The Day the Sky Went Dark

As we shelter now in the face of a worldwide pandemic that has largely shut down air traffic, we’re at the 10-year anniversary mark of another event that, at least for Europe and the North Atlantic, shut down almost all flying, although only for days: the great Icelandic Ash Cloud of 2010.

The cloud, from an eruption of the Eyjafjallajökull volcano starting March 20th, intensified in mid-April, and for nearly a week stopped most aviation. The shutdown was ordered partly because of lost visibility and mainly out of concern for ash being sucked into jet engines, causing sudden power loss. 

Affected areas ranged from North America in the west and to central Asia and Russia in the east, with Europe suffering the most effect. More than 100,000 flights were canceled, with 19,000 on the peak day, stranding over ten million travelers, including many who were trying to return home.

Almost the only area that benefited from the cloud, ironically, was another volcanic area, Portugal’s Azores Islands, far enough south of the cloud to become, for a brief while, a center for diverted flights.

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4 years ago

I remember it well. The volcano erupted on the day we were supposed to come back from Madeira. We got stuck there for a week. Easyjet (the carrier on this package trip) were no help at all (surprise!), but we finally managed to escape to the Portuguese mainland and after a few – actually very pleasant – days there we got a flight back to the UK from Lisbon. Business class and to London, whilst our car was parked at Bristol airport, but we just wanted to get back. I still have the email correspondence with Easyjet after we returned (some 120 messages). Initially they claimed not to know us, but in the end they paid all our expenses – however, they went painstakingly through all our restaurant bills, removing anything that sounded alcoholic!   

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