It's Oh So Quiet

I never realised quite how many aircraft flew directly overhead - and how much noise they made - until today.  With the whole of UK airspace being closed due to another eruption in the Eyjafjallajoekull area of Iceland and the resulting ash cloud heading our way on northerly winds, all flights into and out of the country are grounded until further notice.  BBC News link is here.

This has resulted in glorious plane-free skies above Essex (and everywhere else too.)  Normally you can count up to a dozen aircraft in the sky at any one time - some very high and obviously en-route from the continent, some much lower and obviously in a holding pattern for Heathrow, or about to land at Stanstead. 

The worst offenders for noise and disturbance are the early-morning flights about to land at Heathrow from the Far East.  Those blighters seem to fly directly over the house, putting their landing gear down whilst they go and making a terrible din while they're at it, at 4.30 am every morning - and most mornings they manage to disturb my slumbers.  I do feel terribly sorry for all those poor devils who've had their travel plans disrupted but it is so lovely not to have planes droning overhead constantly, and I am really looking forward to not being disturbed in the wee-small hours tomorrow morning.

My Mum is also enjoying the plane-free skies as she is directly in the flightpath for Bristol Airport.  The planes fly so low over her house that you can practically see the pilot!!  Honestly.  They are flying scarily low at times.

On the same subject, I came across this brilliant tweet on the BBC news site

"1310 Littlesapling tweets:

Dear Iceland, we said 'send Cash'."

Some people are very droll.

Comments

[jeanie]

Just watched (online of course)a network news story and it sounds like you may have a few days on much-deserved peace, the ash looks like it's not expected to dissipate anytime soon. I had no idea how many flights there are in a day over Europe, so amazing. It is nice, however, that Britain and Europe have a good passenger rail system, something we sadly lack in the US. If air traffic shuts down, trains quickly are over-taxed.

[Caroline]

Excellent Tweet - and enjoyed reading about your first car boots finds. Looking forward to Sunday as I've missed the last two weekends.