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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?"
http://www.popsci.com/science/article/2010-04/why-cant-planes-fly-through-volcanic-ash-because-nasa-tried-once It basically starts to eat the plane's internals. So, while it may or may not experience problems immediately, it almost certainly will in the longer run, grounding those planes while they have parts replaced, and costing a fortune in new parts, because most of the shown damage in the pictures is not safely fixable.
There's some uncertainty over the level of ash that poses a significant threat, though. What's known is that zero ash is fine, and a lot of ash causes significant damage, but not too much seems to be known about the concentration/response curve beyond that.
Of course, it's also pretty clear that Branson is angling for a handout here, not really deeply interested in science or public policy. He has a pretty big self-interest in convincing people that the cause of the shutdown was government overreaction, in which case the government should compensate the airlines; rather than having people believe that the shutdown was a necessary reaction to the volcanic eruption.
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Finland's air force flew into the ash cloud, and released some photos of the damage. It ain't pretty.
My vote's on cash grab.
I measured the effects of engine ingestion of ash, etc. for several years, and crash/failure rates, for a major military aircraft manufacturer. It was one of our highest priority concerns. As our founder said, we would not build a single-engine aircraft--two at least, to bring the pilot home. Don't underestimate the effect of rocks bashing multi-layer coated alloy blades spinning at X in a plasma. As I told my students, just jump up and down a few times: gravity works.
I don't know how many flights were grounded, but I worked on some planes that passed through the cloud. When popping some panels to change the reading lights, I would find small piles of ash (more like gray sand) up inside. Nobody seemed too concerned about it. They probably figured they would clean it up during the next "C" inspection(they tear out the entire interior). And the engines would probably remain until somebody complains about reduced power or high turbine temps or fuel consumption. Now, if you want to really wreck an airplane, fly it through some hail. And be ready for a tremendous noise.
For justice, we must go to Don Corleone
As ably demonstrated by "Bang Goes the Theory" on the BBC (UK-only video, unfortunately, but the content is up on Youtube (for now) here), at Jet-engine internal temperatures the volcanic ash melts into glass, that then sticks to both the turbine blades and the casing, and can cause imbalance and catastrophic failure, but there is a fix! If you turn off the engines and glide the plane through cold air and allowing the turbine blades to cool down, the metal contracts, which is enough variance to shatter the brittle glass and expel it from the engine. However, of course, this involves turning off the engines for an extended period, finding a patch of cold air to glide through, and hoping the glass shatters and is expelled, and that you can get the engines fired back up again, before you get what is referred to in the business as an "Uncontrolled descent into terrain".
Branson needs to live up to his manly man self-image and fly through highly concentrated areas of the ash clouds himself (alone). I would contribute money for a cheap funeral for his ashes, based on the payout of a death pool of course. Look at what the Finnish Air Force found out about the sustainability and safety of flying through this stuff. Not safe practices.
After one of the longest glides in history in a regular aircraft, and landing instruments-only because the windshield was rendered almost opaque from the ash, and even then with half the instruments out of commission.
Given the history of aircraft encounters with volcanic ash clouds - near disaster every time, averted only by heroic efforts by the pilots - the total shutdown was the only appropriate short-term response.
The captain of that flight Eric Moody is hilarious
Despite the lack of time, Moody made an announcement to the passengers that has been described as "a masterpiece of understatement":[3][4]
“Ladies and gentlemen, this is your captain speaking. We have a small problem. All four engines have stopped. We are doing our damnedest to get them under control. I trust you are not in too much distress.
followed by the gem
"He then called out how high they should be at each DME step along the final track to the runway, creating a virtual glide slope for them to follow. It was, in Moody's words, "a bit like negotiating one's way up a badger's arse"."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ford_Pinto#Safety_problems_and_scandal
Every time I see someone bring up the question of "How much is a life worth?" I recall this event.
Ford was aware of a flaw in design that placed the fuel tank close to the rear bumper. This meant that relatively-low impact rear-end collisions would rupture the tank and set the car ablaze. The corrective action would involved installation of a dividing plate, however they measured the probability of occurence, the amount of potential losses in litigation, and the costs involved and decided that it just wasn't worth doing a recall.
Their reputation took a pretty severe hit, but it has more or less recovered since then(Toyota will be fine too in the end). When you see this, you have to imagine that some companies have made similar cost-benefit analysis regarding human lives and managed to avoid the same kind of publicity.
It can be argued that some companies valued the cost of a human life too little by reducing it to the amount of dollars involved in the lawsuit. Perhaps the cost benefit should be adjusted to involve the value of the life itself. However, when you put that number in, you've already established that there is a price on human life, and from that moment on, you're just haggling over how much.
At some point, there's a limit. Is a human life worth more than 1 million? I think many would say yes. 1 Billion? Probably not as many, but sure there'd be plenty. Multiple-billions? The number of people is going to drop. I think few people would argue that a life is worth 1 trillion dollars (assuming they have any notion of scale). After all, a trillion dollars could probably save many lives, just from the economic externalties alone, let alone what it might do if applied directly to life-saving measures.
Even more simply, calculate the cost of personal luxuries against the amount of donations needed to save a human life somewhere in the world. My American dollars can stretch pretty far in those desperate countries. But ultimately, that's not how I decide how much I give. There's a discount rate involved, not based upon time, but proximity. I'm not necessarily talking about literal physical distance, but mental immediacy. If the person in need is presented to me through video with a detailed documentary about how human this person is, I'm much more likely to sympathize and give money. Especially if that person looks similar to me.
But anyway, I'm not disagreeing with the initial statement by saying that human lives can be priced. An airplane carries quite a lot of people, and I think that number of people being lost simultaneously would certain be more damaging than few billion dollars. The government was just being cautious, which they should be. Those airlines are just fishing for money.
Oddly, modern jet engines are generally okay dealing with sand. The fine silica particles in volcanic ash seem to pose much more of a problem.
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There's an article in The Guardian about how the authorities asked the plane manufacturers to take part in discussions about volcanic ash safety levels but they weren't interested.
Yes, I'm sure Boeing is really in a hurry to issue a public statement saying 'we accept liability for loss of life and damage to aircraft if it turns out that flying in the current conditions is dangerous.'
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