Roughly three months after ash from an Icelandic volcano crippled air travel in Europe, the international airline industry is still trying to craft guidelines as to when planes can safely fly through such a hazard, The Wall Street Journal reported Saturday.
Airplane and engine manufacturers Thursday decided that they need more research done and stressed that it is dangerous to fly through airspace that has even a low level of ash.
Executives from the air transportation industry also said that pilots have to avoid visible ash since there aren’t reliable ash detectors for planes.
European airlines lost more than $1.7 billion when ash from an erupting volcano, Eyjafjallajokull, in Iceland floated into airspace over the continent, virtually stopping air travel. To avoid a similar situation in the future, Europeans airlines want global benchmarks for safe ash levels to be set.
But the various interested parties can’t agree to on the standards, according to The Journal. For example, the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration take the position that if ash clouds can be seen by pilots, they should be avoided, as a pilot would change course to miss a severe thunderstorm.
Preliminary research by Honeywell International Inc. has found that the Icelandic ash in April was more dangerous than previously believed, because it contained sulfuric clouds, which can wreck havoc with jet-turbine engines, The Journal reported.
That’s more evidence that we should err on the side of caution when considering having our commercial airliners fly through volcanic ash.