British Airways sends test flight into volcanic ash cloud zone

Source: The Guardian

British Airways flight 9271E had an unconventional cargo and destination. There were no passengers on the A320 aeroplane, which took off on Tuesday evening and flew north through a swath of UK airspace that contained, according to Met Office forecasts, a high density of volcanic ash.

Crewed by two BA pilots and a pair of observers from the airline's engineering department, the jet flew at various altitudes through a "red-zone" that hung above much of Scotland and had grounded thousands of travellers beneath it. There was no special monitoring equipment onboard, except for two cameras that were brought to record evidence of ash clouds but were in the end not needed.

"We did not have any specialist equipment, hence the observers to put some additional eyeballs onboard with the ability to walk up and down the cabin in case we smelled anything," said Garry Copeland, BA's director of engineering who was on the flight.

Copeland said there was no evidence of volcanic pollution throughout a 45-minute trip that charted a course from Manchester to Newcastle, Glasgow, Edinburgh and London Heathrow, flying through the red zone much of the time.

Read more: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/may/25/british-airways-test-flight-ash-cloud

they can't be serious

He was on an Iceland Express flight to New York from London.

Somebody is making engineering decisions who never took statistics and/or thinks anecdotal evidence is the best kind of evidence. If they decide to fly based on this, or even 10 more flights like it, I pity the victims passengers on their flights who get to fly thru the ash.

But this might have been a flight that I show up late for. Brave fellas.

wouldn't that be some small hazard?

Fancy pants computer simulations only show so much. There's business to be run, show us the edge.

Get up there and suck in some ash for British Airways!

That's the ticket.

Isn't it ash in the engines that's the concern, not the smell of the cabin? :shrug: The execution here would not be encouraging to me if I was a future BA passenger...

and on some aircraft, external air gets sucked in to use in the air circulation system (i.e., passengers could be breathing in poison air)...

but yeah, the engines and forward visibility have to be the primary concern