
All aircraft engine manufacturers call for zero ash. I'm guessing that they figured that was the easiest thing to do as opposed to doing actual testing. Since it's never been tested properly, I wouldn't blame the governments for following the written specifications. I also doubt that any engine company is going to be willing to take on the lilability of publishing updated specifications allowing some ash.
Re:How long till the Tea partiers blame Obama? (Score:5, Insightful)
Kind of like everyone blamed Bush for anything that happened in the previous 8 years? Including a few hurricanes?
No one blamed bush for Hurricane Katrina. Just for sitting on his ass when it hit, for appointing unqualified and flagrantly incompetent butt-buddies, excuse me, political henchmen to run FEMA, and for deliberately underfunding and eviscerating FEMA and nearly every other non-military federal agency in order to deliberately make them incapable of carrying out their mandate. Which worked brilliantly in his war against "big government", until we actually needed that government to rescue tens of thousands of people.
Then we got our act together, at many times the expense, and with many times the casualties, than it would have entailed if a competent president had appointed a competent leader of FEMA, and not gutted the agency of funds and logistical support.
And yes, everyone (except the hard-core right) quite correctly blames him for that. And the illegal war he started, and the financial implosion that was a direct result of Republican lassaiz-faire bank regulation (and which the Republicans are trying to continue today by filibustering any meaningful bank reform).
It's bad enough they do these things and then try to make us feel bad for pointing out the error of their ways. It's even more disburbing how utterly incapable of learning from their mistakes, and correcting their ways, these idealogues are. They'd rather be stubbornly wrong regardless of the evidence, than have a hint of flip-flopping on an issue(what most of the rest of us would call "correcting a mistake")
Doesn't anyone read the @#%#@$ article?? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Who laughed? (Score:2, Insightful)
We have passenger rail outside the northeast. You just rent a car, drive 90 miles to the depot, arrive near your destination, rent another car to drive 90 miles to your home. What could be easier? ;)
You forgot the one hour plus lay overs like in Atlanta and other parts while the freight trains roll past and you wait for a connecting train.
I guess it beats walking.
Re:SIGH (Score:5, Insightful)
Actually, the danger isn't that planes will fall out of the sky or somesuch because they've encountered some ash. The problem comes from the glass/ash mixture having a rather big effect on engines and airframes' wear-and-tear. Flying thru the ash plume probably causes 10 or more times the normal wear on engines. However, the maintenance schedules are rather inflexible on planes.
Net result? The flights won't be dangerous now. They'll be in a couple weeks/months, when you have 90% of your airplane fleet that has engine problems early, the civil aviation inspectors can't inspect them all, and the average european company becomes no more reliable than the lowliest north-african charter plane company.
Sure, they could replace all those engines earlier. If they can find some outside of the counterfeit market at reasonable prices, that is.
(short: Resuming flights before we can figure out the length of the emergency is short-term good, long-term bad)
Re:Affects on Europe (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:UK MET-OFFICE (Score:5, Insightful)
What about the Norwegian air ambulance helicopter, the Finnish airforce jets, and the MET office aircraft that did fly up there and did come back with measurable effects on their aircraft?
Or were they conveniently ignored because that doesn't fit well into an attempt to blame the met office?
Oh, and besides:
"During all those next days this first data-set never got adapted, updated with actual data or even checked again."
[citation needed]
I can't see any evidence anywhere whatsoever for the above quote, only evidence to the contrary- i.e. that continuous satellite data is being used (and not just by the met office), and also that the met office has as mentioned above sent aircraft up to test the effects too.
Re:Who laughed? (Score:3, Insightful)
You forgot the one hour plus lay overs like in Atlanta and other parts while the freight trains roll past and you wait for a connecting train.
But thanks to all the delays in arrivals and departures, sometimes you only have a 3 minute layover to get from concourse A to concourse D, whereupon you can wait 45 minutes on the plane waiting to take off, enjoying the aromatic plane fumes. This is one reason that I now drive to Atlanta (5 hours) instead of fly, that and the TSA delays and hassles. Actually, I drive instead of fly for any trip I can drive in 8 hours or less now.
By the time you consider connecting flights (can't afford direct flights, which cost 2x-3x as much), delays, early checkin, waiting for luggage, waiting for rental, layovers, cavity searches, etc., it takes 5 to 8 hours to go anywhere you can drive in 8 hours anyway. I would just about take a Greyhound over flying nowadays.
Re:Affects on Europe (Score:3, Insightful)
From Nor Cal to So Cal by train takes somewhere between 20-24 hours (Sacramento to Grand Central LA). Most of that is by BUS. It costs more than a ticket on Southwest Airlines from the nearest Airport.
The last mile is not the problem. The problem is the backbone is slow, has too many slow points, stops every 20 miles to pick up new people.
So, why would anyone take a train(unless they have a fear of flying)?
To make the train make sense, they'd have to start letting people drive their cars onto the train, and make longer than 100 mile segments so the train can actually go 120-150 MPH for distance.
I would love to be able to drive my car to the Train Depot, drive it onto the train, sit and relax for an hour or two, and get 200 miles away. In fact, I would augment or replace long stretches of empty highway with Trains that hauled cars.
Talk about efficiency!