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EU Conducts Test Flights To Assess Impact of Volcanic Ash On Aircraft
chrb writes "As we discussed on Friday, the eruption of Eyjafjallajökull in Iceland has led to flights being canceled across the EU. With travel chaos ensuing and the airlines losing an estimated $200 million per day, EU authorities are coming under increasing pressure to re-open the airways. Test flights conducted on Saturday were apparently successful, with no problems encountered during flight. Following the test flights, Peter Hartman, CEO of KLM, said, 'We hope to receive permission as soon as possible after that to start up our operation and to transport our passengers to their destinations.' Evidence possibly opposing this move comes from the Finnish Defense Forces, which released photos and a statement after F-18 Hornets flew through the ash cloud, saying, 'Based on the pictures, it was discovered that even short flights in ash dust may cause significant damage to an airplane's engine.' Is it safe to resume flights so soon, or should planes remain grounded until the ash cloud has dissipated?"
Tell that to the passengers of British Airways Flight 9!
Of course there is pressure, I believe that those companies value their money far more that the safety of their passengers.
So we can choose between the findings of a massive corporation intent on re-establishing its cashflow as soon as possible or a military entity performing a post-mortem on its equipment which sustained damage just prior to flight restrictions.
You decide!
...of the tests because the conditions these tests will have to deal with vary from amount of dust, to concentration,composition (chemically) and type of equipment to be used.
To make matters even more interesting, the impact of this dust on an aircraft engine also depends on what the load is on the particular engine, not to mention type and condition.
To me, I see the results as those that will be of no consequence.
I think that 'Better safe than sorry' is a good way to handle this... however straight after closing the airspace there should have been real tests going on how much ash there actually is. The warnings given by the Volcanic observation center are just based on simulations and there is no middle way between 'ash' and 'no ash' currently.
I totally understand that the airlines are starting to complain - even more when they have to _prove_ themselves that there is no problem with low concentrations.
There hasn't been any weatherballoons or similar testing by the governments right after closing the airspace.
Spelling errors were made for your amusement only...
Yes, it sucks. To the tune of hundreds of millions of $$ per day. But this stuff can and will kill an engine. I wouldn't want to depend on a lucky restart.
Of course, if this goes on much longer, as it has in the past, we will run into serious problems.
This links leads to a page with a video of an ambulance helicopter that was coated in a fine layer of ash in Norway today. It flew during a small windows of opportunity where the air cleared to pick up a patient in Sweden. The link is in Norwegian, but the video is, obviously, visual.
The interesting part is at ~00:30 where he shows of the ash (requires Flash): http://www.dagbladet.no/2010/04/18/nyheter/innenriks/aske/vulkan/flyforbud/11335687/
Makes me think that a large passenger jet flying long routes and sucking in a whole load of air on the trip might be at risk of engine failure as they say.
I am waiting for the impatient to risk their lives to prove to the rest of us why better safe than sorry is much safer than being dead.
Take a boat.
General: Radioactive Man, we need you to fly into that volcano and tell us how much damage your aircraft experiences.
Radioactive Man: Who, me?
General: Yes, you Radioactive Man. You're our only hope.
Radioactive Man: Isn't Buzz Aldrin available? I hear he's retired and looking for things to do.
General: We don't have time, Radioactive Man. Here, put on these goggles. They'll protect you from the toxic cloud spewing from the volcano's eruption.
[Radioactive Man looks at the flimsy goggles apprehensively]
Radioactive Man: OooooKaaaay
General: Great! Make us proud Radioactive Man!
[Radioactive Man, sporting his safety goggles, flies directly into the toxic plume of the volcano]
Radioactive Man: Argh! The goggles, they do nothing !
General: Hmph, I would have thought his aircraft would have lasted longer than 12 seconds.
The question here is - how long will the eruption and the ash cloud last? Judging from historical records, it's not uncommon for eruptions to last decades. If - then what? New routes? Limit cross-atlantic flights endpoints to southern Spain or something?
-- Sig down
Several countries have grounded low level jets, prop planes, piston powered helicopters, gliders, paragliders and balloons.
There is a slight chance that ONE of those might be affected at high altitude. All the rest are just collateral damage. Note that Sweden have only prohibited turbines from flying, so glider pilots from Norway and Denmark are crossing the border to get to fly again - and lo and behold homeopathic quantities of vulcanic ash does nothing!
Prop planes have started from dry grass fields since the infancy of flying, and still do so today. There is far more sand and dust there, than what we have seen from this volcano. This is pure "think of the children"-madness.
I wonder if something that makes this volcano different than all other volcanoes is that it's erupting at a time when almost all translatlantic flying is done on two-engine planes. To get long-range over-water certification (ETOPS), the manufacturers and maintenance organizations go to great lengths to ensure that there is no common threat to the two engines. The engines are serviced separately by independent crews, fueled separately, and so on. Flying into an ash cloud, though, even if the threat is small, it is certainly a common threat to both engines at the same time.
I was looking for flights to Europe recently, and couldn't find a single 747 or A340 -- it was all 767, 777, or A330. I know 747s fly those routes, but they are a small minority now.
I love Mondays. On a Monday, anything is possible.
So based on a few low altitude flights they want to reestablish about 20k flights / day? It's excellent that 5-10 testflights could manage in low altitude, however if only 0.1% flights drops out of the skies, that is still 20 flights downed per day. You don't establish safety based on limited tests.
Sure it's possible that the computer models establishing the extent of the dust cloud are conservative towards safety, however isn't that what you would expect no matter how much it costs the airlines? The Finnish incident clearly shows it's not safe, at this point I'm not even sure I'd trust the airlines to disclose whether they suffered damage in their test flights.
It takes a man to suffer ignorance and smile
Be yourself no matter what they say
The ash allegedly contains shards of glass, and I can see how this would cause serious problems for turbines... but I think it's obvious that just like any other phenomena of weather, the ash will be non-uniform. It makes perfect sense that one test would have completely different results from another. Thus, broadly-based testing would be necessary to derive any useful result...
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
I don't know enough about the extent of the ash cloud to make a decision about this. In fact, I suspect no one knows much about it and that's the crux of the dilemma. I do know that when Mt. St. Helens erupted the area where I live was seriously impacted by the ash and many vehicles were severely damaged. Of course, this area was only 150 miles east of the volcano and the ash cloud was dense enough to block out the sun. The ash cloud over Europe is likely to be much less dense. I have been an airplane and glider pilot since 1970 and I, personally, would not want to risk flying until I understood more about the risk.
No one ever had to evacuate a city because the solar panels broke!
Currently, there are some 15k planes a day grounded because of this. Hundreds or thousands of routes, different altitudes, plane types, geographical locations, weather conditions, loads for the planes.... You can't really prove that it is safe by making a dozen flights. Hell, you can't even prove that those routes are safe because the ash cloud isn't static. It is really shitty situation to be in, I know, but the only kind of proof you can get to any direction is if a plane crashes... So we need to trust the models. And current models seem to be that there is still ash, the ash can be dangerous and there is some evidence supporting that. Would it really be responsible action if the planes were allowed to fly as much as the airlines feel they are willing to risk?
You could say "Let them fly and just let the people decide whether to take the risk or not!" but real world doesn't work that way. If the planes are allowed to fly, there are people who are practically forced to fly (Business trips to attend to, etc. when the boss says "Okay, go on the trip. The company deems the risk to be acceptable.") even if they wouldn't otherwise want to risk it.
British Airways Flight 9.
According to a report in a major German newspaper (FAZ), there will be launches from at least Berlin and Frankfurt and some other German airports, but not in all directions.
As an ATPL pilot, any idiot who flies into the dense components of the ash cloud will get absolutely no sympathy from me when they suffer from multiple system failures. Important to note though, the article doesn't mention the density of the ash cloud they flew through. Also, I highly doubt they'll readjust the maintenance cycles of the parts to cater for the increase in wear and tear, so even if the aircraft does not have a problem immediately I'd place bets that parts will fail prematurely in the future.
Tell the airlines and the passengers that they fly at their own risk, and that the government doesn't recommend that they fly due to the hazard. If people want to fly expensive airplanes through this, and risk their loss without insurance (which I believe would actually prevent this) or government help in paying for the loss, fine. If passengers want to risk their lives this way, fine.
-- Two men say they're Jesus. One of them must be wrong. - Dire Straits
and it is interesting how the skies are clear of contrails, and also the lack of periodic flights from the local airport, the landing path for which is *directly* overhead at an altitude of a few hundred metres. This includes turboprop aircraft like the Dash jobbies being grounded.
Of course everyone is talking about stranded passengers, nobody is talking about stranded air mail and stranded cargo.
It is interesting to me just how dependent we (and we in Europe are a lot less dependent on flights than USAians) have become on the jet aircraft, and how useless people have become, they just sit in the airports expecting some one else to get them to their destination...
ferries, channel tunnel, trains, automobiles, nope, just won't do... I have driven from London to Athens in less time than many of these people have been sat in airports wringing their hands... I also suspect that it may be CHEAPER to hire a car and drive back home, than to attempt to live in an airport for a week.
interestingly, lots of travel insurance companies are simply shrugging their shoulders when people try to make claims over this, sorry, act of god, not covered by insurance.
BTW, back in the day, we used to hear the sonic boom from Concorde, I have heard some talk that while a 747 cruises at 39,000 feet, Concorde's ceiling of 60,000 feet meant that it could have flown OVER these dust clouds...
http://slashdot.org/~GuyFawkes/journal
Peter Hartman, CEO of KLM ended the interview with the thoughtful remark that, "As a further comfort to our esteemed customers, all seats are now equipped with their own personal parachute. Preliminary research has suggested that those lucky passengers seated direly by the emergency exit increase their odds of successful 'emergency sky-dive' by a factor of 1000 over those in normal economy class, provided that they time their exit and decent to the appropriate altitude, or are just able to hold their breath for over five minutes. I'm also proud to say that all emergency exit seats are also premium economy seats, which will net our esteemed flying blue members 20% extra flying miles. We take our customers loyalty very seriously."
want to take any risks at all. I'm quite perplexed by this since I assume that the ash is similar everywhere in Europe and in Finland, Finnair have - instead of testing on their own - declined the EU's request to fly test flights and referred to the fact that commercial airliners lack testing equipment (which I interpret as an excuse to avoid further maintenance costs later). Before doing so, they took samples for further analysis from all their aircraft that had flown through the ash cloud before being grounded since the Finnish air force reported that a couple of their F-18s had been "badly damaged" by it. So I do wonder why some airlines decide to test on their own.
The main plume of the ash blows right across the Shetland islands pretty close to Iceland. The maps with artificial color show it to be black here, any yet, I see nothing. Blue skies, and starry nights. I have see ash from volcanoes where the sun turns red, so I know the scale, and here it is no ash. I have spoken with friends around Europe, and nobody has seen any ash plume. (except Iceland of course)
If anyone have seen any of this ash plume, please respond.
don't cut it off www.mgmbill.org
...fly below the ash cloud, at around 10.000ft. Any comments on the safety of flying at this altitude?
No, no, this is not the end times you have been reading about. This is the DAWN of a new age of travel! A GLORIOUS adventure on the high seas! See the world ANEW! Why measure your transatlantic travel in hours when it can be measured in DAYs or even WEEKS? Relive a bygone era when it was the JOURNEY that mattered most, not the destination. After a lazy brunch, take a mid-morning stroll on the upper deck in your best pinstripes, while your lady swings her parasol without a care in the world. Dine on the finest cuts of meat, drink the finest wines! Try your luck at the baccarat tables! End your evening with a stout cigar, staring blissfully toward the star filled night sky. It's the future!
Sending multiple 50M aircraft into ash clouds to prove what we already knew: that even a brief encounter with volcanic ash will fuck your turbines up but good. And your surfaces. And your Plexiglass. And your ventilation system. And and and...
This is all a ploy by Apple to stop Europeans flying to the USA to buy iPads, after the worldwide launch was delayed!
Its not clear whether Jobs has actually placed iNukes in the Icelandic volcano to cause the eruption or if Apple have teamed up with the CIA, SPECTRE, THRUSH, SkyNet and the Milk Marketing Board to hack computers and exaggerate the threats!! Maybe that's not ash on the computer projections - its the famous Reality Distortion Field!!!
Expect the ban to persist until the end of May!!!!
Now I expect all the Apple fanbois will crawl out of the woodwork and start trying to deny the obvious truth, and I'll be modded down faster than an Airbus with both engines on fire. If Microsoft had done this everybody would be up in arms!!!!!
In a survey of 100 programmers, 111111 thought that duck-typing was a good idea.
Flights disruptions caused by the ash cloud is only the *beginning*.
The volcanic ash is now attacking servers! Check the disclaimer here, to convince yourself of the problems we're now facing : http://www.ascii-codes.net/cp861.html
All the more reason to never invest in one sole means of travel.
Here's what's going to happen - any one of these, or a combination thereof.
1) Flights resume, and while maintenance costs go up (reflected in higher ticket prices), things are relatively safe.
2a) Airlines decide to resume flights even though they aren't really safe because some corporate beancounter figured that the costs of a lawsuit from a crash would be less than the losses of an extended shutdown on air travel. Planes make it along fine anyway.
2b) Same as 2a, except one or more planes stall and kill everyone on board. Massive P.R. disaster and even further setbacks.
3) Engineers get involved and tackle the problem, thereby making the ash a non-issue.
4) The ash cloud is determined to be staying around for a very, very long time. Alternative modes of transportation in the affected zones are established (or re-established). Boats, ferries, trains, etc. boom in popularity. Previously minor airports suddenly become major transportation hubs due to their airspace not being remotely affected (or ever potentially being affected) by the ash cloud. The new travel system becomes Plane to the closest hub > combination of trains and boats to your destination in Europe. People accept the extra travel time as a fact of life.
5) Finally those mad scientists and loopy engineers will get their Trans-Atlantic underwater/underground train for the benefit of all.
6) Europe falls into a major economic recession as a result of stagnating trade.
7) Some unfriendly organization with some sort of agenda (or perhaps even a nation) exacts a land attack somewhere on Europe, leveraging the fact that traditional foreign air support/aid will be difficult to deploy in the affected zones. Said strategic bombings and/or care packages will be deployed regardless, with the occasional bomb or bale of food ramming into a schoolhouse or something of the like and causing a major disaster.
I can't think of anything else. I don't imagine this situation will last a few days. Now if only there were some natural phenomena to get all of these gaz guzzling cars off of the road in the States so we can have trains even halfway as decent as the ones in Europe.
(Yeah yeah America is bigger than most of Europe combined blah blah, it just means we would benefit all the more from interstate high-speed rail - especially cross-country - if someone would just build the goddamned thing.)
Random Thoughts From A Diseased Mind (Not For Dummies)
Nobody seems to be talking about the effect that this volcano will have of the weather. Previous large eruptions have caused mini ice ages.
Has anyone even vaguely considered that ash clouds from volcanoes can last for very long periods and the effects that shutting down the commercial airline industry might have upon the world? Although the economics of such a loss might be serious the general health of the world population might improve due to less disease propagation from travellers.
They might as well get started up on passenger service and start transporting people across the seas to make up for the loss of passenger service.
First rule of holes; When in one, stop digging.
As with traffic accidents, there is a cost-benefit trade-off to closing down the affected transportation way completely. Presumably people are not getting transplant organs delivered by air, etc. In a notorious Washington, D.C., case a few years ago, a jumper stood on the side of an interstate bridge that gets over 200,000 trips a day. So the authorities closed all traffic for hours, causing untold economic and health damage. (Bet you want to know if he jumped! No.) But it happens every day that responders keep accident scenes closed based of their own procedures and risk aversion, etc., because the trade-off is less tangible, and diminishes their own importance.
Long ago cops in raincoats on the side of the road at accidents waved their arms, "move along, move along, buddy!" You never see that anymore. (I saw it in a movie.)
I just wonder how long it will be before the airlines hike their air fares to cover their losses on this one, or indeed whether they will just follow certain European governments' financial collapse tactics of sending the bill to Iceland. After all surely the Icelandic people knew that the volcano had not erupted for a while and would to go again soon. What if anything did the Icelandic government do to prevent this catastrophe?
Ash wouldn't crash a blimp. The worst ash could do to a blimp would be to weigh it down a bit.
Of course, the steering might get totally damaged, and then the blimp would go where the wind blows... perhaps for a very long time.
1. Gliders don't have engines so what could be damaged?
2. Dust and sand is common and taken into account when engines are designed. The particles are larger and heavier than ash particles, which also have undesirable chemical properties (ash has been used as a cleaning substance since it solves fat, which means that you don't want it to reach lubricates).
3. Do you want to tell the passengers and crew of BA 9 and KLM 867 that it's pure "think of the children"-madness?
4. The Finnish air force observed serious damage to a number of their F-18s from the ash so clearly this ash cloud too damages aircraft engines just like the previous ones have.
5. Let's say that a number of flights seem uneventful, what assurances do you have that ash doesn't e.g. reach lubricates so that they wear out long before the regularly sufficient maintenance interval?
Everybody is acting as if the ash is uniformly distributed. It isn't. The density will vary by orders of magnitude, being generally denser near the source and thin far away. Obviously, at some point it becomes too thin to matter (after all, there always some ash in the air everywhere as there are always volcanos going off). Thus it may be safe to fly over Germany but not Finland.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
In which the plane was 150km away from the volcano, where the pilots had no idea that it was an ash cloud and had no procedure for it or radar which could detect it.
Edinburgh is ~1300km from Iceland, and we have very detailed, up to date satellite photos and full awareness of the problem.
// MD_Update(&m,buf,j);
What I haven't heard anything about is, what will all this ash do when it settles out? Darken sea ice and cause faster melting? Alter sea water chemistry? Or what ?
ESA even compiled an informative animation.
Good grief! It looks like Iceland is anally violating Europe!
And now we see just how much of a joke the state-subsidized airlines are*. After having been bailed-out over and over again, not a single one of them seems to have evolved the capability to deal with a major disruption such as this. They want to stick with their outdated business model of funneling people through hubs, flying planes all in a row in little highways-in-the-sky, and being completely inflexible with regards to cancellations and re-routes. 24 hours ago I was on the beach in Dubai, and would have gladly accepted a few days worth of hotel rooms in exchange for a later flight. It wasn't even offered. Meanwhile, a colleague is paying an extra $3000 to fly around the world the wrong way because he absolutely needs to be back ASAP. Of course there was no feasible way to give him my seat. Before take-off, the pilot sounded like he was about to break out in tears as he explained that we would have to (gasp) fly a slightly different route than expected in order to avoid the ash cloud. And right now, since my flight was delayed by an hour and I spent an hour waiting in line at customs and going through security screenings, I'm booked on at least three flights that I won't be on, and anyone who might need those seats will likely be waiting on stand-by, sleeping in an uncomfortable airport chair before they are offered. I just got offered the chance to wait on stand-by for two days because all the flights are completely booked. And I'm no longer anywhere near Europe. They have no idea where my bags are, and can't manage to re-route them even within the next week. I said 'fuck it', canceled two flights, and am now awaiting a direct flight on Southwest, because they are apparently the only competent airline capable of getting me where I want to go within any kind of reasonable timeframe. And the price was completely reasonable as well.
Oh, and if you think any of this is a decent trade-off in the name of security, think again. I very nearly (accidentally) made it onto the plane with enough suntan lotion to blow a decent-sized hole in almost any fuselage. Not that that would have been necessary, of course, since a swift kick on any cockpit door will still give a terrorist all the access they need to crash a plane. And meanwhile I get to sit here looking like an idiot who hasn't shaven in two days, since safety razors are banned. I expect to see Federales walking around airports with machine-guns any day now, giving dirty looks to poor-looking travelers, as America's implementation of socialist-banana-republic-esque security theater reaches completion.
*This means American, United, Continental, US Airways, TWA, all the little third-world airlines, and probably at least a few others.
"I assumed blithely that there were no elves out there in the darkness"
Some Spanish airports are now open again. Madrid is open The ash cloud has moved north. But the volcano is still erupting, ejecting ash to a height of 4Km. The northwestern part of Europe is going to be grounded for a while.
There are still a few transatlantic liners. If you're stuck in Europe, the Queen Mary 2 sails from Southampton to New York in four days. There's already a waiting list, but it's quite possible that some people planning to take the trip as a cruise can't get to Southampton, and space may open up.
As an alturnative... Even in this day and age, Cunard maintain a scheduled Trans-Atlantic passenger ship service linking the United States with Europe, with roughly monthly sailings from Southampton to New York between April & October. It doesn't cost much more than a business-class airfare, and this includes six night's accommodation and all meals. You'll travel aboard the greatest liner of them all, Cunard's Queen Mary 2, and it really is the only way to arrive in New York...
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
I'm sure the people of Lockerbie are also OK with this since they have full awareness of the problem of (parts of) an aircraft gliding into the ground.
Or anyone along the flight path, rather than sitting willingly in the plane overhead.
Incidentally, airliners are not equipped with instruments that can detect suspended silicates. They're hard enough to detect at ranges of a few km using intense ground-based LIDARs; the penalty in extra mass and power precludes the use of intense airliner-based LIDARs (unless you want big planes to make short trips with small numbers of passengers, which likely would be even more uneconomical and not much less risky than the current situation).
mynuts won; slashdot, 'stuff that (really) matters', trivialized, again. klm should use the opinions of robbIE's 'fearless' ?readers? for their scriptdead ?pr? can0pain.
for example; we've never seen anybody fall over (crash) from smoking a cigarette, yet the 'scary' gov't. insists that they can damage us. that's the 'sense' we get from the article, & most of the comments. carry on? that'll cost ya something as well. checking the motive for any given behaviour would clue one as to possible validity, or lack of.
So they send up half a dozen flights without problems, but this doesn't prove anything. The ash is not evenly distributed; it appears to be in layers in the atmosphere. If you fly up or down through a layer the exposure is brief and you don't see a problem. But if ATC unknowingly tell an aircraft to fly at the same altitude as a layer of ash then you have a big problem. The bottom line is that a few flights prove nothing. If the risk to a single flight is 1% then you won't see anything, but when you restart aviation aircraft will be dropping out of the sky.
You are lost in a twisty maze of little standards, all different.
http://www.flightglobal.com/articles/2010/04/16/340708/grounded-airline-fears-ash-damage-from-quick-return-to.html
You just won't get an IFR clearance, that's all. Neither on turbine nor on reciprocating engines (such with cylinders), nor electrical nor flapping your arms nor whatever floats your boat. You can still go Vne in your turbine powered aircraft under VFR.
It seems as if the only really dangerous thing would be to fly into an ash-cloud that is hidden by something that requires IFR, or an ash-cloud so dense it requires IFR on its own. And, obviously, this affects all kind of flying things, regardless of the engine type.
I don't think this makes too much sense.
The volcano whose name shall not be spoken. Or at least can not be spoken by anyone who does not speak Icelandic. It's amusing watching news readers avoiding naming the volcano. Perhaps it needs a friendlier name... anyone?
There's a Finnish article saying that old Douglas DC-3 planes with desert filters (aavikkosuodatin) could fly in the ash cloud. There are two of them still operational in Finland and they could be used for emergency flights.
Here's the Finnish article: http://www.kauppalehti.fi/5/i/talous/uutiset/etusivu/uutinen.jsp?oid=2010/04/32610&sort=false :)
Here's a Google translation, which translates badly, title should be "DC-3 does ignore the ashes" instead of "DC-3 does not ignore the ashes"
Douglas DC-3: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Douglas_DC-3
i dont know why they even suggested it. if a aircraft flys threw a ash cloud if its dense enough it will like being power sanded. and the polit will have no way of telling. there radar does not pick up dry clouds. we used to fly threw them until flight 9 nearly crashed do to ash getting inside the engines and chocking them all out. yes they where able to land by getting the aircraft sarted again. but it took heavy damage. if you wanna see the story look up all engines failed on youtube.
This is a rare opportunity to measure the particle size distribution of the ash cloud and act on the data. What is the mean particle size and and entire range of particle sizes? What would it take to redesign the jet intake to use a filter than deflects the particles? Of course, the windshields will still look like hell even if a jet engine intake filter were realistic.
Back in time, the old glory days of Propeller driven aircraft (not the turbo-jet propellers either, just combustion engines with some closed cycle, filtered air and such.)
Even better, time to go back to the Leviathans of Air Space - Zeppelins.
All aboard!
You can't handle the truth.
>>Of course there is pressure, I believe that those companies value their passengers money far more that the safety of their passengers.
Divide a cake by zero. Is it still a cake?
Er,
This is slashdot so I assume you're going for a little hyperbole, but just in case you aren't it's quite possible to land a plane without engines - see everything from the Gimli Glider, sailplanes of every nature, the space shuttle, etc. I've done deadstick landings as part of pilot training many times and that's for the lowest of the low Airplane, Single Engine Land. So can we please cut the "you have no engines, you are going to die" meme that has infected the public? Slashdot's better informed than that.
Just let the market decide with its wallets how safe it is.
Full awareness of the problem implying the ability to then solve the problem.. BA9 had no idea what was going on and flew for ages right through the ash cloud, because there was no precedent.
If they had just turned around or changed altitude they would have avoided the vast majority of the resulting problems.
// MD_Update(&m,buf,j);
So tell her to take a train(s) to somewhere that still has functioning air travel. Or get on a boat.
Knowledge != Intelligence
They're allowed to blow up volcanoes.
Except for ending slavery, the Nazis, communism, & securing American independence, war has never solved anything.
While, I agree that the corporate test result may be not the best and most reliable source, I disagree with your analysis.
First. the damage from the ash is unlikely, but not impossible, to mess with the tolerances of any moving parts in the engines, in the why you're writing of. Ergo, the rest of your discussion is meaningless.
Now, what I see the potential harm from is:
1. Abrasive sandblasting of the fans, stripping off the precisely formed aerodynaics, causing turbulent airflow and worse,
2. hot molten glass blasting the rear components of the engines,
3. hot molten glass melting the inner surface components of the engine,
4. volcanic ash reducing the burn efficiency of the engines, and hence the power output, and hence airspeed,
5. hot molten glass preventing ignition of the air/fuel mixture, and hence loss of power,
6 hot molten glass projectiles punching holes in the engine parts,
7. hot molten glass clogging engine parts.
Now, the effect of number 5 is documented. However, the questions that should be asked and answered are:
1. how dense is the ash,
2. at what altitudes is the ash,
3. is the ash sufficiently damaging at commercial altitudes,
4. what length of time in this ash cloud is safe,
5. what is the uniformity of the ash cloud.
Now, if the ash cloud isn't uniform, that makes it even more dangerous. There is no logical reason to conclude it is uniform, but it is likely a Brownian motion artifact and hence likely has some random uniformity. But also, likely unpredictable. Only a test of the entire cloud and afterward closely monitoring the cloud near the source as it continues can produce reliable data as to the safety of flying through it.
Simply testing the established routes is pointless, as the air in those routes will be different an hour after testing.Simply said. One route at one point in time may be perfectly safe, and at another time disastrous.
Lastly, the engines in commercial aircraft are more complex than military fighter engines. Unless they've stripped one down after the flight, they couldn't know if there was damage. I am skeptical they've had time to strip one down. I'd like to see pictures, too.
The last time this volcano erupted it was from mid Dec 1821 to January 1823 which is one year plus two partial months. However, the ash phase was intermittent for about 8 months. I've been seeing numbers all over the map on this subject. Still in eight months all the European airlines would be bust. US airlines would survive, but prices would go through the roof.
At least, not in the scale of the global climate. The problems its causing are related to its very inconvenient location.
Build a man a fire, he's warm for one night. Set him on fire, and he's warm for the rest of his life.
It is possible that the airlines are collecting data (while they can) to be able to sue the agencies once this is over.
there are bean counters in the airline industry that would say "hey boss, the cost of grounding the whole fleet is $x, and the cost in lawsuits and replacement planes of a crash is $y. and as you can see, at a z% crash rate, we will still make money flying in the ash cloud"
this same calculus governs the automobile industry: why spend bazillions on safety devices when the half dozen lawsuits from deaths every year from not using the safety component is cheaper?
the point is: you need government regulation. you need strong government regulation because companies can NOT be relied upon to police themselves. that feedback from the market is NOT a valid safety mechanism. the free market fairy can in fact very often decide AGAINST saving human life. we need a strong regulatory government agency (as opposed to the clinton-bush era "dismantle all regulations in finance industry" bullshit philosophy) to simply say: "sorry, there is something more important than the bottom line, and that's the lives of our citizens, so you will not fly in the ash cloud, and you will build expensive safeguards in your automobiles. at your expense conglomerates. shut up and deal with it"
and guess what: you will pay taxes for these regulations and their enforcement, and you will not whine about bureaucracy and red tape, and you will not balk at the cost of these regulations. you will happy these government functions are there to save your life (regardless of the downgraded value of your life according to your own free market worship ideology)
my whole point is: the free market fairy does NOT solve all problems. it only maximizes profit. and maximizing profit can at times be in direct conflict with simple morality, lives and health (as we see in the health care "industry")
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Except the EU is *NOT* the federal government of Europe. European defense is still a *national* (or NATO concern), and Finland is *NOT* a member of NATO. The EU has nothing to do with what Finnish fighter jets do.
Those photos all look rather ominous... but then again I have no idea what the inside of a jet engine normally looks like. The inside of the exhaust pipe on my car looks rather horrifying too; that doesn't mean the car is in danger of a catastrophic failure; that's just what the insides of exhaust pipes look like. Without some comparison photos of a normal jet engine, it's really hard for a lay person to judge those photos in any meaningful way.
the silica particles in the ash cloud
Can these be filtered? I'm thinking of a pantyhose-like bonnet on the jet for flying through the ash cloud at low-throttle. Maybe they could be dumped once through the cloud with a clever application of throttle and tension (like they're under tension from the side and they pop off when the jet throttles down). If they could avoid sucking the whole mess through the engine, that is.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)