Thursday 22 April 2010

five and a half days

Not sure what those of you outside of Europe know about the volcanic ash cloud, but the skies over the UK were closed for five and a half days!

By anyones calculations that is a long time!

One of my friends and her husband were due to fly out to Singapore last Friday (the first full day of the closed skies), they then were going on to Australia (three days later on the Monday). I will have to find out when they get back how they got on.

Eurostar and the passenger ferries were completely sold out, so I bet they were well pleased with the volcanic ash cloud.  As they say every cloud...

Apparently BA forced the government to reopen the skies by flying their planes back before the ban was lifted (I love that pun ;o)).  I guess they are trying to make up ground for their industrial action over Christmas and just before Easter.  As they say it is too little too late!

3 comments:

Al said...

There are a lot of people suggesting that very thing, and they would seem to be supported by the number of planes hanging around the UK in the hours before the first planes landed.

chocolat lover said...

Do you live on the flightpath to Gatwick? I have a couple of workmates who live on the flightpath to London City and they said it was great & they could even hear themselves think when they sat outside!

It was cheeky of the airlines & could have backfired...

Al said...

Don't live on the flightpath, no, but I can generally see them taking off and landing from the car park at work. They're still a bit far away to hear though, although the railway on the other side of the car park would probably drown out any noise there was!