CAA Quango admits that 'Grounding may not have been necessary'

Channel 4 news report that:

'The Civil Aviation Authority has told Channel 4 News the grounding of aircraft caused by the ash cloud may not have been necessary if rigorous engine testing had been done previously.

...

he CAA's Richard Taylor told Channel 4 News: "We didn't know then (last Thursday) what we do know now. The kind of testing that has been done over the past four or five days has never been done before.

"The data was never analysed to the extent that we know what we know now.

"So if you ask me if aircraft would have been grounded last week, probably not."

Mr Taylor said that flights had been resumed over the UK because "engine manufacturers are now happy with the current concentrations (…) It wasn't until late yesterday afternoon that the engine manufactuers told us they were content with the testing data."

A similar explanation emerged from the National Air Traffic Service (Nats), the body with responsibility for implementing the shutdown.

A Nats source told Channel 4 News: "The science has been complex to try and find a way to do the analysis between the engine manufacturers and airframe makers."

They explained that last night they had "looked at the coordinates on where the cloud was, using the new densities."

The source continued:"This has been an unprecedented situation, with a lot of pressure on a lot of people."

Today's comments by the CAA and by Nats confirm the view of Bill Voss, chief executive of the independent Flight Safety Foundation, who said yesterday: "It is an incredibly serious oversight that research has never been carried out into what levels of volcanic ash pose a risk to planes."

In the last few days around 40 European airlines carried out test flights, including British Airways on Sunday. Their results suggested that the risks to aviation are not as high as computer models predict.

A test by German operator Lufthansa "did not find the slightest scratch on the cockpit windscreens, on the outer skin, nor in the engines," according to company spokesman Klaus Walther.'

So thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands of people inconvenienced, some seriously, and there might have been no need.

It seems that the 'ash cloud' scare was about as well based as avian flu, swine flu, AIDS and climate change - all were/are massively over-hyped and the reality is at variance with the computer modelled predictions. When will people remember - GIGO = Garbage In Garbage Out?