Volcanic Ash – where next?

It’s hard to miss the talk about where the Volcanic Ash from Iceland will be next, disrupting travel for all concerned. This is a new concept for us in Northern Europe, although we have other Volcanoes , especially in Italy. In the US and Asia, however, they have been dealing with this for many years.
I managed to avoid flying in Europe since the erutpions started, until last week, that is. I was operating a flight on behalf of BMI from London Heathrow to Freetown . Amongst our passengers was the President of Sierra Leone, on his way back from China.
To avoid Spain and Morocco ( who’s airspace was closed due to the ash) we had to head east, and stop for fuel in Naples.
When we got there, and had refuelled for the 6 hour trip to Freetown, we were told that we could not transit through Algeria because we didn’t have an overflight permit!
And this is where the job gets challenging. The entorurage of the Sierra Leone President start making calls to Foreign Ministers offices, High Commissions, and soon everyone on the aircraft is aware that some political power is coming into play. Our Operations department start working on rerouting us back through Spain as the airspace was starting to open again, and (just to add another twist) a Polish passenger became alarmed that we were going to head off into Africa under pressure from the President, thereby putting ourselves and the passengers in danger ! Plainly, recent events were on her mind.
So it took some amazing diplomatic work by my colleagues who were flying the plane, to calm everyone down, and get on our way.
Needless to say we never saw or encountered any Volcanic ash.
But I suspect we’ll see more disruption over the weeks and months ahead.

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