The Perils of Volcanic Ash

So the travel industry announced the other day that volcano Eyjafjallajoekull in Iceland has cost them £1 billion. As the dust – I mean ash settles – we are all counting the costs of the chaos that has affected over 1 million travellers worldwide.

The post-mortem has begun and questions are now being asked as to whether it was really necessary to shut airspace down for 10 days. The general opinion is probably not. The regulators had to err on the side of caution as the effect of the ash on the jet engines was unknown. However they probably could have carried out safety checks a lot faster, rather than waiting until weather conditions blew the cloud of ash away from Great Britain (and ironically back towards where it came from – Iceland!)

The airlines now have to cough up millions of pounds each in compensation to travellers forced to spend money (often extortionate amounts) charged by hotels around the world who took advantage of the situation and raised their room rates knowing people had no option but to agree to their raised tariffs.

That the airlines have to pay for this seems incredibly unfair. However I’m sure it will not be long before current legislation is changed so that if in the unlikely occurrence of a repeat scenario the airlines are exempt from footing the whole compensation bill.

In the long term I can only fear that the eruption of a volcano in Iceland is bad news for all travellers as airlines will all have to put up their prices to cover the millions of pounds they have lost due to volcanic ash.