A volcanic eruption that began on May 21 under Europe’s largest glacier, Vatnajokull in Iceland, has resulted in the closing of Iceland’s main international airport in Keflavik, Bloomberg reported.
The impact of the eruption could threaten trans-Atlantic air traffic, with the possibility of ash reaching the UK this week, said the report.
“If the eruption doesn’t abate, the ash plume could reach the U.K. later this week,” Haraldur Eiriksson, a meteorologist with Iceland’s Met Office, told Bloomberg. “According to our latest forecast, the cloud is expected to reach north Norway by noon” today.
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Eurocontrol, which oversees Europe flight paths, said on its website yesterday afternoon that “there is currently no impact on European or trans-Atlantic flights, and the situation is expected to remain so for the next 24 hours.”
A spokeswoman for the U.K.’s National Air Traffic Services Ltd. said last night that conditions are “very changeable.”
“We’re monitoring the situation very closely. We’re not speculating at all,” she said.
This is the second disruption in 13 months to Iceland’s air traffic.
An eruption beneath another Icelandic glacier, Eyjafjallajokull, on April 14, 2010, closed European airspace for six days, grounding 100,000 flights at a cost of $1.7 billion, according to an estimate then by the International Air Transport Association.
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