This latest news report is some completely self-seeking publicity by "scientists" for their own works. Possibly at a time when government financial support for various projects, scientific and otherwise, is being reduced, we should expect more such.
If the scientists were saying that the huge no-fly area was completely inaccurately calculated, and scientists should have identified what was done was a nonsense, fair enough. But they don't. This is about them playing a part in predicting volcanic eruptions in the first place and how likely this is. They are saying that they would have predicted the Iceland volcano as more likely than was believed.
What would be even more useful would be if they had predicted by scientific means that after 999 volcano eruptions in recent years which were handled fine, the 1,000th would result in ludicrous behaviour by civil servants who do not know one end of a volcano fromn the other.
Clever presentation of the press release allows a perception to be made to many that they are saying that if we had paid more attention to scientists, there wouldn't have been the disruption. It comes over like this in this morning's TV summaries which show a backdrop of thousands sat in departure lounges, the implication being that we would not have been sat there, delayed, if scientists had been listened to. Reading the report fully (which few will do) shows they don't say any such thing.