Safety concerns must remain paramount in air travel crisis

When mother nature roars, she has a way of getting our attention. The awesome power of nature in all its raw glory witnessed in the past week is a reminder that we are mere tenants on this planet and that humankind cannot ever hope to control the forces that have shaped the world in which we live. The extent to which the Eyjafjallajokull volcano has shaped the lives of European air travellers has become all too evident in the past seven days. A major eruption of a relatively small volcano underneath a glacier in southern Iceland, combined with unprecedented meteorological conditions blowing the massive ash could down over densely populated northern Europe, has brought a continent to a standstill as a flight ban imposed by aviation authorities has stranded hundreds of thousands of passengers in far-flung destinations around the globe. Airports across Ireland and throughout Europe have remained eerily quiet as aircraft have been grounded and increasingly desperate, broke and exhausted travellers use any means at their disposal to get themselves home. Stories are legion of Irish people stranded in various locations throughout Europe and beyond using all manner of ingenious methods to get themselves to northern European ferry ports and a ride home - all told with the stoic good humour that Irish people are noted for. Many Meath travellers have been caught up in the crisis, too, with some already having made it home successfully but with many more still abroad hoping the situation will improve by the end of this week. This has been an extremely damaging period for airlines that are struggling to survive after starting to emerge from the most difficult 18 months in their history and there are huge commercial pressures to get planes lined up on runways and into the skies again. However, safety must remain the number one priority for carriers and must at all times override the understandable desire on the part of some airline managers to have the no-fly ban lifted, at least partially. In the past, there have been as many as 60 reported incidents of damage to aircraft engines from flying into and through volcanic ash and one particularly celebrated incident where a British Airways Boeing 747 lost all of its four engines after encountering an ash plume in darkness over Indonesia. In this case, the flight crew were able to relight the engines when the plane descended out of the contaminated air but it does not bear thinking about what might have happened if the engines were too damaged to re-start. Several major European airlines have already conducted test flights without incident but there has been some criticism of these tests in that they were only superficially scientific. In other words, there is simply not enough data collated at this point for regulators to make a definitive judgement as to whether it is safe to fly in such conditions or not. Until that data is available, there should be no lifting of the restrictions in countries over which the ash cloud is located. This is certainly going to be inconvenient for passengers and economically difficult for airlines as long as the volcano eruptions continue and the wind direction is blowing from the north or north-west. The beginnings of a properly co-ordinated plan from European governments began to emerge on Monday with the differentiation of threat levels throughout Europe that will allow some countries to open their airports depending on the air conditions. However, much more needs to happen much more quickly if this massive and unprecedented disruption is not to become commonplace over the next weeks or months if, for instance, the volcano continues to emit ash to high levels and, more seriously, if its much bigger neighbour, Katla, also erupts which Icelandic seismologists say is possible given the seismic activity going on in the area at present. The Government's emergency taskforce has said that weather forecasts still indicate that, by the weekend, the weather pattern should enable more flight restrictions to be eased over Ireland and Europe. That represents the best chance of a way out of this crisis and would be most welcome, but it may only be temporary if the wind direction changes again. Maurice Mullen, the chairperson of the committee, said the geological information available indicated that the volcano is generating less ash than previously, although there are still some smaller sporadic eruptions taking place. The best estimate of the numbers of Irish people still caught up in the shutdown is 20,000 to 30,000. He said, based on their correlations with the movement through ferry ports, it is possible that 20 per cent to 30 per cent of that number may already have arrived back in Ireland. Ominously, Icelandic president Olafur Grimsson said European and international experts need to draw up plans on how to cope with a possible eruption from the even bigger Katla volcano. He said it has a history of erupting twice a century and last erupted in 1918. These is an extraordinary crisis beyond the control of any airline or government but there is now a realisation that a regular paralysis of European airspace such as we have experienced in the last week will do severe damage to the economic recovery underway in Europe and do an equal amount of harm to our own stuttering economy which is still mired in recession. Airlines will go to the wall and passenger confidence in the industry and air travel in general will be seriously dented unless governments and aviation regulators can put in place a system that takes account of the new realities and which will allow flights whilst maintaining the necessary safety margins that passengers have come to expect during this crisis period.