Iceland plays down aviation threat from pending volcanic eruption

Iceland has sought to temper concerns that an imminent volcanic eruption would wreak widespread havoc on European aviation as happened in 2010. An eruption is expected within days at Grindavik, a small fishing town in the country’s south-west, with a 15km magma tunnel underneath the town. The level of disruption to travel is dependent on whether magma emerges on land or in water, with the latter more likely to generate an explosive event and shoot ash up into the atmosphere. “The latest activity indicates that magma would most likely come up north of the town and that the likelihood of an ocean eruption has decreased,” Ms Birta Lif Kristinsdottir, team leader of aviation weather services at Iceland’s Met Office, said by phone. Three eruptions have occurred in the area since 2021, all of them fissure eruptions with lava flowing rather than spewing ash. Those contrast with the events of 2010. That year, the volcano Eyjafjallajokull that sits under a glacier erupted in an explosion that released a plume of ash so vast that it grounded air traffic across Europe for weeks. It resulted in the cancellation of 100,000 flights and affected over 10m people. At the time, the International Civil Aviation Organization, ICAO, had rules which prohibited flying though airspace containing ash particles or affected by an ash forecast.<br/>