Slashdot Mirror
Was Flight Ban Over Ash an Overreaction?
HaymarketRiot writes "Richard Branson has claimed that the flight ban, due to the eruption of the volcano Eyjafjallajokull, was an overreaction on the part of the authorities. Britain's government has even called for the airlines to be compensated. This does look like a perfect excuse for already greedy airlines to try and get more money ... any experts care to comment on the effect of volcanic ash on planes?"
If one had flown and crashed, everyone would have blamed the governments involved for not stopping all the traffic. While I am no fan of the government, this is one where they could not win.
Grimjack
In the wild there are no dumb lions tigers or bears. Only humanity subsidizes the continued existence of the stupid.
I ain't engine expert nor volcanologist nor geologist, but I'd rather think more than twice before pouring sand into my car's engine.
Suffice to say that if my car engine dies, only the engine conks, the rest of my car don't break up in pieces.
But if an airplane's engines die, it'll crash, and everyone inside the plane gonna die with it.
That old British hippie is getting way too greedy.
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
Did Airbus and Boeing say what levels of ash were OK?
If they don't say it's OK, you can't fly their planes through ash unless there's practically no ash.
AFAIK the regulators did their jobs properly.
The pilots and airplane engineers were singing a very different tune from the bosses of the airlines.
The engine isn't the only important part of a jet aircraft. Apparently flying a jet aircraft through what's effectively 200 miles of sandblasting has other deleterious effects such as sandblasting the windshield, abrading the skin of the wing and other forward parts and trailing parts including the tail, obstructing the pitot tubes that gauge airspeed. Some of these effects are immediate and inconvenient (landing an aircraft when the windscreen is frosted glass can be challenging), and some are not immediately apparent but can cause aircraft failure several months after the ash is gone. Trailing edge surfaces can also be affected in subsonic aircraft, though these can be less important because critical control lines can not be routed aft of trailing edge surfaces. The mobility of ailerons and flaps can be affected by grit. This grit can cause failures in flight because the maintenance schedules for aircraft do not account for flying through powdered glass.
Let's review: Glass is harder than steel. Volcanic ash is glass. Volcanic ash in the air can be as course as 1.5", or as fine as 60 microns. The skin of aircraft are predominately aluminum. Aluminum is not as hard as steel. These ash particles can abrade aluminum. If you fly though enough abrasive, the skin of your aircraft will wear through.
The way airlines work some of these aircraft might be rotated to routes far from northern Europe, placing almost anyone at risk. Did that commuter plane from San Francisco to San Diego accumulate ash damage over the North Atlantic? You don't know.
It's better safe than sorry I think. We have a long history of airlines ignoring common sense and basic safety to put butts in the seats. They need regulation to keep them from getting stupid.
It's not like volcanos were just recently discovered. They predate airlines by a good bit, and Iceland volcanos go off on a regular basis. I say it's part of the normal order of the day for these airlines. If they're not insured against this risk then it's their own cost because they're self-insured. I'll bet some of them are getting compensation from their insurance and want to be compensated twice to improve their bottom line. Getting paid twice to not carry passengers is almost three times as profitable as getting passengers to grandma's house - especially if Grandma's house is in Finland, since they save some accellerated depreciation on a very expensive aircraft.
Help stamp out iliturcy.