Icelandic Volcano, the definitive answer.

[Bollinge]

To understand that chaos that ensued following the Icelandic volcanic eruption, it is necessary to understand the mindset that pervades every aspect of life in Britain under the last few days of Mr Brown's Socialist government.

 

A whole culture has grown up around "'elf 'n safety", meaning that no aspect of human endeavour can be allowed to proceed without a "risk assessment".

 

And so, our Meteorological Office, who forecast a "barbecue Summer" last year (pi***d down) and a "mild Winter" (coldest and more snow since '63), ran a computer simulation and following a risk assessment decreed that the volcanic ash cloud was so thick that aircraft could not fly through it safely.

 

It subsequently transpired that there were no thick clouds of ash, and aircraft could have flown normally, possibly diverting around ash concentrations in the air, as and when aeroplanes encountered them. But of course, aeroplanes were banned from the air...........

 

Everyone involved in the ban is so embarrassed at their incompetence, I doubt that blanket closures of airspace for days on end will ever occur again.

 

Class action lawsuits are just beginning.......

 

So, forget your worries and fly on!

[Paulchili]

Class action lawsuits are just beginning.......

 

So, forget your worries and fly on!

 

 

Hindsight is always 20/20.

What do you think the lawsuits would be like if an airplane crashed b/o the ash, as it almost did in recent memory over Indonesia? Not to mention a lot more and real suffering by people (as in loss of human lives), not just inconvenience and expense.

[Bollinge]

No-one has ever been killed as a result of a 'plane flying through an ash cloud. The Indonesian incident was in 1982.

 

How many people have been killed driving to the airport to catch a flight?

 

I'm afraid this ranks as British government incompetence alongside the Millennium bug and B.S.E. crisis.

[Paulchili]

Bollinge;

No-one has ever been killed as a result of a 'plane flying through an ash cloud.

 

Does that mean that no-one ever could be? We should take it as the absolute truth?

 

The Indonesian incident was in 1982.

 

That is within my recent memory - and I am certainly glad I was not on that plane or else I might not have flown again.

[ikelmay]

Bollinge, have you just returned from a long evening at your local pub?

 

Personally, although this has turned out to be a tempest in a teapot, I would be happier that the precautionary principle was adhered to - planes flying through clouds of ash have a habit of losing power in engines and getting their screens frosted. As it turned out, the collective european (not just Mr. Brown's government) response was overall, a bit of an overreaction.

 

I'm sure you would be lamenting long and loud about Mr. Brown's incompetence in allowing planes up in the sky to crash and burn and fall on whichever part of merry england was under their flight path, had things been different.

 

I hate to break it to you, but had it not been for the British Airways crew and their efforts to restart all four 747 engines over Indonesia, and their ability to fly a jumbo in to land with a completely frosted front screen (they did in fact land using the side screens only) it could easily have been a total catastrophe.

 

 

I do like your humour in headlining the thread as being "The Definitive Answer". I think the icelandic volcano itself might be the one to decide both the question and the answer...............

[Susan-M]

 

It subsequently transpired that there were no thick clouds of ash, and aircraft could have flown normally, possibly diverting around ash concentrations in the air, as and when aeroplanes encountered them. But of course, aeroplanes were banned from the air...........

 

 

 

According to this article, it's been shown that damage to aircraft occurs even with a slight amount of volcanic ash:

 

sorry, the link doesn't work, so here's the text,

 

a case study by the US National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) suggests that even tenuous volcano ash clouds can inflict serious damage to an airliner. While the damage may not necessarily threaten the immediate flight, one cruise through an invisible ash plume can run up a multimillion-dollar repair tab.

 

The plume in the NASA study was so thin that the flight crew had none of the cues they ordinarily might rely on – odd engine readings, the smell of smoke of sulfur in the cockpit, or even outside electrical phenomena such as St. Elmo's Fire – to alert them to a plume's presence. And they had no visual clues on the aircraft after landing to tell them they'd encountered a plume.

 

The case study concludes that the engines sustained enough damage that key components could well have started to fail with only another 100 hours of flying time.

http://www.alpa.org/portals/alpa/volcanicash/03_NASADC8AshDamage.pdf

[Bollinge]

Bollinge, have you just returned from a long evening at your local pub?

 

No, I have just returned to England after a long three-day journey by air, land and sea from the Mediterranean island of Mallorca, instead of on a two and half hour flight.

 

And then I read this:

 

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1268794/Remember-ash-cloud-It-didnt-exist-says-new-evidence.html

[azalice]

Do we have to start throwing blame, getting political, badmouthing officials, etc. etc. everytime there is an incident, crisis, or inconvenience? We do it also in the U.S.A. I have lived long enough to know mistakes are made and bad decisions are made; but people do their best in most cases to make the right decisions for the most good.

 

Alice

[WooKeef]

My sister had just arrived here in Paris for a visit as the airports were shutting down...my husband was stuck in Africa for a week. My exact words to them were:"I would rather take their advisement and stay on the ground as long as any risk is seen. I would rather have my family safe and alive then have them get on the one test airplane that crashed" Risk definitely not worth it. That being said, the media did blow this completely out of proportion and I could not help but notice how I heard nothing else on the news but about air traffic and Iceland. And, then when airspace opened back up we did not hear boo didly about poor iceland. Rather sad I think. But, I doubt this will ever ocurr again...something hit the fan after this and it was not ash:p...so fallout to begin. I am just glad I am not having to take a train to Venice on Saturday for my B2B on Journey...that would have stunk for sure.

[Bollinge]

The British Meteorological Office now publish these five-day ash forecast charts:

 

http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/corporat...n/fiveday.html

 

However, they are notoriously bad at weather forecasting, and the government keeps increasing the concentration of ash through which it is considered "safe" to fly. They say the "safe" concentration now is equivalent to two grains of sand in a bath tub, but they are going to double it to four..........

 

Virgin Atlantic, British Airways and Ryanair insist it's always been fine to fly, and this is just over-reaction. Remember the Millennium bug?

 

Other volcano related problems occurred when aircraft flew very close to volcanic eruptions, whereas England is more than a thousand miles away from Iceland!

[Redtravel]

I know many people who were stranded in the past few weeks as a result of the volcano. There will be more delays in the months ahead. I always buy insurance. If any travel company values its future business,it will help see that their clients are either redirected safely or reimbursed for added expenses. I recently booked a land tour and asked the company what they did for their clients. They either rebooked flights and reimbursed for any extra expenses or just gave back the money for the tour. They also refunded money to anyone who wasn't able to reach their destination whether or not they had insurance. They also had one couple from LA who got to Chicago to learn that their flight to Paris was canceled. The tour company paid for them to stay overnight, booked them a return flight to LA,and refunded their money for the tour. You can't complain about that kind of service. I can't tell who the company is because of cruisecritic rules. Since I am leaving soon for a tour in Europe with this company, I am not worried. In the future, when booking any trip, I will ask the question "what did you do for the people who were disrupted during the volcano problem?"