The prospect of ash affecting flights in eastern Canada prompted a handful of early cancellations on Sunday night, however flights resumed on Monday morning in Newfoundland and Labrador.
The U.K.’s National Weather Service indicated on Monday that the ash cloud could spread further south into New York airspace early this week, however forecasters believe that the concentration of the ash was of little threat to aviation.
“The ash in the atmosphere now is mostly from the first eruption last week, and it has spread out over thousands of kilometers and diffused,” said Jim Andrews, senior meteorologist for AccuWeather.com, a forecaster connected to State College, Pennsylvania.
“The concentration of the ash is therefore very low, even below critical levels for aviation,” he said in an interview.
However, he said that the situation could change for North America, particularly next week if there was another major eruption.
Canadian forecasters said on Monday that they had found “some potential ash presence, although in low concentrations.”
“The Canadian Meteorological Center considers that there is a low probability of risk as satellite imagery does not support ash presence in high concentrations,” said Environment Canada, a government agency.
There were fears that the spread of the ash cloud could repeat in North America the disruption that has occurred in the U.K. and Europe.
Since the Eyjafjallajokull volcano erupted on April 14, as many as 81,000 flights have been canceled in Europe, leaving hundreds of thousands of passengers stranded.
Airlines have protested against government-imposed flying bans saying it has cost the industry $200 miilion-$270 million a day. British Airways said it had flown a plane Sunday through the no-fly zone and found “no variations in the aircraft’s normal operational performance.”
Parts of Europe were expected to open to flights on Tuesday morning, after transport ministers divided the region’s airspace into areas where it was and was not safe to fly.
However, industry figures were critical of the official response to the crisis, with the International Air Transport Association saying there had been little risk assessment and “no leadership.”
“It’s embarrassing, and a European mess,” said Giovanni Bisignani, chief executive of IATA.
Despite that, an unnamed diplomat quoted by AP said that several NATO F-16 fighters had accumulated glass-like deposits in the engines after flying through the ash cloud, suggesting that the threat to airlines and passengers is real.
Several forecasters in Europe and Canada noted that the volcano has emitted little ash since the major eruption last week, prompting speculation that the worst is already over.
“The volcanic eruption has reduced and the volcano is not currently emitting ash to altitudes that will affect the U.K.,” said the British air traffic control agency NATS, in a statement on Monday.
“Assuming there are no further significant ash emissions, we are now looking at a continuously improving situation.”
Others have noted that the last time Eyjafjallajokull erupted was in 1821 and it lasted for 13 months.
Andrews said that if there was another eruption before Thursday this week, it would be Britain and most of Northern Europe that would bear the brunt of the ash.
But if the eruption took place after Thursday, the changing wind pressures meant that the situation for North America was “more complicated.”
“If we get a more substantial eruption, there’s a chance it could reach the northeastern part of North America. However, this is purely speculation, given how unpredictable the volcano has proved to be.”
