Ash Clouds in Europe

As I'm sure you've seen in the media, an ash cloud has been wrecking havoc on European air travel for the past few months.  I remember when Brian sent me the first email about it - my dad and I had just flown to the States from England earlier in the week when I got an email from Brian saying that airspace over Europe was being shut down.  Here was the specific article.  At first, I thought the email was a joke - I mean, who has ever heard of entire airspace being shut down?! 

My dad and I were so fortunate to get out when we did.  It wouldn't have been a huge deal for me, but it would have been bad for him because he wouldn't have been able to get back to work.  Flights were messed up for weeks, and people were stranded all over Europe.  Even today, the ash cloud is still messing with us!  Brian and I were both impacted on our separate flights back to England from the States.

I dropped Brian off for his return flight from Orlando, and he called me back a few minutes later asking me to pick him back up because he was delayed for 5 hours because of the ash cloud.  Once he was on the plane (about 30 minutes past midnight), he still was delayed because the pilots had to take a different route which added almost 2 hours to his flight.  Luckily though, he made it back safely (although he was pretty tired when the adventure was finally done)!

I flew back a little more than a week later from New York City, and sure enough, I was stuck at the airport for a while too.  I was supposed to take off at 10:30 p.m., but when I went to check-in, I noticed all of the international flights were delayed, sure enough due to the ash cloud.  As I was sitting at my gate waiting for more information, I pulled up a news story online that said London Heathrow (where I was flying into) was shut down.  Luckily it did open a few hours later, and we were finally able to take off around 1:30 a.m.  Everyone was a little freaked out and wanted to make sure everything was going to be safe.  The flight attendants were really good about reassuring everyone.

Sadly, it seems that our days of dealing with volcanic ash clouds may not be over.  An article on MSNBC today says that another volcano in Iceland, a much larger one than the one that has already been causing problems, is expected to erupt soon...  *sigh*  We'll keep you posted!