The dust has settled here at Economy Car Hire, following the recent Volcano crisis, and booking levels have quickly bounced back. During the crisis, our reservations team dealt with more than 800 calls per day, and hundreds of e-mails requesting car hire bookings to be amended or cancelled, with the situation affecting almost 4,000 customers. All staff members pitched in to ensure that all customers were dealt with as quickly and efficiently as possible.

A certain amount of people had to extend their hire, but the majority of calls were amendments or cancellations to car hire bookings. The whole team managed the situation fantastically and credit is certainly due to those who worked extra hours and came in on Sunday, when we are usually closed.

Another side effect has been a doubling in sales of our cancellation protection product, see previous blog. We expect this recent increase in bookings to continue as we enter the summer months and would urge customers to book as soon as possible to secure their car hire at the best rates.

Following the recent Volcanic Ash Cloud situation in the UK, which resulted in thousands of flights being cancelled, (and in turn car hire bookings), travel insurance and cancellation protection has never been more important. Since the Ash cloud situation, Economy Car Hire has seen sales of cancellation protection increase two-fold.

Cancellation Protection is a product which we sell when customers make a booking.  It waivers our normal cancellation policy and provides customers with a full refund in the event of cancellation. The cost of this protection ranges from £2.50 to £10.00 depending on the rental duration.

We operate a fair cancellation policy, which provides a cooling-off period, so customers can cancel within 48 hours of making the booking with no charge. After 48 hours have passed, we apply a £15 charge to cancel. However, if you cancel within 48 hours of the rental taking place, the charge increases to 50% of the rental price. This policy is fair and encourages customers to give us at least 48 hours notice if they need to cancel.

When a Volcano erupts, it injects a huge plume of ash into the stratosphere. Apart from visibility problems, volcanic ash can cause aircraft jet engines to stop working completely.

Volcanic ash is made up of tiny glass shards and rock, which can re-melt inside an aircrafts engines, causing them to stop. If the ash is fine enough it can suffocate the jet engines which also cause engine failure.  Fine ash particles also cause problems with the air conditioning systems which provide fresh air to passengers.

Any forward-facing surfaces on the outside of the aircraft can become pitted as a result of the tiny particles, this causes significant damage and can be expensive to repair.  In some cases this can prevent the pilots from seeing out of windows of the flight deck which can impede a safe landing. The particles also cause problems with radio equipment.

In 1982 a British Airways flight flew into a cloud of volcanic ash, resulting in the failure of 4 engines.  The plane had to glide through the remainder of the cloud, where they managed to restart 3 of the engines and finally made a safe landing.

In the past 20 years, more than 80 commercial aircraft have unexpectedly encountered volcanic ash clouds in flight, which have reached nearly 100 million USD in damages.

Every year around 15 major explosive eruptions occur which are powerful enough to inject ash into the stratosphere.

If you are travelling on Wednesday 21st April or Thursday 22nd April  we would strongly advise that you check if your flight has been cancelled. A volcanic ash cloud has meant that all airports have cancelled hundreds of flights.

We advise that you call your airline as soon as possible, all Airports in the UK are affected. Most restrictions have been lifted on UK airspace and almost all airports are now open. However, we would still advise you to contact your airline as soon as possible to check if your flight has been cancelled, due to the huge back log of flights that airlines are now faced with.

So, if your flights have been cancelled and you have car hire booked with Economy Car Hire, please call us to rearrange the pickup dates and times, and our friendly reservations team will be happy to assist!