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Wednesday, 21st April 2010
So it was the airlines fault all along !!
So, Today, Europe is flying.
And on the day when most of Europe is finally re-opening its skies and airports, some extremely interesting information is coming to light.
We've all read the reports how the airlines have been putting pressure on the various European governments
in the last two or three days, worried about their mounting daily losses and lawsuits and insurance claims from stranded passengers, not to mention the expensive hotels they had to keep many of those passengers in.
And the inference in many quarters is that the final lifting of the flying restrictions is as much to do with Eyjafjallajoekull calming down as it is to do with the pressure the airlines have been putting on European governments.
Well, well, well. What do we learn today ?
If the airlines had provided the scientific information they had been asked to provide over the last 5 years, the flying restrictions might not have happened at all. As simple as that !!!
for quite a few years the various Aviation Authorities of European countries have been having meetings asking airlines and airplane manufacturers for their latest data on
safe flying through volcano ash !!! And guess what happened : most of the time the airlines and manufacturers........ would not turn up ! Why ? Because they were afraid of revealing that their latest scientific data showed that modern planes could have a much higher tolerance to volcanic ash, then see one of their planes going down in volcanic ash, and then be sued to extinction by the relatives of the crash victims !
So rather than work together with the various European Civil Aviation Authorities to arrive at
modern ultra safe level recommendations, the airlines and airplane manufacturers simply refused to take part and thereby forced Civil Aviation Authorities worldwide to continue working on 20 to 30-year old data. And it is only the prospect of financial meltdown caused by the
Eyjafjallajoekull eruption which, finally, this second week into the eruption, forced these airlines and airplane manufactures to hand over
modern and recent scientific data which in turn allowed all European countries to re-adjust their safety levels and re-open their skies late yesterday and this morning.
So, just like the financial crisis of late 2008 and last year, where the world suffered because the big financial boys played money games till it crashed, another World disaster was caused purely by........... self-interest again.
Human beings don't change, that's for sure.
And the irony of it all : this morning airlines are now publicly asking for
a greater say in the setting of safety levels. What !!!!! After being the architects of last week's mess, and while in the middle of suing the EU for bailout money (seen this word before??), they're asking us to trust them !!!!!
What did I just say : Human beings don't change, that's for sure.......
And, another absolutely crass move : in the UK, which is in the middle of an election, the Tory party, knowing full well the details I've just written about above, are now trying to make political gain by flooding the news blaming the current Labour government for having shut UK air space when it was [supposedly] clear all along that airplanes could fly through those levels of volcanic ash.
Give me strength !
—— (TUT) SpaceMan
Saturday, 17th April 2010
The Whole of Europe grounded
Well, didn't I predict it in my blog on the day of the eruption ?
On day 3 of Eyjafjallajoekull's eruption, the whole of Europe is now grounded. And it is now official : even World Wars did not have this effect on aviation.
23 countries !
Stunning.
And, as I predicted, at the lowest level sport teams from all types of sport are unable to travel and UEFA has now stated that it will announce on Monday whether it
Farmers in Kenya are throwing away matured crops destined for Europe, tulip growers in Holland can't ship their beautiful tulips around the world, people holidaying on the ski slopes in Switzerland are stranded unable to get back to their jobs, many of our own clients who'd flown abroad for the Easter weekend are stranded as far away as Florida, Bermuda, or South Africa, and computer parts manufacturers in China, Vietnam, and Taiwan, where, collectively, 80% of all computer parts are manufactured (motherboards, CPUs, hard disks, memory), are unable to fly their goods to anywhere in Europe.
It's mayhem !
What a lesson in humility from Eyjafjallajoekull !
Meanwhile, as a mark of respect for Eyjafjallajoekull's immense power we are offering all visitors to AnswersThatWork, a 4-day discount period for
The Ultimate Troubleshooter of 40%. So, get on it, check
and, if you like it, don't forget to use the coupon name
EYJA when you order to get your 40% discount. Offer ends
Saturday at midnight.
Ciao,
—— (TUT) SpaceMan
Thursday, 15th April 2010
One volcano, One worldwide economic and aviation disaster
The news this morning, driving to work listening on the radio, was staggering : all UK airports closed because of of the spectacular ash eruption from the volcano in Iceland.
Initially the news was that all airports would be closed till this afternoon.
When I got to the office the Internet chatter, that wonderful thing, said that all airports would now remain shut till tomorrow morning Friday.
Then the news started filtering that all Nordic countries, Iceland, Sweden, Groenland, Denmark, Norway, Finland, had also shut down all their airports.
Then Holland, Belgium, and Northern France were affected.
Then the whole of France shut down quickly followed by Germany and Luxembourg.
At the time I am writing this Spain is now shutting down. I'm sure its next door neighbour, Portugal, will follow suit soon.
I am now reading that all US Air Force bases in all affected countries are now shutting down all flights
for at least two days.
It all makes sense — volcanic ash kills aircraft engines, pure and simple. When a plane's engines stop, the plane crashes. It's that simple. It is that deadly !!!
It gets worse : Icelandic volcanologists, possibly the best in the World, are now saying that this could continue for days, if not weeks.
I speak 4 languages, so I checked newspaper websites in those four countries and they're all the same : going into the minutest details of
stories of thousands of travellers stranded in their airports.
And this is what the World media is concentrating on.
But, to my mind, because of the spread over most of Western Europe this is a
worldwide disaster.
Consider this : if all these countries are shut down this means that all flights TO these countries are also grounded. So we're not just talking outgoing flights, but flights from Denver, New York, Los Angeles, Shanghai, Tokyo, Osaka, Johannesburg, Dubai, Rio de Janeiro, Mexico City, Sydney, Lagos, Calcutta, Mumbai, Jakarta, Buenos Aires, Toronto, Vancouver, Montréal, Wellington, and Taipei going to or refueling in London, Paris, Berlin, Amsterdam, Brussels, Copenhagen, Oslo, Stockholm, Helsinki, Dublin, Vilnius, Madrid, Lisbon, Riga, and Luxembourg City,
are all grounded.
This is a Worldwide economic and aviation disaster, make no mistake about it.
At the most un-thought of level it means that football teams in France cannot travel from one end of the country to the other, it means Champions League football matches can't happen, it means London theatres suffering badly because they depend so much on Nordic tourists, it means beautiful Scotland suffering because it too depends heavily on Northern Europe tourists. At business level it means airborne worldwide freight hitting a massive halt, it means DHL, Fedex, and UPS grounded completely, it means delay in international postal deliveries, it means businesses hit hard by freight, goods, deliveries, or business partners not arriving and not leaving.
Some airlines will collapse, that's a certainty, but, also, in our totally connected world, companies around the world will fail as they might have been living on the edge already, in our already tough times, and now their goods worth millions of dollars are stuck at Lagos airport, at Melbourne airport, at Chicago O'Hare, at Charlotte North Carolina, at Dubai airport, at Cairo airport (Hello Marks & Spencers!), at Sao Paulo airport, and for as long as they are stuck in those airports they can't get paid ! As I write this there are thousands of business men and business women frantically working out their alternatives, meeting up with bankers, etc...
It's a total utter disaster, and it's worldwide.
And all of this because of........ one volcano !
This really shows how small we are when nature has a big moment !
And we thought only a World War could shut down all airports on an entire continent......
Eyjafjallajoekull. A name to remember !
—— (TUT) SpaceMan
Monday, 12th April 2010
Going Back to The Future
The other day I was riding the bus to work and saw a very odd sight : 3 people reading the newspaper, page by page, from front to rear page, and exchanging opinions about the news.
This was such an odd sight I could not help check it out out of the corner of my eye.
For a start those 3 people were..... school kids going to school, 12 to 14 years old max (so difficult to tell sometimes).
Now, am I living in a different planet or wasn't this an odd sight ?!! This is 2010, isn't it ?
There were loads of other school kids on that bus, all being normal, by which I mean talking, laughing, on their cell phones, on their iPhones, on their iPods, on their MP3 players, some playing games on their cell phones, you know what I mean, but these three.......... They stood out from the rest, standing up, in an island in the middle of the bus, reading the newspaper, discussing the latest Space Shuttle flight ("57,000 miles per hour, Wow!"
one said), the Moscow Transit bombings, and the elections. And they reflected the make-up of London too : one was Asian, another one was Black, and the third one was White.
What a strange sight.
I'm buying a newspaper tomorrow morning. Dunno about you but I for
one certainly don't want to miss out on The Future....
Cheerio
—— (TUT) SpaceMan
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