I was thinking much more of the aviation authorities, who I understand set policy, guidelines and rules that the airlines should follow. I'm completely unsurprised that the airlines were incredulous when the safe limit was set as zero
The standard was set by the industry and merely applied by the government bodies.
Surely any plan to continue airline operations through closed airspace (for whatever reason - eg 9/11 US airspace shutdown) would be illegal and threfore somewhat unwise to put on record.
Any explicit plans to lobby / pressure / bribe poliiticians to lift flight bans is probably in the same category.
Its the industry problem to deal with, not politicians, the world can survive without airlines for a few months, they can go bust and new ones setup. Its the airline managements responsibility to see their business is not affected, not government.
The area closed and the impact on travel would have been well know, they were doing drills for this event. When they did the BIA the financial impact would have come up in red to any airline who were doing their duty. You would expect a better response than hoping it won't happen, something along the lines of what is now happening, putting sensors on commercial aircraft that can scan up to 150km away and determine the risk precisely. A few million here and there would have saved ten times the amount - if they had done it in advance.