That volcano!!

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Member for

14 years 9 months

Posts: 699

Does anybody know if the restrictions on commercial flying brought about by the Icelandic volcano will affect light aircraft operations? The VAC is having a fly-in at Fenland on Saturday, might this be affected?

Regards

Original post

Member for

20 years 7 months

Posts: 2,623

Orion, as far as I am aware it is only CAS that has restrictions, so as long as it sits in the open FIR you'll be fine :)

Member for

14 years 9 months

Posts: 699

I believe Elstree is operating. I spoke to a friend there this morning and he feels that the only problem for flying schools will be that they might have to change the filters more often. Whether private owners will have the same laid back approach remains to be seen. I shall be going to Fenland anyway.

Regards

Member for

20 years

Posts: 1,496

For those in the know, are exclusion zones around commercial airports operating even when the airport is closed?
I ask because I watched a light aircraft doing lazy eights almost over Stansted yesterday before bimbling away to the north, he almost resembled the flight of a bumblebee:)
I also notice that other small aircraft are flying a lot closer while passing Stansteds control zone.

Don't you think they may have been communicating on the relevant frequency. A group of microlights flew into Bristol and landed yesturday. They were made most welcome.

Mark
G-POZA

Member for

16 years 9 months

Posts: 313

No worries

We flew Shoreham - Duxford - Damyns Hall - Shoreham today and no sign of volcanic ash even though the Shoreham ATIS was giving a warning mention.

On the way up spoke to Heathrow, who would not entertain any overflights but we were allowed to route directly overhead London City airport.

Duxford had a fly-in yesterday and today among aircraft flying the Catalina was busy doing circuits, crew training ready for the season.

On the return journey we were one of many aircraft being permitted to do an approach and low overshoot (not below 800' and 1000' respectively) at both Stansted and Gatwick, where the duty controllers were being kept busily occupied by light aircraft taking advantage of this rare opportunity.

One man's meat and all that !

Wicked Willip :diablo:

Member for

15 years 1 month

Posts: 2,828

As stansted and Gatwick happily accepted GA to fly over, why didnt Heathrow?

I wish I had some time booked to fly while these restrictions are in place as it would be great to see the big airports from above, but sadly I lack the money right now.

Member for

24 years 2 months

Posts: 16,832

I'm now starting the planning needed to collect my wife (currently in Oz, shortly to be in Singapore) from Spain, assuming she can get there somehow, in the Colt if needed.

Moggy

Member for

16 years 9 months

Posts: 313

As stansted and Gatwick happily accepted GA to fly over, why didnt Heathrow?

I wish I had some time booked to fly while these restrictions are in place as it would be great to see the big airports from above, but sadly I lack the money right now.

The whole thing has become ridiculous - shades of the Bermuda Triangle and swine flu all over again. I believe it was a political decision that decreed no access to Heathrow airspace and suspect that the powers that be were jittery at the prospect of all those journos camped there seeing lots of little aircraft flying over when the airline passengers were being kept firmly on the ground.

Seems a shame as Stansted and Gatwick were being very helpful and accommodating - believe the former even allowed a hot air balloon to lift off from there. Luton too were perfectly happy to accept a similar request for a flyby from Auster G-AHAM on a local sortie out of Rush Green.

Appears, however, that to some extent we were lucky in the UK as we heard much of Northern Europe, including the whole of Belgium and Holland, and possibly Norway and Sweden as well, were accepting no flights at all over their territories.

Wicked Willip :diablo:

Member for

15 years 6 months

Posts: 9

In case its of any use to anyone in the GA world, here is a link to a site I put together with some software I've been working on for a few years.

http://www.ashtam.co.uk

It contains all kinds of mapping tools for the volcanic ash advisories and the Black Ash buffer Zones.