Should Airlines Have Closed During the Volcano Disruption in Europe?

In the first place do no harm is great guidance.

But having an idea of consequences is important, not just fears. The research on this has been postponed for years.

However, the European continent has embraced the precautionary principle, which turns risk management on its head.

There would be no fire if the precuationary principle was operant in neolithic societies.

The intelligent management of risk is really what the question is.

Who, What, When, Where, Why, How, How many?

In the stock markets, the technical analysts look at the perturbations of minute by minute changes and make decisions.

The longer term fundamentals are watched by the MBA's in the mutual fund desks.

But nobody has a Volcano factor in their models.

Its like roulette. They have the odds figured of Red, Of green, to the 4th decimal point. But they had no idea that their was a Zero that was five days wide for the ball to eventually find, taking money off the table in their calculus.

I was personally booked on a flight to Frankfurt saturday.

Friday night, Continental said flight on schedule despite German airspace being closed down. Elite help desk said same thing.

Saturday morning- flight on schedule. Put on hold for hour fifteen minutes no human. web showed On schedule. Nytimes reported all German airspace shut down. CNN too.

Continental couldn't figure it out.

At 12:30 they finally showed flight cancelled (it was 3 oclock departure.)

The problem is systems, not pieces of the systems.

The problem is defaults that say "on schedule" instead of "All airspace is closed all affected flights must be cancelled."

So their systems were worthless, added confusion not clarity to the situation.

Systems engineering. Postponed research. Bureucratic groupthink based on fear and ignorance.

Our hindsight is 20-20 today to respond.

May I suggest we ask

"What have we learned so next time we can intelligently manage risk?" Who will do the research, the testing, have the authority?

Rather than quarterback the last play, I am looking forward to the next one. What should they do differently?

milo

In my risk management training, we're told to assess realistic, project-specific (system-specific) risk. I have trouble trying to ignore the simple fact that the world might end today, which would impact the project. There are a million ways Nature could shut down European airspace, if we exercise our imagination.

I guess those whining about lost revenue just need to adapt to a real world.

"Governments should help carriers recover the cost of this disruption." Airspace was closed and no one was killed so the government should pay. If airspace was open and someone was killed then government should pay. Profits are down due to something beyond the control of people, so government should pay.

It sounds like government is expected to provide profit insurance to the airlines without the airlines paying a premium for this insurance. By the way, "government paying" really means that the people pay. These are the same people that get trapped on the tarmac for six to eight hours straight because it would cost extra money to let the people off until the flight is ready to go. These are the same people that now have to pay for tickets, checked bags, carry-on bags and all sorts of other hidden fees for whatever can be dreamed up. These people are being asked to treat the airlines as something special when the airlines treat them as cargo with temperature, oxygen and restroom requirements.

By the way, 99% of the people being asked to pay "airline profit guarantee" tax are people who bear their own burden of income that can go down and expenses that can go up when there are snow storms, earthquakes, wild fires, terror attacks, volcano eruptions, etc. Should they also have "no premium required" insurance against these losses?

Maybe we should Google up some of the aircraft that flew through volcanic ash in the past and feel good that the governments and "the system" kept everyone safe.

Since the research (apparently) has not been done to exactly quantify the risks, and the outcome is uncertain, the airlines have decided not to fly on the basis of established but unquantified risks.

If we lived in a world where volcanic eruptions were so common that aviation had a large database on the known effects, it would be a different story.

There was the unfortunate event just days before, that the Polish president and personnel crashed due to trying to land in conditions that were objectively risky. This is a tragic outcome where the usual precautionary approach was waived with unfortunate results.

Avoiding the risk of mortality at all costs is not a bad principle for a transportation provider. If a natural catastrophe such as this eruption makes it risky to fly, then I also don't have a problem with the government(s) helping to cover costs of accomodating passengers who could not be provided their transportation because of an unforseen natural event. Just as most governments would be expected to help citizens affected by a natural catastrophe more directly in the event.

"the airlines have decided not to fly..."

No, The various Govt "authorities" dictated Airspace availability, Airport availability, closure etc.

Regulators regulated, but as was pointed out by original poster, with theoretical models, poor communication, and poor decision making methodology.

This is, in my mind, the very exemplar of bureaucratic non-achievement.

No lives were lost. Hooray.

Now how many million passenger miles could also have been flown with no lives lost using better facts, better models, collaboration not dictat, and a more transparent scheme of decision making?

That is the work that is ahead.

milo

Even more to the point, what could be engineered to mitigate this sort of risk entirely? It is a question of particles being drawn into the engines: filter of some kind seems the obvious answer.

I'm not the engineer of such things, so I wonder how it could be done in a practical manner.

It's not just particles in the engines. I saw a program about a 747 that flew through an ash cloud on a night flight. They had St Elmo's fire all along the plane, and all four engines quit. As they descended below the cloud (which didn't show up on radar, by the way) the ash which had bonded to the blades cooled, solidified and fell off allowing the engines to restart.

They returned to Jakarta (I think) and found the windscreen was fogged. The ash had sandblasted all leading surfaces.

The plane did land safely, but it was pretty tense, especially trying to land while almost blind, but it needed a lot of repair.

Wow. I see the technical issues may be insurmountable, thanks for the explanation HarryBurt and krishnan.ng. All the more reason not to fly in those circumstances.

Very interesting stuff - I'm involved in making hot gas parts for turbines (albeit much bigger ones that don't fly), and I was thinking along the lines of the ash abrasively removing the blades' thermal barrier (ceramic) coating, which is a key to preventing failure in hot gas components - I hadn't considered (though it makes a lot of sense) that the ash would bond to the components.

Thanks for your post.

I think the other side of this isn't just total engine failure that needs to be worried about, but also engine damage and premature overhauls. I'm pretty confident that a couple levels below those CEO's are some maintenance folks that are happy they weren't flying.

"filter of some kind seems the obvious answer"

It is technically impossible to incorporates a filter in the air intake of jets engine. The intake design consists essentially of an opening to minimize drag to allow smooth flow through compressor and turbine blades. Filter installation will cause disastrous and chaotic air turbulence. This limitation is the very reason why filter is not the answer not only against sand and dust but also against much larger objects like birds ingestion in to the air craft jets. .

Who will pay for that work? the problem was a very rare one, not the thing to attract the big money needed. There was no precedent for the recent events. I can imagine the outcry if a government announced it was spending big money on the offchance that there would be an event like this one.

Milo, how about research on the effect of tsunamis on coconut production? I mean, come on, there is, thanks God, enough unknown in this world to make it interesting. Volcanoes like that erupt once every 100 years or so, and the event evolution during an eruption is unpredictable. Who's got the money and time to do research on such seldom acts, with results that are obviously at best guesses? Simulations? Pffff! There were millions of lives at stake. Who'd take responsibility to allow flights? You?

They should have paid attention to which way the wind was blowing, and detoured around the plume zone.

I fly back and forth from the USA to the middle east all the time, along these routes. You quote "airspace was being closed on theoretical models, not on facts. ..." Sometimes being safe is BETTER than being Sorry.

This volcanic ash STOPS Jet engines, what facts do they want, a major jumbo jet to fall out of the sky with 4 bad engines?? test flights are only valid at the location and time of the test flight. Any airline that risked a loaded plane, with paying civilian passengers and crashed would loose everything in the finger pointing and law suits that followed. It is easy after a storm blows over and misses your house to tell your neighbor that he was TOO cautious with his preperations.

Weathermen tell us THEORETICALLY where bad storms are likely to hit, when the facts arrive, then that means the storm HAS HIT and it is too late to do anything about it. Does Mr. Bisignani carry an umbrella when the weatherman says that there is a 90% chance of thunderstorms or does he say that he will wait until it is raining to look for one... ??? What DO YOU DO????

Should government help the Airlines Recover? NO! Not at all.

We can all imagine the feeding frenzy if a plane had actually crashed.

Every "expert" in the media and every "surely you should have reasonably known .." lawyer in the world would be baying for blood (and possibly a bit of money as well).

It's a bit like the recent bird & swine flu outbreaks. Now the precautions have either worked, or were unnecessary, FOX "news" can pontificate that it was all a waste of time & money.

The question should be; would you have flown through the ash?

Now that planes are flying again and no one was hurt the news coverage and pressure on government is mostly about money. Airline money to be specific. To condense the news stories down there seem to be two main points:

1) Airlines want government money to compensate them for AIRLINE PROFITS lost due to not flying for about a week. No one died so obviously the government was wrong (so they seem to be saying).

2) Airlines want relief from the need to pay the hotel, food and other EXPENSES OF STRANDED PASSENGERS for about a week.

Airlines are in a business where they can't fly during snow storms, bad rain storms, hurricanes, earthquakes, volcano eruptions, etc. With respect to point #1 above I think that a reasonable response is "some years your executives get multi-million dollar (Euro, Yen, whatever) bonuses and some years the bonuses are smaller. That is what we call "business".

With respect to point #2 above they might have a valid point. It is routine for airlines to over book flights, over crowd airports and routinely assume that everything is ideal in their quest for big profits. That's what is called business. But, the airlines often strand people causing unnecessary expenses and the loss of the valuable time of people and "on the clock" employees. This makes it appropriate to impose business regulations on the industry. The airlines might not always be 100% at fault for every passenger stranding, but their (acceptable) quest for profits is typically a contributing factor to the loss of time and added expensed of their passengers. Thus, requiring them to build into their business model compensation for stranded passengers is a business regulation that most reasonable people would support.

But, most reasonable people would also support the claim that there comes a point where the points made in the previous paragraph become weak or unreasonable. Many strandings can be resolved with 24 hours or less of delay. But, between large storms and no margins built into the system strandings of 2 or 3 days are not that uncommon. I would suggest that two days of compensation be built into the airlines business model. Sometimes this compensation would function as a regulated "check and balance" for the airline's "profit over passenger rights" pressure. At other times the compensation policy might function more like insurance for passengers that are financially unable to deal with the stranding expenses. Either way, it would be very similar to current policies and most people would accept it as good.

At some point it can not be reasonable to make the blanket assumption that the airlines are typically at least partially responsible for the problems and delays. At that point the concept of "maybe a little insurance mixed in with a lot of airline blame" shifts over to a much more clear case of "traveler insurance". The shutdown due to the ash cloud seems to have gone well over that point.

Compensating passengers for this event is a problem. It would seem that current regulations require full reasonable compensation. Many people seem to feel that future regulations should be a little different. I don't know what to do a about the current problem, but I feel that the points given above are valid for future regulations.

Your post is well reasoned and insightful.

Sadly it is also annonymous.

We would welcome you to more fully participate as a registered member- your thinking is clearly worth the time to read.

milo

I suggest members to read the heroic saga of British Airways Flight 9 on 24th June 1982 vividly described at "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Airways_Flight_9". 263 passengers survived flame out of all engines of Boeing 747 due to blockage of volcanic ash over Mount Galunggung, West Java, Indonesia. There can be little disagreement that crew of the aircraft captained by Eric Moody flew the stricken aircraft with extraordinary airman ship and courage saving the lives and aircraft form total disintegration.

So, Icelandic banks have lost a fortune by speculating on sub-prime investments, and then the country catches fire.

Is there any truth in the rumour that the whole thing is an insurance scam?

It seems to me that the best input as to whether the flights should have been canceled should have been obtained from the various engine manufacturers and the pilots.

The engine manufacturers would almost have to beg off on the question because of the legal implications. Though they all have test facilities where they study the effects of ingesting all sorts of objects. The legal implications probably extend to any one foolhardy enough to endorse flying in those conditions.

The pilots are another matter, They don't even have to offer up an opinion, the mere fact that he is boarding the flight speaks volumes. A lot of these people are from military backgrounds, and though brave most of them are not foolhardy.

I had read in one article that the last time this volcano erupted (1800's) it lasted about one year. I am sure if this eruption reignites and lasts for a couple of years we will get past the CYA aspect of this and utilize these OEM test facilities along with some other appropriate experience input and develop realistic parameters.

As for reimbursing the airlines, maybe this will weed out a few of the marginal ones. That is business.