UK, Irish and Scandanavian (Norway, Sweden, Finland and Denmark) and other countries have grounded their flights. Volcanic ash can destroy the engines of a plane and sandblast the windows.
Hope you don’t have a flight planned in the next day or two.
I work a couple of miles away from Edinburgh airport, and had wondered why there were no planes today! Weird. Are we supposed to be able to see the ash cloud from the ground (i.e. any perceptible change in weather/conditions) if it gets blown over us? It looks quite far north of the British Isles from the map in the article.
Guy on the radio just said that if the cloud was overhead you wouldn’t see it very well due to it’s lack of density but would definitly fuck any plane flying through it.
I feel sorry for the people who’s holidays have been messed up, poor sods.
First Iceland fucks with our bank accounts, now they fuck with our planes. 
I just saw a tweet (in dutch, so my translation) directed at Iceland:
We wanted your CASH, can’t you people read?
That’s really unsettling. Glad I’m staying put. Actually, I wouldn’t mind an overseas holiday, but not with a chance of Volcanic ash ruining it.
P.S. Finland isn’t part of Scandinavia. It, or its northern part, more accurately, happens to be on the Scandinavian Peninsula… Unlike Denmark, which actually IS part of Scandinavia. So I don’t blame anyone for getting it confused.
They’ve closed the airspace so they can avoid a repeat of this incident. As the captain said: “Ladies and Gentlemen, this is your Captain speaking. We have a small problem. All four engines have stopped. We are doing our damnedest to get them under control. I trust you are not in too much distress.”
interesting read!
Here’s a full-colour satellite view of the ash cloud, fresh from the European Space Agency’s Envisat spacecraft.
Here’s another incident, this time a KLM 747 in 1989, again losing all engines after flying through ash.
Radio 4 was it?
Nah t’was an Irish Station. NewsfuckingTalk 10fucking6 
The ash from the volcano erupting in Iceland has disrupted travel all over Europe.
"An ash cloud from Iceland’s spewing volcano halted air traffic across a wide swathe of Europe on Thursday, grounding planes on a scale unseen since the 2001 terror attacks as authorities stopped all flights over Britain, Ireland and the Nordic countries.
Thousand of flights were canceled, stranding tens of thousands of passengers, and officials said it was not clear when it would be safe enough to fly again. "
Any dopers effected by this?
The mother of a friend of mine is stranded in London. She was there on business, though, so until she can get home, she’s raking in overtime pay
Otherwise, not much.
Update: Data from Meteosat and atmospheric modeling give this animation of the movement of the ash plume.
I was supposed to fly from Pittsburgh to Paris, then to Tunisia today at 6pm. Right now my flight is delayed until almost 8, and I hope it doesn’t get canceled altogether. As it is, I will probably miss my connection in Paris.
There’s another thread open right now, which has links to satellite pictures and animations of the ash plume and descriptions of the effects of volcanic ash on aircraft.
After reading so many “fucks”, that animation looked amazingly phallic.
Mrs Wallenstein is due to fly to Rome on Saturday morning - fingers crossed it’ll have blown over by then, although it’s going to be a close-run thing.
A lad in our office is due to fly to Rome tomorrow morning - he’s aiming to propose to his g/friend so he’s understandably in a bit of a state with the delays!