WaPo: Airlines, European officials urge end to flight restrictions

From http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/04/18/AR2010041802260.html">The Washington Post:


More at the link above. So I've seen Jaws. What happens is money makes pressure. Pressure causes the politicians and the lawmakers to cave. Then somebody gets eaten by a shark and everybody in charge stuffs their hands in their pockets, starts whistlin', and walks around the nearest corner.

PB

Bullshit. That type of ash can really fuck up a jet engine.

Closer to the truth: We're losing money! Get my planes in the air, goddammit!

And the planes can fly under the ash cloud. There is no reason for the continuing restrictions.

:shrug:

PB

"But a case study by the US National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) suggests that even tenuous volcano ash clouds can inflict serious damage to an airliner. While the damage may not necessarily threaten the immediate flight, one cruise through an invisible ash plume can run up a multimillion-dollar repair tab.

The plume in the NASA study was so thin that the flight crew had none of the cues they ordinarily might rely on – odd engine readings, the smell of smoke of sulfur in the cockpit, or even outside electrical phenomena such as St. Elmo's Fire – to alert them to a plume's presence. And they had no visual clues on the aircraft after landing to tell them they'd encountered a plume.

The case study concludes that the engines sustained enough damage that key components could well have started to fail with only another 100 hours of flying time."

More at source: http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/2010/0418/Should-planes-fly-in-Iceland-volcano-ash-Be-careful-study-says.

Winds can shift. Shit can (and usually does) happen. Don't fuck with Mother Nature!

Fucking with Mother Nature is what we've done since day one.

But on the night of Feb. 28, 2000, the crew of a DC-8 NASA used for atmospheric research discovered first-hand that ash plume forecasts are not perfect. The agency ended up paying a $3.2 million repair bill.

The DC-8 was en route to Kiruna, Sweden, for the start of a research project to study atmospheric ozone over the Arctic, according to a NASA technical report written by Thomas Grindell of NASA's Dryden Flight Research Center in Edwards, Calif., and Frank Burcham Jr. of Analytical Services and Materials, Inc., also in Edwards. Some 35 hours earlier Iceland's Mt. Hekla volcano had sent clouds of ash and steam soaring to altitudes of 45,000 feet.

The DC-8 was cruising at just more than 500 miles an hour at 37,000 feet and some 200 miles north of where the plume was predicted to extend. The sky was generally cloudless with no moonlight. But the highly sensitive research sensors aboard the craft detected a sudden rise in ash particles and sulfur dioxide. For seven minutes, the craft flew through a tenuous ash cloud some 800 miles from the volcano.

The only visual clue they had: They couldn't see stars in the night sky, a common phenomenon when flying through high-altitude cirrus clouds. Cockpit instruments reported no unusual engine behavior. The crew smelled nothing unusual. And they saw no other visual clues that would tip them off to the presence of volcanic ash.

try another angle, that one isn't persuasive.

:boring:

Oh Canada!

Sounds like you've already had a few.

swoon

in danger if you should fly through one of these clouds?

Plane engines get bird strikes, sand, salt - they aren't as delicate as everyone seems to believe. And there are lots of dangerous conditions to fly in. Going under a cloud isn't one of them

Huh.

Edited to add the question, what are your credentials?

Since planes flew through it today, no.

Since pilots are the ones complaining about the restrictions, no.

Since it's about flying UNDER the cloud, no.

The PILOTS are the ones complaining about the flight restrictions, and the plan is to fly UNDER the cloud. They can also fly through the holes like 3 KLM planes did today.

Satellite imaging takes care of the rest.

or attempt to restart their engines should they fly through an ash cloud. What is the altitude of the cloud? Are they going to fly below Class A airspace flight level 18000? How will ATC handle that and the VFR traffic since everything above FL180 is IFR?

If you can't, then don't ever fly.

Altitude is money in the bank. The more you have the more options and time you have to make decisions and fly the plane. What is your expertise?

restart the engines. What part of that don't you understand? I'll ask again: what is your expertise?

If you can't trust pilots, then do us all a favor and don't fly.

You don't belong in the air.

If your so damn tough, why don't you answer questions? Bravado is pretty easy behind a keyboard.

to sit behind that keyboard safe and secure without all engines out, at night, trying to restart your engines, losing altitude fast, terrain rising and trying to keep the aircraft from hitting the earth. But for you, flying Microsoft Flight Simulator, it's really easy: if you crash, you start a new game. Real life is different with life and death consequences.

You told me outright that pilots make mistakes.

Of course they do.

So do surgeons. And dentists. And lawyers. And chiropodists. Shit happens.

But you can't spend your life hiding under a bed. Because then you'd have to trust the bedmakers.

If you can't trust someone's professional judgement, that's where you belong though.

And if you don't feel you have the competence to fly a plane, and you certainly don't seem to since you equate flying lower with more time to make a decision, then you shouldn't be in the business.

grounding the planes, it's the civil aviation authorities. But then again, you can puff your chest out all you want because you have no skin in the game.

A surgeon, dentist or whatever can only injure/kill one person at a time. A pilot can injure/kill hundreds at a time. But then you knew that.

as I said many posts ago upthread.

If you don't trust other pilots, you don't trust yourself.

Change jobs.

No one has the patience for it. Sorry.

ANGRY PILOTS: IT'S SAFE FOR US TO FLY NOW

Monday April 19,2010
By John Ingham

PILOTS and airlines led protests against the aviation lockdown last night, claiming it was perfectly safe for aircraft to fly at lower altitudes.

Germany’s Lufthansa and Air Berlin, and KLM from the Netherlands have all carried out test flights in the past few days and said there was no damage to their planes.

British Airways yesterday became the latest airline to send up a test flight to check the dangers posed by ash.

One former airline pilot said: “There seems to be a bit of an overreaction by the authorities. Nobody has previously shut down airspace over such a large area due to a volcanic eruption and you have to question whether the evidence for this is cast iron.”


http://www.express.co.uk/posts/view/170080/Angry-pilots-It-s-safe-for-us-to-fly-now



And on the weekend Steven Verhagen, vice-president of the Dutch Airline Pilots' Association, pointed out that risk can never be entirely eliminated.

“We are asking the authorities to really have a good look at the situation, because 100 per cent safety does not exist,” he said. “It's easy to close down air space because then it's perfectly safe. But at some time you have to resume flights.”

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/world/carriers-push-to-reassess-danger-and-reopen-skies/article1538732/

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/36637380/ns/travel-news/

LONDON - A senior Western diplomat said several NATO F-16 fighters suffered engine damage after flying through the volcanic ash cloud covering large parts of Europe.

The official declined to provide more details on the military flights, except to say that glasslike deposits were found inside the planes' engines after they patroled over European air space.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/in_depth/8632583.stm

There was a pilot on one of the news channels today who was being interviewed. He flew thru volcanic ash in 1982 and all four engines lost power. It was quite a stressful situation as the pilot kept trying to restart the engines of the jetliner. Eventually, around 11,000 feet he was able to restart them. He said that he would not want to risk flying in that again.

With unbelievable restraint, Captain Eric Moody addressed British Airways flight 009 as his Boeing 747 drifted inexorably down towards the Indian Ocean.

Displaying the stiff-upper-lip spirit that built an empire, he uttered the words that are every air passenger's worst nightmare: 'Ladies and gentlemen, this is your captain speaking. We have a small problem. All four engines have stopped. We are doing our damnedest to get it under control. I trust you are not in too much distress.'

Minutes before, while cruising at ten kilometres above the sea, Captain Moody had instructed his first officer to send a Mayday call to ground control in nearby Indonesia. The date was June 24, 1982, and this extraordinary flight has since gone down in aviation history.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-431802/The-story-BA-flight-009-words-passenger-dreads-.html#ixzz0lIGfgWJw

they were lucky one of their engines came back on line...

This link goes there after search:
http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/2010/0418/Should-planes-fly-in-Iceland-volcano-ash-Be-careful-study-says.
For some reason the one without the period at the end (or "dot") doesn't. Odd.
http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/2010/0418/Should-planes-fly-in-Iceland-volcano-ash-Be-careful-study-says

It's that simple - so what if a plane load of folks die.

..... The free market lets consumers choose whether to live or die. :sarcasm: