BlogOfTheMoon

Sunday, 25 April 2010

Post-volcanic kerfuffle

I’m a little late with this, but the complaints of the air travel industry after the eruption of the Icelandic unpronounceable volcano have somewhat bemused me. European airspace was closed based on longstanding international protocols and as soon as it became clear that the eruption was going to last more than a few hours, the authorities immediately started getting test flights in the air and got in touch with the engine manufacturers to start to tackle the immense problem of developing and testing models of how engines would react to the sort of ash released by Eyjafjallajökull. I’m actually highly impressed that it only took them six days to declare that the current engines could fly (to a degree) safely.

I understand that the airline industry has lost a lot of money on this, and that passengers have been stranded, but imagine if they hadn’t taken this action. If they had either let the aircraft continue to fly, or opened the airspace before they were sure that it was safe. Can you imagine the reaction if they had done that and an aircraft had crashed because of it? So I hope the industry stops its whinging and joins me in applauding the amazing speed at which this safety testing work was carried out.

Also, anything that makes Ryanair uncomfortable is a good thing, as far as I’m concerned.

1 Comment »

Raj says:

From Abita on the LJ feed:

I can understand why people are annoyed about the flights not going and so being stranded in whatever country they were in at the time, but like you, I definitely believe in better safe than sorry.

And yes, isn’t it wonderful when Ryanair get made to back down 🙂

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