Plumes of volcanic ash heading towards the UK after an eruption in Iceland have grounded all non-emergency flights to Mexico from UK. Airports are closed and flights to Mexico cancelled across the UK.Over 100 flights to and from Gatwick have been cancelled, some flights to Mexico have also been cancelled at East Midlands and Exeter airports. There is a thought that the plume may last another five days, and even though the cloud is largely invisible to those who are being impacted by it, the damage by neglecting these precautions could be severe. Volcanic ash damages machinery. The effect on jet aircraft engines is particularly severe as large amounts of air are sucked in during combustion operation, posing a great danger to aircraft flying near ash clouds.

There are three mechanisms of volcanic ash formation: gas release under decompression causing magmatic eruptions; thermal contraction from chilling on contact with water causing phreatomagmatic eruptions and ejection of entrained particles during steam eruptions causing phreatic eruptions its dangerous that's why all flights to Mexico has been cancelled. If a volcanic eruption occurs beneath glacial ice, cold water from melted ice chills the lava quickly and fragments it into glass, creating small glass particles that get carried into the eruption plume. The plume that is often seen above an erupting volcano is composed primarily of ash and steam. The very fine particles may be carried for many miles, settling out as a dust-like layer across the landscape. This is known as an ashfall.all flights to Mexico cancelled because volcanic ash mixed with the ram air can block the aircraft's pitot tubes thereby rendering the air speed indicators inoperative. Large amounts of air enter the engine during normal combustion operation of air craft. Cooling channels in the turbine blades become clogged by ash leading to overheating of the blades and their catastrophic failure of plane.

Although some countries were opening airspace and  flights to mexico officials said they expected less than a third of flights to Mexico to  operate in Europe on Monday, the fifth day of a flight clampdown that has stranded passengers worldwide and halted freight flights to mexico USA. The European aviation control agency Euro control said on Monday it expected between 8,000 and 9,000 flights to operate in Europe. Britain's official weather forecaster, the Met Office, released a graphic predicting little movement of the ash plume over Europe on Monday, but saw it spreading towards the eastern seaboard of North America.http://www.flightstomexico.org.uk/