Volcano crisis:
Sense vanishes in a puff of ash
The closure of our airspace casts a highly disturbing light
on the way we are governed, says Christopher Booker.
Last week, for the second time in a decade, a major crisis erupted out of the blue that cast a highly disturbing light on the peculiarly contorted way in which we are now governed. The Icelandic volcano shambles had striking parallels with the foot-and-mouth crisis of 2001.
Both episodes involved a massive system failure in a complex new structure of supranational governance which was being put to the test for the first time, Both were made much worse by over-reliance on an inadequate computer model, which ended up causing unnecessary chaos and misery for hundreds of thousands of people and costing not millions but billions of pounds.
What turned that shower of abrasive volcanic dust from a drama into a crisis was the central flaw in a new international system for responding to such incidents, which was put in place only last September. As everyone now recognises, the emptying of the skies which plunged Europe's airlines into chaos was a grotesque overreaction to the reality of the risks involved.
Within two days, the amount of ash over northern Europe was at barely one per cent of the official danger level. But the authorities were locked by international rules into a rigid bureaucratic system, based on a computer model, which gave them no alternative but to close down air traffic for days longer than was justified. The real flaw in the system was that it made no provision for testing that crude computer model against actual real-life data, which could have shown that the computer was vastly exaggerating the risk.
Responsibility for responding to the Icelandic eruption lay with a bewildering hierarchy of national and international authorities, starting at the top with a UN body, the International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO), working down through the European Commission and Eurocontrol (which is not part of the EU), to national agencies, such as our own Civil Aviation Authority, the National Air Traffic Service and, last but not least, the UK Met Office, owners of the relevant computer model.
Under guidelines issued by the ICAO last September, as soon as the Met Office's computer simulation of air flows around Europe indicates that a particular wind-borne dust cloud might theoretically be a danger, it automatically triggers an exclusion zone for air traffic. What the computer cannot show is the density of the dust, and whether it thus poses a genuine hazard.
A properly designed system should have allowed for immediate sampling and monitoring of the ash cloud to see whether it was at the danger level. As a spokesman for the International Advisory Committee on Flight Safety put it, "military and transport aircraft should have been sent straight up to determine the nature of the ash cloud. The density and the make-up of the cloud is what matters, and that information has just not been available."
But somehow the need for this had been completely overlooked by all the international officials involved in devising the new system (which was endorsed on our behalf by the European Commission). Because no one had been made officially responsible for carrying out the relevant sampling, it then turned out that there were very few planes left in Europe specially equipped to do it (the only dedicated aircraft in Britain was sitting in a hangar being painted). It was thus left to the beleaguered airlines to carry out their own test flights, which they began to do last weekend, finding that the quantities of ash in the air were negligible.
With losses soaring towards £2 billion, the airlines, led by British Airways, acted to break the official blockade. BA's Willie Walsh told the authorities that he had 22 aircraft already in the sky, heading for Britain – and the serried ranks of officialdom buckled, rushing to explain that they had only been doing their jobs in acting by the rule book. It was, of course, that rule book which was at fault, because it gave exclusive authority to a computer model not up to the task.
This was reminiscent of what happened in 2001, when our Government tried to tackle the foot-and-mouth epidemic within a new straitjacket of EU directives. Instead of listening to those world experts who were urging it to contain the disease by vaccination, it handed over direction of the crisis to a computer modelling team with no experience of animal diseases, who came up with that truly disastrous policy of a "pre-emptive cull". The result was that millions of healthy animals were killed unnecessarily, the appalling damage inflicted on Britain's countryside was infinitely worse than it should have been, and the cost rose into billions.
As the cloud thickens, some pilots are asking...
Why can't we just fly beneath it?
Few could have guessed the impact of eruptions from a volcano 1,000 miles away under the Eyjafjallajoekull glacier in Iceland.
Last Wednesday, we found out. At mid-morning, the high-level cloud of volcanic ash had spread across the Atlantic and was approaching Scotland. Flight operations in Aberdeen, Edinburgh and Glasgow were suspended.
By midday the whole of British airspace was closed down. It has remained so ever since.
At first it was all rather thrilling. Suddenly, city-dwellers looked up to clear quiet skies, without a vapour trail or a glint of sun hitting metal in sight.
But now hours have turned into days and, though few are willing to admit it, days could just as easily turn into weeks… or perhaps longer.
Thousands of flights have been cancelled, hundreds of thousands of passengers stranded and frustrated. The cost to airlines climbs through the millions of pounds with each passing moment.
Tune into the latest updates on-line or on television and there is an inescapable doomsday feel to it all, with graphics of a shadowy mass spreading across the outline of our island.
It is something we have, for the most part, simply accepted. After all, this isn’t some work and conditions dispute that can be argued out is it? We just have to sit it out don’t we?
Anyone in any doubt of the wisdom or necessity of this nationwide grounding is promptly reminded of what happened to BA Flight 009.
That was the jumbo jet en route from Kuala Lumpur to Perth on June 24, 1982, flying at 37,000ft when it suddenly experienced the nightmare scenario of all four engines failing.
Pilot Captain Eric Moody glided the jet down more than 20,000ft before he successfully managed to restart one engine at 13,000ft followed by others, before landing safely.
The aircraft had flown into a cloud of volcanic ash from the eruption of Mt Galunggung in Indonesia. There are other incidents too that can be cited.
On December 15, 1989, a KLM jumbo lost all four engines when it flew into a cloud that turned out to be volcanic ash while descending to Anchorage, Alaska. The engines resumed working and the aircraft landed safely, but badly damaged.
In 1991, Mt Pinatubo in the Philippines erupted, and more than 20 ‘volcanic ash encounters’ occurred from what was then the largest volcanic eruption of the past 50 years.
The ability to predict where ash was to be found was challenging because of the enormous extent of the ash cloud. Commercial flights and various military operations were affected. One US operator grounded its aircraft in Manila for several days.
Six years later, when Mt Popocatepetl in Mexico blew, there were several incidents. Although damage was minor in most cases, one flight crew experienced significantly reduced visibility for landing and had to look through the flight deck side windows to taxi after landing.
In addition, the airport in Mexico City was closed for up to 24 hours on several occasions during subsequent intermittent eruptions.
Each of these incidents was distinct and separate. And the action taken in response was distinct and separate. But that is where a gap begins to emerge between this history marshalled as reason for the current blanket grounding and the situation in which we find ourselves today.
It was these incidents that had the international aviation community look at procedures and guidelines in the event of volcanic eruption. One very sensible outcome was to increase observations and reporting.
The Galunggung incident had happened simply because no one had warned Captain Moody of the erupting volcano. Had he known about it, he could easily have changed course and avoided it.
Over the past few days we have been led to believe that grounding all planes is inevitable. That there is absolutely no alternative. But that just isn’t true.
Europe at a stand-still: Smoke and lava are seen as a volcano erupts in Eyjafjallajokul. Activity could continue for days or even months to come
What we are witnessing here is not a natural law, enshrined since time immemorial but a policy drawn up by the International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO) and then interpreted and enforced by the UK’s National Air Traffic Service (NATS). And that interpretation requires some scrutiny.
In September 2009 the ICAO published their ‘Contingency plan for handling traffic in the event of volcanic ash penetrating the airspace of North Atlantic Region’.
In many respects the guidelines are highly detailed though they make no distinction at all between major or relatively modest eruptions.
Nor do they take into account the dilution effect as the cloud spreads from the original point. The only reference is to generic dust clouds, without any attempt to carry out a risk assessment.
Using as its model the largest and most dangerous of Icelandic volcanoes, the Katla volcano, it offered a series of procedures for monitoring and tracking volcano ash clouds and ‘advice’ to be given to airlines in the event of a volcano eruption.
This current eruption is a relatively modest affair – certainly not at all in the league of Katla.
Yet it is worth noting that for even the most serious of foreseen eruptions the plan issued by the IOCA involved re-routing aircraft round, or under, dust plumes.
The control tower at Edinburgh Airport as restrictions on flights in and out of the UK remain in place
We have been scared into believing that to fly would be madness, but part of the rationale that is keeping us grounded is an economic equation rather than simple personal safety.
To fly beneath the cloud until clear of it would mean burning more fuel. But not flying at all is surely burning money more swiftly.
Low-flying to simply avoid the danger of ash being sucked into the jet engines is a temporary solution gaining currency on professional pilot’s forum Pprune. One pilot writing there yesterday pointed out: ‘The chances of it even appearing at puddle jumper altitudes is negligible’.
It isn’t just daredevil pilots who are beginning to question the necessity of the current stalemate. Steve Wood, Chief Pilot at Sussex and Surrey Air Ambulance, yesterday described the measures being taken as ‘a complete overreaction’.
Modern jet aircraft engines are amazingly robust. And indeed they must be so. They have to face not only the hazards of bird strikes, but rain, hail and even salt spray on take-off from coastal airports.
All of which can potentially wreak havoc on engines. Furthermore, sand is a common hazard from dust storms and from desert airfields.
Some aircraft are better equipped than others to deal with high-dust conditions, and consultation with aircraft and engine manufacturers might have enabled more precise restrictions to be imposed, rather than a blanket ban.
But a spokesman for NATS admitted: ‘We don’t really deal with particular manufacturers.’ They were more concerned with ‘applying the international regulations’ rather than working on a specific plane-by-plane, make-by-make basis.
The blanket ban under clear blue skies and glorious sunshine is making some wonder whether this ‘one-size-fits-all’ regulation is appropriate to a situation that the regulations did not foresee.
And there will be many among the 200,000 Britons currently stranded abroad, who would be quite happy to take the risk.
In the final analysis, despite the scares, no one has actually been killed in a volcano incident – something which cannot be said for the much more hazardous drive to the airport.
Richard North is co-author of Scared To Death – From BSE To Global Warming: Why Scares Are Costing Us The Earth.
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Posted by Bruno Waterfield in categories Ban nothing, EU, Precautionary principle on April 19th, 2010
Monday, 19 April 2010
Knee-Jerk No Fly Ban Discredits Global Warming Alarmists
dropping out of the sky contradicted by numerous successful
Paul Joseph Watson |
With European governments coming under increasing pressure from airline groups to re-open airspace following dozens of successful test flights directly through the volcano ash cloud, it appears as if the infamous UK MET Office, which relies on similar voodoo science in proliferating its fearmongering about global warming, has once again been completely discredited at a cost of widespread chaos on top of hundreds of millions of dollars a day in lost revenue.
As the Telegraph points out today, "Volcanoes have pumped ash plumes of this size and bigger into the atmosphere many times in the past without turning an entire continent into a no-fly zone."
Now International Air Transport Association chief Giovanni Bisignani has slammed the no fly ban as an "embarrassment."
“It took five days to organise a conference call with the ministers of transport. Europeans are still using a system that's based on a theoretical model, instead of taking a decision based on facts and risk assessment," said Bisignani.
"This decision (to close airspace) has to be based on facts and supported by risk assessment. We need to replace this blanket approach with a practical approach."
The knee-jerk ban on all air travel was imposed firstly in the UK on Thursday by the National Air Traffic Services company as a consequence of advice from the UK MET Office, a quasi-governmental metrological outfit which is closely connected with the UK Ministry of Defence.
The MET Office was deeply embroiled in the Climategate scandal, and as a result were forced to re-examine 160 years of temperature data before they can make their next prediction on climate change, a process that won't be completed until 2012.
The MET Office has constantly proved that it cannot even accurately predict the immediate weather forecast, never mind temperature models a hundred years into the future. The MET Office infamously predicted last year that the UK would enjoy a "barbeque summer" and a "mild winter". This was followed by disastrously wet July and August before the UK suffered one of its coldest and most severe winters in decades.
The MET Office gravely warned that the ash from the volcano would cause jet engines to fail by melting and then congealing in the turbines, but airlines have now flown multiple test flights directly through the ash cloud and safely landed with no ill effects whatsoever.
"Lufthansa and Air France’s KLM unit reported successful testing of flights without passengers during the weekend, and Air France said an inspection of an Airbus A320 flown yesterday from Paris to Toulouse showed “no anomalies,”reports Bloomberg.
KLM and Lufthansa conducted no less than 10 flights each without incident. "Airlines that have carried out test flights say planes showed no obvious damage after flying through the ash," reports the BBC.
A British Airways Boeing 747 also safely conducted a test flight through the no fly zone on Sunday.
Steven Verhagen, vice-president of the Dutch Airline Pilots Association, told the Associated Press news agency: "In our opinion there is absolutely no reason to worry about resuming flights."
Authorities have been "criticised for imposing rules which were based on theory rather than practical evidence," which sounds like a charge that could be leveled against any of the measures imposed in the name of alleviating global warming, which have proven to be based on voodoo science in light of the Climategate scandal.
Indeed, it seems that European air travel has completely ground to halt, costing hundreds of millions in lost revenue every day, while leaving thousands of people stranded in remote areas with no means of returning home, as a result of a "precaution" that remains in place despite the fact it's been soundly rubbished by the safe return of dozens of test flights.
London Telegraph blogger James Delingpole satirically scorns this "Precautionary Principle" in his article today while making the analogy to global warming.
"Has anyone else noticed that since the eruption of the Ejyerkslllbjorkscreeylllkkrctarslyllgrgleglugglug volcano not a single plane over Europe has crashed, been involved in a terrorist incident or caused any of passengers on board an aircraft any discomfort whatsoever?" he writes.
"I suggest we ground all passenger aircraft forever. On the Precautionary Principle....Do you see now, why the precautionary principle makes sense? When we apply it regularly all we have to lose is our money, our freedom and our sanity."
The chaos is costing airlines an estimated figure of $300 million dollars a day, a massive blow considering many were only just beginning to get back on their feet after the global recession. Airline and travel stocks plunged today, some by well over 6 per cent, as the market reacted to delays that some are saying could continue for weeks or even months.
Now the MET Office has gazed once more into its crystal ball and predicted that the deadly ash cloud is heading towards Canada and the U.S.
Will American and Canadian authorities exercise the same misplaced trust in the discredited MET Office and as a result threaten to derail an embryonic economic recovery? To be relying on atmospheric data from a body that has proven itself over and over again to be an outlet for bias, spectacularly inaccurate and agenda-driven science is a complete joke and cooler heads need to prevail before this stupidity drags on any longer.
Another power grab - by Richard... Tuesday, April 27, 2010
Slowly, the details are being teased out – just at a time when the British media are losing interest and focusing ever more closely on the election charade. Thus it is left to Deutsche Welle to come up with the little nugget that adds to our understanding of the threat posed to aircraft confronted by volcanic ash last week.
It appears, according to this source, that the test flights by research aircraft revealed interesting data, not only on particle density but also composition. The ash cloud, we are told, contained basalt – which is relatively benign – rather than another common component of volcanic ash known as andesite, which we are told is far more damaging to aircraft engines.
From a zero knowledge base, therefore, just by diligent perusal of the media over the last week or so, a layman of average intelligence can deduce that the threat posed by volcanic ash is determined not only by its presence, but by a number of other factors.
Particle size is an issue. Generally, the larger particles are more dangerous, although these tend to drop out earlier. Then, particle density is very relevant, as we have seen, with extremely low concentrations being reported.
Then there is the degree and extent of stratification. All things being equal, thick layers of ash present a greater hazard than thin layers, where dwell time is short-lived. And then there is the composition, yet another factor which goes to characterising the degree of threat.
All that must have been – or should have been – known to the experts, the people charged (and paid) by us to anticipate threats and to devise contingency plans and guidelines, to ensure our safety while at the same time minimising unnecessary disruption.
But, if it was, there is no evidence that any such was taken into account in the ICAO contingency plan, which makes absolutely no attempt to assess graduations of threat, other than to characterise visible ash clouds as dangerous.
With such knowledge, though, Peter Sammonds, a volcanologist at University College, London, makes complete sense. He is cited by DW saying that this underlines the fact that it is not enough to rely solely on weather simulations.
"That sort of initial monitoring of the volcano, the modelling by the Met Office, probably needs to be backed up with more intensive atmospheric sampling to try and map the distribution of the ash in the atmosphere somewhat more accurately to provide better input into what the next decision should be," he says.
The sense of this is self-evident, the obvious inference being that aircraft must be available for physical sampling, further calling into question the adequacy of the ICAO plan, which fails to state this very obvious need.
To date, the most voluble critic of the plan's inadequacies has been Giovanni Bisignani, head of the International Air Transport Association, who earlier in the crisis complained that a great swathe of northern European airspace had been closed purely on the basis of computer modelling.
"I call it a European mess because we did not focus on figures and facts. Europe was using a theoretical, mathematical approach. That is not what we need," he said last week. "We need test flights to go into the atmosphere, assess the ashes and then take decisions."
That we need to get our act together is now even more vital as there is a distinct possibility that the Eyjafjallajokull volcano eruption will be followed by the more powerful Katla, requiring a much more sophisticated response if unnecessary disruption is to be avoided.
But, while this is recognised, there is no sense of contrition evident in the authorities which crafted the original plan, which included the national safety agencies, the EU commission and the pan-European air traffic agency, Eurocontrol.
Needless to say, Eurocontrol is not keen to highlight its own lamentable role in the affair. Instead, we have Brian Flynn, deputy head of operation, claiming that: "The crisis was well managed, but it was managed as a crisis - not as a manageable threat".
He neglects entirely to say that a system was supposed to be in place, and is rehearsed bi-annually under the aegis of Eurocontrol, the last exercise actually taking place on 1 March 2010 only just over a month before systems were tested for real – and failed.
And while some have been quick to argue that critics are relying on hindsight, the potential problems were well known. Eurocontrol itself stated, well prior to the event: "The impact of the dangerous effects of volcanic ash for airlines and for ATC operations can be huge. For example the busy airspace over central Europe airspace could be contaminated by ash only a few hours after an eruption of an Icelandic eruption, if the winds are northwesterly."
Despite this, Flynn has the nerve to say that a comprehensive crisis management system is needed to deal with future events that may jeopardize international air traffic. "Volcanic eruptions are very rare in Europe" he says. "But we must also be able to deal with other threats to air safety, such as terrorism security alerts, health epidemics, and major social unrest."
Quick off the mark when there is an opportunity for aggrandisement, Eurocontrol has assembled a team of "experts" to analyse the lessons of the airspace closure, slated as "the worst disruption to hit international civil aviation since World War II." They met yesterday to start collecting and analysing the data and, no doubt, to prepare their alibis.
Alongside Eurocontrol, in an overt attempt to exploit the crisis, is Siim Kallas, the EU's transport commissioner, saying he will begin working this week with colleagues "to lay out a road map for similar events." While British politicians are immersed in the general election, the "colleagues" are untroubled by such vulgar processes and can focus on expanding their own powers.
With weary predictability, Kallas declares that, "We needed a fast, coordinated European response to a crisis." In classic "more Europe" mode, he goes on to say: "Instead, we had a fragmented patchwork of 27 national airspaces. We need a single European regulator for a single European sky." Thus he will propose speeding up the plan to unify control over all European airways.
This is picked up by The Washington Post but not, so far, by the British media which, as we know, doesn't "do" Europe – especially at election times.
And from hero of the hour, Giovanni Bisignani becomes the villain. "The volcanic ash crisis that paralyzed European air transport for nearly a week made it crystal clear that the Single European Sky is a critical missing link in Europe's infrastructure," he says. He has called an emergency meeting of EU transport ministers for 4 May – two days before our general election, to fast-track the wholesale reform of Europe's air traffic system.
By such means is a major power grab under way, where Britain will be represented by ministers who may not be in office days later and certainly have no mandate.
But the EU has its own agenda. Unified airspace, we are told, would put the skies under one regulatory body instead of leaving decisions to dozens of individual countries - "one of the key sources of confusion in the volcanic ash crisis," which the commission says "made it tough to deal with the crisis."
As we know, though, the real problem was the inadequate contingency plan – produced with the support and approval of the very agency which is now laying claim to taking unified control – compounded by the lack of aircraft capable of collecting physical data to characterise the threat, making up for the inadequacies of the Met Office's model.
When push comes to shove, it really does not matter who is in charge. If the aircraft are not available the next time an ash cloud threatens Europe, we will be just as ill-equipped as we were last week. Solving that problem is down to member states, who must put up the money and the resources, which is of course, why the EU is not concerned to highlight the fundamental defect in the system.
Such then is another example of the cynicism and ambition of the EU. There is no problem, of any nature, which cannot be perverted and shaped to provide yet another opportunity to increase European integration. And, by the time our own politicians have even begun to focus, the game may well be over.
All that will be left for us to do, as The Daily Telegraph points out, is pay the price.
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