Originally Posted by
captainpaddy
Imagine a design fault which had caused over reported 100 incidents (and likely many more unreported) leading to damage and a combined total of hundreds of millions of dollars in reapir bills. One year alone had 23 incidents. 7 incidents involved engine failure including two with all engine loss but none resulted in accidents. The occurence of the issue could be loosely forecast but it was difficult to narrow down the exact conditions under which it would occur. The fact that 100 issues had occured at all suggests that inadvertent and unexpected recurrence was both possible and likely.
Interestingly, there is a phenomenon very much like you describe...
Bird strikes, we know broadly when and where they occur, they are estimated to cost aviation £1.2bn pa., have a recent history of causing complete and unrecoverable loss of power, and have caused fatal accidents and the loss of airframes in non-fatal accidents. (at least everyone so far involved with ash encounters has been able to get the engines going again!) Should we stop civil aviation during bird migration season? No of course not. We should take sensible mitigation steps. That is all people seem to suggesting - not that ash is not a problem - just the approach of closing down Europe was out of proportion to the risk.