by Catherine Lear

Created on: May 05, 2010   Last Updated: May 06, 2010

Once again, British air space has been closed due to the eruption of the Icelandic volcano Eyjafjallajokull. Iceland just a mere 700 miles from the shores of Britain has been the centre of attention since 14th April 2010 when the volcano first erupted.

The volcanic ash dust first drifted over the North Sea towards Norway and quickly spread throughout the rest of Europe, the European authority's were quick to see the danger and suspended all air traffic throughout Europe.

Although satellite photographs showed that, no ash was anywhere near Britain, the British Government along with health and safety put a blanket ban on all flights coming in to Britain and going out of Britain.

This left millions of British citizens abroad stranded, while the airline companies and government officials argued about the fall out of volcanic ash, Britain basked in warm sunshine with out a cloud in the sky.

Now on the 5th May just as the last of the stranded passengers have come home, once again Britain is once more held hostage to nature. Once more the Eyjafjallajokull volcano has spewed out tons more of volcanic dust, however this time the winds have changed, this time the wind is bringing the volcanic ash down the west coast of Britain, and this time the danger is for real.

Satellite pictures are showing that the cloud is moving slowly over the north of Scotland and down over the small island of the Isle of Man, and down over Ireland.

Interestingly the British Government has not this time thrown a blanket ban on airports and airlines, only Ireland has banned all movement of aircraft, and only the airports in Scotland have been closed.

However this small eruption of this volcano will be nothing in comparison when its sister volcano erupts. Katla just a few miles from Eyjafjallajokull is a much larger volcano and has a history of erupting with Eyjafjallajokull, Katla usually erupts six months after her sister volcano and the power that it pushes its volcano ash into the air is formable.

We can look forward to many months of chaos when Katla erupts far more that we are seeing today. The Eyjafjallajokull volcano disrupted 100, 000, flights and stranded over 10,000,000 passengers, it cost the airlines over 2 billion British £s, not to mention the chaos that it brought to commerce and the economy.

In addition, it is not stopping, no costs have been evaluated for this latest airport ban but you can bet that airlines and airports are now biting there fingers wondering how much more punishment they can take. In addition, if Katla erupts in the next few months, we will see many; many small airlines along with at least one large airline go out of business.

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