How to Handle Volcanic Ash?

The answer is: Bad things happen. Sensors can fail. Nothing is fool proof. The airlines should err on the side of caution, but it is the passengers ultimate responsibility to decide whether to err on the side of caution or to take the chance.

Air travel is the riskiest of all modes of transportation. Despite the AAA claim that air travel is the safest (small number of fatalities per passenger mile), air travel results in the most catastrophic loss of life when an accident does happen. Imagine the new Airbus carrying 500 passengers.

"Air travel is the riskiest..." I beg to differ. There is a very low probability of an accident on any given flight, and certainly the lowest number of fatalities per passenger mile. It's just that when the rare accident does happen, its consequences are likely to be more catastrophic than others, except possibly for passenger train wrecks. That's why they get so much media attention.

A major reason for the relative safety of airline travel is precisely the conservatism than grounded the planes in Europe while the ash cloud was present. Experience has shown that knowingly flying through volcanic ash when it could be avoided is a truly foolish undertaking.

Don't know what type of ash that is if its abrasive, didn't really look into it.

But all it would have took was One single plane to go down and the question would be "Why did you fly?"

What are we to gain by second guessing against the side of caution.

Volcanic ash is very abrasive. I was in the Mount St Helen's area two weeks after it erupted and saw countless numbers of cars, trucks and farm machinery that were disabled by the fine ash. It gets into the wheel bearings, the carburettors and any place where an abrasive is not wanted. I personally would not fly in a plane under those circumstances, but there are some who will tempt fate and throw caution to the wind. Maybe that's why I'm still around at 75.

The recent flight European air traffic disruption is making aviation industry to face the reality of dearth of scientific data on the impact of volcanic ash on aircraft.Little is known about the real danger of flying through volcanic ash. The International Civil Aviation organization (ICAO) has recorded 80 incidents in the past 15 years where aircraft unexpectedly encountered volcanic ash. The grave risk was made clear to NASA when one of its DC‑8s in February 2000 traveled through an ash cloud, which NASA personnel did not realize until a post-flight analysis. The ash clogged holes that provide bleed air cooling to turbine blades, and also left deposits on the turbine blades after ash entered the combustion chamber and melted. The DC-8 engines had to be repaired at a cost of $3.2 million following the incident, even though it flew 200 nm. north of where the ash was predicted.Another potential danger is blockage of pitot tubes and damage to windshields.

European authorities opted for the only course open to them under these circumstances.In fact it is debatable whether the airlines like Lufthansa, Lufthansa Cargo and Air Berlin have sacrificed air safety over the profits when they operated hundreds of flights under visual flight rules (VFR) even before any data on the concentration of the ash cloud was collected—the scientific sampling mission only occurred later that day.

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İ believe the civil authorities did the right thing in shutting down air travel. İ also believe the airlines are whining and hoping to get government handouts - nothing more.

I agree. How many planes went down during the shut down?

Vince

When there was total shut down of air space and no commercial air crafts were flying?

The plume has moved again and the shutdowns have started in Ireland again.

What worries me is that last time Eyjafjallajokull erupted: it erupted from 1821 to 1823.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Airways_Flight_9

this is why the planes didnt fly they were afraid this could happen again

I would not want to rely on in-engine sensors to detect ash. By the time the ash is discovered, the engine is already damaged. It may still be functional, but its time to major service has been reduced. Safety issues aside, the engines just cost too much to buy and maintain to casually abuse them like this. A better method might be a scanning IR laser back-scatter system.