It's called the Nanny State for a reason

The eruption of Eyjafjallajökull (hereafter to be called E+15) and the subsequent six day closure of most European airspace brought a whole new level of meaning to "shlamozzle".

What should be -- actually, probably is -- infuriating to those stranded travelers in their thousands was that the reason for their torment was not E+15, but rather bureaucrats who apparently operate under the notion that zero tolerance is somehow an intelligent means of risk assessment:

When the news about the volcano broke, we [writes Dame Hutton, who is in charge of the CAA] at the Civil Aviation Authority were faced with a huge challenge. The unequivocal guidance from manufacturers – based on such events as the multiple engine failure that affected a British Airways flight in 1982 – is that aircraft encountering volcanic ash must "AVOID AVOID AVOID", and make sure there is absolutely no interaction between jet engines and ash.

This is utter tosh. It is certain that jet engines routinely ingest volcanic ash. After all, the stuff girdles the globe following a large eruption. Further, this amounts to an hysteric's counsel: the CAA reacted to the volcano with the same calm, cool, analytical approach one expects from a pre-teen girl confronted with a spider.

The air safety threats entailed by clouds of the stuff compared to dispersal sufficient to achieve invisibility are wildly different that orders of magnitude do not suffice: the former is a near certainty, the latter is zero.

Let me repeat: flying through volcanic ash clouds insufficiently dense to be visible to the human eye poses absolutely no threat to flight safety.

What gasts even the most unflappable flabber is this zero tolerance approach absolutely turns operational risk assessment on its head. Planes have crashed, and people killed, due to run ins with our avian friends. Are we to suspend all flying where birds roam? Thunderstorms have exacted an aviation body count far exceeding that of volcanoes, which is thus far hovering at zero, yet the forecast of convective activity does not lead to cots clogging concourses across an entire continent.

If rational people, rather than place holding quangocrats with approximately the same aviation background as my dog, had been making airspace decisions, they would have looked to history and noted the number of in flight emergencies due to volcanoes amounts to a whopping zero 600 miles from eruptions much larger than E+15. They would have further noted that distance gets one only as far as Glasgow.

Now, it is true that an aircraft has suffered damage from flying through an ash cloud 1000 miles away from a volcano. But there are two things worth noting. First, it was at night, and the ash would have been visible during the day. More importantly, though, is that the damage, while requiring premature removal of the engines, did not affect the safety of the flight.

Then, at least initially, they might have: imposed 600 nm exclusion zone and a day, visual meteorological conditions (cognescenti talk for clear air) requirement extending to 1000 nm to allow see-and-avoid; required sufficient fuel to reach an alternate 1500 nm from E+15. Then they would have added a post-flight inspection requirement to look for fan blade erosion.

Which, in the event, would have closed airspace in northern Scotland and the northernmost reaches of Ireland. It would have required re-routing, or canceling, flights between Europe and US destinations west of Detroit, since great circle routes between the two regions pass within 600 nm of Iceland. Pilot reports would have quickly shrunk the exclusion zone and eliminated the day/VMC restriction outside it.

Number of aircraft damaged or endangered? Zero. Ability to react to unforeseen changes? Same as all the other meteorological phenomena the air transportation system deals with daily.

Only the warders of the nanny state think life can be made risk free.