MORE VOLCANIC ASH

I spent yesterday in the hallowed halls of the Royal Aeronautical Society (well the Bill Boeing Auditorium anyway) being reacquainted with my old friend, Eyjafjallajokull and her infamous outpourings of ash in April and May of this year. I was amused that while the resident volcanologist rattled off the name with practiced ease, complete with Icelandic accent, another presenter repeatedly referred to it as ‘E15’; or the letter ‘E’ followed by 15 other random letters. There were approaching 20 presentations crammed into the agenda, which was ambitious and we could easily have survived without some of them. Most of the morning was taken up by the various agencies charged with managing the situation at the time, explaining why what they did was precisely the right thing to do and how wonderfully well they all co-operated to find solutions – not the way it looked from where I was sitting...

However, the real message was in the very first presentation, given by an economist, outlining the massive financial impact of the episode, not just on the airline sector and not just in Europe. His excellent statistics analysed details like the loss of traveller spend in destination countries, as well as the increased domestic revenues from locals who stayed at home. The bottom line was simple: everyone lost and lost heavily, and this is the point. We were shown numerous proposed initiatives like satellite imaging, forward scanning by passive infrared and atmospheric sampling by UAVs but no-one could say where the money would come from. It was patently clear that governments contributed precious little last time and that they would be unlikely to stump up any more in the future. Meanwhile, industry players who had given their resources for free in April/May expressed doubt as to whether they would be able to again. Bearing in mind the losses suffered by the industry AND by worldwide GDPs as a whole, it is vital that a joint government/industry effort is focused on bringing technology into reality and organisation into readiness, otherwise E15 and her friends (is a volcano a ‘she’? I think so) will paralyse our skies once again and we will only be able to look up and wonder at the lack of ‘airplanes in the night sky’ to wish upon!