Captain Paddy
When I made my comments to you they were more in relation to ongoing eruptions of the Volcano and ongoing periods of airspace closure.
Such a situation would be untenable for aviation if passenegers did not know if going on a busiess trip or holiday might not see them back in the UK for days and the Airlines having to pick up the tab for hotels and costs every time.
There would be no uniformity of operation and with all the other problems and expense that would incur would infact mean that the airlines might as well be grounded.
I take your point that very low levels of Ash would be difficult to see but then are very low levels a hazard? You dont know, I dont Know and as far as I can see the authorities dont really know either.
In Alaska the airline has experience of working around volcanic ash. Interesting that they limit flight to daylight so I presume that more is visible to the pilot of threat densities of ash than many have given credence too.
But that is the big question! what is a threat density of ash?
At the moment the authorities have upped the zero levels a little and I am sure are monitoring what is going on in the field.
With the fighters they have only claimed evidence of ash not damage as yet.
Fighters spend a lot of time up and down sub 20k while us jet jockies spend most of our time above 20K. Fighters probably have higher IAS low down so maybe more prone to lower levels of ash?
Pace