I can't see any national security reason as to why information on the extent of the ash or volcanic gas should not be public. Show people the scientific evidence and they'll stop saying it's an over-reaction
My point exactly.
And as I fly hardware with spinning wings over my head, I tend not to exceed 7000 ft. So closing off the entire airspace without any concrete information about concentration levels and when they are considered to be dangerous and why, is pretty annoying.
I don't advocate finding the nearest ashcloud and drive straight through it, but after all sorts of knee jerk reactions to terrorism, illnesses and perceived threats, I am loathe to accept at face falue the simple closing of large areas of airspace "because we know it is safer".
Show me the proof, or at least show me the theory behind the caloculations. Stopping all SAR and HEMS because someone says we should not be flying to me is an overreaction when not substantiated by scientific evidence.
And what if it takes more than 4 days? What if it is 2 weeks? Are we then going to differentiate in which concentrations are safe enough to fly and which are not because the economy cannot sustain a total shutdown? What sort of evidence will we be using then?
I can understand not putting high speed IFR traffic into a risk area, but I do not believe that the entire airspace from the ground up towards the stratosphere contains enough ash to become a significant problem, and especially not in VFR/VMC conditions.