Originally Posted by CargoOne
...And who told that airspace shutdown was a tough decition? Those who did it have nil chance to be personally fined and jailed for this.
Well....this applies even more to people resting in their arm chairs uttering something like "What the hell...only hysterical overreacting cowards everywhere....let them fly, and if some drop out of the sky, who cares"....
The risks of flying through volcanic ash clouds is well documented by various incidents. Its a KNOWN RISK.
The risk level in dependence on the particle concentration, composition of the ash cloud, etc might be not fully understand, but 'real life experiments' with thousends of passengers to assess this risk 'in more detail' are definitely not the way to go.
So the 'better safe than sorry' logic of the desicion makers is the only right option in my eyes. And in contrast to the 'arm chair dare devils', those guys might actually feel responsible for aviation safety and also have a fair chance of being sued if anything happens.
As already suggested above, real test flights are the only option to assess the risk more precisely. Now is the perfect time to do this. This KLM flight is the right step forward.
Regards, ihg