In the year 2010 the volcanic eruption in Iceland shutdown Europe’s air travels. This stranded many throughout the world. Europeans could not come home and visitors could not leave. This impacted the world and the economic toll that is still being felt. Indeed, this natural event showed just how fragile some of the most taken for granted systems truly can be.

Airports everywhere were impacted including London’s Stansted Airport. The airport is home to the massive low-cost carrier Ryanair. Ryanair uses Stansted as one of its bases and has over one hundred routes out of the airport. So, when the airport closed during the disruption this carrier had thousands of passengers left at its many destinations, as well as London. To its credit it did do much when flights resumed to take people home, it even added flights to make it happen as quickly as possible.

Of course, Stansted Airport and ash cloud issues impacted more than just Ryanair. EasyJet also has a significant presence there along with many other airlines. Stansted has over a nineteen million passengers pass through every year. That makes it the third busiest airport of the London international airports. That just shows the scale of what the drifting ash cloud had on the airport when flights were grounded.

Sadly, things were touch and go, with another dense ash cloud in May impacting travel. For even if Stansted was cleared for travel, then another airport closure could leave people stranded in London or elsewhere. This was the case with Ryanair during the May ash cloud, Ryanair had to cancel twenty-five flights because of airport closings elsewhere.