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The great imaginary danger

Head Rambles Posted on by

Will someone please explain to me all this hoo-ha over volcanic ash?

To the best of my knowledge, no plane has ever crashed as a result of flying through the stuff.  One nearly crashed but didn’t, yet as soon as a volcano puffs a whiff of the stuff into the air, there is panic in the aviation industry.  What’s worse, they don’t even know if the stuff is up there.  The whole scare is based on mathematical models which can be notoriously inaccurate.  The computer says it’s there, so it must be there, even if the computer is wrong.

I put it down to the Nanny State mentality – one must avoid danger at any cost.  It’s a bit like “second hand” tobacco smoke – no matter how imaginary the threat then steer clear at all costs.

Icelandic volcanic eruptions are hardly a rarity yet last year was the first time that they shut down virtually the entire European airspace.  What happened in previous years?  Was it a different kind of ash?

Of course there is another explanation.

Europe is rightly pissed off at Iceland for refusing to pay their banks debts, and this is a lovely way of getting the public to curse Iceland.

This is the new mantra – if you want to get at someone, dream up some imaginary threat to get the flock of sheep public on your side.

Very like smoking, in fact.

Heh!

 

Comments

The great imaginary danger — 9 Comments

  1. Michael O’Leary agrees with you:

    “Ryanair cancelled some 30 flights to and from Glasgow Prestwick, Edinburgh and Aberdeen today but said it did not believe it was necessary.

    Ryanair chief executive Michael O’Leary said the airline had completed a one-hour “verification flight” at up to 41,000ft in Scottish airspace this morning. It said the aircraft took off from Glasgow Prestwick, flew to Inverness, on to Aberdeen and down to Edinburgh.

    In a statement, Ryanair said: “There was no visible volcanic ash cloud or any other presence of volcanic ash and the post-flight inspection revealed no evidence of volcanic ash on the airframe, wings or engines.

    “The absence of any volcanic ash in the atmosphere supports Ryanair’s stated view that there is no safety threat to aircraft in this mythical ‘red zone’, which is another misguided invention by the UK Met Office and the [Civil Aviation Authority].”

  3. Mossy – Hah!  I hadn’t seen that, though they are playing down his claim on the news at the moment.  They sound pretty annoyed with him, as he is flying [sic] in the face of their rumours.

    TT – I take it you are trying to imply something?  ;)  Actually I love flying but it does have some drawbacks.  a) I cant fit the car on the plane, b) Herself brings too much luggage and c) it’s a little more difficult with a dog in tow.  If they want someone to go on a test flight around Iceland, I would be more than happy to oblige….

  4. Michael O’Leary is a twit, His Aircraft did a test flight this morning from Scotland to 41 thousand feet and landed at Prestwick. He said there was no ash, ash clouds or a danger to Aircraft. He also said the weather forcasts and resrictions were “duff”. The operating heights for passenger aircraft over Europe is usually up to 35 thousand feet. He flew over any ash there was.
    He’ll have to waste more fuel and run his “tests” again.
    Would you trust him in a self regulation situation? I bloody would’nt.

    Aircraft have become so over engineered that they seem to need near perfect conditions to fly. The CAA stated 4 microgrammes of ash per cubic metre is the limit. Just shows how much air the engines must suck in and how much pollution they create.

    If we were still using the old piston engined aircraft, it may be a bit slower but here would not be this problem.

    I think The Icelandics are stirring up the volcanic stew just to fuck up our “great” Euro zone.

  7. indeed sir i think you are on to something, wonder what we can apply it to..hummm

  9. “Computer says it’s there so it must be”.
    Sounds a bit like global warming to me.

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