Euro Air-travel Disrupted by Iceland Volcano.

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Gabriele,

I am sorry to hear that.

Eurostars are OK for a five minute trip from here to there IF you are 1)Alone in the wagon.
2)No idiot has smoked on the "smoking" side of the wagon (the Austrians kept that one up until recently).
3) There is actually someone or a computer to buy a ticket from.

I have never taken a train in the South of Italy without having to pay some "penalty" or other because the ticket was either "wrong" or the "date" was stale or my tennis shoes had velcro and not shoe laces...

This is the first (and probably the only) time I have ever had anything bad to say about anything Italian, but the train system in Italy is no fun.

Good Luck!
 
Rush Limbaugh

also found an explanation for his tea-party and ditto-head followers:
Europe is suffering because the Americans passed the health-care act.

God is punishing us "socialists" over here to show you folks over "there" how angry he is for us providing medical care to all humans.

I sometimes wonder if it isn't us in the Northern Hemisphere who are upside down.

 
Panthera:

you can say all the bad things you want about any train, anywhere in Italy! The prices are absurdly high and the service is very poor! The only thing that keeps "trenitalia" alive is monopoly... and now they said they're going to buy the French TGV...

The only good thing is that all the trains are smoke-free since 1995!
 
I hate that!
I'm stuck and the airport is still closed! And tomorrow morning I was supposed to have and exam at the university! God, I hope I can make it home by the 24th as I don't want to miss the 25th of April celebrations! And I have already booked the restaurant!!!
 
I wouldn't count on the Iceland volcano (with the unpronounceable name) causing global spectacular sunsets.

Unlike Pinatubo, the Iceland volcano is relatively puny. Or that's what I'm reading. But it sure is coughing up a lot of trouble.
 
Rich,

Relatively speaking, yes, it is small.
Two caveats. One, it is right next door to a seriously major volcano, the name of which I can't even spell with this keyboard much less pronounce, which is way overdue for another eruption.

Two, it may be 'small', but these volcanoes have been known to go on at this level for many months at a time. We saw a famine in Central Europe in the early 19th century because of them.

What scares me is the pressure being put on politicians to loosen up the air corridors.

European politicians are more sensible than American politicians for one simple reason - they are ALL on the take here and All decisions are based on their financial welfare and NOBODY in Europe pretends otherwise.

If the airline$ can make the ca$e that it i$ financially $afe to take the ri$k, the politician$ will open tho$e corridor$ right over the volcano, it$elf.

The only thing holding folks back right now is not the facts, it is the crash of that Polish flight two weeks ago.
 
Yesterday the Finnish Air Force sent up a jet to test the air, it came back with moderate engine damage. The ash junk gunked up the engines.
With engines costing over a million dollars each, the airlines don't want to risk it. They'd be replacing engines left and right.
Now the ash only goes up to 25-35K feet, so planes could safely fly over it, but you have to descend through it to land.
 
Yes, but, Allen

That was a Finnish airplane, not a real German plane, according to the asshats at AirBerlin who are demanding we open our airspace.
They don't care about the planes - they're only rented, after all, they don't care about the passengers - we don't do million dollar settlements like in America - all they care about is their short term profit. So what if one or two crash?

This is a real chance for the pilot's unions and sensible people to reinstitute some sensible regulation in an industry which has been deregulated to the point of being dangerous.

Someone pointed out in a large newspaper here this morning that one reason the politician$ are thinking of the people first (for a change) is because the UK elections are on and there is a major German provincial election coming up. The consequences of the ruling party in either country opening the corridors and then having people killed would hurt in the only way that matters to politician$. They'd lose parliamentary seats.

We need to seriously rethink travel. I fly a lot, and security means a lot to me. We need more than one viable way to get from here to there, the Hindenburg disaster was a million years ago, time to rethink everything.
 
Panthera

Don't think the Polish crash has anything to do with this, European airliners have gone down before without shutting down much of the air space.

To my mind it just shows the huge difference between how EU and the US goverments view things, especially when it comes to saftey.

American businesses for the most part are left to make decisions (within rules and laws), on their own judgement,and as much of the economy here is in priviate hands, goverment tends only to get involved when there are clear risks, such as during and after 9/11/01. USA airlines though face a much more court happy society, and if something happened you can bet there would be lawsuits that blame an airline for sending the flight when it should have known better.

Europe on the other hand is much more proactive and is heavily involved in all businesses, also is much less willing to leave safety up to corporations.

The test done so far, at least according to published media reports involve flying well below the ash clouds or into gaps.

Since on one can accurately predict wind patterns, and or how long or intense this spewing of ash is supposed go on on, I for one wouldn't want to take off from JFK because things are "fine" in France, only to have conditions change during the six or so hours it takes to cross the Atlantic, what does one do then?

Some airlines are saying they may start flying more and larger planes into the open southern European airports to at least get some passengers across the pond, and some Americans home. The UK is talking about using the Royal Navy to ferry it's citizens from various points in the EU home.

As thing stand now, even if the ash situation clears up today and or the ban is lifted, it is going to take a week or much longer at least to get this mess sorted out.
 
Today several European airlines sent up planes to pove that

Apparently they came back with no indication of engine wear or damage and now they are howling to have European airspace re-opened. They are saying that it is safe to fly above 30,000 feet. The European aviation authority is not convinced and keeping the airspace closed for at least another 24 hours. I understand that financial losses are significant and some airlines have been standing down several thousand staff, but human safety comes first. Though one can see that some are quite prepared to risk the loss of a plane or two for the sake of PROFIT. I guess the potential loss of a plane full of people, over two hundred million dollars a day, is a manageable risk.

Olav
 
Actually, it does

Most people here believe that the real reason the Polish plane crashed is because the PM made the pilot land.
He was a nasty piece of work, a real tin-pot dictator and had a reputation for doing that quite often.

We have pictures of the crash, the funerals, the ceremonies on the front pages of our boulevard press every day, right below the volcano. I do think this plays a role in the psychology of things here - I know Russia nd Europe seem inconsequential to day to day life when I'm in the USA, here, though, we fly much more (flights are cheaper, security is both better and friendlier than in the US) and this has a direct connection for many.

Those test flights don't mean anything as Laundress so very well pointed out - and the head of AirBerlin should be fired for his disregard for human safety.

Yes, we passengers will have to pay more for this over the next years. OK, I can live with that. Set up a pool, save the airlines from dying then set up a time limited surcharge to pay it back.

There is a fine layer of gritty dusty on everything here this morning, I believe those tests like I believe anything a politician $ays.
 
Testing

Well, the business colleagues managed to get another 36 like minded stranded travellers signed up in Zurich at the hotel and hired a coach which left Zurich Saturday evening and arrived in London Sunday morning, at least they are the lucky ones but had to use own initiative to get things sorted....

Its going to be a long time before everything is A okay again...saying that BA took a test flight yesterday and the person on board was non other the the CEO Willie Walsh, that says a lot about trying to find out a solution to the problem, although I bet the insurance company where sweating on the results!!!

 
Latest news here is that our minister of traffic affairs is getting nervous, he wants to open the airspace as soon as possible. Besides gliders and balloons, helicopters are now also permitted to take off.

A Dutch plane has just been flown from Amsterdam to Paris without passengers.

A radio reporter based in Paris was stranded in the Netherlands and took the high speed train to Paris. He was very surprised to see that there were only four passengers in the car during the journey...
 
My oldest brother took his oldest son, who is graduating high school this year, on a "bonding" trip to Europe during his spring break. They were flying into England and then going to Amsterdam, Belgium and back. THEY'RE STILL THERE! Now they've seen France, EuroDisney, and much more that they didn't expect to see. It sounds like it's getting old. They are both so ready to get home. His wife just had to wire money yesterday because his funds are about gone. I think it cost him something like $800 each to get back to England on the train since it was packed with stranded travelers trying to get elsewhere. They got a hotel room near Heathrow, but can only stay 2 days and they need to move to another one because of other bookings. It sounds like a nightmare. I am sure that this is a trip he & his son will never forget. I can't wait to talk to them when they get home & hear the whole story.
 
I saw on the news last night that one can book a flight from Europe back to the USA... but it costs around $10,000 a seat. LOL.

The good news is that the Icelanders say that their most recent flights over the volcano show a red glow. This means that the ice melt may be slacking off. The water from the melt is the primary cause of the ash eruption. Once the ice has melted and the water is gone, then the volcano will switch to lava flows which obviously don't threaten air traffic.
 
Latest news from Netherlands:

First ash particles are expected to land on Dutch soil tomorrow;

Dutch minister of traffic affairs wants to resume flights tomorrow;

Transport priority will be given to the dozens of corpses that have accumulated in the mortuary of Schiphol airport...
 
Two very interesting and mutually exclusive reports. One is

Guess who:
(excerpted from link):

Separately, senior Western diplomat said several NATO F-16 fighters suffered engine damage after flying through the volcanic ash cloud covering large parts of Europe. The official declined to provide more details on the military flights, except to say that glasslike deposits were found inside the planes' engines after they patroled over European air space.

Over the weekend, several major airlines successfully tested the skies with flights that did not carry passengers. The announcement of successful test flights prompted some airline officials to wonder whether authorities had overreacted to concerns that the microscopic particles of volcanic ash could cause jet engines to fail.

 

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