Jetliner Safe; Lost Power in Volcanic Ash

A Boeing 747 passenger jet made a safe emergency landing here Friday after it flew through volcanic ash and temporarily lost power to all four engines, the Federal Aviation Administration said. No injuries were reported.

The engine problems were reported immediately after KLM Royal Dutch Airlines Flight 867 passed through ash from Redoubt volcano, which erupted Thursday and Friday. The volcano is 115 miles southwest of Anchorage.

The jet, carrying 231 passengers and a crew of 14, landed at Anchorage International Airport and taxied to a gate under its own power, airport and FAA officials said.

The plane was traveling to Anchorage from Amsterdam when the crew reported smoke in the cockpit and loss of engine power at 11:50 a.m. Alaska time, FAA spokeswoman Mary Lou Wojtalik said. About eight minutes later, the crew reported that two of the engines had been restarted, Wojtalik said. She said the other two were restarted shortly afterward.

The jet dropped 13,000 feet during the engine trouble, Wojtalik said.

She said that the volcanic ash was so fine that it went undetected by radar and that the pilot was unaware of the ash until it appeared on the plane’s windshield.

At least two other planes reported problems when they flew into ash near Anchorage, FAA spokeswoman Ivy Moore said, but the MarkAir commercial jet and a military plane landed safely

Fiery explosions racked the volcano Friday, creating giant new ash clouds that darkened the sky and forced other air traffic to take 200-mile detours.

The 10,197-foot volcano, which burst to life Thursday, erupted three more times Friday morning.

Redoubt’s biggest eruption yet, Friday at 10:17 a.m.--almost 24 hours to the minute after the Thursday eruption--sent an ash-filled plume to 40,000 feet, said Charlotte Rowe, a University of Alaska Geophysical Institute seismologist in Fairbanks, about 400 miles from the volcano, where she said she could see the ash cloud 2 1/2 hours later.

“This eruption was so large,” Rowe said, “that our seismic station monitor was off scale. The pen was banging back and forth off the scale. Looking at that, we decided a major eruption was going on.”

Redoubt’s big explosion was over Friday afternoon, and Rowe said Redoubt was beginning to show a pattern of eruption, calm, seismic activity building in intensity to constant shaking, then eruption, calm and a repeat.

The sky blackened north of Anchorage. Some schools canceled recess and kept students inside. Health warnings were issued for a second day for people with respiratory problems to stay inside to avoid breathing ash. The state Emergency Broadcast System was activated.

Anchorage has been spared from falling ash, but nearby towns to the north and west have been dusted, and ash warnings have been issued for a broad area of southern, interior and eastern Alaska, extending to the Canadian border.

An ash cloud 160 miles long after Friday’s early morning blasts was on the move and growing substantially larger after the bigger late morning explosion, the FAA said.

Air traffic north of Anchorage--including over-the-pole flights between Europe and Asia that use Anchorage as a refueling stop--have had to go 200 miles out of their way to avoid ash, Wojtalik said.

“We’ve had some delays because of longer routing and some carriers are canceling flights, primarily from Anchorage to western Alaska,” said Larry Michou, Anchorage International Airport operations manager. He said some flights were diverted from Anchorage to Fairbanks and Seattle.