Hello Bloggers!
As all of you might have heard, the eruption of Eyjafjallajokull volcano in Iceland has caused air travel chaos across Europe, stranding 1,000,000 of travellers!!!
Airline companies such as British Airways, Austrian Airlines, Ryan Air and many others have been canceling both short-haul and long-haul flights due to the very high risks the fine particles of rock and glass erupted by the volcano may cause.
Scientists have proven that when these fine particles composed of glass and rock are "sucked into aircraft engines and rapidly heated can quickly clog vital intake valves with molten glass, causing the engine to overheat and fail." However, Air France, Lufthansa and KLM have carried out test flights through the ash cloud without any kind of damage to the aircraft.
Lufthansa flew 10 long-haul planes from Munich to Frankfurt through the ash cloud and reported there was not even an indication of a scratch on any of the planes."We observed no irregularities either during the flight or during the initial inspection on the ground," Peter Hartman, KLM's chief executive who was aboard Saturday's flight, said.
No one knows how long the ash cloud will last, so the question arises, are flight bans really necessary even after test flights have proven otherwise? Are civil aviation authorities being overly precarious? Thoughts??
8 comments:
I m not an expert, but I do think that security goes beyond anything, therefore I do think that flight bans are necessary. These test flights may have worked on these occassions, but just think about the opposite. If, because of some successful test flights,other air carriers (from different countries) get comfortable and try to think about commercialisation before safety and prove negatively, what then? At the end of the day, nothing is certain, either way it is going to have some positive and some negative aspects for one or the other.
I agree with Hulya. Flying a few planes around completely randomly is not exactly the most scientific way of testing the effects of the ash, they may basically just have been lucky and flown through smaller concentrations. Military planes have been doing actual testing and measurements and found microscopic particles in their engines that had caused damage. I can see the frustration of the airlines because judging the movement and concentration of the ash is basically guesswork. So something more should be done,but just taking the chance is definitely not the right solution
I have to agree with the ladies, despite being irritated by the ban. I wonder how come the commercial companies' tests were positive while the ones from the government aren't... It seems to me that agendas are once again being set above us...and I doubt any had our prime interest at heart....
i also think that securtiy should be the first priority, but i think this will not last any longer because the airlines already made a loss of a couple of million euros.
... for me this whole situation is quite scary. the last time this vulcano errupted was about 200 years ago. and then it was keeping on errupting for about 2 years on the go. just imagine this would happen in todays world?!noone would be able to travel around the world. loads of companies will be having financial problems.
man kind of 2010 can't imagine what a big disaster only one vulcano can create. that is why i think that airplane companies just try their best to fly at risk. because with every day, where no planes departure, they loose money. and todays world is ruled by money ...
I agree that security is more important than risking that a plan could crash just because of the money. However airlines can't afford it any longer to stop planes from flying.
The economical effct also reaches beyond flying: lots of farmers, especially from Africa or South America, can't export their agricultural products...
It was only a question of time that airplanes could fly again, because in a world which is dominated by money and the phenomen of globalisation, planes are irresistable. The erruption of the vulcano just has proven has how weak this network actually is!
This was sooo crazy i have never heard about something like this before. Funny to see how depended we are on airplanes. So much food got wasted because it couldn't be transported from A to B. I wish I would have been on holiday and not being able to come back to work.. lol!!!
Thank u, good post! =)
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