Bruce Wayne
...... I've bough and sold a number of commercial jet engines over the past few years. One, off wing from a 737 had 9 T1 blades melted through, but you know what, the engine still made its EGT's in limits in the test cell.
There are, and always be contaminats in the air, many of these are destructive to engines over time and as such there are TBO limits on blades, disks, hubs, bearings, shafts etc becuase of this.
Shutting down an airspace over an unknown contaminant level, not knowing where it is, or even what levels are acceptable in terms of everyday exposure is simply crass and destructive to the industry.
Is North African airspace shut down due to dust storms which regularly sump sand over the UK ? do other countries which have regular volcanic activity shut down airspace completely?
We have ASHTAM's they should be used.
Finally some data to put things in perspective
The safety first crowd and running a business with maintainence related decision making can finally come to an agreement
with data and a risk management approach.
The aviation industry, manufacturers, operators and regulators know how to manage safety and what data is necessary. Unfortunately it is taking too long to sort this out but we will get there.
We just seem to get conflicting view points in discussion forums like this from folks who have no experience in risk management.
The cloud is neither black nor white