On 5/5/2010 10:17 AM, Graydon wrote:
On Wed, May 05, 2010 at 09:58:58AM -0400, P. J. Alling scripsit:
I've do a little research, and it appears that no matter what the
"Mail's" agenda, there was little enough reason for a blankett ban
air travel. Plenty of blame to go around.
Sure there is.
The ash is not evenly distributed. The ash is not predictably
distributed. There's, oh, one chance in a hundred thousand of an
emergency and some lesser chance of a crash if an aircraft flies through
the ash cloud, and because it's not a nice neat plume it's difficult to
route around. (It could well be worse than that; there isn't a large
body of statistical data on flying wide-body jet aircraft through ash
plumes because on those few occasions when it has been done it has gone
extremely wrong.)
There's between 22 and 25 thousand air movements in the affected area
of Western Europe every day. So one chance in 5 some flight has an
emergency, every day. Four chances in five that you'll get one in a
week. Do that for two weeks and the odds of a crash get peskily close
to certain.
Despite which, many of the flights wouldn't have been affected at all.
It's just that the one that *did* get the total engine out and crash
would have been correctly describable as completely predictable.
-- Graydon
WTF? The US didn't blanket ban air travel after Mount St Helens, there
was no continent wide ban and no air crashes. Yes, there were several
planes that made emergency landings from engine damage but they were in
the air in the area of the volcano when the eruption occured. Most
delays were caused by ripple effects from places actually effected by
the plume, and actual air sampling gave a very good idea of where the
problems areas lay.
If the US and Canada had taken the same tack as Europe not a plane would
have flown in North America from Mexico to the Arctic Circle, for the
duration of the several eruptions that took place. That didn't happen.
Flights were canceled only where they were at risk.
--
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New;}}
\viewkind4\uc1\pard\f0\fs20 I've just upgraded to Thunderbird 3.0 and the
interface subtly weird.\par
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