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?"
Basically, the jet's internals are hot enough to melt rock back into glass... So after a couple of passes through ash clouds, you have a thin layer of glass covering all the internal turbine blades. Which completely destroys the engine, and is extremely hard to repair without completely replacing the blades.
So, basically, what I've been told is that, yes, flying a jet through a volcanic ash cloud is a good recipe for completely destroying the engines, such that they need to be rebuilt, within two or three passes through the ash. It sounds plausible, and I've not yet heard anyone who actually does aircraft maintenance or anything like that suggest that it's harmless.
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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.
The summary is wrong. It is the founder of Virgin Atlantic that wants compensation, not the government. Has anyone ever heard of a government wanting to dish out compensation?
Better known as 318230.
We already have evidence of at least one plane nearly crashing due to volcanic ashes. Is this guy saying that we should take the chance? Would he say that to the families of those who could die because of it?
If you're not sure, and you don't have time to do the tests necessary to make sure, then it's usually best to err on the side of caution. It's very plausible that ash particles and other ejecta could interfere with the normal and safe operation of an aircraft. And you cannot simply pull over and make a pit stop if your aircraft breaks down unexpectedly while you're 10km above sea level - the closest possibility is "pray to god that physics doesn't say you're about to become very, very dead."
This is a barefaced cash grab, nothing more. What were they going to do if it turned out to have a very dangerous effect on the plane anyway, bring the passengers back as zombies and comp them a free flight?
The chances are that at least one slashdot poster is qualified to comment. Lots and lots of users, topic is a field that many people are employed in, and many of them engineers or techies of some variety.
My blog: http://www.seebs.net/log/ --- My iPhone/iPad app: http://www.seebs.net/seebsfrac/
Don't know if you put any stock in what an aircraft manufacturer might say on the subject, but...
http://www.boeing.com/commercial/aeromagazine/aero_09/volcanic_story.html
Summary: If you find yourself flying into an ash cloud, turn around immediately.
So, yeah, maybe Branson wants a check, but flying into ash clouds is a very bad idea. And they don't show up on weather radar.
Why yes, I AM a rocket scientist!
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.
Planes are one of the safest means of transportation. This is reached by systematically evaluating all risks. The exact effect of vulcanic ash on the various types of engines seem not to be known. Normally engine failures are not correlated on a signle plane. However there have been examples of planes loosing several (or all) engines at onces when flying trough volcanic ash. This means that this (unknown) risk does not enter in the usual power law for several redundant systems. Moreover its known that in influences sensors of the plane. A loss of sensors caused the crash of the Air France flight some time ago. If several engines fail at once of the sensors fail in a fatal way, people may die.
The logics for this must be: "Do we for sure that a plane can operate as designed under these conditions?" instead of "do we know fore sure its dangerous?"
I dunno. KLM Flight 867 lost all four engines after flying into Mt. Redoubt's ash plume, back in 1989. I was in Fairbanks at the time, and many people I know where stranded, trying to get home for Christmas vacation.
Ash is not good for jet engines. Period.
Microsoft is to software what Budweiser is to beer.
this could not have ended well. 1982 & 1989 747 - all 4 engines shut down. Last week Finnish F-18 - major engine damage. This stuff does kill an engine.
But from the few risky flights last week...no crash. Just like a drunk driver. "Hey..I didn't crash!" (this time)
If the airlines had been allowed to fly, and there was just one instance of an engine shutting down, there would have been lawsuits all over.
I just did a couple of quick Googles and found that every time there was a mention of the British government accepting that there was an overreaction was a direct quote from Branson. I don't think that he could be considered an impartial source on this quote. I certainly find it difficult to believe that the government is asking for compensation.
And don't the airlines have insurance against this sort of natural disaster?
"Flawed computer models may have exaggerated the effects of an Icelandic volcano eruption that has grounded tens of thousands of flights, stranded hundreds of thousands of passengers and cost businesses hundreds of millions of euros.
The computer models that guided decisions to impose a no-fly zone across most of Europe in recent days are based on incomplete science and limited data, according to European officials. As a result, they may have over-stated the risks to the public, needlessly grounding flights and damaging businesses."
From the Financial Times (http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/0821cc00-4bb5-11df-9db6-00144feab49a.html?ftcamp=rss)
[Insert pithy quote here]
Had they permitted a plane to fly, and it crashed, the outcry of permitting a plane to fly when we knew about the risks posed by volcanic ash...
But this wasn't even volcanic ash, it was volcanic glass, the effect would be sandblasting the engine while in operation. The safe option was to keep planes on the ground.
Fly or stay grounded - either way, whiners will whine.
Good security is based upon reality and common sense. Common sense is a function of having common knowledge.
And one or more planes went down due to the ash cloud? It just wasn't a risk worth taking. Branson is being foolish.
I've given up on Slashdot's comment scores.
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 know almost all regulations are written in blood. If the wind decides to shift and a plane goes down that's unacceptable.
Money really is more important than human life.
Did anyone see the movie Supervolcano? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supervolcano_(TV_movie)
There's a british kid's show called "bang goes the theory" (it's awesome)that had a great little demo of what happens. Basically the ash turns to glass on the hot jet engine turbine blades. It might not be nearly as bad for piston engine planes assuming they have air filters, which is not always the case.
there's a blackhat video here (all I could find) it's the whole show. Luckily the demo is at the beginning. If someone could cut out the pertinant clip it would be cool
http://www.megavideo.com/?d=0XOVBR18
Richard Branson should fly through an ash cloud and let us know.
I'll have a go at this one. I'm a pilot and I see this regularly in the US with general aviation pilots. It's statistically safer than driving because we're taught how to deal with calculated risks and weigh the consequences. This is why aviation is so safe, the best way to avoid a dangerous situation is to avoid it in the first place.
I once asked my dad, a former martial arts teacher "How do I dodge a bullet". His reply? "Don't get into the situation in the first place".
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.
Aviation safety is not repeat NOT something to play around with. Better for an airline to lose a few million pounds and passengers to be stranded somewhere than for a plane to lose engine power in the middle of the Atlantic. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ash_cloud#Aviation
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".
The effect of volcanic ash on airplane engines can be found here.
Because overreaction and lost sales are certainly more important than passenger safety.
The Google translation clearly shows that Koneiden tultua laskuun koneet tarkastettiin ja moottoreiden imuaukoissa havaittiin perunajauhomaista vulkaanista tuhkapölyä means Machines after the decline in machinery and engines are inspected inlet was observed from potato flour, volcanic ash and dust. They should try it again without the potato flour. ;)
Village idiot in some extremely smart villages.
I remember reading an article not too long ago about the process of cleaning jet engines on the tarmac and the benefits of increased fuel efficiency associated with including this technique as part of regular scheduled maintenance. Is anyone reading this qualified to discuss how efficient this process would be at removing volcanic ash?
Generally, when people can only support an argument with a newspaper article, you'd fund a university to do some baseline research for you to get some data to back up your claim. I mean, this is how pharma, oil, silicon, mining, and many many many other industries work. However, the problem is you have to *pay* a university to do this work thing for you. Since airlines pretty much all charge $15 to check a bag, its unlikely that any airline will ever pay for any kind of research. That would be some common sense long term planning...something that appears to be absent from all current business school textbooks.
So obviously you want the number of crashes to be less than or equal to 0
How much less than 0?
rewriting history since 2109
. . . until it is not safe. As for the money, it never hurts to ask, which reminds me. Can anyone mod this up?
This is one of those "You are screwed no matter what you do" situations.
If the government had allowed flights to continue, and there was damage to plains, then airlines would be going after the government for the repair costs.
If a plane were to crash because of either the debris going through the engine, OR the windshield being "sand blasted" eliminating viability, then the government would be blamed for the deaths.
However they chose to error on the side of caution, because they felt it was better than taking a chance with lives and expensive equipment.
So obviously you want the number of crashes to be less than or equal to 0 {snip}
Imagine if suddenly one day, *more planes landed than had taken off* that morning...
:D :D
:D
On-topic: People seem to have forgotten that flying is an inherently risky thing to do. Safeguards, safety, and the odds have gotten better, but when you fling your solid self up into a gas, you do so **knowing that you will eventually come down**... - most hopefully in a nice, controlled manner.
We've done many, many things to ensure the controlled come-down, but even so - they don't all work, not all of the time.
"So it goes..."
"...there are some things that can beat smartness and foresight. Awkwardness and stupidity can." ~ Mark Twain
I find the greedy airlines bit in the summary to be rather offensive. I'm sure more than a few local European airlines will go bankrupt because of what happened. And billions of dollars of potential revenue were lost. Airline companies haven't exactly been rolling in it of late....remember when the high oil prices nearly ran a few of them out of business a year or two ago? These airlines employ thousands of people who are just trying to get by, just trying to make a living, and as companies, they run razor thin margins. And then there are the thousands of travelers who were trapped, burning through their wallets living out of a hotel who couldn't get back home. And the summary basically implies that this is all about greed. This story isn't about greed: it's about survival - people trying to make a living despite a crazy natural disaster that had a very negative impact on many, many people's lives. These people feel like the government was overly aggressive about shutting down air space and didn't sufficiently consider the magnitude of effects it would have on the airlines and the travelers. If the government made a mistake here and it had severe financial implications for lots of people, then government ought to take responsibility for its actions and compensate them.
Branson: The shutdown of airspace was a massive overreaction that needlessly cost us large amounts of money and we should be compensated.
Slashdot geek: Branson is being a greedy corporate pig that doesn't care about lives and wants a bailout.
He should be replaced!
Branson: It cost us enough that we're shutting down Virgin Galactic and there will be no suborbital space tourist flights.
Same Slashdot geek: Those overcautious government nanny state meddlers wasted so much money on a needless overreaction, and are scuppering private development of space.
They should be replaced!
ash turns into volcanic glass inside the engine, wearing it to failure. the ash can be so fine you can't see it, and you also can't detect it on normal radar. by the time you realise your in it might be too late.
considering the fact planes have gone down before because of this exact problem it makes it a high risk. If i was a government regulator, my response would be if sir branson was prepared to be charged with manslaughter if anyone died flying through this ash, go for it.
i'm betting he wouldn't accept.
If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
First... It seems obvious at this point that volcanic ash does, in fact, destroy engines. The fact that "how much ash for how much destruction" is unknown, well, I can almost sympathise with the airlines, and perhaps the governments really were erring a bit vigorously on the side of caution.
Then I think... Man, there was a time when airlines garnered occasional goodwill. I'd feel I'd been treated well by them, where there wasn't nickel-and-diming at every turn, where flying didn't make me feel like a criminal [sure, not entirely the airlines fault, but I don't remember any of them ever stepping up on behalf of their customers].
That time has passed. Nowadays it brings nothing but joy to me to see their airlines suffering. In some parts of the world stuff like this is known as karma. Treat your customers like shit, eventually mother nature dumps thousands of tons of rock on your ass.
Gary (-;
Erik Klemetti's Eruptions blog has a recent post called Eyjafjallajökull flight cancellations: How the right decision is being made to look wrong defending the decision to cancel, with much discussion in the comments section. (IMO, that blog's recent series of posts on the Iceland situation has been the best place to read about the eruption.)
We want planes to lift off from the runway. Duh.
Bert
Two points:
1. The policymakers for an issue like airline/passenger safety should not be forced to pay for their reasonable decisions afterwards. The reason our air travel is safe is because people like pilots and air traffic controllers are independently allowed to make safety calls, without threat of retribution financially or politically directly as a result of their judgments. Everyone in positions of safety administration know the stakes -- it could be much worse if they were made directly accountable for the bill later.
2. But even then, as long as the air traffic stop affected all players, I think no one should be compensated. They all suffer on an equal baseline, and as competitors, no one is unfairly hurt/unhurt by the stoppage. Everyone suffered the same setback, and will have to deal with it. If there are job losses perhaps due to the event, then let the government help through normal channels. But just outright paying for a naturally-caused suspension of operations is ridiculous -- government is about correcting inequity, and there was nothing unequal about this.
They should have let the industry decide! Nothing ever goes wrong when you make your decisions based on your bottom line.
Here is problem with over-regulation: there is no right answer.
In the US it has pretty much been said a lot that the FAA was not restricting flights on its own authority but instead advising the airlines about the cloud.
Europe, on the other hand, has a regulations in place that make it the government's responsibility. So if they let the planes fly, then it would have been the government regulator's liability for the crash. Alternatively, if they ground the flights, then the airline bankruptcy is the regulator's fault as well.
If the government is advising, then the liability would be at a much lower level - the airlines, probably where it should be. If the government is regulating and controlling the behavior of the airlines then no matter what they do, it is the wrong thing. If a plane had crashed, it would have been "lax regulation". As it is now, likely as not the airlines aren't going to cease operation but instead be bought up and consolidated, possibly due to overly restrictive policies.
No way to win.
Unfortunately finding the one slashdot member who is qualified amongst the blather from those who are unqualified and yet still offer their opinion as fact makes it a futile task.
For a prime example, see timmarhy's post above mine.
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 !
The actual headline would be closer to "Government Sleeping on Job Kill Hundreds." Gotta keep stuff sensational enough.
Thanks to the time it takes to fly somewhere and timezones it happens all the time ;)
Had they not put the ban in place and a plane crashed the public would be up in arms.
Since they did put the ban in place everyone is upset over the ban!
Don't drink water, fish f**k in it.
The issue is that commercial airliners have no instrumentation capable of detecting ash clouds (normal clouds are detected via the radar return from water vapour) let alone telling if the density is at a safe level. Even if commercial airliners carried this sort of instrumentation there is insufficient data to decide if a given ash concentration is just going to mean an engine needs replacement earlier or cause the engine to catastrophically fail. So the onus is on the airlines to pay for this if they want to be able to fly during extreme conditions like this.
========
CINC, 4th Penguin Legion
I notice a lot of responses like this, the majority of slashdotters seem to be backing off from saying the planes would crash right away. which mean Branson wins the argument.
the maintenance of airplanes is the airline's business, not governments.
there were countries that had blue skies over head, and theire govt told plane owners they could not take off (even if they had no chance of -in your words- flying through an ash cloud more than once).
the ban was obviously a way over-reaction, IMO. I would give the politics of it, but this is tech forum
if the blather is so bad, why did you add to it with your own useless post?
If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
The word ash denotes dry grey dust or small wafers blowing about in the breeze.
With some moisture volcanic ash can best be described as being like wet cement. Its nasty stuff.
In post Patriot Act America, the library books scan you.
All takeoffs are optional. All landings are mandatory.
If I had a choice between taking off into air heavily polluted with ash from a volcano and staying on terra firma, I'm staying on the ground.
Branson should stop bitching about the flight ban as his barely profitable Virgin Trains stands to make a very nice profit from this mess.
The BBC News website had daily maps of the extent of the ash cloud. It wasn't a matter of "going around it", as flights to destinations other than Europe would not have flown through the part of the world anyway. However, the ash cloud did cover nearly all of Europe (Spain was a notable exception) and it was simply impossible to reach most destinations from any angle.
people always have to find someone to blame, they can't just accept shit that's out of their control. another prime example is an earth quake in kalgoorlie australia. you'd think no one would be able to find a way to blame someone for an earth quake right? wrong, there's people trying to tell the world the super pit is why they had a magnitude 5 quake.
i've been in the super pit, yes it's a big hole in the ground, but an earth quake? seriously? compared to the forces at work that caused that quake it's like pimple on the ass of australia.
If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
I live in oregon and maybe 20k years ago we had a volcano blow its top off, mt mazma. covered multiple states in multiple feet of ash. a bit of the eye witness accounts are still around. looks like to me, these things are often troublesome.
I lived in seattle when mt st. helen went. I looked up and saw the plume and chose to immeadiate drive to the closed office and shut the computers down. This was winchester tech, sort of a big platter set, with external air blown in to keep the head up. The ceo wanted to burn me for an assumed failure to protect capital assets in my custody, but had to settle for being mean to my second.
now seattle was never really bothered, but eastern washington got feet of ash drift in places. I hear from the manufacturer hardware techs that a lot of disks had to be completely rebuilt.
so i would say some caution is justified, particularly with life critical tech.
as far as bailouts, nobody owes these stockholders anything. usa tsa budget is already pretty much an airline pr boondoggle.
they shut down a whole continent. and all you can cite is a plane that did not crash after directly flying through an ash plume
that means Branson is right
99 comments and no one has mentioned:
d) Fly around it
How wide is this ash cloud, anyway?
Several thousand miles, covering most of North-Western Europe. The entire airspace of a long strip of countries was completely closed to all air travel. On top of that, the bulk of the cloud was between 20,000 and 36,000 feet up, which is also where a good chunk of your air travel happens.
When a large number of your international transfer airports are right smack in the middle of a no-fly zone, then it doesn't really matter what direction you're coming from -- you still won't be able to go to your destination.
...any experts care to comment... ?
The reason for any over reaction was that there are no experts on this very rare flying condition!
It's only happened 1-2 times before, so no one really knows much about it. And when you don't know, you have to be extra careful.
Shutting down most of Europe's airspace was entirely the right decision. All it would take is one flight through an unexpected dust cloud to produce a near-disaster, if not a crash. That's happened at least five times in the past. Read Boeing's advisory on volcanic ash.
Read Branson's autobiography? Several times in his life, he's been involved in adventure vacations that left someone else dead. This is not someone you want making risk management decisions for others.
The big problem now is that the airlines are botching the logistics of getting people back where they're supposed to be. There are people being told they can't get a flight until mid-May, because they booked a flight using frequent-flyer miles or via some discount deal that has a low priority. They can't get the airline on the phone, and they get hit with heavy roaming charges while on hold. This is really tough on people in transit running out of money.
I don't know where you live. Where I live (in Europe incidentally), if I drive with worn out tires I get fined, and my car gets towed to the impound yard.
if the blather is so bad, why did you add to it with your own useless post?
Because it's that bad, and/or he's finally given up all hope.
It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education. - Einstein
I'm a little curious about what that comment is based on. Actually, I'm not quite sure what it means for a company - an entity that exists for the sole and express purpose of making money - to be considered greedy. Are there many generous companies, too?
sic transit gloria mundi
This is a situation where this is definitely a major overreaction and at the same time volcanic ash is absolutely hazardous to aircraft.
Volcanic ash can foul the turbine blades, cause the engines to overheat, melt and turn into glass making repairs highly impractical and can cause the engines to flame out repeatedly. It can also clog pitot tubes resulting in loss of the instruments, can damage the environmental control systems and when it comes into contact with the windshield can cause severe damage dangerously limiting visibility. The airframe can also suffer some damage, although in most past cases this was not severe and the airframes could be repaired and placed back into service.
There have been several incidents where aircraft unknowingly flew into volcanic ash clouds and had all engines flame out, fortunately in those documented cases the aircraft were able to glide out of the ash cloud and eventually restart their engines and land safely, however the engines had to be replaced, which is very expensive.
As long as you have enough altitude and can glide out of the ash plume and restart the engines there is a very high probability that it will be a survivable event.
If you can avoid the cloud you're completely safe, the key problem is you don't know where the ash is until you fly into it, since it can't be detected on radar or other instruments currently available on passenger aircraft.
Had a system to track volcanic ash been developed to make information available to the crews in the cockpit in real time this wouldn't be a problem.
The other major problem is economics, most airlines prefer to use the established North Atlantic air routes to save money on fuel costs and reduce flying time, even though alternate routes may already exist, or could be established, that would go around the ash cloud.
Finally there's a good deal of politics in all of this which doesn't really make a lot of sense from a practical standpoint.
Since there is no easy way to remotely measure the ash density or composition, allied to the obvious fact that the ash cloud is constantly in motion, I think the gov should instead ADVISE the airlines not to fly. "Oooh, I wouldn't fly in that if I were you. I mean, if you really want to fly that is up to you, but you might get a lot of bereaved families suing your ass."
Let the griping bastards make test flights or risk lawsuits, don't they get paid millions for making tough decisions?
They whose government reduces their essential liberties for temporary security, receive neither liberty nor security.
Sorry, but you're wrong, the governments have the responsibility to ensure their citizens are safe. Keeping airlines in check and making sure they value safety above profits is their task.
Airlines can't simply be trusted to do this by themselves, even if they have the best maintenance routines and model employees [like any business] their decisions will be influenced by shareholders and upper management. Considering the difficult economic conditions for airlines I wouldn't put it past some of them.
If you're American you might have a different view on this, but as a European I trust my government over any business. We [the people] want our representatives to control this and determine when it's safe or not. We like regulations in Europe, it keeps companies in check. The banks in my country were regulated and we avoided the recession that hit the US.
The EU maintains a long list of blacklisted airlines, if the airlines don't hold adequate maintenance standards they don't get to enter European air space. There's obviously a need for some oversight.
Don't tell me you didn't think of the potential of an artificial ash cloud as a weapon
It really is a lose lose situation at this point. Because of the swift action by the government, they would be accused of overreacting and the airlines will demand compensation. On the other hand, if they had done nothing, they would be accused of taking too big a risk without any really evidence either way. It comes down to this, it is all about risk. Without adequate information, was it a good idea or halt flights for the 'possibility' of things going wrong? I would say yes, I'd rather stand by their side then take the risk of people's lives being lost.
Different words, but same numbers apply. And same logic applies when it comes to regulators and airlines/users.
[I am not 'russ1337' - just another knowledgeable AC.]
I saw a documentary a while ago about a plane flying through an ash cloud at night over the Andes - all 4 engines quit. There was also abrasion of
the windshield as I recall, plus electrical discharges around the plane that probably affected radio communications.
Several media articles have explained the effects of ash on jet engines, and it seemed prudent not to fly following the volcano eruption. There were initially no standards on safe levels from the engine manufacturers, so zero tolerance as a first response was sensible. Later, some testing was done, and measurements of ash density determined that some airspace could be opened. The last report I read said that planes were flying but engines were being inspected before and after every flight. One might argue that the tests should have been done sooner.
I would like to add that on the near accidents mentioned above the damage to the aircraft was also VERY extensive. The BA flight needed 4 new engines (around U$ 14 million EACH), new windows (more expensive than you would think), new pitot and static ports (and an overhaul of tubing and sensors) and a paintjob (big surface, costs quite a bit) as well as a thorough overhaul of pretty much everything.
Even if no one dies it is still extremely expensive to fly accidentally into an ash cloud.
I really don't think this was an overreaction. Safety must be paramount, and if only one or two aircraft had gone down due to ash that would have seriously impacted the publics faith in the airline industry and their view of safety. That would have been a lot more expensive in the long run, and the airline industry has spend decades building an image of themselves as super safety minded.
And just for the record, I'm an ex-commercial pilot. From Iceland. I've flown smaller aircraft around volcanic eruptions and had great fun.
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.
Ash particles pose a real threat to aviation safety in the Finnish air space.
Over Thursday and Friday, the Air Force has examined the F-18 Hornet fighters of the Lapland Wing that flew practice flights over northern Finland on Thursday morning. The air space was still open to the public then.
The planes were examined after they landed, and volcanic ash dust, resembling potato flour, was detected in the engine intakes. An engine of one of the Hornets was further examined with a fiber optic camera. It was concluded from the images, that significant engine damage is caused by even a short flight through ash.
The pictures show that the accumulated ash has melted inside the combustion chamber, where the temperature is around 1000 degrees centigrade (1800 F). The molten ash blocks the cooling ducts, which causes overheating of engine parts, and the materials are weakened. This causes a risk for fractures in the rotating parts of the engine, and in the worst case the parts will break apart and the engine will be completely destroyed.
The exposed Hornets will be thoroughly inspected. It will be necessary to dismantle at least some of the engines, after which they will be sent to Patria engine repairs for further examination. Any engines with noticeable ash exposure will be taken apart to determine the full extent of the damage. The cooling air ducts will also be checked for ash blockages at that time.
"any experts care to comment on the effect of volcanic ash on planes?"
Well, dust in any turbine system is bad as-is, but then you're looking at high internal temperatures. I'm not sure if it's hot enough, but I'd think it'd be hot enough to re-fuse that dust and ash into volcanic glass once it gets heated and pressurized in the engine. Molten glass inside an engine = bad.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
The cooling system used in gas turbines (jet engines) is very sophisticated and necessary to keep the superalloy blades from creeping too fast. The system consists of bypass air channeled through the blades and exhausted through tiny perforations, creating a layer of cooler air between the blade and the hot flow from the combustor. Furthermore there are two ceramic layers on the outside of the blade. One to prevent oxidation. One to slow heat transfer (insulate). As has been mentioned in other articles, the cooling pores could get clogged by the ash. I also suspect the coating might fail if impacted by ash. If the coating fails or otherwise reacts with the ash, then you can definitely have a problem.
If the blades get just a few tens of degrees hotter, they will surely fail. There's not a lot of margin for error with jet engines. Through good design and manufacturing control, we've managed to make gas turbines extremely reliable, but ash is not a design condition at all. It's abrasive, might react with the coating, and might accumulate on the blades, changing both their mass and aerodynamics.
"There are some people that if they don't know, you can't tell them." ~ Louis Armstrong
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2011643386_apeuvolcanojetsdamaged.html
No.
That's the problem, I'm not from a major European country. I'm Norwegian. Norway took the correct measures to stave off any negative effects (according to the OECD). Jobs, banks and housing markets remained stable. We have 2.6% unemployment.
While there might be more to the story than simply having regulated our banking industry we did very well during this recession. It doesn't hurt that we're the world's 3rd largest exporter of oil, or that we have no national debt, and put our oil revenue in a huge sovereign fund invested abroad. We base our welfare state on taxes, not on oil revenue.
Part of the reason our banks were already regulated was the fact that during the 1980s Norway had its own bank crisis and housing market crash. The government had to take control of the collapsed banks and rebuild them. Since then our banks have been strictly regulated and the housing market stable.
The UK was badly hit by the recession obviously, but Germany has been out of recession for a long time now. Germany is the major nation in Europe. I believe France technically came out of recession too. Spain, Portugal and Greece are not large countries. I doubt you can find a European country that experienced the recession on the scale of the US.
I can provide a source too if you like: http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2009217763_norway14.html
It's my understanding that volcanic ash is, among other things, incredibly abrasive. Wouldn't flying an airliner through some airborne ash, be like a couple hours worth of sandblasting? I'd hate to think what that does to the engines.
Friend: "The NIC is misconfigured..." Me: "No prob, I'll just telnet in and fix it." *Silence*
My dad was a jet engine mechanic in SAC stationed at Ellsworth AFB when Mount St. Helens erupted. For about a year following the eruption, volcanic ash settled into a visible layer on everything which required cleaning on a daily basis. It really kept settling out of the air for that long. While I understand that eruption was an odd case, it does show that we have had some pretty extensive experience with aircraft flying through significant amounts of volcanic ash. Remember that they had Operation Looking Glass at that time so there was no way we didn't have aircraft flying in those conditions.
Of course, it wasn't just the USAF that had to deal with this, commercial airlines had to deal with that fallout as well.
So I find it hard to believe that we don't have some decent amount of data about this. What about the commercial airline data from that time? Where did it go? While the military data from that period might be classified, it may be time to request declassification of some of that data. I'm willing to bet that with a little bit of effort that data can be scrubbed and the safe portions of it released. As for the taxpayer dollars required to accomplish that task, as a taxpayer, I think it would be a worthwhile investment.
It's easy to say it was an overreaction, but imagine what would have happened if one of the planes would have crashed into the ocean or even worse into populated areas? THEN they would have not only sued aeronautic control centres for letting them fly but also a lot of people would have died. Having studied law myself I can honestly say that a pretty huge amount of advocates are dicks which only want to make as much money out of anything as they can.
Plus a lot of people can make up plausible sounding bullshit and get modded up for it.
echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
Are you kidding?
Just in case you were serious: the affected area was western Europe with the exception of Spain. How would reroute a flight from London to Frankfurt around the affected area, given that both the take off and landing points are inside the affected area (not to mention all points in-between)?
Now, if your flight was from New York to Moscow, you could reroute flying over Africa, or over the arctic, but I imagine any route that would have otherwise involved flying over Europe would end up having much more than an hour added to the flight time in order to entirely avoid flying over Europe.
"Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies."
and their passengers, not the government.
whats next, prison sentences for those who don't rotate their tires?
I take it you are fine with airliners flying without seatbelts and emergency oxygen to save money? In the event of a crash passengers will be free to choose a more expensive airline when they fly again.
http://michaelsmith.id.au
I didn't offer an opinion on whether or not the ban was an overreaction, I instead offered an opinion on the value of your post.
My post may be just as poor quality blather, but at the very least its blather about a different topic.
It was that bad that even gliders (no engines)and balloons were grounded. As well as all other airplane that flew far below the 5km altitude where the cloud was. Yes, that is overreaction.
I am not sure that calling the airlines greedy is really fair, the airline industry has been having a very tough time in various different ways since 9/11.
BA in particular have had lots of problems with strikes leading to a negative effect on their already poor finances.
Now I am not saying that they should be compensated, or that it was right for the airlines to want to fly when the conditions could have been dangerous, but "greedy airlines" is probably a little too simplistic.
"This does look like a perfect excuse for already greedy airlines to try and get more money ..."
That's ridiculous. If the government forced them to stop flying and was wrong, then the airlines should be compensated. Otherwise, let them do what they want. Who's hurt more by a plane falling out of the sky, a company or a government. They know when to ground their own.
"I Don't Have Enough Faith to be an Atheist"
An intelligent response that I would certainly mod up if able.
Closing most airports in Europe was an overreaction, apparently based on the assumption that the cloud was uniformly dense and everywhere. That's a paranoid, unscientific assumption which was not checked soon enough.
Everything is risk. We have to balance risk against the cost of avoiding it. In this case, a bad call was made, causing inconvenience and expense for perhaps a million people who would otherwise have been unaffected. Typical behaviour for the UK Government really.. if it isn't a bogus "terror" or "paedophile" threat, then it's "volcanic ash". Don't panic! Don't panic!
And by the way, I agree with you completely about the wind farms. Money spent building them would be much better spent on nuclear reactors, since these provide better value for money and generate clean energy in all weather conditions.
You're an immobile computer, remember?
When a farmer loses his harvest to hail, he's out of luck. He will be asked why he wasn't insured against this "act of God". Even if there are no records of hail happening in his area for any recorded time. He can basically sell his farm and hope he can somehow file for bankrupcy.
But as soon as a company is big enough to be heard when they whine about their loss, we get to foot the bill. Yes, my question is why they weren't insured against this kind of problem. If not, then tough luck. Go bankrupt. Why should I care?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Here is the EASA regulation: very similar, but using more words.
20-25 years ago Qantas flew a 747 through an volcanic ash cloud somewhere in Indonesia and all 4 engines stopped. They dove and managed to
get the engines restarted but they dropped a long way. I wouldn't want to have been on that flight.
People fly too much as it is, planes are fuelled with fossil fuels and I don't see why non-essential travel (holidays) should take priority over essential travel (going to work). Also the CO2, why should we have to cut down our electric use and go backwards in terms of progression just so planes can carry on flying as usual.
As someone who has flown about twice I don't see why I'm paying huge taxes on my income just for it to be given to big businesses that have not planned for such natural disasters.
So that's an easy one: no, it wasn't.
1 - At the time of the eruption, there was no other data available than from planes that had flown through dense clouds, and the results weren't very positive. From the perspective of available information, the shutdown was justified - imagine the outrage when they hadn't done that and a plane had downed.
2 - Where they did make a mistake was not immediately collecting data in whatever way possible. Adjusted planes, weather balloons - whatever. That should have allowed for adjusting the strategy as soon as possible. Instead, it took days - this is where the possible compensation story could start.
3 - I heard some budget airlines screech about having to repay passengers their hotel costs. Having been on the receiving end of the "care" such companies in general extend to passengers when they get their schedule wrong I'd say "tough luck". If you didn't insure yourself for that risk it's your own fault - those are the rules of the game. I know some find it totally acceptable to leave people alone in an airport at night (with children) without spending even a minute time to help them find local resources, so tough luck.
My best wishes to everyone who was caught out - I hope you eventually got home safely.
Insert
Sure, just as food tasters are a good way to detect things wrong with the food. Sucks to be the taster though.
"Is he still moving?"
"No."
"Mmmm, I guess this week old fish salad is bad then. Send in the next taster for the running cheese!"
"Don't you mean runny cheese".
"No."
The testing was done by airforces, you know the ones with ejection seats and two engines per passenger? And they considered it unsafe. I take their word for it. If Finland grounds its fighter defence, then I don't go up. I do not know better.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Poorer by ... $77 million ... for raising the safety from 99% to 100%.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
This might be interesting to read,
http://www.volvoaero.com/volvoaero/global/en-gb/newsmedia/press_releases/actual/Pages/Default.aspx
Personally I believe the authorities did the right thing. By doing it in that way it was equal for all carriers.
Lufthansa executives openly declared in media they wanted to lift the ban. Imagine if a Lufthansa plane had problems with ash during a transatlantic flight. As Volvo Aero writes: "This soon causes build-ups in the turbine, which grow and inhibit the performance of the engine. In the worst case, it shuts down entirely."
Would anyone survive? Probably not. Would Lufthansa have survived such an incident? Look at Pan Am, the worlds largest carrier, until Lockerbie. They didn't last very long.....
The airline industry is the most unsafe industry that is supposedly heavily regulated. Let me make clear what I mean by this. You always have daredevil industries like riggers who think working at 100 meters in the sky with no safety line is just the way you do things. But the airline industry is supposed to be different since a daredevil pilot/airline is not just risking his own life but hundreds of passengers.
And yet the industry has endless problems with aircraft being build against known safety procedure. You would think that by now aircraft building would be known.
Take a simple thing like pressure and doors. If you got a pressurized cannister and you want to make sure a door doesn't come off, then you put it so that it opens to the inside, so the inside pressure keept the door in place. Boeing thought they knew better, and lots of people died. Was this fixed? No.
Aircraft got large fuel chambers which by nature are often empty. This causes fuel vapor to build up and that can go boom. Not a good in thing when you got the fuel in the wings and under the passengers. Easy fix? Pump in some gas that displaces the oxygen. Not even all that expensive and done for the longest time on military aircraft. Hundreds died and will continue to die because the airline industry refuses to introduce a simple proven safety measure.
How about inside the aircraft, would you allow gallons of highly explosive liqued in any form of transport? No? Then how about duty-free alcohol? Allowing carrying on cargo is already risky enough but in a fire, this stuff is lethal.
Or how about the seats? Why not a simple three point harnass? And why no protection for the most essential parts of your body in a crash, your legs. Lots of people survive crashes and then die because their legs are broken and they cannot move. Or how about just making the seats a little bit more attached to the floor so they don't break loose so easily?
None of this would cost much, but the penny pinching industry just goes "oh well, accidents are an act of god, noting we can do about it".
Like installing run off areas that stop the aircraft if it doesn't stop on the runway. The costs for this are truly pitifull, you are talking about a gravel zone. On the costs of running an airport this is insignificant and has already proven succesfull. But even filling in a canyon at the end of the runway is to "costly". Regardless of lost lives.
If there is one industry that requires grey bureaucrats taking absolutly no chances whatsoever then it is this one, because to Branson, you life has no value.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
While the press appear to have focused on the problem of aircraft jet engines failing in flight, there is an even more important issue which has been completely ignored.
All commercial jets apart from the latest Boeing aircraft all take new cabin air from around an aircraft's engine (using the heat from around the engine to warm so they do not have to use a dedicated heater). The problem with volcanic ash is that if it is inhaled enters your lungs, remaining there causing Asthma or worse depending on quantity. As I understand the particulate filters on aircraft are not capable of preventing the ingress of ash, and so an aircraft could fly though volcanic ash which is of a low density without stopping the engines but which will introduce warm volcanic ash in to the cabin air, which are passengers you inhale. Initially you would find you have a cough, as the ash causes more irritation your breathing becomes more difficult. By the time you realise there is a problem your home or at your destination and your health is permanently effected.
"The CEOs being on the flights? Sure. But they don't have 10 CEOs (per airline) to put on every one of the test flights anyway--not to mention presence of CEOs themselves are scientifically useless."
not really they are no worse than any other Test Dummy
Any person using FTFY or editing my postings agrees to a US$50.00 charge
No matter what was done there was going to be a lawsuit because billions were on the line. Billions in ticket sales or billions in funeral costs.
[signature]
Kill me once, shame on you. Kill me twice... can't get killed again.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
So not only did Russia intentionally cause the crash, but NATO cooked up this volcano ash story and grounded almost all flights in European airspace just so they wouldn't have to go to the Funeral?
And they say the Polish are prone to conspiracy!
Is there any particular reason that passenger airliners must fly at heights in excess of 18000 feet? If flights to destinations which can reasonably be reached by other means are canceled, congestion can be reduced and a few flights could have been authorized to intercontinental destinations. So does a good chunk of air travel fly at 20k to 36k feet purely for reasons of efficiency and air traffic separation or would it have been unsafe to fly below the cloud as well as within?
This is a serious question, I make no statement here, I'm just looking for information
"Cursed is he who rises early in the morning..." Isiah 5:11
If you really want to see what can happen when a plane flies through volcanic ash, click this link. http://www.jma.go.jp/jma/jma-eng/jma-center/vaac/typical%20damage.htm
*Headline News* censorship shuts down the Internet! More at 6PM!
He is being pretty selfish calling this decision an overreaction IMO.
As a pilot, I do know some of the complexities of trying to manage thousands of flights into and out of an area.
All commercial flights will have to fly through cloud at least some of the time and places like England are known for their cloudy days. There is no conceivable way that any air traffic controller would be able to tell which clouds have ash and redirect planes around them. Redirecting planes around every single cloud would not be practical.
Also, the comment about some countries having clear blue skies shows that whoever wrote that isn't thinking like a pilot at all. When flying an airplane, it's the pilot's responsibility to check the suitability of the destination airport for landing BEFORE leaving. If they were allowed to fly, then you are now placing an even bigger responsibility on the pilots to somehow know whether or not the arriving airport or alternate airports are suitable to land at. Not only that but they would have to check all the area in-between to make sure it's safe. Air traffic control is certainly not responsible for routing traffic around all clouds, because in the end it's the pilot's sole responsibility to ensure the safety of the flight.
Now think about that situation for a single flight and how many variables there are, then multiply that by the thousands of flights that would have occurred in the time the airspace was closed. Can anyone guarantee there would not have been any problems? Of course no one could so it's much better to just be cautious and close the airspace until the ash is clear.
I currently work in aviation...I'm not an A&P, however, I do know a little bit.
First, the main threat is sulfuric acid. This is something that will deteriorate blades as well as tear up other important components of an engine. These engines are $3 million and up.
Second, as long as the proper maintenance requirements are in place, consider it the same kind of maintenance as a bird strike or any other in-flight event: examine for possible damage and clean it up to prevent anything further. As long as GE, Pratt, Rolls Royce, etc. have some kind of hostile environment prevention maintenance program in place, there shouldn't be any kind of issue. How many years have planes been operating in and out of Hawaii or other volcanic regions? You also have to factor in those areas are mostly in a salt water environment and as long as a comp wash and borescope are done, there shouldn't be a problem.
Finally, as for the accumulation of ash that could crystallize on the blades, yeah good luck with that. Any airline that would not have a comp wash done AFTER flying through the cloud and then borescope (based on the severity of the eruption) should not be flying. Maybe they initiated the "ban" so that a company like Ryanair (the company that instituted pay per potty on flights) would not take advantage of the situation and charge people 10 times as much to fly...
"Be polite, be professional, but have a plan to kill everybody you meet." General James Mattis
The Chilean government and most airlines avoided flying around a volcano in Southern Chile a couple years ago. They did not however restrict small planes. In the course of about 4 months, 3 small planes crashed including a military flight. They were all prop planes with more than one engine. No one every officially linked the crashes to the volcano, but it was definitely outside the statistical norm for crashes in the area (like one every 2-3 years normally).
Living in Chile
The cloud covered, among others, Heathrow, Charles de Gaulle, and Frankfurt, i.e. the 3 busiest airports in Europe (Heathrow is the busiest in the world, and CDG and FRA are not much behind). It also closed the other London Airports, Amsterdam, and Copenhagen. First, this is where people want to go. Secondly, no other airports in range have the capacity to take up this many flights.
Stephan
The spelling's always been bad on slashdot.
As someone who had a flight scheduled to go through an area that was affected by the ash, I say absolutely not. I don't care what the airlines say or how many millions they are losing. I think I will trust the engine manufacturers and their engineers rather than some airline suit sitting in his office when it comes to putting my life at risk in this context.
[alk]
.
The ash is an operational hazard of flying through the air. Why didn't the airlines have insurance to cover these types of interruptions? That would have been prudent business management on their part.
The cloud covered, among others, Heathrow, Charles de Gaulle, and Frankfurt, i.e. the 3 busiest airports in Europe (Heathrow is the busiest in the world, and CDG and FRA are not much behind). It also closed the other London Airports, Amsterdam, and Copenhagen. First, this is where people want to go. Secondly, no other airports in range have the capacity to take up this many flights.
All of those airports were closed but do we know for a fact that the cloud was covering those areas? All of those airports you mentioned were "international" and most international flights in the northern such as between Europe and North America and Europe and Japan would usually go close to north pole to take advantage of the wind currents and curvature of the earth at those latitudes. In the past, flights would go across the atlantic stopping to refuel on the east coast of Canada.
Are we all certain that there was ash coverage over those airports and if so, was it enough to pose a danger?
Jesus was a compassionate social conservative who called individuals to sin no more.
If you can't easily detect where dangerous concentrations of ash are then talking about an "acceptible ratio of ash particles in the air" is a fairly pointless academic exercise.
There are two problems here:
We can't reliably find it.
We don't know how much is too much.
Until both questions are answered it is just playing Russian Roulette with no idea if every chamber of the revolver is loaded or not.
It only encourages them.
Gee "Sir" Branson, I certainly hope you don't exercise this same lackadaisical attitude when you start sending your airlines into Space. I really wonder if you just condemned Virgin Galactic's future with that attitude.
"What? It's just a small asteroid storm. What's the big deal?"
Cars have a hard time running right after driving through a shitstorm of ash like that, and this guy thinks it's no big deal for a jet engine.
Individuals who are needlessly detained by government don't tend to get compensation offered, and if there was some good reason to believe they should be detained (even though it later proves otherwise) through no fault of the detainee even the courts tend to award nothing. Why should the airlines be any different?
Put it this way, if someone wants to put down 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 dollars a nanosecond until the natural end of my lifespan, I'll agree that this is the value of my life (to me).
Until then, my life is equivalently PRICELESS.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
There's an interesting article over at.... http://www.ien.com/ienblog.aspx?id=157606 Get's into a couple of the events talked about here, with a couple of photos of the Finnish jet engines. The author seemed to think there is a metaphor between the ash situation and Jaws. Let the people back in the water??
I have a huge problem with the "already greedy airlines trying to get more money" little stab in the post. What is the purpose of a business? To lose money? To give money away? To be altruistic? Why is it so negative for a company to actually strive to make money? Its irritating to hear this referred to in a negative connotation. If you've ever flown anywhere, you better thank God that the owners of airlines are greedy, or those flights probably would not even exist. The owners would instead be paddling boats around the world searching for people to pass their time and money off to in the name of "not being greedy". As long as businesses are going to be looked at as evil for their "greed" we're going to have huge problems in this country.
It wasn't an overreaction, but it was the wrong thing to do.
Banning all flights was simple and expedient, but it was a big sledgehammer solution. A more nuanced response would have involved looking at what routes were compromised and what routes might be safe, and introducing new routes if needed. In addition, regulators in Europe should have required any aircraft that flew to be subject to additional inspection and maintenance.
But no love lost for the airlines. I believe officials understood that given an inch the airlines would take a mile and before you can say "frequent flyer" an aircraft would have fallen out of the sky and the executives whining about losing money would have fallen all over themselves blaming the regulators for the tragedy.
There's an old Usenet maxim that no ironic humor can be so blatant that someone won't take it seriously.
I figured the idea of Virgin cancelling the space flights due to losing money on the Euro flight shutdown was oddball enough to signal that. Apparently not ;)
Slashdot mass opinion being a very fickle beast when it comes to geeky endeavors has long been a target of lampooning.
I live in Kagoshima, Japan, which is 10km from an active volcano, and its airport is 50km from the volcano.
The volcano is called Sakurajima, and it has multiple eruptions daily, each of which sends up a large plume of ash for about an hour or so. It's a Decade volcano, and here is its wiki page.
Its ash volume must be much less than the Iceland volcano, but it's also an order of magnitude closer to the airport and its airspace. I don't ever hear about them closing the airport for ash, so it would appear that as long as one stays out of the really thick part of the cloud, you'll be fine.
here's a pic with a good pic of it erupting. Keep in mind this happens every day here.
It depends upon whether the volcano was set off on purpose. If so, then they probably did so as an excuse so the mothership could land without being seen.
Those offers to compensate the airlines is just politicians feeling guilty. wait!what? Politicians feeling guilty? Something doesn't add up here. Now I'm curious.
Whether or not there was an overreaction is irrelevant. There is no case - none - for giving airlines money if civil servants acted in good faith and believed that they were taking a necessary action to protect the public. Airspace can be shut down because of forces outside human contral - that's a reality of air travel and airlines need to be ready to deal with it.
Branson is making a weak, transparent grab for money and he deserves all the cynicism being directed at him.
My college (who deals with engine health monitoring and MRO's) reckons a medium sized airlines may be in the hole for US$2B should they're engines be exposed to ash.
It's much worse than that: I'm not sure that a medium-sized airline would even get a chance to spend their non-existent $2B. Let's suppose the carriers got lucky and there were no catastrophic accidents of failures from flying thru ash. There would probably be sub-catastrophic engine damage that would manifest itself over time. What's the probability of that? Nobody knows, we're talking a manly shoot-from-the-hip gamble.
What would happen if an extra 10,000+ engines from the entire European fleet prematurely came in for overhaul over the next 6-18 months? Engine overhaul capacity is a very finite thing, and so is turbine manufacturing. Overhaul facilities are already booked for scheduled maintenance well into the future. Overtime + existing parts stock definitely wouldn't cover this, and the necessary mechanics take forever to train and legally certify. Just replacing all those engines with new ones is a non-starter for many reasons.
The backlog would take years to clear. In the meanwhile, a big chunk of the entire fleet would be out of action for a long time. Could any airline survive that? Could the economy?
Branson's effectively suggesting that the entire industry should have taken a cowboy-style gamble on their entire future to save a week's losses, not to mention the broader economic and security consequences of such a disaster! Branson's never been a risk-adverse guy, but gambling the entire fleet...?!
(groans at comment since I have just had a 24 hour fever from some runny blue cheese).
The answers are "Yes", and "nobody knows, and we don't have sufficient knowledge to make a good guess". The ash cloud was both modelled and, later, measured during test flights, and at least the spatial extend was in decent agreement with the models. Since the current stance of the ICAO is "detectable ash means no flights in controlled airspace", national ATC agencies followed that standing recommendation. There is a good argument to be made that we need more research, but that means that someone has to pony up the cash for that, and it's not a small chunk. Jet engines are very expensive toys to play with. All that money has to, in the end, come from the passengers. If RyanAir moves you 1000 km for EUR 5, imagine how many passengers have to pitch in to get, say, 14 million dollars for one engine of one model (and you haven't yet paid any researcher, or the test stand, or found a way to simulate high altitude and various ash densities). At least up to now, nobody was willing to spend that money.
Stephan
I remember from when I used to play Eurofighter 2000, that plotting a route at a higher altitude saved fuel, probably thanks to lesser air density. I always assumed that this is the reason. Also, higher is safer, because you have more potential energy that you can spend to reach an emergency destination in case something goes wrong. But I'm only guessing here, and know nothing of any legal or procedural reasons.
My grandfather once went to Frankfurt - it wasn't planned to land at all - and he ended up stuck there in rather low-grade accommodation till 1945. And that isn't what you colonial types quaintly refer to as quarter "till" eight, of the p.m.
It's true I tell you, feller at work's next door neighbour read it in the paper.
Its a given that ash particles damage jet engines. But how far out for various kinds of eruptions? 500km? 100? 3000? This is where we need more study and observation techniques.
It's better to be on the ground and wishing you were in the air, rather than in the air and wishing you were on the ground.
well potential customers could choose not to fly on that airline if it has horrible performance. in the end someone has to be paying attention. when the govt makes it its job to pay attention for us we assume that they are doing a better job than we would.
every anarchist is a baffled dictator. Benito_Mussolini
The initial flight ban decision was based on a computer model (which turned out to be flawed) and not based on facts.
From another article on http://spectrum.ieee.org/riskfactor/computing/software/flawed-computer-models-add-to-european-flight-delays:
The FT says that the models used were "based on incomplete science and limited data, according to European officials. As a result, they may have over-stated the risks to the public, needlessly grounding flights and damaging businesses."
If we base our decisions on computer models, and not on actual data gathered by humans (or other methods), then we have gone off the deep end.
In an alternate universe he's claiming compensation from governments for not stopping flights and thus avoiding 25 expensive Virgin planes crashing with the loss of all aboard.
As a results of your latest business activity, we have endured over $1B losses.
We hereby present you with the attached invoice.
Thanks for your understanding and we look forward to collaborating in the future.
Kind regards,
European Airlines.
> I have a huge problem with the "already greedy airlines trying to get more money" little stab in the post.
What is staring to piss me off is the way the airlines are trying to manipulate public opinion to create an environment where they have a better chance of a government bail out.
(I guess also that the bailout of banks has increased the confidence of large companies that they are all "too big to fail".)
Despite Branson being an irritating beardy nirk, I do have a modicum of respect for him, and in this palaver he has generally done the sensible thing of shutting up about things that he doesn't really understand.
The CAA have for quite some time (since 16th April) posted reasons for the discouragement of flying in volcanic ash, which cites this PDF from a 1993 publication. Which boils down to "ash fucks engines, windows, instruments and paintwork and can generally fuck your plane out of the sky".
So, for a long time (since 1993, if not earlier) the advice has been "don't do that".
Now, there's a general question of why the engine manufacturers, instrument manufacturers, and aircraft manufacturers didn't long ago get their communal posteriors in gear and come up with some more nuanced guidelines than "don't do it". Maybe something like "don't do it at more than one part in 10^15 of ash suspended in air for more than 10 hours of accumulated flight time before stripping down all the engines and replacing the pitot air-speed sensors" (numbers are for illustration only). And the general question has a general answer, "no one considered that the question was important enough to deserve more attention".
There's also a failure of communication here too - us geologists have long (centuries) known that Iceland is a hotbed of volcanic activity, and we didn't think to slap the CAA (and international equivalents) around the face and ask them some awkward "what if?" questions.
But then, we don't generally get the CAA calling us and asking what the consequences of a loaded jumbo jet crashing into a volcano would be. The two fields don't really impinge on each other. Except with a CFIT (when the Terrain normally survives better than whatever does the Controlled Flight Into it; "CFIT" is aviation lingo for "Controlled Flight Into Terrain", but dressed up so as not to scare the paying sheep in the passenger cabin), or as we now know, with a volcano erupting close enough to a major airways nexus for the ash cloud to affect it.
Hmmm, a question occurs : were there any aviation bans associated with the Grimsvotn eruption of 1996/8? No reports that I know of.
What about the Grimsvotn eruption of 2004? Ah, 59 flights cancelled from Schipol and numerous more diverted. That's an unprecedented new meaning of "unprecedented".
I'm slightly surprised to read that report myself - I've known that Grimsvotn has been erupting irregularly for over a decade (it's on the to-do list if I can persuade the wife to come on holiday to Iceland ; but don't tell her!) ; I hadn't heard about the flight impacts until just now. But then, I'm a rock-doctor, not a joy-stick jockey. I had been feeling slightly contrite that my subject (Earth) and my colleagues (rock-doctors) may possibly have not given sufficient reasonable warning to the aviation industry (apart from throwing planes out of the sky, burying military and civilian airbases, etc, etc), but it look as if the Earth has been throwing lumps of rock at planes over the north Atlantic for years. That puts the ball squarely back in the aviation industry's court over why they hadn't foreseen this eventuality.
Oh well. News item : Humans get given plenty of warning of natural events, and humans don't pay the blindest bit of attention.
Well, that's unprecedented (in the new meaning, see above). Sudbury. Manicougain. Nordlingen. Toba. Vesuvius (multiple times). Laki. Krakatoa (west of Java). Tunguska. Galunggung (and it's associated Gliding Club). Nevado de Ruiz. Redoubt. Hurricanes ad nauseam preceding Katrina. Grimsv
Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"
the so-called flamer and the person he flamed were the same PERSON !!
You fucking moron....
I'm not a fucking moron, I did notice the bad grammar--right after I pressed the "submit" button. Not much I could do about it at that point.
I wish Slashdot had an edit function like many other discussion boards do.
This ain't rocket surgery.
They was just publicity stunts of no scientific value at all, especially given the majority of the flight time was well above the ash cloud.
Since you think that "They was" is proper English and this is not a case of a missing word typo or a misspelling typo ("was" and "were" aren't close enough for this to be a single letter spelling mistake), I conclude that you are not smart enough to make that conclusion.
The risk of losing too much money started to exceed the risk of loss of life..
As I said before, the initial ban was IMHO justified on the basis of the data they had, but they should have followed up immediately with work to validate those few assumptions. By not doing that they left the door open for airlines to push, because there wasn't a viable argument to say no otherwise after the airlines managed to send a couple of empty planes through the clouds unharmed.
Insert
Next time this happens, the governments should give the airlines an option - passengers get to choose whether they want to fly at no penalty, but let the airlines fly IF airline agrees to pay $1M in fines AND CEO spends 1 year in Jail for each and every death resulting from the decision. That way those who are willing to risk it, can go on. And the 'C' levels are being told to make an intelligent, rather than profit-driven, choice.
I heard a lot of moaning about the amount of revenue the airlines lost. Yet I constantly hear them moaning that they make virtually no profit at all, because their expenses are so high. Does this mean they really lost next to no money, because the expenses were no where near as high as they would be had they been flying? I wonder what the actual real honest losses were.
Volcanic ash is invisible to radar and invisible at night. For east bound transatlantic traffic the time from departure to the risk zone is too long for updates and predictions to be able to give the pilot any good advice prior to departure or in route. Little was said when the volcano east of Mexico City was active about ten years past. They banned all night traffic. Daytime did permit visible assessment and the eruption was much smaller.
Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities; Truth isn't. Mark Twain.
You have a very simplistic view of things, and you sound like a blind nationalist.
Your "faith" in people's accountability is somewhat blemished by all the recent American scandals from politics to business. Where was that famous American sense of personal responsibility? Did the lack of regulation really work for the people when the banks collapsed? I think not.
My government doesn't tell me anything in particular, I live my life as I want to, and I probably have exactly the same freedoms as you. I don't have a gun, but if I want one I can get one. I wouldn't carry it around, but that's the law in several US states as well.
I live my life under the motto "freedom with responsibility" (in my native language it's more detailed). As long as I don't hurt anyone, I'm free to what I like. Does that meet your "approval"?
It amuses me that you Americans in general feel so "superior" that have your "freedom" from government regulation when you in fact don't! In my opinion, and that of my American friends, your society is far more regulated and controlled by laws and authorities.
I believe my countrymen and I have far *stronger* senses of personal accountability and judgment than the average American. Your cries of "freedom" are often at the expense of others!
My country is a strict, historically Lutheran, society where these values have been thoroughly ingrained in us as a people from the first days of my Viking nation.
While we take our responsibilities serious on a personal level, it is even more so as a society. We take care of our own, especially the weak and those without the ability to take care of themselves.
Even more so in cases where some might feel pressured to ignore one of the central tenants of our legal system; the precautionary principle. The common safety is surely more important than the losses of the few!
We have a healthy skepticism of people employed by the state, but they don't set the policies! As in any nation the elected representatives do that! However we do appreciate the fact that people employed to work for the people have a sense of obligation, duty and responsibility. They act in our best interest, not at the whim of businesses!
We have a different sense of unity, and nationhood, than you do, we have been one people since ancient times, and have a strong feeling of common, shared responsibility and trust. We trust each other, that we will do our best to help each other, to act together out of common interest.
Your silly and outrageously absurd questions are not "evidence" of any problem with my society, they are merely figments of your politically diseased imagination. What makes you think your cereal is any less regulated than mine? I would rather worry about your health than mine, at least here we know the government food inspection works as a bulwark *against* business pressure over safety regulations. Have you seen the documentary "Food, Inc."?
While my government certainly won't tie my shoes, they will provide top of the line services for people that need them. And they do *make sure* that everyone, everyone, checks their car for serious errors each year. While it might no be necessary to push everyone, it's for the few that do, and our common good. The same rules apply to everyone, for the benefit of all.
And while they don't "announce" bans on working during dangerous conditions those are the exact situations where employers are required to act in accordance with their personal sense of duty and the law to protect their employees, the public and their property.
The government doesn't have to tell people to act, they don't have to ban anything, they merely expect people to act in accordance with "pater familias"-standard. What would a normal, sensible and conscionable citizen do in a case such as this. A central question in our tort legislation.
Your distrust of your government, its employees, capabilities, intent and elected representatives is so crucial to your American identity that is completely a
I should have qualified what I meant by "on the scale of the US".
I have not heard of tent cities in Ireland? Or lack of public health care available to Greeks and Irish citizens? Or how major national champions collapsed (GM, Chrysler, major banks). Or the incredible housing collapse that lead to literally millions of homes being abandoned or sold at auction.
The incredible scenes from the US of real human suffering, poverty, destitution and homelessness have not been repeated in Europe as far as I can tell?
Please supply a source for this rather silly claim. Especially since the UN rankings consistently places Northern European countries on top the lists for life expectancy, health, quality of life etc.
Your claim is even more silly when you consider the fact that you claim your figures include "Europe" vs the US. There is no such thing as "Europe" in terms of cancer survival rates! There are 50 countries, with 50 different health care systems! You can't even mathematically compare them since they are based upon different methods, societies, economies etc.
The Scandinavians, Germans, Dutch and British are usually ranked the best countries to live in [the world] for a number of reasons [by the UN, OECD etc].
You on the other are just making up numbers to please your sense of nationalist pride. "Go USA!", haha.
Actually, Norway is larger than New Mexico, that's your 5th largest state.
I'm just going to point out, again, that the oil revenue is sent directly to the sovereign fund. It's not included in the tax basis for our national budget.
While the oil sector does generate 25% of GNP, it does not fund our welfare state. The biggest contributor to our budget is in fact general sales tax [on consumer goods].
Norway's economic planning has certainly been credited by the OECD and major economics experts from around the world.
http://www.oecd.org/document/9/0,3343,en_33873108_33873681_44704905_1_1_1_1,00.html
And why are Americans always so quick to point out that European nations are "smaller" than your own? Europe as a whole is twice the size of the US in terms of population, and even has the bigger economy! That's not including Russia or Turkey.
Furthermore if a "small" nation can do it, why can't a bigger and more resourceful nation do even more!
Yes, of course, the social systems did make all the difference.
I don't disagree with you that both sides of the Atlantic have felt the recession, however I do believe the fall out was worse and bigger in the US. The sheer size of the US economy dictates that it had to be.
Major banks in Europe did need bailouts, no doubt about that, and so did even larger American banks. This is does not mean European countries experienced the exact same effect. I believe over 100 banks collapsed in the US in total.
The unemployment rate in Spain is the result of their unrealistic spending spree and construction boom. They really didn't build an economy, they simply financed an artificial construction boom. It's a bad example of a healthy European economy. That bubble would have burst soon anyway.
The average EU unemployment rate is not really an accurate measure of anything. What is the EU? A loose group of nations that barely cooperate. It's not like British and German, or Spanish and Swedish, workers enjoy the same conditions.
The fall out was indeed greater for the average American citizen. While the UK certainly suffered, I follow your news closely, it did not hit with the same impact or for the same reasons.
You are quick to point out that the social systems are expensive for Europeans, yet you have no opinion of the fantastic debt the US is in? It's not like their spending is any better, have you read about California's woes?
The social systems did help dampen the effects, some countries are financed not by borrowing but by taxation... Leaner times indeed.
While certain nations will no doubt feel the debt for some time, I question your claim that "EU citizens" will feel the debt. Each nation still controls its own economy after all, I doubt the Danes will be paying for Greek debt in the future.
And while Europe will take longer to "recover" it is not at the expense of the people, unlike the US where a quick turn around is possible at the cost of people's homes, jobs and savings.
It's a fair price to pay for a measured and controlled turn around. You always have the option of moving to the US if you want higher risk and higher [possible] gains.