Volcano Eruption - Flight Disruption Sticky
 

Mods, Randy,

This Volcano thing is causing absolute chaos, the information other than the UK and Scandinavia is totally disjointed and there are thousands of FT'ers looking for information. I propose that immediately a Sticky is created at the top of all pages as a clearinghouse for all volcano related information. This thing is unprecedented and may continue for days.

A sticky makes sense to me also, until the ash situation resolves.

Are there any open airports with TATLs?

I suspect some airline fora already have these, much like American AAdvantage Forum. Link.

The only way to get this done is to use the RBP (Report Bad or Missing Post) function, which sends a message instantly to all forum moderators. At the moment, according to the BBC, Ireland, the UK, the Netherlands, Belgium, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Finland and France are affected by the volcanic ash cloud.

Agreed, but maybe separated by region - that will help looking endlessly for answers if you're not able to check in continuously...

I believe you can still get across the pond from Southern and Eastern Europe. Germany is supposedly on high alert but still open. Spain and Italy are okay for the time being, but the forecast is for all of these to be shut down at some point as well.

Links to the relevant airline threads are found in this post on The Gate.

I'm happy to add more to the post, just pm or email me.

Seems to me that it makes just as much sense to post in the respective airline forum instead of a sticky. Those who go on Flyertalk should already know the airline that they are going to be impacted on. Plus not all airlines are impacted so having a sticky for this one event would mean that when hurricanes hit the Southeast region should also get one, which hasn't been the case.

Love, you must be US based and not travelling today and have little sense of the scale of this thing if you are making a US hurricane analogy.

1. There are estimated to be in excess of 700,000 people stranded across Europe alone right now as I write with no clue about what is going on. (this does not include the hundreds of thousands which are stranded outside of Europe, the number will at least double tomorrow if this doesn't clear)

2. Oh, I know what airline I am supposed to fly tomorrow, and have a backup to that if it fails, and a second backup to that if it fails and even a third. In addition to the plain fact that it is inconvenient to hit 3-6 forums for the information needed, My first airline which I am ticket on does NOT have a main fora on FT, the main fora to date has no word on that airlines flights. The airport in questions website says that half the flights are cancelled, but not which flights exactly and recommends going to the airlies site, the airline site says to check the schedule function which obviously has not been updated, and the "news" area says that if you contact the airline you will probably not get a response as they are slammed. So no, just having it piecemeal around the various fora is NOT a good idea.

3. If Ft could serve as communications hub between certain Israelis and Lebanese during the last big skirmish than it certainly can kick into high gear for this disaster and consolidate this information in a much more concise and useful manner.

You are definitely entitled to your thoughts on how the forum should work and the points you make, however I'm just countering them. I don't see the value of a sticky for this as you do. Other disasters that impacted travel have happened and FT has not made it a point of having it a sticky.

It doesn't really matter whether it is a hurricane or volcano plume... last time there was a volcanic eruption in Alaska/Pacific Northwest region and it impacted travel as well... no sticky there.

As for finding out each forum, does it really take that much effort to read the related airline's? A consolidated forum would even be messier, with people trying to sort through their own airline amongst all the other ones thrown in there. For an airline that isn't listed, there is a forum for airlines that are not listed; that would be an equally organized approach for those not listed.

If I recall correctly on the Lebanese Israeli event, it was not a sticky made on the top of every page... it was a thread and I thought it was a fine example of the communication medium FT is (especially w/ Dovster's and Beyflyer's updates). Comparing a sticky for weather to this just doesn't support the need for a sticky.
http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/commu...ws-report.html
Besides, as I mentioned in the previous paragraph, I can't imagine it being in an orderly fashion when you have updates from all over the place for dozens of airlines. Who's gonna moderate and update it so the recent info is consolidated into one place? It's not like FT has the option of a summary page that can be edited by everyone.

Commercial air traffic has been shut down on a scale not seen since 9/11, and with no real end in sight. Whether you like it or not, this is huge news, and very important to a huge number of people. Millions of people are or will be stranded in the coming weeks, and this could very seriously hurt some European carriers. Information is widely scattered on Flyertalk and it's inefficient to gather all relevant information. This absolutely does need a sticky.

You are so right about this. And by the way, the ripples of this have really spread, or at least the airlines are using it as an excuse. I'm stuck in GRU after an evening of going from scheduled flight to one backup to another backup and finally back to my hotel in Sao Paolo. The real shame in this was that the airlines knew the flights would not get out (they are saying they had crew shortages, but who knows), so many of us braved evening traffic only to have to turn back around. There is so little good data on the airline sights outside of a bit about northern europe.

Agree, an overall sticky is needed. Lots of Asia-Europe flights are affected now, and folks trying to get from one place to the other can't just run out and book the Eurostar. Quite a few of the Asian carriers aren't as conscientious about notifying passengers about cancellations and changes, so having an independent forum is really useful. Passengers out of position, planes and crews out of position...the volcano effects are rippling around the world's airline system.

Yes, Mt. Redoubt's eruption in 2008 impacted travel between here at Alaska. Yes, Mt. St. Helens' last volcanic activity (they weren't really eruptions, though) impacted air travel to an extent. The volcano in Iceland is impacting a lot more travelers than any of the most recent eruptions of Mt. Redoubt, Mt. St. Helens, etc. have.

We are talking having nearly an entire continent being shut down by Mother Nature's fury. This is, as someone else mentioned, on the same scale as 9/11. This is having a MAJOR impact. Mt. Redoubt and Mt. St. Helens were minor in comparison to this.

I think a general sticky on the main forum page is appropriate. When you're talking about something of this scale, one central thread is necessary...not four thousand other ones that you have to go searching in different foras for.

Another vote here for a unified source of information on this. There's a lot of good information in the various fora, but it is cumbersome to find and to follow, though JDiver's efforts in the AA forum might be a good template, with a number of useful links to the big picture.

Here is the forecast of the Norwegian Meteorological Institute up to Sunday morning 6am:

http://met.no/?module=Articles;actio...icShow;ID=2873