Volcano Blast 2

A new sci-fi, action thriller by top European studios. Featuring top British and French stars of the past two decades.

Yeah that was just a joke. But it seems that nightmarish volcano issue hasn't quite passed us yet. The thing is once again blasting more ash into the fly zone of British Isles airspace forcing some more closures in Ireland, Scotland and northern UK.

So this is not such big news because none of the major European airports were affected directly. You know, Heathrow, Charles de Gaulle, Frankfurt... Etc. What was interesting was the emergency meeting the European Commission had on the aftermath of the crazy six-day-no-fly crisis in April. Please keep in mind the very important operative notion that the EC met AFTER the crisis.

What came out of this very pro-active way of working was the following:

1) EU Member States will have to bail-out their national airlines affected by the poor decision making of the European institutions.

I was under the impression that because the EU didn't do their work properly to make sure the Greek economy was sustainable, to what is basically an economic cooperation which is the EU, that the whole European economy is about to go for a second dip following the financial crisis of 2009. How do they suppose national governments can support a bail-out of this size? The whole structure will just fall to pieces!

2) A previous plan for the creation of a single controlling body of European airspace will be brought forward from 2012 to later this year. The idea being a single entity will call the shots in terms of European air travel safety, airspace, etc.

How on Earth does that help? The airspaces closed because all Member State national civil aviation bodies followed the recommendations of the European air travel advisory institution, Eurocontrol. Of course we all know it was due to their over-cautious reports that wiped hundreds of millions of Euros off the accounts of, not just airlines, but everyone (civilians included). Creating a body that will call the shots over that of every national aviation authority doesn't solve the problem. That wasn't the problem in the first place.

The problem was that there were no precedence and no one really knew what the safe ash-air concentration is. Why don't they just start scientific researches into this phenomenon and draw up proper regulations to govern situations like this.

Come on people. Stop being stupid. The entire European Institution is, well, basically that: an institution. Stop being bureaucratic, do some proper root cause analysis and fix the problem!


- Posted from my iPhone