TURIN I'm sorry, but your comment presents exactly the same ignorance that prompted the knee-jerk reaction. The two well known cases were both the result of aircraft flying into a dense eruption cloud in the close vicinity of a volcano in IMC. It can be compared to inadvertantly flying into a CNB, and you don't shut down all the airspace over a continent just because a few scattered thunderstorms are forecasted for the afternoon.
Yes, volcanic ash is damaging to jet engines, just like sand from sandstorms (just ask the engine shop at DXB...), but in the widely dispersed concentrations experienced during the lockdown it was purely an economic issue rather than a safety one. Had the lockdown not happened, there would likely have been more engines off the wing sooner than planned, but that is a risk each airline would have been perfectly capable of deciding for and managing themselves. Save for a few denser patches of ash floating on occasion over Scotland and Scandinavia (which were perfectly trackable and constantly monitored by the respective met offices) the rest of the continent was perfectly safe, the airspace closure was nothing more than mass hysteria.
Last edited by andrasz; 15th Oct 2020 at 09:45.