Now if there could be a natural disaster that would make hand held gadgets crash; maybee folks would be able to talk to talk to actual human being right in front of them.
Not to undermine the scale of volcanic ash and all, its just that these global groups always have some hype that they are pushing. Like Climategate, the hoax. Just makes me wonder. Iceland just voted as a nation to reject the bank pay-off--pay off from what I wonder.... Some international bankers create the unwrapping of a nations economy and then come in and ask for a bailout---sound familiar? http://www.usatoday.com/money/world/2010-03-05-iceland-bank-losses_N.htm
What I find ironic is that when the airlines got together and all just happened to run test flights on the same day it only took a matter of hours for Europe's policy of zero tolerance of ash to be revised - a policy making process that usually takes years took hours.
Now the Airlines are demanding government compensation for the last few days of the zero tolerance policy that they happily flew with for decades.
So, if the policy was so clearly flawed for so many years why did these evidently very powerful airlines not invest a relatively small amount of money in testing this out years ago? Why did they not get the zero tolerance policy abolished years ago and replaced with a 'safe' tolerance level?
The simple fact is the Airlines have no one to blame but themselves for their own shortsightedness, their own failure to perform contingency planning and risk assessment, and their own failure to purchase insurance for such an eventuality.
Why not fly OVER the ash cloud? For international flights.
Quote "'German planes are flying over London again,' said a Lufthansa spokesman. 'We are using a corridor over England and flying very high - above 20,000ft - to keep above the ash cloud.' One of the first was a Lufthansa Boeing 747 Jumbo jet with a thin white vapour trail in its wake through clear blue skies." (Daily Mail)
Neil wrote: Maybe they can redirect cruise ships for use as transatlantic ocean liners!
I wondered about this too. Before the present dominance of air-travel people had the option of taking a "steamer" instead of an airplane (earlier aircraft were also less able to handle adverse weather) whenever transit of any significant body of water was needed.
Airship proponents would still have to deal with ash-fouled engines in such a situation, but at least the craft would not fall out of the sky.
So far as I can tell, the issue here with aircraft seems to be how much volcanic ash jet turbines can absorb w/o damage. Even turboprops (e.g. Lockheed Hercules, Vickers Viscount) would have the same problem.
I also wonder how well RF navigation aids like GPS work with all that stuff in the air. And celestial navigation wouldn't be much help while in the "soup," either.
Maybe they can redirect cruise ships for use as transatlantic ocean liners!
Another technology trap. Not that I'm down on technology, but it's interesting to see how events like this ash cloud show how increasingly dependent on technology we become as technology itself advances.
Less than 100 years ago, this ash cloud would be little more than a passing curiosity, I suspect.
"Gil Rugh said or, wrote: The perspective of the believer and unbeliever on world events is very different. The unbeliever's level of peace and security rises and falls as the economy, the environment, the political scene, and so forth either causes problems, or seems to be resolved. The believer understands the problem in the world is sin, only God has the solution,..."
Jim Is the problem here that God created volcanos OR that man, with God given ingenuity, built airplanes, which cannot fly through volcano ash???
Also "the problem of sin" which you refer to; Is this the reason why some people must use modern versions???
Gil Rugh said or, wrote: The perspective of the believer and unbeliever on world events is very different. The unbeliever's level of peace and security rises and falls as the economy, the environment, the political scene, and so forth either causes problems, or seems to be resolved. The believer understands the problem in the world is sin, only God has the solution,...
Dr. Alan Cairns | 2/2/2009
COMMENTS | 
christopher000 from rhode island: "let's see, they kill men, women, and children,..."
