An aeroplane that can fly unaffected through volcanic ash is being used to help monitor the Icelandic ash cloud, the company behind it said yesterday.
The Diamond DA42M Guardian, made by Austrian company Diamond Aircraft, is being kitted out with a special air sampling system to help accurately map the cloud that is causing chaos to air travel across Europe.
The plane uses a piston engine rather than a large-scale turbine jet engine, allowing it to travel unaffected through the ash, unlike large commercial jets.
A high concentration of ash ingested by a jet engine can become molten and cause engine failure, which is why planes are not allowed to fly through the cloud.
But Diamond's turbo-charged aircraft do not have problems under such conditions due to low combustion temperatures and air filters, the company said today.
The unique aircraft visited the UK for the first time yesterday, stopping overnight at Gamston airfield in Nottinghamshire, where Diamond Aircraft UK is based, before continuing its journey to Iceland.
Tony Cowan, from the company, said being able to fly into the ash makes it the perfect aircraft for the job of taking measurements and mapping the cloud. He said: "What members of the public perhaps don't understand is there are different types of aircraft. Those particularly bothered by ash are those which have large jet engines, turbine engines that take large amounts of air, add fuel, and combust.
"Whereas others, like the Diamond DA42M, have piston engines which take filtered air.
"It's more suitable for air sampling in and around the ash cloud to measure the problem and now it's being fitted with a sensor system.
"It's an air quality measuring system that has been adapted to be fitted to the aircraft.
"Having tested the system in Austria they are now off to Iceland to do some more meaningful tests.
"This aircraft can fly where perhaps large commercial aircraft would not want to be and get a measure of the ash so scientists can map the ash cloud more precisely."
Diamond Aircraft has teamed up with Austrian environmental monitoring company MLU and its Airpointer system.
They will use the system to measure ash concentrations from the Icelandic volcano in Europe at altitudes of 500 to 6000 metres.
By determining wind speed and wind direction, it will be possible to predict exact forecasts for international airports.
They said first tests were showing huge differences of particle concentration, such as a 150 times higher concentration over Vienna than over the Semmering - a pass near the city. But Mr Cowan said despite the apparent solution to problems of aeroplanes and ash clouds, the aircraft would not be suitable for large-scale commercial passenger flights.
"When you are carrying large numbers of people across the Atlantic you have large commercial aircraft that are carrying 300 people, possibly more," he said.
"These are large aircraft that need large powerful turbine engines.
"A piston engine, like this, would be the wrong engine, it's not so powerful.
"These engines are not suitable for very large powerful aircraft.
"There's nothing we can do to stop these volcanoes so we need to work out how we can live with them and monitor them.
"This is really the right aircraft for this job because it can fly into the ash cloud, it can fly to very high levels and it can fly for extended periods to get the measurements and information back which can be studied to establish more precisely where the ash cloud is, how thick it is, and what it is going to cause."