Icelandic volcano fizzles, industry says regulators caught flat footed - again

BERLIN Tegel and Schoenefeld airports closed yesterday, joining airports in Scotland the day before in the face of the spread of a cloud of volcanic ash from Iceland, which disrupted flights as experts said the eruption was fizzling.


"It's not over," said Pall Einarsson, from the University of Iceland, reported The Associated Press. "But it's declining rapidly."


This left airlines angry with the over reaction of regulators and their lack of investigative response to assess a problem as it is, rather than at its most scarifying.


Some experts say particles can stall jet engines and sandblast windows, but other say flight bans are a massive over reaction by badly prepared regulators.


"We flew in the red zone for about 45 minutes at different altitudes over Scotland" and the north of England, BA-Iberian CEO Willie Walsh told BBC radio. "All the filters were removed and will be sent to a laboratory for testing. The simple answer is that we found nothing."


Irish budget airline Ryanair also challenged regulators, saying it had sent its own plane into Scottish airspace and found no ash in the atmosphere.


But German transport minister Peter Ramsauer said precautions were justified, and said that authorities were better prepared after the Eyjafjallajokull volcano eruption last year forced the closure of European air space for five days, stranding millions.


In Iceland, observers at the crater were reporting only steam, an indication that the eruption could be nearing its end.


The International Air Transport Association (IATA) complained to the British government about the way it had handled the issue, saying it should have had light aircraft to carry out tests instead of relying on the weather service.
(Source:http://www.schednet.com)