Page 8 - Tom Aspell News Today

British airways has already announced it canceled its short haul flights for the day. some taking off from scotland but mainly feeder flights around scotland, low level flights. for the most part british airspace remains closed. monica. tom, thank you. weve got a breaking story, wall street giant goldman sachs under fire for allegedly -- $3.5 billion in profits, double from what was earned a year ago. it could add fuel to the fire as congress looks at reining in the industry. bertha coombs j...

European countries. in some places, passengers are starting to feel some relief and in parts of the u.k., planes can fly above the ash cloud. tom aspell is in london. what are british authorities telling you about plans for air travel? >> well, theyll make a decision later tonight and two hours in fact, limited air space between scotland as far down as the british midlands will begin to reopen. we have not heard about the main airports in london. later this evening, theyll decide whether limited...

In green you see a few countries like spain, they are open for business. with 95,000 flights canceled since last thursday, passengers are exhausted. >> were ready to go home and want to go home. >> trying to go to france, anywhere in france. >> theres no way. >> tom aspell is in london where airports are closed. its the sixth day that flights are closed in england, how are people dealing. >> reporter: so far, they are quite understanding. there isnt much anybody can do about the force of nature....

Feet. it also wouldnt be cost effective because jet engines burn a lot more fuel at lower altitudes. al alex? >> good point. tom aspell, thank you very much for that. well, a completely soggy weekend in parts of the country getting hit with heavy rain. in dallas, the folks there might want to keep their umbrellas handy throughout this it day. you can see theyre dealing with pretty wet weather and it looks like there are more showers on the way. so lets get a check of the weather in your area. ...

Congestion flowing at lower altitudes. europe has an average of 28,000 flights a day so, even if you put up a fraction of those, it would be too many airplanes at low altitudes because there isnt room to maneuver they have to take evasive action. and jet engines use more fuel at lower altitudes so the airlines are probably discounting that for the time being. >> tom aspell, thanks. a veteran pilot is highlighting just how serious volcanic ash is when it comes to airplanes. captain rob shapiro ...

The rest is completely shut down. >> tom, as i understand it, when the flights went, the pilots did everything on visual, right? they didnt rely on radar. they literally were looking around to have to deviate around ash clouds if they saw that? >> reporter: thats right, alex. the german planes flew at low altitude between frankfurt and munich observing what they call vor, visual flight rules. 20,000 and 30,000 feet. the dutch went higher but were deliberately trying to ingest as much of the ash ...

Them for after the lockdown ends. now the germans flew at low altitude under that cloud, which is between 20,000 and 40,000 feet. they were following about 12,000 feet on their route, observing visual flight rules all the way. now, that would not be impractical for the rest of europe to use that as a method of transporteding people around. its just too dangerous to fly at low altitudes for long periods of time. and it wouldnt be fuel efficient. >> tom, are you getting any sense of a change of te...

And they are full of blame for the aviation authorities. theyre saying that they should have left an air space clooer from london to the southeast on the first day of this crisis. they could have escaped then, they say, with their planes. and theyre now saying, many of them having experience of flying through volcanic ash in asia and the caribbean, saying its not as dangerous as the aviation experts are claiming. we could at least get the planes out to another destination and try and at least re...

Londons heathrow airport today. tom, with a good morning, i understand that klm just completed some sort of a test flight through an ash cloud. what happened there with that flight? >> reporter: well, both the dutch and german airliner looked at the dutch conducting test flights yesterday. they took a boeing 737 up to a height of 30,000 feet, and now theyre examining the plane to see how much of an effect on the engines that the dust clouds has caused. the germans were primarily flying planes, t...

Alex? okay, thank you very much, tom aspell from heathrow. a geologist in iceland said activitys increased at the volcano, causing the ash to rise more than five miles in the sky. officials say that the winds have cleared visit for the scientists so today is the first day theyll be able to fly above the volcano and try to assess the activity a bit more closely. keep it here on "msnbc saturday," well have a live report from chris jansing in iceland just a few minutes from now. thousands of pl...