Posted on 05/17/2010 7:54:05 PM PDT by Stoat
The airport chaos that hit tens of thousands of travellers yesterday was based on a faulty ash cloud prediction.
Officials closed south-eastern airspace for ten hours following a Met Office alert about dangerous levels of ‘black’ ash.
Yet when the forecasters took fresh soundings, and sent up a plane to check, they found their assessment was flawed: there was no such ash. By the time the mistake had been realised, Heathrow had cancelled 169 arrivals and departures and Gatwick more than 200. An estimated 50,000 passengers were affected. Willie Walsh, boss of British Airways, said the shutdown was a gross over-reaction to a very minor risk. ‘I am very concerned that we have decisions on opening and closing of airports based on a theoretical model,’ he added. ‘There was no evidence of ash in the skies over London yet Heathrow was closed.’
(Excerpt) Read more at dailymail.co.uk ...
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Yes, they did the same thing last month. This Free Republic thread is from April 24:
Ash cloud that never was: Volcanic plume over UK only a twentieth of safe-flying limit
Ash cloud that never was- Volcanic plume over UK only a twentieth of safe-flying limit
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Going nowhere: A man sleeps at London's Heathrow Airport yesterday after flights were cancelled 
So, let's see how this plays out. BTW, I think the odds favor the Mid-Atlantic Ridge!
Yah. I got an unplanned “vacation” in Frankfurt thanks to the cloud. Two days of touring alone — fine. THEN it became boring. But better that than an “unplanned descent.” Let them work out the hazards offline.
Those who didn't are definitely candidates for the Darwin Award!
Don’t know if you’ve seen this, I’ve posted it once or twice on FR since the...ash alert.
http://www.pprune.org/rumours-news-13/
Professional Pilots Rumor Network
They have an ongoing thread about all things ash. Most of it is way above my head - pilot lingo - but trying to find the most recent updates about closures. DH is flying out of EU tomorrow.
Thank you. Where did you find those?
He’s flying from Warsaw to Amsterdam and thence to the US.
I keep checking the airline website and so far so good. Looks as though PL and NL will be okay.
Your link in #5 gave me other links
Duh.
I am a complete idiot - have all the working parts.
:-)
I remember when this first came out, I questioned the severity based on the location of England in relation to Iceland and the prevailing winds.
It just didn't seem like such a major catastrophe to me.
But then ... I wasn't there, so what do I know.
bttt
Nope, this simply proves that free market decision making is better. Let the airlines decide if it is safe to fly, give passengers the information and let each accept the consequences.
Alert level is orange, because it is always orange.
Not that "free market decisions" can't be made, but without some sort of "standards" the passengers are not going to be fully informed.
There's been so much government and other funding doled out for projects that would seem to solidify the case for global warming, that what underling could avoid being swept away in the chase for such government money, jobs and career advancement while avoiding being black-balled!
HF
Not exactly. Those of us that know aviation (over 20-yrs in the business as a fighter pilot), and having flown near ash clouds before, we knew from the start that this was a CYA over-reaction. Europe has been closing airspace based on mathematical predictions of where the ash might go, not real-world data, and this led to unnecessary stoppages.
Volcanic activity is not new. In the state of Alaska, for example, this has been a reality for many years and dealt with accordingly. The solution: Find out as much as possible about the ash cloud and reroute. . .don’t panic and don't over-react. Unfortunately, many people that have limited experience in aviation sound like the occasional airline traveler standing in the insane TSA “security” line: “Oh, isn't this wonderful. We should all be willing to fly nakked just to be safe.”
Europe should follow the US: The FAA’s primary method of dealing with volcanic ash is operator avoidance, since the geographical location of areas that may be affected by volcanic ash is weather-dependent, we manage air traffic when confronted with volcanic ash like any other major weather event. We don't willy-nilly close airspace.
The U.S. gathers information from various agencies and disseminates it to aviators and it is the operator that makes the decision to fly or not. If the operator chooses to fly, then FAA controllers will direct the operator around volcanic ash.
In the US, it is the airlines that supplement government volcano alerts by providing visual confirmation by pilots, who fly without passengers solely to determine the extent of the ash. We simply don't rely on computer models. Real-world exploration of the actual ash cloud is key. Then when you have real-world data, you put a safety margin around the affected area and fly around it if you can. If you can't, then you cancel the flight. Europe did not do this. They simply cancelled.
The ultimate goal should be: Close airspace only when singnificant ash is actually present, not where a computer model says there MIGHT be ash.
Sure, they're about the same size, both have some mountains and active volcanos, and people live there.
On the other hand, Europe has 800 (minimum) TIMES the population of Alaska, and the airspace is vastly busier.
We can only imagine how flights get rerouted in Europe.
No one is ever fully informed. There’s never perfect information in any market.
What minimum standards do you want to know before you fly a commercial airline?
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