Interesting watching and tracking what is happening regarding the airspace issue and the Icelandic ash cloud.

UK airspace was spookily quiet for most of the day on 20th April with only a few overflights at altitudes well above the 20,000ft extent of the ash.

However rumours and hints that UK airports would re-open later on in the evening prompted British Airways to allow some long haul flights to leave their destinations heading for Heathrow & Gatwick.

Using the RadarVirtuel website it was quite fascinating (if your an aviation geek like me) to watch what was happening with this inbound traffic.

BA flight 74 from Lagos destined for Heathrow was put into a hold over northern France waiting for Heathrow to open.

BA Flight 84 from Vancouver suffered a similar fate..

and BA 274 from San Francisco was forced into a loop off the coast of Ireland..

At least they looked like they would make Heathrow when it was scheduled to open at 22:00 hrs..

Another BA flight from Asia was forced into a flash aerial tour of Holland before being diverted to Brussels. I am assuming that it probably didn’t have enough fuel for a 4 hour hold !

It looks like it will take a week or so to try and get things back to normal…assuming we don’t get another eruption that is.