Fonte: BBC. Clique aqui.
Many UK airports are closed until 0100 BST on Monday because of drifting volcanic ash from Iceland, with more disruption likely over coming days. Manchester, Liverpool, East Midlands and Doncaster airports are among those closed since 1300 BST, with Birmingham and Norwich to shut from 1900.
Airports in Northern Ireland, Prestwick near Glasgow, some Scottish islands and the Isle of Man are also affected.
London airports are open. Travellers are urged to check with their airline.
Situation ‘fluid’
The air traffic authority Nats said the Civil Aviation Authority had been forced to extend a no-fly zone imposed earlier on Sunday after the ash cloud spread further south. Other airports inside the no-fly zone include Teesside, Humberside, Leeds Bradford, Blackpool, Ronaldsway, Caernarfon, Sheffield, Doncaster, Carlisle and Norwich.
All three Northern Ireland airports – Belfast International, George Best Belfast City Airport and City of Derry Airport – have also been shut.
Dublin Airport is due to be closed from 1900 on Sunday until at least 0900 on Monday. Elsewhere in the Irish Republic, Donegal, Sligo and Ireland West airports have been closed until 1200 on Monday, and Galway until 0900. Waterford Airport is due to close at 2300 on Sunday until at least 0900 on Monday.
The Irish Aviation Authority said Cork, Shannon and Kerry airports remained open until further notice.
The UK no-fly zones are set out by the Civil Aviation Authority using Met Office data. Forecasts suggest the ash cloud could extend further over the UK during Monday and Tuesday.
Nats said London’s airports should remain clear of the no-fly zone between 1900 BST on Sunday and 0100 BST on Monday.
In a statement, it said the ash cloud would continue “to change shape and move further south to just north of Oxford during this period”.
Nats’ Jonathan Astill said: “Unfortunately, yet again, a mixture of volcanic activity and weather systems have conspired to bring a cloud of ash down towards the UK.”
The cloud is expected to lie over the London area by Tuesday, but is likely to have drifted out of UK airspace by Wednesday, forecasters predict.
Transport Secretary Philip Hammond said the situation was “fluid” but passenger safety was the top priority. Ash from the Eyjafjallajokull volcano has caused disruption to thousands of flights since April. Airlines criticised the handling of the ban on flights which hit the UK in April, leading to thousands of passengers being stranded abroad.
BA spokesman Some claimed the ban could have been lifted sooner when conditions eased. Sir Richard Branson, president of Virgin Atlantic, criticised the latest decision to ban flights from Manchester, branding it “beyond a joke”. He said there was no evidence planes could not continue to fly safely.
“All the test flights by airlines, aircraft and engine manufacturers have shown no evidence that airlines could not continue to fly completely safely,” he said.
“Over 1,000 flights took off from France last week in similar conditions to that which exist in Manchester today without encountering any problems or showing any levels of ash concentration.”
But a Civil Aviation Authority spokesman said Sir Richard’s remarks were “quite surprising bearing in mind we had all the airlines and manufacturers into a conference on Friday, including Virgin”.”They all agreed the way forward including his airline,” the spokesman said.
He stressed that everyone was working together to find a way to raise the threshhold level of ash considered safe for flying.
British Airways joined Sir Richard in criticising the way airspace closures are being handled. A BA spokesman said it believed airlines – rather than the authorities – should take the decision on whether or not it was safe to fly.
“The approach the airspace authorities have taken in relation to volcanic ash remains overly restrictive and not justified on safety grounds,” he said.
“While we welcome the steps that have been taken since mid-April to moderate the restrictions, it is clear there is too much reliance on the theoretical model of ash spread produced by a single body – the London Volcanic Ash Advisory Centre.”
He said BA had “co confidence” in the model as a basis for deciding on airspace closures. “As a global airline, British Airways has operated for many years in areas of volcanic activity, and we believe airlines are best placed to take the final decisions on whether or not it is safe to fly,” he said. A spokesman for Manchester Airport said the latest disruption to flights was not expected to reach the level which previously left thousands of passengers stranded abroad.
He said: “There is absolutely no official suggestion or prediction that the prolonged, continent-wide airspace restrictions experienced in April are about to occur again.”
Molten glass
Meanwhile, Network Rail said it was boosting services to and from Scotland, and to Irish Sea ports, with engineering works postponed where necessary.
Eurostar said it planned to run extra trains between Paris and London on Monday as a result of the disruption to flights.
Virgin Trains said it would make 7,000 extra seats available on Sunday and Monday, mainly on services between Birmingham, Glasgow and Edinburgh, and between London Euston and Glasgow.
Dr Dougal Jerram, a volcanologist from Durham University, warned the last big eruption of Eyjafjallajokull – in the 1820s – went on for about two years, and its current eruption could last “several months”.
But he said the continued eruptions would not necessarily cause more problems to air travel, as a number of factors – explosive eruptions, a concentrated plume and certain weather patterns – needed to be in place at the same time to create “the perfect storm”.
Aviation expert David Learmount told the BBC the ash from the volcano could cause disruption for years.
He said: “This could go on for 20 years or more. We just don’t know how long this volcano is going to erupt for.
“Technologically there’s nothing we can do about this. We cannot build engines and aircraft which can fly safely through volcanic ash, it’s just out of the question.
“The only thing that we can do is get better at predicting precisely where every part of the volcanic ash cloud is.”
In April, airspace across Europe was shut down for five days over concerns ash could turn to molten glass in high temperatures, crippling plane engines.
Scientists and engineers have since revised the safe-to-fly threshold, but clouds of volcanic ash have continued to drift over Europe, causing airport closures, flight delays and cancellations. In the past week, several airports in southern Europe have been forced to close and flights have been re-routed.
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