New Volcano Threatens Europe

Millions of us was effected by the eruption of the Eyjafjallajökull volcano in April 2010.
Ash spread across Europe and caused aviation authorities to close large areas of the European airspace for over six days. We were taken by surprice by the events, and we remember it with horror!

The International Air Transport Association IATA, estimated that airlines lost more than $1.7 billion in revenue during the crisis.

Since then, there has been “significant progress” in the European approach to volcanic ash eruptions, according to Eurocontrol. Aviation authority officials now say that it is highly unlikely that a new eruption will cause the same amount of problems.

The approach is more coordinated now and “recognizes that decisions to perform flights in airborne Volcanic Ash should be made by the airlines, based on the conclusions of their safety risk assessment.
A lot of research has been done since 2010.

New Volcano Threatens Europe

On August 18, the Icelandic Meteorological Office (IMO) raised the color code of the Bárðarbunga (Bardarbunga) volcano in central-southwest Iceland to orange. This is the second highest alert level, indicating that the volcano “shows heightened or escalating unrest with increased potential of eruption. The Bardarbunga volcano, last erupted in 1910.

The agency said its monitoring network had detected 2,600 earthquakes since the onset of an “earthquake swarm” in the Bárðarbunga caldera, an area of collapsed land, that started two days earlier.

Several of the seismic events measured larger than magnitude 3 on the Richter scale.
The activity is still going on. On 2014.08.20 the alert level was 4/5 on the scale.

A new eruption might not cauce the same disrution as in 2010, but it can still cause a lot of problems for the airlines.

Sources:
Aviation International News
Icelandic Meteorological Office
YLE