Canada, Watch Out For The Ash Cloud

A BBC weatherman has predicted that a change in wind direction this weekend will blow Iceland’s volcanic ash cloud away from Europe and towards Canada. Northwesterly winds over the Atlantic have blown the plume across the UK and Europe, grounding thousands of flights over the past week, but a wind change in the opposite direction could disperse the ash over northeast Canada.

I am safely on the ground in London so can honestly say I have not been directly affected by the eruption of Iceland’s Eyjafjallajokull volcano earlier this month. I know the stranded will not agree with me, but I almost wish I had been affected. If I was traveling out of London sometime in the past week I could be taking advantage of a prolonged vacation that would not count as missed work days.

I can hear the cries of disagreement now. Not only from the thousands of travelers inconvenienced or the airline industry which is being hit hard or even the UK businesses that are sorely lacking staff. I have stranded friends and family as well, who are not too impressed with the questionable inconvenience.

Two of my British friends, Danielle and Natalie, are teachers, and spent the last week or two on Easter holidays in New York City and Australia, respectively. When it came time to return to classes yesterday, both were still living it up in their respective destinations, an expensive delay, I must admit. Another friend, Marge, is stranded – the wrong word, I’m sure – back home in Montreal. And a couple more, Sandra and Peter, were hopping around the Scandinavian countries for Easter holiday, and are still up there somewhere. My cousin John has been given the go-ahead to fly from London to Ottawa tonight, but I’ll believe it when I see it. And my Mom and aunt may not make it up to the UK from the French Riviera at the end of this week.

It’s not all bad news for these travelers. If they can afford it, and are comped by their airline, millions of people are being given a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. But the airline industry is losing millions of pounds and euros and dollars every day. According to a report from absence management firm FirstCare, UK absence caused by the volcanic ash jumped from 20,300 cases yesterday from a typical 3,000 on any other day. That damn volcano is costing British businesses an estimated £3 million a day (Read more at my magazine, Employee Benefits.)

When it all started last Thursday, 15 April, with volcanic ash drifting south-east from the volcanic glacier just 120km from Reykjavik, the numbers started off modestly, with merely tens of thousands of passengers grounded across Britain and Europe. As the ash moved southeast into northern Europe, a blanket ban was announced. More than 800 people were evacuated from southern Iceland, where the volcano was erupting in phases. Two days later, most airports across the continent were closed down, though some 5,000 flights were allowed to fly – a mere quarter of the 22,000 planes that are normally in the sky each day.

The UK workforce has been shattered as well. I’m sure my teacher friends are only a tiny percentage of those not able to return to the classroom after the Easter holidays. This week is a good one to be a supply teacher. International conferences have been suspended, postponed or cancelled altogether, as exhibitors and delegates are unable to arrive at their destination. And as I make my usual news week calls, I am finding a lot of HR departments short-staffed due to stranded employees.

And even the sports world is impacted, not that I really care. With the Liverpool Football Club unable to fly out of England, their only option for reaching Madrid for their match is to take the Eurostar from Paris and carry down to Spain from there. Plans for the English cricket team to reach the Caribbean for the International Cricket Council World 20 this weekend will probably see them travel by land and sea to Dubai before being airlifted directly to the West Indies for the tournament.

More importantly to me, the London premiere of Date Night and the world premiere of Iron Man 2 are now tentatively cancelled because their stars can’t reach the UK. So much for my plan to head down to Leicester Square after work tomorrow to worship the goddess Tina Fey or drool all over RDJ (Robert Downey Jr.) next Monday.

Perhaps the saddest, and most ironic, story that the volcanic ash has wrought is of the poor scientist who spent his whole career studying Eyjafjallajokull and waiting for her eruption, only to be away from Iceland last week when it happened. (Though what kind of a scientist would he be if he didn’t know the exact date of the eruption?) As a result, since no planes can fly into Reykjavik, he is stranded somewhere else while his whole life’s work is crumbling and spewing lava back in Iceland.

Though the ash particles are too small to be spotted as they sprinkle down on us (scientists have found ash cloud remnants in Sheffield, up in Yorkshire), the plume is destructive enough to enter into the engines of planes and cause massive failure. The best-known incident involving airplanes and volcanic ash took place in June 1982 when a British Airways 747 flight from London to Auckland encountered ash from Mount Galunggung in Java, Indonesia. All four engines failed but the plane glided far enough out of the plume for three of them to restart and work sufficiently for an emergency landing. No passengers were injured.

So, there is genuine danger associated with the falling volcanic ash. It’s not all free vacations and extended international hotel stays. For me, the most severe effect is waiting for my friends to return and hoping that my Mom, and aunt Mary Lou, make it here this Friday without a detour from Nice to Paris to London on the Eurostar.

Good luck to the Canadian East coast that will likely be affected this weekend. If you’re booked to fly, get out while you still can.