The Airlines are moaning yet again crying into their meagre soup, telling us that when it comes to Icelandic volcanoes called Eyjafjallajokull and safety in the skies:
“airlines are best placed to take the final decisions on whether or not it is safe to fly”Yes, the people who run corporations (such as airlines) and have a legal duty to their shareholders to make money are of course the best placed to make this decision. And of course, “European governments [should] bail out the airlines with what ultimately is taxpayers' money” for not allowing them to fly last time around.
This is a bit like saying the Catholic Church is best placed to deal with paedophile priests, that the city is best placed to regulate itself and the laws that regulate the milking of taxpayers, that the best people to regulate the press in the United Kingdom are the press themselves - therefore the ‘toothless’ Press Complaints Commission should not have any legal powers, because a telling off is obviously enough. Indeed, why not exempt oil companies such as BP from environmental review when they go offshore drilling or let Nick Griffin and Abu Hamza draft our next set of legislation on race relations.
My solution to this quandary is simple. Get the airline owners/executives such as Stellios, Branson et al and their families into a plane and they can spend the next month repeatedly flying in and out of the ash cloud.
If after that month the engines have not been fused and these fucking leeches are still alive (between the ash and the airline food who knows what offers the better chance of survival?), then and only then should the government consider the possibility of allowing normal people to fly through an ash cloud or indeed compensating these greedy bastards.
In terms of the compensation a strict formula should also be followed:
Compensation = x/1,000,000,000
X in this case is whatever figure the airlines pluck out of the air (which must be limited to thirteen figures), and it might as well be plucked from the air. It’s not like they weren’t warned about ash clouds as the “International Airways Volcano Watch Operations Group…discussed three years ago establishing what might constitute "safe" levels of ash for aircraft to fly in…the aircraft manufacturers were reluctant to talk about the issue.”
So to summarise; they didn’t listen, it’s not their fault, they want their money back... and you’re going to pay for it. And if your plane crashes because of ash…that’s not their fault either because they never agreed anything in the first place so you can’t hold them to it.
On the plus side, with Eyjafjallajokull still grumbling, I can look forward to some beautiful skies clear of contrails (just like in the picture above), without the deafening roar of planes banking above my fucking house/head (and constantly ruining any attempt to listen to birdsong or the person I’m standing next to) and know that the air I’m breathing is less polluted.
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