Ryanair says test flight found no ash

SCOTLAND:RYANAIR INSISTED there was no volcanic ash material in the airspace over Scotland yesterday even though the UK's civil aviation authority (CAA) ruled that it should be closed.

The airline said it strongly objected to the decision to close Glasgow Prestwick, Edinburgh and Aberdeen airports and described the presence of ash in the airspace as “mythical”.

It was forced to cancel a total of 36 flights yesterday as a result of the CAA’s decision relating to ash spewed from Iceland’s Grimsvötn volcano which is not expected to cause disruption on the same scale as that which followed the eruption at Eyjafjallajökull last year.

Ryanair yesterday said it dispatched a test flight from Glasgow Prestwick to see if the ash posed a danger. The 90-minute flight flew to Inverness, on to Aberdeen and down to Edinburgh – all of which were said to be in a red zone of “high ash concentration”.

“Exactly as we predicted there was no evidence of any volcanic ash material whatsoever,” the company’s chief executive Michael O’Leary said. “There’s no cloud over Scotland. There’s no dust on the airframe or engines or the wings.”

However, British transport secretary Philip Hammond said the radar track information for the flight Mr O’Leary referred to did not fly in the red zone.

“In fact all [Mr O’Leary] has done is confirm the CAA’s own model, which showed there was no ash in the areas where that aircraft flew,” Mr Hammond said.

Mr Hammond said a different solution to last year’s problems had been agreed and that Ryanair had been involved with all the other airlines in discussions to arrive at that solution. “We’ve now got a much more refined model,” he said.

“We know much more precisely where the cloud is and what the density of the cloud is and the airlines have much more discretion in making their own proposed operational plans, putting them forward to the CAA for approval.”

Mr O’Leary said Ryanair had received written confirmation from the manufacturer of its aircraft which stated that it was perfectly safe to fly even with volcanic material in the sky so long as they were examined afterwards.

He said this information had been passed onto the Irish Aviation Authority and Civil Aviation Authority in the UK.

“What we expect is the aviation authorities to work on the base of evidence. The airlines have sent up testing flights. There is no volcanic ash cloud over Scotland, no volcanic ash material whatsoever,” Mr O’Leary added.