Over 700 flights cancelled due to Icelandic volcanic eruption

One can say that it has been happening all over again. Today the European Air Traffic Controllers have announced that they are expecting around 700 flights to be cancelled due to the volcanic eruption in Iceland which have covered the sky of Europe with ash and steam and thus halting the air traffic movement.

This has caused several of the airliners either to cancel or to divert their daily routes to Europe. The Dubai based airline, Flying Emirates, which flies several flights daily to Germany have called off its scheduled flight to Hamburg (Dubai-Hamburg-Dubai). The authority has rather urged the passengers either to opt for the alternative flight to and from Dusseldorf or to reschedule their journey to the following day.

Recently the Icelandic volcano Grimsvotn have started spewing lava and smoke that has obscured the sky of Northern Europe and British Island making it difficult for the airliners to continue their regular flights.

Although to the relief of many the cloud of ash and smoke has moved from UK, which has allowed the flights to resume their scheduled trips in and out of UK; it is now sifted to Germany affecting 90% of its daily air traffic.

Only last year several of the flights to the Northern Europe and Britain were affected due to volcanic eruption in the region, leaving 10 million travelers world-wide stranded for many days. The same thing has been happening again this year although the experts are expecting its impact to be less severe than the last time.

The history of Grimsvotn
Grimsvotn is one of the many volcanoes that mark the topography of Iceland. Grimsvotn is a volcano in the uninhabited Vatnajokull glacier at the southeast of Iceland. It stays covered in ice and hasn’t been active since 2004.

On May 23rd, 2011, Saturday, the Grimsvotn volcano of Iceland has started flinging smoke and ash that has covered a great part of the country in shoot. This has been the first eruption of the volcano since 2004 and is said to be the biggest one.

Likely impact on global air traffic
Scientists are of the opinion that Grimsvotn is likely to have lesser impact on global air traffic than the volcanic eruption of the last year. in 2010 the ash spewed by the Eyjafjallajokull volcano covered the air space of 80 miles (130 kilometers) and had affected the flights in and out of Europe and Britain for many days, leaving over 10 million passengers abandoned.

However, this time the eruption is expected to have lesser impact since the shoot is coarse in nature and is less likely to hang in the atmosphere of longer period. Already the flights have been resumed from UK as the cloud has passed to Northern Germany clearing the British sky to resume daily air traffic. Although some of the airlines like Flying Emirates and three Indian airlines- Kingfishers, Jet Airways and Indian Airways have canceled their flights to many parts of UK and Ireland, Etihad has continued to fly to UK uninterrupted.

Last year the impact was greater also because of the adverse economic condition while most of the airlines were struggling to stay afloat. But this time the industry is hopeful that normalcy will return soon and the loss amount won’t be as big as the last time.