It's a song by the Dixie chicks, but it was kind of appropriate for last weekend. To be fair, our "plight" was not exactly desperate, we were due to fly out on Thursday to Manchester and thence to Aberdeen, when the airspace was closed. Nobody was too sure what was going on, so we got ourselves rebooked onto the next flights on Friday, on the assumption that things would literally blow over.
Friday saw it worse, and it didn't look as though Manchester would be open all weekend, so we pored over the Volcanic Ash Advisory Service diagrams (who even knew this existed?) and reckoned that if we could get onto the Cork/Glasgow flight, both of those should be open, so we would stay put another day.
7:30 on Saturday morning, we found we had to change this plan of inaction. If we could get onto a 8:30 train to Belfast, we might make the 17:00 ferry to Stranraer and at least be in Glasgow by the evening. The rest of the day was spent effectively double-guessing whether we could make the next part of the journey, hoping not to miss one of our relatively short connections, and trying not to get too annoyed at the inconvenience. And 28 hours after we left, and having used 2 taxi's, 3 trains, 1 tram, 1 bus and 1 rickshaw (well, only joking on the rickshaw), we got back to Aberdeen. And we were still 3 days early compared to the airborne route.
Looking at it from the risk assessment point of view, it's quite interesting. The rule for ash was quite clear, any ash = no fly. From our point of view as process engineers, that's like saying that the lowest risk is when there is no production, although there is also no benefit either. It looks as though they are feeling towards a point where there is some risk, but how do you define if it's acceptable? Or as low as reasonably practicable? Are all the pilots and air-crew really on-board that it's now safe? Will Ryanair really do a full check on all engines after every flight? Is that reasonable? Practicable? Who's fault would it be if an emergency now happens? It'll be interesting to watch it as it goes on. As long as we can get away on our holiday in July.
