With airports in Northern Europe left struggling to get passengers home after more than five days of air space being closed, Charles Schlumberger of the World Bank outlines the impact on the industry, the challenges this unprecedented event has caused.
In a completely unprecedented event, air travel in Europe was last week brought to a virtual standstill after European air space was closed for five days between April 15 and April 20. Thousands of travellers, including many World Bank staff, were stranded in many parts of Europe and beyond, as they could not transit through key hubs. With each passing day expectations were high that 'tomorrow things will gradually return to normal' but it took five full days before scheduled finally resumed and even then the backlog meant that operations remained far from normal.
In a nutshell:
The cause of the problem:
A volcano in Iceland, under a glacier known as Eyjafjallajokull, began erupting several weeks ago for the first time since the 1820s. It exploded more violently early Wednesday April 14, spewing ash 30,000 feet into the air. For aviation the major difference with this eruptions, compared with others, is the fact that the volcano was covered with a massif cap of ice, which melted in an explosive manner. This resulted that the lava and its ashes were transformed into an aerosol type, which stays airborne for days, and which is transported over long distances.
The aviation world has very limited experience with volcanic ashes:
Even though there have been over 80 ash related incidents in aviation over the past decades, only two major incidents involving commercial airliners and volcanic ashes were examined in detail. One of these incidents was British Airways Flight 9, sometimes referred to as the Speedbird 9 or Jakarta incident. This was a scheduled British Airways flight from London Heathrow to Auckland, with stops in Mumbai, Madras, Kuala Lumpur, Perth, and Melbourne. On June 24, 1982, the route was flown by the City of Edinburgh aircraft, a 747-236B. The aircraft flew into a cloud of volcanic ash thrown up by the eruption of Mount Galunggung (circa 180 kilometres (110 mi) south-east of Jakarta, Indonesia), resulting in the failure of all four engines. The reason for the failure was not immediately apparent to the crew or ground control. The aircraft was diverted to Jakarta in the hope that enough engines could be restarted to allow it to land there. The aircraft was able to glide far enough to exit the ash cloud, and all engines were restarted (although one failed again soon after), allowing the aircraft to land safely.
The risk for aircraft operations in the presence of volcanic ashes:
Ash clouds from volcanoes pose a threat to aircraft safety because the plumes are filled with abrasive silica-based materials that risk clogging up the engines and sandblasting windscreens. Traversing a high-altitude volcanic ash clouds with a plane may also spark an electrical discharge known as St. Elmo's fire, block speed sensors or disrupt the airstream as pulverized rock strips away paint.
According to Toulouse-based Airbus SAS, volcanic particles have a melting point that is below an engine's internal temperature, causing them to melt when they pass through an engine in midflight. This may clog turbine vanes and disturb the flow of high-pressure combustion gases, risking an engine stall, according to an Airbus flight operations briefing note.
Many other aircraft systems may be affected immediately, or over time, which are causing expensive repairs and may pose an immediate or delayed operational risk. These include for example clogged airspeed indicators, angle of attack sensors, pressurization systems, static ports, or various other external sensors of an aircraft.
The regulatory challenge for aviation authorities:
Civil Aviation Authorities (CAA) around the world are responsible for regulatory oversight of aviation. In terms of safety, they need to intervene when a dangerous situation threatens safe operations in air transport. Given the experiences in 1982 and 1989, the presence of volcanic ashes in the atmosphere represents such a risk. However, it primarily seems to affect flights in higher altitudes performed with modern turbine driven aircraft. The sanction is to order that air traffic services cannot accept any controlled flight in their air space, which virtually cancels all air travel on jet driven commercial aircraft. It does, however, not necessarily cancel or prohibit flights in uncontrolled airspace and in lower altitudes (usually, all flights above flight-level 180 (18,000 ft) are in controlled airspace) -> e.g. several test flights were conducted by various carriers in uncontrolled airspace, and many small private aircraft enjoyed training e.g. at Zürich International Airport this weekend, not being disturbed by airlines and when even the landing taxes have been cancelled (see picture below)!
Aircraft need to be operated by manufactures specification, which requires e.g. clean air for engine operations. Despite growing pressure from air travel groups such as the International Air Transport Association (IATA), the CAA said that all current jet engine manufacturers specify zero levels of atmospheric ash for safe flying. The CAA said that unless jet engine manufacturers changed their operating specifications, something it added was highly unlikely in the short-to-medium term, the restrictions would continue to apply. Addressing calls from some quarters of the European travel industry to lift or ease flight restrictions, a CAA spokesman said: "We need evidence to prove that it is safe to fly... we have evidence that ash adversely affects aircraft and at the moment the manufacturers' guidelines are zero rating with respect to ash." The spokesman said that it would be very unlikely that NATS, the British air traffic control provider, would lift restrictions in the current circumstances.
The economic impact of the flight cancellations:
The disruption is estimated to have cost airlines at least $200 million a day in lost revenues, said Giovanni Bisignani, director general and CEO of IATA. Airports have lost close to €136 million ($184 million U.S.) so far, said Olivier Jankovec, director general of Airports Council International Europe. More than 6.8 million passengers have been affected, he said. Many other services, such as catering or handling are affected, and will lose million of euros from this.
Next to direct losses on airlines and airports there are indirect and implied losses. Indirect losses are losses from related economic activities, such as tourism, and implied losses are created be secondary effects of the indirect losses (e.g. services to the tourism industry). No assessment can currently be done on these sort of losses, but should the crisis continue, their effects will certainly become an issue.
Finally, were some supply disruptions in manufacturing and services around Europe as cargo flights are also not possible.
All together, the closing of European airspace starts to provide dramatic evidence on how important air transportation has become for modern society and its economic activities.
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