easyJet - testing volcanic ash radar

This morning, easyJet  held a press conference to announce that  a solution might have been found to one of the problems that significantly affected us during April and May. The Icelandic volcanic eruption caused cancellations in Europe, disrupted travel plans and contributed to reduced economic activity. EasyJet said that the disruption cost them between £50 and £75 million. Two of my flights were cancelled and train services did well out of me, being able to charge higher rates than I would normally pay in order to get back home. Now easyJet think that this solution, called AVOID, could prevent a similar issue affecting us in the same way. And it is all down to Fred.

Fred is actually Dr Fred Prata, a scientist working at NILU (Norwegian Institute of Air Research) and he has been working on this technology since 1993. It is he who has developed AVOID which for the technically minded of you stands for Airborne Volcanic Object Identifier and Detector.

The problem, he explained, is not knowing how much ash was in the atmosphere. Opening a tin, he blew some ash into the air and Andy Harrison, Chief Executive of easyJet immediately said that no flights could travel as there was now an ash cloud!  Dr Prata’s solution is to use fast sampling imaging, infra red cameras attached to the tailfins of planes to detect ash up to 100 kilometres away. It sounded so simple they way he explained it.  Apparently you can split infra red light just as you can split ordinary light. If the amount of red is greater than blue then there is ash in the atmosphere. More blue and there is water and ice. If the amount of red is the same as the blue all is well with the world.  By measuring the amount of red, AVOID can assess the volume of ash.  That will help authorities to decide whether planes can fly and where. It could mean that there can be ash but we can fly around it or in thinly affected areas.

Fine in theory but will it work? This is where easyJet comes in.  It is spending £1 million on development work including attaching this camera to one of its planes,  a 4 engined (for obvious reasons) Airbus A340, and then it will fly into an area where there are ash particles. But, I hear you say, there is no ash in European airspace at the moment. Correct but Quito airport in Ecuador and Guatemala City airport are both closed due to ash activity.   So there will be ash somewhere that Fred and easyJet can use for the test. This will take place in the next 2 months. EasyJet then plans to put this on about 12 planes so it can gather much more information. With more information then, it is hoped that better models will enable those who regulate our airspace to make better decisions on when to ground flights. Or, as easyJet hopes, never to ground them to the same severity ever again.

And with Fred’s AVOID, it might just stop your flight being cancelled in the future if we are ever unlucky enough to have such a volcanic eruption again.

During the ash shutdown one academic vulcanologist appeared frequently on TV and in newspapers so we asked him for his thoughts on AVOID. 

Dr David Rothery, who chairs the Open University’s course on Volcanoes, Earthquakes and Tsunamis http://www3.open.ac.uk/study/undergraduate/course/s186.htm commented “The AVOID system is likely to be a very reassuring safety measure. If it works, as I believe it will, then no aircraft equipped with this ash detection system ever need blunder into an ash cloud dense enough to cause damage. However, this is not the complete solution for managing flights during a volcanic ash crisis. Commercial flights need to know where the ash is before take-off, so an appropriate route can be plotted that will get them to their destination. For example, a last-minute course change mid-way through a trans-Atlantic flight will certainly make the flight-time longer and may leave insuffiient fuel to reach the destination.”
Stressing the need for monitoring and tracking of ash by using satellite images as a way of completing the picture, and measurements of ash cloud heights and density with lidar instruments (a kind of laser radar), Dr Rothery added, “The industry needs to establish just how much ash a jet engine can tolerate. No safe threshold had been agreed before the Eyjafjallajokull ash cloud hit us in April, and that’s why so much airspace was closed for so long. This is not a “phantom menace” – engines DO fail if they suck in too much ash. The “safe” ash threshold of 2 milligrams per cubic metre was announced in rather a hurry after the first six days of flight bans, and I would feel more comfortable with a threshold based on longer study and agreed by the experts away from the commercial and logistica pressures of an ongoing flight ban.

All of you have probably heard of the strange case of easyJet at Liverpool’s John Lennon Airport where two passengers arrived with a man in a wheelchair. The problem was that he was dead and it looks as though the women, his wife and daughter, were trying to take him back to Germany. The taxi driver appears not to have noticed the fact that the man was dead but airport workers did. Now I could have believed that was an April Fool but human nature seems odder than you can make up.

The second case involves an announcement by a small, no frills airline in America called Spirit Airlines. They have announced that they are going to charge for carry-on luggage.  If you can fit the luggage under your seat you won’t have to pay. If it goes in the overhead locker then it can cost $30 (say £20) if you check-in online and $45 (say £30) if you pay at the gate. This airline only serves the USA and routes into the Caribbean and Columbia but it could cause an impact over here. You can bet you last quid (before the no frills airlines take it from me) that if Spirit succeeds in making this stick that Ryanair, easyJet and the others will try and introduce it here as well.   And we joke about what else they can charge for!

Finally some potentially good news. Air Asia, the no frills, long haul airline has announced that is altering some of its economy class seats so that they will become what they call, “flat-bed, premium seats. The bad news? On some prices I checked the single fair from Stansted to Malaysia’s Kuala Lumpur rose from £348 to £869 for one of these new seats. (this doesn’t include a UK tax of £65) What this really means is that a no-frills airline has introduced a business class ticket.  The daft thing is that this no-frills airline was beaten on price by Malaysian Airlines on an economy fare (I could save over £40) but is a lot cheaper on a premium economy or business class ticket. But most of us travel economy so which would you go for?

It looks to me that April Fools has every chance of becoming a year long event!

These awards are given by CI (www.consumersinternational.org) to highlight the use by companies of PR spin to make the public believe that they are environmentally friendly. In fact they go further. They say, and I quote, “It seems that many of the world’s biggest green house gas emitters think they can cover up their dirty tracks by trumepting minor ‘green’ schemes.” Fairly strong stuff. So what’s the crime?

EasyJet gets its award for claiming that its planes are greener than a hybrid car. CI goes to some lengths to point out the flaws in EasyJet’s argument. Briefly, Easyjet’s figures are based on having a full flight whereas its annual report says they fly at only 85% capacity. And it points out that the Advertising Standards Authority has already stopped EasyJet from claiming that its planes (some of the youngest in any airline) create 30% fewer emissions per passenger compared to others.

We all know that flying creates carbon emissions. Saying EasyJet creates less than some competitors would probably be honest.

So for exaggeration, they join the other winners, Audi, BP, Microsoft and the strangely named CO2 is Green.

 By voting you could also win but those prizes will be announced a bit later.

So for now, these are some of the winners.

You chose First Choice as the best short haul tour operator and Virgin Holidays as the best long haul one. Your best airport in the UK was Manchester Airport and overseas, Singapore. The best UK destination was Cornwall and your favourite country to visit was the USA. Your favourite citybreak destination was Barcelona and you thought that Dubai was the best tourist board. American Airlines was voted the best airline and Easyjet, the best no-frills airline. The best cruise company was Cunard and the best ferry operator, P & O. Shearings were voted the best tour operator for escorted tours and Thomson was voted the best in a number of categories including all-inclusive, best to the Middle East and the Med.

For the full list go to www.britishtravelawards.com/tip_awbf.php

Just a reminder. The survey about your future travel thoughts is open until November 30^th. We’ll send you a reminder a little closer to the time as well but you if you haven’t filled it in you can do so by going to www.britishtravelawards.com/tip_rp.php.

And thanks once again for voting. As soon as the winners amongst the voters is known, we’ll let you know.

At a time when airlines are having difficulty filling seats and losing money due to fuel prices and the inability to charge higher prices, airport landing charges are a sore point. Shouldn’t airports cut prices or at least, not raise prices and take some of the strain? too many have increased prices thinking they a market that will continue to use them come what may. these two airlines at least have thumbed their noses at particular airports.

Take note then of Kansai international Airport at Osaka in Japan. They have cut landing fees by 80% if airlines use either larger planes or increase the number of flights. The incentive lasts until March 2011 when most economists think we will be comfortably out of the recession. The airport wins, the airlines win as does the passenger since prices won’t go up.

It’s time airports in our part of the world considered something similar.