Volcanic ash originating from Russia’s Kamchatka Peninsula canceled Alaska Airlines flights to Nome and Kotzebue Tuesday morning. The ash plume came from the Klyuchevskoy volcano, prompting an advisory from the Alaska Volcanic Ash Advisory Center in Anchorage.
The plume is expected to persist in the region for at least 18 hours, according to an advisory issued Tuesday morning.
The center’s warning coordination meteorologist, David Kochevar, said it's up to airlines to modify or cancel flights based on the warnings.
“We're really just advising on where the possibility of any volcanic ash is in the atmosphere, and then the airlines are using that information to determine what to do with the flight and any particular community,” Kochevar said.
The advisory is confined to airspace between 15,000 and 35,000 feet above sea level. Regional airline Bering Air typically flies at elevations under 10,000 feet but canceled at least 20 flights Tuesday morning due to heavy rain and high wind gusts.
Kochevar said the advisory is important for operators like Alaska Airlines that fly jets at higher altitudes.
“There can be impacts to the instruments on board as well, or scouring of the windscreen. Ash is extremely coarse and able to scour surfaces. So that's one of the big issues,” Kochevar said. “Ashes, when you heat it into a jet engine, it's essentially like glass, it would melt.”
Alaska Airlines has not cancelled Nome’s second daily nonstop to Anchorage scheduled for Tuesday afternoon. Kochevar said the center will continue issuing advisories as needed to inform airlines on the latest conditions.
“There's a big impact to not getting the morning flight or potentially later flights into the community, but the risk to an engine is very, very high. So most airlines really have a policy to totally avoid any possibility of volcanic ash in the atmosphere for that reason,” he said.
Klyuchevskoy is one of the most active volcanoes on the Kamchatka Peninsula. It erupted shortly after a magnitude 8.8 earthquake sent waves across the Pacific Ocean two weeks ago. It was the sixth strongest earthquake ever recorded.