Sat here in the UK where the ban on all flights has been extended for another 24 hours. The people living under/near the flight paths are finding the silence quite eerie apparently, such as they can now outside their houses and hear the birds sing. And where I live this morning a smattering of black volcanic ash has appeared....

Hotel owners must be grinning from ear to ear. The first day, every room in London was sold by midday, according to the BBC news.

Can't help but think of Pompeii - no reason why an eruption like that couldn't happen again at any time.
Could be worse though - like this.

Bring on 2012!

I hope all clears up..an island needs its transportation.

I see they halted mildenahall and lakenheath.. been there with military.

to give an idea of the scope of this, I am in maine, and been feeling rumbles since january. I even blogged details along the way..
a hole in the earth does not know westerlies.. it does know its diameter however...and it is a big one.

I wonder when mt. katahdins steam goes volcanic.. (local mountain)

this is comparable to something from 1820 or 1783...only today for the first time in humanity,there is planes trains and automobiles.

fun fact: bangor maine is 2668 miles from the western shore of ireland..
los angeles is just over 2700... iceland is 500 miles closer than both.

my car, from alaska..straight line (non-road measuremant) took just over 2700 mile journey to be where it is.. math is funny, playing with radius.

The earth and the way it is portrayed is bewildering... like the ongoing error of 3 dimensional photos...alaska looks likeits a universe away.. la is right down the road.. iceland may as well be another planet, and europe.. wow, that is another galaxy...

measurements speak for themselves.

So much for my trip to Scotland... Oh well, I'll visit some other day...

Unless you can score a train ticket?

Yeah I looked into that
430 euros from Paris to London (round trip)
300 euros from London to Glasgow (round trip)

Compared to my 70 euros plane ticket round trip from Paris to Glasgow

I even looked into ferry baots... From some random town into Belgium to Edimburgh... A 20 hour trip... 300 euros one way... Argh.... Plus the cost to go to that Belgian town

F18 flew through the ash cloud :
http://www.flightglobal.com/articles/20 ... canic.html

:lol:

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/n ... ano19.html

More on that here
The cynical side of me suspects some kind of publicity stunt - he is a TV presenter.

if thats the case, he should be tried as a pirate and made to walk the plank...ARRRR!

The PBS Newshour had a story on the troubles and expense of working around this problem:

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/europe/jan-june10/volcano1_04-20.html

You know, I was like, wow, that does cost a lot to the airlines hm.

then I was like, F*** them, when do they care about me or my wallet?

All this crap about "expense to industry" and nothing ever about bailing out real people who don't step on other's faces like the "industry" actually does.

That aside, I have heard some interviews with families and couples on vacation who are older that got really screwed out of a lot of money trying to get back home. That sucks. What sucks worse is how the EU did jack shit to help these people get home FREE. What a great "union". This was a national emergency. I mean it is pretty easy to say that a volcano exploding and covering you with ash is a national emergency. However, the few 100 thousand people were needlessly stranded while being robbed blind trying to get home. Isn't Nato there? We can lift 6 M1-Abrams tanks plus troups in a matter of hours from England to Iraq, yet we cant lift a couple weighing a combined 280 lbs. 1 country over for free.

It was hardly an "emergency" - yes, a lot of people were inconvenienced, and there's no excuse for some of the profiteering which took place (although I guess it was to be expected, human nature being what it is), but no-one was at any risk of death or serious injury. A large-scale mobilisation of the armed forces would have been a ridiculous over-reaction.

What would really "suck" is if the EU did "jack shit" to help people who were too poor to get out of the way of an incoming hurricane, for example, but I doubt if that would ever happen.