"Met Office chairman Robert Napier spent eight years running the Worldwide Fund for Nature. He changed the emphasis of its work from the protection of endangered species to lobbying for tougher climate-change measures."
Posted on 04/24/2010 8:26:14 PM PDT by Stoat
The Mail on Sunday can today reveal the full extent of the shambles behind the great airspace shutdown that cost the airlines £1.3 billion and left 150,000 Britons stranded - all for a supposed volcanic ash cloud that for most of the five-day flights ban was so thin it was invisible.
As the satellite images of the so-called 'aerosol index' published for the first time, right, demonstrate, the sky above Britain was totally clear of ash from Iceland's Eyjafjallajoekull volcano.
Inquiries by this newspaper have disclosed that:
'We never understood why a blanket ban had been imposed - something that would not have happened in other parts of the world,' a senior airline executive said yesterday.
(Excerpt) Read more at dailymail.co.uk ...
It pains me to say this, but on this occasion I’m with the regulators. For years they’ve been trying to persuade the airlines to jointly commission proper research on an acceptable maximum threhold of ash through which it’s safe to fly. Such research has never been conducted.The airlines have always refused, insisting on an ‘any ash present, no fly’ regime. The airlines have only themselves to blame now this has come back to hit them.
It appears that the powers that be are desperate for crisis.
You are 200 percent correct. The issue, IMHO, is that governments will spend TRILLIONS of dollars coddling illegal aliens and welfare cases, and completely abdicate their true responsibility, which is keeping us safe. IMHO, that's why you see situations like the one above. Have you noticed how they're cutting police, fire, and teaching positions instead of welfare payments, at least where I am?
I seriously doubt there were even German airline pilots flying anything through the Pinatubo dust clouds ~ but that doesn't mean they didn't want to!
Again, may I remind you that just because you don't remember something doesn't mean it didn't happen.
Bitch bitch moan , moan bitch bitch moan.
Get a life
Because when it concerns volcanic ash...VFR rules don't work. You aren't just trying to stay out of the "cloud" and you can be VFR for days and still have enough ash in the air to stall your engines (if you are a jet).
Ash builds up over time on the engine...so even if you can't see it...its slowly building up in your engine...and grinding the little pieces down.
There is also the little problem of abrasiveness. Even if there is just a little bit of it in the air...it's abrasive. When it hits the cockpit window, it scours it (almost looks like a frosted up window). Then the pilot can't see whether its VFR or IFR. You want to fly with a blind pilot...go ahead...
You definitely were not following the story at all if you picked up on just the CO2 parts ~ http://www.philly.com/inquirer/front_page/20100423_Iceland_a_hot_spot_of_volcanic_activity.html
The amount of flourine emitted at this spot is unusually high. Deadly events elsewhere that appear to have involved the Iceland volcanic array include the destruction of Northern and Western Europe at the start of the Dark Ages (circa 535 AD) That event is reported in the Annals of the Kings of Britain. Later reports from British reports reveal that when resettlement was attempted in what is now called Brittany there were basically no animals, people or plants around anymore. Merlin found it necessary to replant all the vinyards (among other things).
More recently archaeologists have found that Sa'ami settlements in Southern Norway, Sweden, Finland and the Baltic states were present for thousands of years and then appear to have suddenly disappeared. This was before the Indo-European invasions!
If you read the article you'd notice that a modern era eruption killed people with poison gas in Britain (not just Iceland).
There's a reason almost all the people in the world with an Icelandic ancestor live in the United States or Canada.
"Met Office chairman Robert Napier spent eight years running the Worldwide Fund for Nature. He changed the emphasis of its work from the protection of endangered species to lobbying for tougher climate-change measures."
Nah, I am not buying it.
If you have clear visibility there isn’t enough ash to cause any problems. Sure you might have some ash in the air (dust) but that is just routine maintenance issues.
I flew over to Mount Saint Helen’s just after it blew and it was easy to avoid the ash. And no, there was no abrasion on the prop or the windshield.
The results of a brief seven minute encounter with a diffuse ash cloud.
http://www.nasa.gov/centers/dryden/p...ain_H-2511.pdf
In the early morning hours of February 28, 2000, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) DC-8 Airborne Sciences research airplane inadvertently flew through a diffuse plume of volcanic ash from the Mt. Hekla volcano. There were no indications to the flight crew, but sensitive onboard instruments detected the 35-hr-old ash plume. Upon landing there was no visible damage to the airplane or engine first-stage fan blades; later borescope inspection of the engines revealed clogged turbine cooling air passages. The engines were removed and overhauled at a cost of $3.2 million. Satellite data analysis of the volcanic ash plume trajectory indicated the ash plume had been transported further north than predicted by atmospheric effects. Analysis of the ash particles collected in cabin air heat exchanger filters showed strong evidence of volcanic ash, most of which may have been ice-coated (and therefore less damaging to the airplane) at the time of the encounter. Engine operating temperatures at the time of the encounter were sufficiently high to cause melting and fusing of ash on and inside high-pressure turbine blade cooling passages. There was no evidence of engine damage in the engine trending results, but some of the turbine blades had been operating partially uncooled and may have had a remaining lifetime of as little as 100 hr. There are currently no fully reliable methods available to flight crews to detect the presence of a diffuse, yet potentially damaging volcanic ash cloud.
And doing that is, well...risky! You could end up dead!
Communist regimes ALWAYS put bureaucrats in charge of important and critical infrastructure who have little or no experience in the basics of what they're charged with running.
These people are political appointees who have the correct political orientation and party allegiance, which for Commies, trumps real knowledge and experience. Disasters ALWAYS follow these appointments, as a result.
Welcome to the United Soviet Socialist Kingdom.
Centralized government strikes again. The EUwwww is going to give the people of Europe a ride for their money.
So, the MET office erred on the side of caution, and they are idiots for being careful.
Had the ban NOT gone into effect, and ONE aircraft had lost its engines, the same cry-babies who are snivelling about the shutdown would be screaming about malfeasance and greed, profits over safety, and all the rest of the anti-business drivel spewed by the ignorance and class-warfare brigade.
The MET office made the correct choice, since nobody was hurt.
Water vapor is a LOT less abrasive to jet engines than pumice stone. The water also doesn’t melt in the combustion chamber and deposit on the turbine blades.
Taxi drivers, ferries, car hire companies, hotel chains :)
LOL
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