I was taxiing from my gate in Geneva, Switzerland on SWISS Air Lines when I was informed that due to some volcanic burps from the bane of Europe, Eyjafjallajokull, our flight to JFK would be an hour longer, as we would have to fly north of the Iceland ash cloud. The other passengers and I might have been disappointed if the pilot hadn’t informed us that we’d be able to see the active volcano erupting from the air. What a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity!
A few hours into the flight, the fancy individual video systems on our newly tricked-out SWISS A330-300 were paused and passengers, regardless of class assignment, bounded to the left side of the plane with cameras. I bogarted business class to get the closer shot above.
Eyjafjallajokull appeared to be spewing an ash cloud about twice as long as Iceland:
… And it’s nasty-looking stuff. My condolences if your flight was canceled, but you didn’t want to be flying through that. Yikes.
Check out more of Gadling’s ash cloud/volcano/Eyjafjallajokull coverage here.
My flights to and from Switzerland on SWISS Air Lines were sponsored by Switzerland Tourism, but the ideas and opinions expressed in this article are 100 percent my own.