John,
I wouldn't say "nice" of your photo as my understanding of nice means something diffrent from clearly broken aircrafts. But a great shot!
Now, on the 1st. picture I can see what looks like a Longranger hovering/landing in the background, and I am curious as to know what sort of damages that sustained or what kind of "anti volcanic-ash-kit" it was equipped with? Clearly, if the ash does not melt to glass(looks like powder to me) on the ground, then landing in half a foot of "it" with a helicopter would kick up some dust that eventually finds it way into the engine, no?
Saturday, KLM, Lufthansa, Airfrance and some other airlines took off with various aircrafts and flew sectors in their respective countries (KLM with a 737 with it's CEO on board) to see the effects on the aircrafts engines and the rest, without finding any damages whatsoever. I am not talking about that they were chasing the ash cloud, but they flew normal routes. THIS is diffrent to flying through the heart of the cloud that you can see with your own eyes, like the examples that has been re-told/re-aired (BA009 on Disc.) 200 times the last 3 days.
It's about
concentration (ie. PPM) and size of the ash that will be a factor, or we have been flying around eating ash for many years unknowingly. As for the last 30 years there have been some fairly heavy eruptions around the world, which have produced a lot of ash over the years. I will not list them again... Google.com
These particals stay in the atmosphere for years and don't all come down within a matter of a few days if someone think that (of course the main parts of it will come down, but not everything)
Maybe 2010 ought to be the year, we all stopped flying as a precaution, hell then the tree-huggers would be happy too as all the bad CO2 from the aviationsector would stop and the planet is finally saved!!
