Report and photo by Peter Clark
The volcano in Chile’s Puyehue–Cordon Caulle chain that erupted on 4 June managed to generate heat all the way across the Pacific. The media have fanned some rather less than cool remarks by airline executives.
The temperatures began rising in New Zealand a week after the eruption with the arrival of ash clouds brought by strong winds and jet streams; the initial ash plume reaching above 50,000ft. Volcanic ash particles come in a range of sizes, and while the biggest fall to earth quickly, very fine particles take a long time to settle. The eruption ejected these small particles high into the atmosphere where transoceanic air currents carried them eastward, eventually to New Zealand and southern Australia.
Disruptions to New Zealand flights started on 12 June with Jetstar announcing, “The safety of our passengers and crew is Jetstar’s number one priority. Jetstar will not be flying into airspace that remains affected by the ash cloud until we are confident that it is safe to do so. Our approach to flying is based on the Qantas Group’s high standards of safety and risk assessment.” Then Qantas confirmed this, reiterating a policy of not flying beneath volcanic ash cloud under any circumstances.
However up to eight other airlines, while also confirming their commitment to safety, continued flying. All the airlines based risk assessments on the same available information.
One of these airlines was Air New Zealand which continued operating virtually all its domestic and international flights. Domestic services simply flew at lower altitudes. Aircraft on international routes took off under the ash cloud and departed north until free of it so they could climb to higher altitudes and continue their flights. Air New Zealand acknowledged that “the extra distance involved required the use of 10% more fuel”, but said this “has meant customers were able to safely get to where they needed to go”. By working closely with the CAA, the Volcanic Ash Advisory service, the Metservice and others, the airline says it was able to safely make adjustments to flight paths and cruising altitudes so as to completely avoid the ash.
Air New Zealand general manager Airline Operations and Safety, and chief pilot, Captain David Morgan said, “It would have been far easier to simply cancel flights, and it’s taken a lot of effort by our operations teams to develop alternative flight plans to continue to get passengers to their destinations.”
Late on 16 June the ash cloud reached the south of the South Island at around 10,000ft, causing the closure of Invercargill, Queenstown, Dunedin and Christchurch for brief periods. But by the middle of the next day the cloud had moved east and Air New Zealand was back up to schedule again, while putting on extra flights to clear the backlog.
Meanwhile the hearts of aeronautical sentimentalists were warmed when the Southern DC–3 showed how the grace and toughness of age can still win out over brute size, jet engines and computer technology by coming to the rescue of the Crusaders rugby team when it needed to get to Wellington for a match with the Hurricanes while also ferrying other less illustrious travellers. The fares were uncompetitive, but the DC–3’s reputation as arguably the greatest aeroplane ever built was not diminished.
Then two weeks into the volcanic ash problems the heated words began. Air New Zealand CEO, Rob Fyfe, said that his airline was “constantly battling a series of malicious rumours emerging from the Australian market and fed to media”. These suggested that Air New Zealand had six ash–damaged aircraft hidden away in the back of a hangar somewhere, an ash–abraded aircraft grounded in Australia, and an aircraft requiring a nose cone replacement due to ash impacts. All of these were a complete fiction, and their source somewhat of a mystery.
Fyfe also took a swipe at Qantas, saying that an email from Qantas chief executive Alan Joyce to the airline’s eight million frequent flyer customers, justifying Qantas’s decision to ground many of its aircraft, implied that airlines like Air New Zealand and Virgin Australia were operating unsafely.
“What Alan omitted to mention was that it wasn’t just Air New Zealand and Virgin Australia that had managed to adapt their operations to operate safely in clear air, but all airlines apart from Qantas and Jetstar had managed to achieve the vast majority of their operations.
“What Alan also failed to mention was that Qantas was very happy to transfer thousands of its customers onto Air New Zealand and other airlines’ services, which seems a strange thing to do for your customers if you have concerns about the safety of the airspace.”
Then in the Business Herald on 24 June Jetstar chief executive Bruce Buchanan weighed in with an assertion that other carriers were operating in a similar way to Qantas, and a huge number of flights had been cancelled by competitors in the Australian market place. He went on to say, “One would expect also that Qantas being the airline with the best safety reputation of all airlines in the world would err on the side of caution more than any of the other airlines.”
So as we go to press the ash has now travelled around the world many times, and the volcano is still erupting. Airlines will be taking heavy losses and passengers have been severely delayed around the world by this eruption, with nearly all flights from South America to New Zealand and Australia having been cancelled for weeks. And we have seen few Qantas and Jetstar flights in our skies for most of a month. Potential passengers will be aware that once again nature has beaten the most modern and robust aviation technology.
The final word goes to Dr Andrew Tupper, head of the Volcanic Ash Advisory Centre in Darwin, as reported in the New Zealand Herald. He stated that he thought the cancellations were unnecessary as he knew of no documented evidence of engine damage caused by an ash cloud thousands of kilometres away from the ash.
- Published in the July 2011 Issue