Alaska Airlines Copes With Mount Redoubt and Tweets, Too
Travel Blog • Rob Verger • 03.31.09 | 9:16 AM ET
Photo by Alaska Airlines announced Monday afternoon that flights to and from Anchorage were operating “on a limited schedule” due to the eruption of Mount Redoubt, and that the status is being re-evaluated every hour. Clearly, it’s a fluid situation. For information, visit the the carrier’s website or follow its snappy updates on Twitter.
The Alaska Volcano Observatory is also Tweeting about the mountain’s status, as previously mentioned.
Meanwhile, for some context on why volcanic ash is so hazardous to airplanes, the Dallas Morning News looks back at the story of K.L.M. Flight 867, a 747 that lost all four engines (and later managed to restart them) after flying through Mount Redoubt’s ash on an approach to Anchorage in 1989.
A New York Times story from that year describes what happened this way: “The huge airliner descended from 25,000 feet to 12,000 feet in eight minutes before the crew was able to restart two of the engines, and all four were operating when the plane, traveling from Amsterdam to Tokyo, landed at 12:25 P.M. in Anchorage, where it had been scheduled to stop for refueling.”