mrgumby wrote:The decision to suspend flights was made using the best knowledge available.
This is what I have serious doubts about.
mrgumby wrote:I don't know where you get the bit about people losing their lives?
People who couldn't fly used cars to travel and died in car accidents which would not happen if they could fly.
What I am proposing is:
instead of just banning all flight and then sitting on their asses for five days they should have go and measure what ash concentrations are where and based on that decide where it is safe to fly and where it's not. That's what they are doing now but that's what took them five days to start doing.
I live in central Europe, fairly close to our country's main airport. I see no volcano ashes in the sky, no clouds, no smells, nothing. What I see is perfectly clear sky. It's been the same all the time, if I didn't read a volcano erupted I would never guess anything happened.
I can't tell there are no ashes in the air. Maybe there is slightly increased amount of dust particles, something measurable but not visible with naked eye. But what I can tell is that whole Europe including Italy and Spain was grounded for five days, then in just one day they moved the boundary by several thousands of kilometers. It screams incompetency in decisions to me and that's what I am complaining about.
There's no way I'd ask for planes to fly through volcano ash clouds. All I'm asking about is to leave it up to experts.