Certification regime for ash tolerant aircraft
Having watched all this kerfuffle, which like the volcano itself is spewing forth a variable mixture of light, heat and crud of differing penetrability, I wonder what the ideal long-term outcome is.
It strikes me that the major problem is lack of definition of the problem. We do not know, except for a few datapoints, how airframes, systems and engines behave in volcano-contanimated air. Particulates and corrosive gases are not part of any certification regime. So, the questions are:
1. Is a total-avoidance reaction the most cost-effective? It's been a costly and frustrating exercise on this occasion, but if it's only going to happen once in a hundred years then the costs and frustration may be worthwhile.
2. If not, what do we certify for? What is the expected range of contaminants that may be encountered, and what within that range can be designed against?
A parallel may be the weather, where we have characterised a wide range of conditions and built systems that can be certified to work within a subset of those conditions. Aircraft carry sensors that allow pilots to make decisions on local data; ATC have access to more data and there are copious ways to create and apply a big picture that makes constant cost/benefit/risk analyses.
It's certainly feasible, these days, to imagine sensors both airborne and ground/space based that constantly check for a wide range of contaminants, and to have engines, airframes, etc, that are certified for operation under certain contaminated conditions. Such things would doubtless have reduced Eric Moody's value as an after-dinner speaker and would increase the burden of training and qualifying pilots, but neither is necessarily a deal breaker.
However, the overall costs of such a regime would be very large, it would take decades to implement, and like any extra layer of complexity would carry risks of its own. It would also create quite a lot of economic activity, which us SLF would doubtless bear... ah, well.
Would it be worth it? How can we tell?