By Steven Goddard
As reported on WUWT, The UK Met Office is taking a lot of heat for airline financial loses, caused by no flight rules during the Icelandic volcanic eruption. Many readers have expressed their agreement with those criticisms.
I don’t agree with all of these criticisms, and here is why.
Suppose you are taking a ten hour 8:30 PM flight from Seattle to London. You pass Iceland eight hours into the flight, and ash conditions may have changed dramatically since you left. A new volcanic eruption may have occurred overnight, and your plane is almost out of fuel. No matter how accurate the circulation models are, they can not predict the behaviour of the volcano. The modelers and the people in charge of decision making have to be conservative.
Do you want to be on a plane over the frigid waters of the North Atlantic, which can’t progress forward and does not have enough fuel to turn back? I know I don’t. Erupting volcanoes can change in the blink of an eye, as people near Seattle found out at 8:32 AM on May 18, 1980. There is always going to be some risk, but this particular volcano has been spewing out a lot of ash and deserves particular caution.
Now that enough information has been gathered, the decision has been made to restore the flight schedules. It has been a very long week for travelers, but in terms of the required science and engineering – seven days isn’t very long when making life or death decisions.
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stevengoddard (09:32:20) :
I was flying the Atlantic every few weeks after 9/11 and I was not aware of the reduction in passengers that you talk about . I get the impression you are making it all up or your imagination is too vivid.
Steve,
Why comment an something you clearly know nothing about?
This is as bad as climate scientists predicting thermageddon.
The precautionary argument is not a valid one. We take risks all the time. A pilot can decide to change course or change altitude, this is why there are pilots in the plane rather than computers. Is someone suggesting there was heavy ash (enough to bring down a plane) everywhere across all of Europe – I don’t think so.
It is ever so obvious that the draconian government no-fly measures were overdone otherwise planes would have fallen out of the sky everywhere once flights resumed.
stevengoddard (10:15:18) :
Rob Honeycutt (10:02:35) :
It is one thing to have one distressed plane, and quite a different management problem to have dozens or hundreds of them at the same time.
Unless they were all flying in formation, that would be an unlikely scenario. The ash cloud would have to be of a uniform density over the entire area and at each altitude the aircraft were transiting, and the first aircraft encountering the ash cloud would probably request an immediate deviation, probably to a higher altitude — and there’s enough separation built into the standards to accommodate that. Deviation requests for avoiding unforecast severe turbulence are more common than you’d think.
So, you probably wouldn’t get more than a half-dozen in actual distress, but you probably wouldn’t one to be on one of them…
David Porter (13:15:00) :
“U.S. consumers reduced their air travel by between 12 and 20% in the 3 months after 9/11”
http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/41573.php
“In 2001, the winter-flu season developed more gradually than usual in the United States because of a reduction in air travel after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, a new study says. ”
http://www.highbeam.com/doc/1G1-151900499.html
It was great travelling to Europe back then. I would frequently have an entire row to myself and could put the arm rests up and sleep.
Jeremy (13:19:17) :
The no fly zones were extended to areas where it was believed there might be a safety threat from the ash.
It is now safe to fly, but not to watch South Park.
http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/tv_and_radio/article7105417.ece
UK John (13:10:16) : “All other days the sky was remarkably clear, clearer than normal for UK, wherever I went in UK.”
Jet planes are profoundly affecting the global weather because their jetstreams “seed” high-altitude clouds. Ground the planes and you have these “remarkably clear” days, days which used to be taken for granted. Probably the single most significant man-made effect on the climate, I think.
Ian W (12:32:18) :
I don’t know if anyone will read this far… but here are the issues:
_______________________________________________________________________________
Very well stated. However I would like to add one very crucial point. As we see government “consolidation” and “harmonization” of laws across international borders. As we see international bodies like the World Trade Organization and the United Nations take the dominate role over supposed sovereign nations this type of bureaucratic bumbling will increase.
Britain’s 2001 Foot and Mouth epidemic was a classic example.
“….It is difficult not to conclude that the handling of the 2001 foot-and-mouth crisis amounted to an act of maladministration as grave as any for which a British government has ever been responsible….
As one of the greatest social and financial disasters ever to fall on peacetime Britain, it was hardly surprising that for months there had been calls for a full public inquiry into every aspect of how the Government had handled the great foot-and-mouth crisis of 2001.
…senior veterinary scientists outside the UK were all-but unanimous that it was too late for a policy based exclusively on slaughter to contain the spread of the disease. The only way to eradicate it was to use ring-vaccination round the outside of the areas where it had been identified, gradually working into the centre of each area.
If such a vaccination programme had been efficiently organised, experts like Professor Brown and Dr Barteling insisted, the epidemic could have been brought completely under control in a matter of weeks, and at minimal cost….
The next problem was that a combination of two factors conspired to stop this happening. The first was the historical British prejudice against use of vaccination for foot-and-mouth. The second was that the European Commission made clear that it would strongly oppose any widespread use of vaccination in Britain, because this might endanger the international trading status of the entire European Union. There are still large potential export markets, as in North America and Japan, which prohibit imports of meat products from countries which use vaccination against FMD. …IIn this respect, of course, an anomaly arose when Holland applied to Brussels to carry out a limited vaccination programme in April. So insistent on vaccinating were the Dutch that their permission was granted, they were entirely successful in halting the epidemic and, having insisted on slaughtering the vaccinated animals, they recovered their full export status only four months later, in August. For some reason this was not considered to affect the trading status of the rest of the EU….”
This account is well worth the read for the lessons taught about large bureaucracies such as the EU, the UN, and WTO. Since this type of multilevel bureaucratic fiasco is going to be the “wave of the future” if Maurice Strong, AL Gore and their globalist buddies have their way.
Steven,
no offence meant, but you dont seem to understand how commercial air tranport works, i suggest talking to an airline pilot to get some proper info.
gianmarko (13:53:00) :
Thanks. I have also been told that I don’t understand how the climate works, and that I should talk to a climate expert.
I spent several years doing research on explosive volcanic eruptions, and developed a healthy respect for them.
http://www.driever.nl/foto/achtergronden/JLM-NatGeo-Mount-St-Helens-1980-May-18.jpg
The 767 is also a twin-engine aircraft. This increase the risk potential over a 4-engine jet such as the 747.
I’d say stevengoddard doesn’t have much of a clue about air traffic control, aviation operations, the size of the sky over the North Atlantic, the very dim prospects for practical fusion power from ITER and perhaps about much else. I’m going to ignore his posts in future.
If we want cheap, nearly unlimited energy for at least the next few thousand years fission is here right now and will do the job. ITER is just a Euro jobs program as that benighted continent sinks into a morass of over regulation and a version of the “permit raj”. I’m still hoping Doc Bussard’s ideas work out though.
On the contrary, the fuel is quite adequate for the full route, and alternates for emergency refueling are readily available with small fractions of the remaining fuel.
Your Great Circle route is not an accurate representation for all or even most of the SEA-LHR, LHR-SEA, SFO-LHR, LHR-SFO, LAX-LHR, LHR-LAX flights. There are a number of different jet routes in use for thos departure-destination routes. The eastbound flights tend to use the more southern routes passing over and south of Iceland at lower altitudes to save fuel by riding along with the highspeed winds inside the jetstream. The westbound flights avoid the headwinds in the jetstream by flying farther northwards in some cases and flying at higher flight levels above the westbound headwinds. My commercial flights between Los Angeles, Seattle, and London most often crossed the Atlantic Ocean with Iceland far away on the southern horizon or nearby to the south of the flight path. My westbound flights sometimes used the jet routes across Central Greenland, the Canadian Northwest Territories, Yukon, Vancouver, Seattle, San Francisco, Santa Barbara, Los Angeles. Other flights crossed Central Greenland, Northwest Territories, Alberta, Montana, Reno, Central California, Los Angeles. The routes varied according to upper level winds and many other factors. We flew slightly west of Mount St. Helens as it continued to smoke some weeks after the big eruption.
Although flying into volcanic ash plumes is not recommneded for reasons of passenger safety and economy of aircraft maintenance, especially for commercial aviation, The widescale and arbitrary shutdown of European airspace by whomever appears to be unwarranted by past applications of ICAO and other flight regulations and experience. It may even be fair to characterize the scope of the flight restrictions as unprecedented for volcanic ash hazards and arguably an hysterical overdone response to a relatively minor risk.
While the Met Office is not directly responsible for making the decisions which shutdown European airspace, the Met Office is directly responsible for the accuracy and inaccuracy of its observation programmes and its forecast models used by the decisonmakers. To the extent of which the Met Office and its supporters in the executive and legislative branches of government are responsible for any lack of an effective observational programme capable of providing real world data on Icelandic volcanic ash presenting risks to flight operations, they are then also culpable for any over reliance upon unreal computer models by the decisionmakers. Consequently, the Met Office computer modeling is a legitimate topic of political debate insofar as those computer models are used to supplant the proper usage of accurate real world observational data by the decisionmakers.
wobble (13:13:02) :
I didn’t realize that the wind always blows the same direction in Iceland.
Mike Borgelt (14:41:13) :
So what you are saying is that the EU decision to shut down the air space was stupid and was my fault, EU fusion research is stupid and corrupt, and nuclear proliferation from breeder reactors is of no concern. It is difficult to debate against such well articulated logic.
The accepted standards are that if the ash cloud is not visible to the naked eye and not visible from space it is not a major threat to aircraft. All that needed to happen in European airspace was setting up an exclusion zone around the volcano and flying VFR rather than IFR elsewhere – ie no flights at night and no flying through clouds – with air traffic controllers directing aircraft around or under the *visible* extent of the ash cloud.
The Met Office predictions *were not* as accurate as some are claiming given that the first flight they sent up to find the cloud wasn’t able to.
It wasn’t the job of the Met Office to close the airspace but the data they were feeding NATS and the CAA does appear to have been inadequate until they got BAe-146 G-LUXE back into service.
I also think that the “risk” should have been the airlines to take, they could easily have informed passengers that they were going to drastically reduce flights (which would have at least given people a chance to get home and change plans). Flying directly through newly released ash is a no-brainer… but more diffuse clouds just shorten the already-required maintenance cycles of very expensive aircraft.
To see air traffic control in action during an “event”, watch
and the similar “linked” videos on the right side. These FedEx videos have always amazed me, as others mentioned they “look like ants”.
In fact, I’m amazed at the variety of opinions on this topic. I tend toward the “there’s no such thing as zero risk” camp, and firmly believe it should have been left to the people with the equipment and reputations at risk, NOT governments. I’m a bit disappointed at those saying there was a dramatic danger that was unacceptable to fly in, because that is just not the case.
However, thanks to this being discussed here and elsewhere, a lot of people are learning that the Met office models are not all they’re cracked up to be, so the end result is acceptable to me.
Being some 9500 km from home at the moment and seeing this all happen from within Japan the initial decision to ground flights was a good one.
Where the EU failed big time was in follow up test to verify if the ash-clouds did pose a serious threat to airplanes and the insanely slow process in wich EU-ministers has to come to a decision in opening the skies again. They wasted a whole weekend before they started talking again on monday.
Flights could have been resumed at least 2 to 3 days earlier.
Kay (08:14:27) :
Safety comes first. The people who were complaining should try flying in it.
No, it looks like money comes first.
A family friend of ours from Germany was supposed to visit us for 4 weeks, and was supposed to arrive last Sunday in LAX.
Obviously that flight was cancelled.
No contact with the airline (Lufthansa) by phone either, even after she waited for 2 hrs in the voice-mail hell.
This Tuesday (2 days ago), she went to the airport ticket counter after it was announced that flying would resume.
The people at the ticket counter told her:
1. The “hotline” phone line is not monitored by people. They simply did not man it during the no-fly time. As people could not fly, there was no point in spending manpower helping the stranded passengers.
2. Because she bought a ticket that was lower in price than a regular full fare ticket, the earliest she could fly was May 2. She bought the ticket directly from Lufthansa, which had special fares before this volcano thing.
She also would have to return at her original return date, cutting 2 weeks of her planned vacation, because after that date no flights would be available (booked out they said).
3. She could fly right away, if she upgraded to full price 1st or business class.
4. Lufthansa would gladly take back her ticket and refund what she paid for it.
After she did 4., she went online and bought a new ticket at a quite a bit higher price. Plenty of seats available (same airline), and no problem with her return flight date either.
@ur momisugly Symon (08:36:47) :”Yes, they would simply have to circle until they crash and burn into the volcano because there are no divert airports between SEA and LHR. Canada has no airports at all, and there are no other countries between the West Coast and Europe.”
In addition to Greenland, there’s Keflavík (KEF) in Iceland. There was a time not long ago when we needed these refueling stops for heavy bombers and fighters traveling to the European war zone.
stevengoddard (09:03:19) :
I’ve been on trans-Atlantic flights where another jumbo jet crossed paths within half a mile. No doubt a screw up, and the idea of quickly rerouting hundreds of jets around an unpredictable ash plume seems unmanageable.
The relative velocity of two jumbo jets in opposite directions is faster than the speed of a high velocity .22 LR bullet. How good are you at dodging several hundred bullets in the air at the same time?
Transatlantic reroutes happen all the time for unpredictable weather.
Dodging hundreds of high speed bullets isn’t all that hard if
a). they’re in several hundred thousand cubic miles of airspace
b). you see them minutes ahead of of time
c). they’re trying to dodge you, too
Transatlantic paths don’t cross. What may look close would be an aircraft at a different altitude, and the pilots would be well aware of it, both visually and electronically.
International flight rules require planes to have alternate airports all along the route, and plenty of gas to get to them, and then diddle around for an hour or more before landing.
For once I tend to agree with Steven. Let’s put this whole thing into perspective. In 2008 the European Airline industry had operating revenues somewhat above $160 billion (see http://www.atwonline.com/channels/dataAirlineEconomics/World_Airline_Report_2008.pdf). Actually, revenues are probably significantly more, as I only included the major airlines in my total.
Even if regulators had not implemented a flight ban, many airlines would have cut some flights due to the risks of equipment damage, airline reputation, law suits and so on in the event of an accident. Therefore, the Volcano would likely have still cost the industry somewhere in the vicinity of $500 million to $1 billion. Thus, the regulators are at most responsible for $1-1.5billion in losses, which is still well below 1% of the total industry annual revenue.
Could the regulators have been more responsive and reduced some of the losses? Sure, but this whole argument is really a tempest in a teapot, probably stirred up by the Airline industry to siphon off more money from the government and pad their bottom line. I’m sure there are plenty of other regulatory blunders happening all of the time in the airline industry accounting for more than a 1% drop in revenues. There are probably also benefits greater than 1% of revenues that the airlines get from the bureaucracy, such as public assistance in funding Airports, Airport security, Air traffic control, etc…
The bottom line is that from a purely financial perspective this is a minor blip and if we look at it rationally should have been lost in the noise.
stevengoddard (11:27:42) :
Steven, have you driven 17 from Santa Cruz to Los Gatos? If you have, knowing how much weed those CA stoners have smoked, and you think flying through an ash cloud is dangerous, I’ll retire hurt!
Lots of experts posting here who know more about my experiences than I do.
Here is the flight path from SEA-LHR
http://gc.kls2.com/cgi-bin/gc?PATH=SEA-LHR&RANGE=&PATH-COLOR=&PATH-UNITS=mi&PATH-MINIMUM=&SPEED-GROUND=&SPEED-UNITS=kts&RANGE-STYLE=best&RANGE-COLOR=&MAP-STYLE=
Just like in the article.
And I was most definitely on a flight which nearly collided with another plane near Greenland. I was looking right out the window. But I do understand that air traffic controllers and pilots never, ever make mistakes, and all are experts on the effects of volcanic ash on jet engines.
Mike McMillan (16:37:31) :
Can you see through a cloud of volcanic ash, at night?