US Inbound Visits Decline 6% in 2009

For a tough year the US managed to eek out a smaller decline incoming than might have been expected. Year on Year according to the US TIA - the overall decline was 6%.

There are three reports that can be viewed.

To view the top states and cities visited by overseas travelers, go to: http://tinet.ita.doc.gov/outreachpages/download_data_table/2009_States_and_Cities.pdf

The 2009 overseas traveler profile may be viewed at: http://tinet.ita.doc.gov/outreachpages/download_data_table/2009_Overseas_Visitor_Profile.pdf

To see the market profiles, go to: http://tinet.ita.doc.gov/outreachpages/inbound.general_information.inbound_overview.html

There are some interesting characteristics that can be gleaned from the data.

Business Travel took a hammering - down more than a million visits and who dropped in market share to now around 20% of all trip visits. This reflected the major drop in transatlantic business travel which is reflected throughout the report. Leisure travel rose slightly. The needle didn't mover for many other points. For example advance purchase stayed the same. Average number of nights etc.

And what of 2010.

The rise in the dollar is going to hurt inbound in my opinion. The increase in the dollar against the Euro has been significant in 2010 and with the Euro zone in financial crisis we will see a slackening off of Euro visitors. This will be offset by a rise from Asia and Latin America but remember that Western Europe represents the largest proportion of visitors to the USA and double the number from Asia.

So US vendors selling inbound better sharpen your pencils at Pow Wow starting tomorrow.

Cheers

Dubai - Reset

The headline this morning may seem quite dramatic. Here is the coverage from ATWonline:

Emirates fiscal-year profit soars to $1.1 billion

Emirates Group reported net income of AED4.2 billion ($1.14 billion) for its fiscal year ended March 31, a substantial increase over a AED1.49 billion profit in 2008-09, marking its 22nd consecutive profitable year despite what it described as "a year fraught with worldwide market instability and economic uncertainty."

So this morning there are a lot of happy people in Dubai and smiles all round in that nice new building that is their HQ.

I was in Dubai for the Annual Arabian Travel Mart last week and I spent some time speaking to many people from the business, who live in the region and Dubai itself. While ATM was - shall we say a bit quiet - I don't have the numbers but as a seasoned show goer - it was quieter than I expected.

There has been a significant downsizing. Perhaps not of the total economy but definitely of people's expectations. The two ex-pat communities are both notably chastened by the bursting of the bubble. There is still a correction on-going. There are wonderful anecdotal tales of people whose job it is to move the tower crane so it looks like the building is still being built. What is not anecdotal are the canceled and delayed projects. Even the closely controlled newspapers are full or projects where the boosters are denying that they have been canceled. But suffice to say the boom curve is a lot flatter and a lot further out. Next month will see another mini-exodus of expats at the end of the school year. Some broken dreams will be realized.

Out at "The World" the essence of extravagance - there is but one lone property occupied. It looks a little forlorn but I am sure its owner is very happy.

For the travel marketplace - this will take some time to smooth out. There is an excessive amount of inventory that needs to catch up to the travellers. Strangely enough Dubai and Las Vegas share a lot more of issues than they might think.

However overall I am impressed with the way they have dealt with the bust. The taxi drivers sound a little happier (always a good sign). And the flagship of what the airline means to the rest of the world is giving them pride again. The price was heavy and will continue to be so. How much and exactly what form is unknown to all but a few.

Cheers

Is a Fee a Tax? The Aussies now know

The Australian Federal Court ruled in court this week that a Fuel Surcharge is not a tax (even though it has been listed in the fare rules as a tax like item). As a result of the ruling - the Australian agents will get a windfall of commissions due during the time the surcharges were first filed.

Whether the ruling is appealed (highly likely) and it makes its way all the way up to the Australian Supreme Court remains to be seen. But we are now seeing that the issue of what is a fare, what is a fee and what is a tax will need to have greater scrutiny.

For the US environment - the USA Internal Revenue Service actually ruled on this last year, declaring that ancillary revenues are not a fare and not a tax. Thus opening up the opportunity for every jurisdiction where an airline product is sold (absent pure airline transportation fares) or delivered to be taxed.

As you can tell the airlines are none too pleased with this ruling. But unbundling the fare into these buckets of fees etc was hardly likely to escape the scrutiny of the lawyers and the tax authorities. Indeed anyone who unbundles their products will be under scrutiny. (er hummm GDSs - are you paying attention here?)

I would caution on too much celebrating by the agents at this point. They will of course have to pay their own tax on this!

Cheers

Say Goodbye to 2 Storied Brands

Today as they say is the first day in the rest of your life.

It also marks the end of 2 storied airline brands. As regular readers know I am a bit nostalgic for airline brands.

Today Continental announced that it will be subsumed into United. Also at various press conferences and meetings over the past few days - Air Jamaica (Air Jam) has been consumed into Caribbean Airlines.

Somewhat sad but understandable.

Farewell both of you

Cheers

Open Travel Comes to Seattle - Where Are You?

Open Travel has its first full meeting in 2 years starting tomorrow.

With a good crew of technology luminaries from most of the major sectors. I was privileged to spend an hour with the board meeting today looking at where the organization goes next. Tomorrow we get into the meat.

No promises but I will try and do a follow up blog on what happened.

During the show Stephen Joyce and Dennis Schaal of TNooz will be tweeting and blogging. Further in the evening we have TCamp4 hosted by Gene Quinn and Dennis will aim to make sense of it all.

Hot on the Agenda already are Ancillary Revenues and the complexity of delivery into the market.

So what aren't you here?

Oh yes - I know its because you think it rains here all the time (OK so today it lived up to its reputation).

Cheers

Search vs Navigation?

Are you a control freak?

I am - well maybe just a little bit. What do you trust more - navigating down YOUR path or relying blindly on search - usually Google based on a specific site.

The answer is fundamental to how we build our sites and how we allow the user community into the site. If search was so good then theoretically we wouldn't need deep linking. But we know that despite the squillions that are spent on search it is still an imperfect art. Getting a lot better - but still pretty naff. And there is a good set of reasons to this. Most websites are still first generation affairs still relying on the same logic that got them onto the web in the first place. People got fat dumb and lazy and frankly scared to fix something. So company websites tend to be largely imperfect affairs of a spaghetti like mess of inconsistent blocks of data (don't you DARE call them information). The user is FORCED to hash through them looking for good quality data that they can use. If you don't believe me - just try searching for your number one product or attribute on your website and see what gets returned. Go on - try it - I dare you (with acknowledgment to the late Robert Conrad). I think it should be comulsory that a company's CEO and top management team must all sit in a room with their customer service staff and show them how well they navigate around their company's shop window - aka the website. It would be a wake up call.

For me - I pretty soon get cheesed off with the search facility on the site and almost always end up using navigation which in turn is inconsistent and often leads to to seeing SO many broken links and poor results. (Not to mention all the circular loops that poor nav leads me to).

The premise that any information is better than no information seems to drive a lot of people's thinking. It is why we all have Web ADD. WE just don't get a good experience so we keep looking until we get what we want. Or until we lose interest. Which seems to be the majority of the cases.

Back to our question of the day. Gerry McGovern's piece this week argues that Navigation is more important than search. Aha - for once I disagree with him. It is BOTH. They are the yin and yang of your business. You need them both and one without the other is to upset the natural rhythm of the universe. BUT you have to make sure that they work both in tandem as well as individually.

Too few people forget that - don't you be one of them...

So back to dealing with control freaks - here is a little article for you to enjoy.

Cheers and Happy Sunday.

Apple's iTravel May Have a Problem

Just for fun I searched the Apple site for the word iTravel. Seems that someone on the iphone app filed an app called this in October of 2007. They have a website hotelwidgets.com

So before everyone starts using the term iTravel they had better be careful

And its only Saturday!!!

Cheers

What Does Google Really Want From ITA?

So speculating on why Google wants ITA software ranges from the good to the bizarre.

The usual candidates are its Search Business, its software and its expertise. But I have another idea. In addition to the above - how about it wants to become a huge player in the overall travel space and can do that with the significant library of ITA's Patents

Let me list a two of them...

The Needlebase Patent - United States Patent 7668740

Fare Construction Patent US Patent 6263323

I wont spoil your fun by listing them all - but there are a lot of them. The categories range from payment to user interface to shopping as well as the obvious. And these are but a few. You can be darn sure that right now there are a bunch of lawyers pouring over these little gems.

And there are a whole lot more being filed and in the works.

Think about it.

If you are in the business of travel - perhaps you should be afraid now. If high priced Google patent pit bull attack lawyers get a hold of these - those of us in Travel Technology will have a very miserable life.

Scary?... Yup - now you see why that $1 billion number is not that bad.

Cheers

PSS and GDS Customers Might Want To Revisit Their Contracts

This is a salutory warning to those who interact with external (typically GDS based and PSS based) systems. This post should be read by airlines, travel agents and third party technology providers to the passenger industry.

In the overall scheme of things the unprecedented events since April 15th of the Volcano should cause those who pay bills to the GDSs for products and services to go back to look hard at their contracts.

If you have a contract that has threshold clauses in it - then definitely pay attention.

Let me pick on 4 customer types:

Airlines - IT Customers
Airlines - GDS - Participating Carriers (PCA)
OTAs - GDS subscribers
Travel Agents - GDS Subscribers

I also recommend anyone who has a signed GDS contract as a third party technology provider should also read this post.

In the next few weeks and months the airlines are going to be getting a lot of extra charges from, amongst others, Amadeus (the bills will come due after the IPO). Amadeus is on the record as saying that the volcano will have minimal impact on their IPO and are steaming ahead with it. What they didn't say was if the impact will be bad. It just may be - as more than one person who reads this blog told me - positive. The airlines didn't cause the mess but they are going to be paying for it no matter what. But all that extra processing is going to be an additional cost for the airlines. All those passengers who were checked in and then had to be "de-boarded" Hmmm that will be interesting to see how that works in those contracts. (PSST Hint to other PSS and airline IT vendors - if you didn't cash in on this gravy train more the fool you!)It is very important that the bean counters examine their invoices from their vendors VERY CLOSELY over the next few months to ensure that all the costs that are in the contract are correctly charged and that the Airline IT guys don't try and slip in some extras in there. I liken this to an unscheduled maintenance on a car. You get the bill and the estimate just doesn't match what you were quoted for!

For PCA based agreements - the cancellation costs that may be accrued needs to be carefully studied. Every airline accounts receivable person worth his salt better be on his toes. Also those nice bill auditors - people like Kale Consultants - should get into the act and make sure that they are poised to check and support their customers - the users.

For OTAs, the big ones at least, they should be OK (GDSs have a habit of turning a blind eye to larger users) - however head back to your contract and look at the threshold clauses. You will like be breaching them. Hitwise and others reported record breaking traffic which translates into a lot of extra hits for NO ADDITIONAL revenue. For smaller OTAs and those whose IBE is provided by a third party - indeed the 3rd party technology providers as well - go check out your contract. I just checked mine and I cringed. Fortunately I had no traffic on it last week!!!

For regular travel agencies whether or not you have an online presence via a booking engine, you need to make sure you have checked your activity. For those bookings that were canceled or re-booked by you - you should be OK. But for those cases where you helped your stranded clients and looked for viable options for them (because you are a customer service operation) and didn't generate additional GDS bookings - you will be hit by a double whammy - additional traffic and several days of no revenue.

With BA and others shutting out inventory, other airlines generating schedule change messages onto queues - there was an AWFUL lot of airline initiated traffic that resulted in extra hits with no corresponding revenue.

If you are one of these people - it may be a good idea to pull out your contract and have a deep look at it. If you are adversely affected - you might want to consider this next time you are sitting round the table whether its for a cold brew or its a hard negotiating session.

You have been warned

Cheers

BA Blames Others For Res System Snafus

In what must either be a simmering dispute between Amadeus and BA or Amadeus's failure to provide basic functionality to BA Reservations - Willie Walsh went on the offensive with his pleas to having customers be patient with BA as they rush to restore order and get people home.

Knowing a little about the reservations system - it would seem that either a rule could be written to cover how interline, codeshares and GDS based new bookings could use the system at a lower priority for BA's own customers. To wit - BA has an unused letter in its inventory bucket system which could be used to accommodate passengers who had existing reservations. "R". While my solution would be simplistic with a bit of jerry rigging the customers with existing tickets could be ticketed on a priority basis in R notional bucket ahead of any Y seats. only when R's were exhausted for a particular flight would the seats cascade down to open classes of seats. Yes it would take some effort but it would be a solution.

However it seemed all the bright sparks at Amadeus and BA couldn't figure out a system way to handle the customers who were stranded. Result - BA had to shut off all access to its seats for new customers and others alike. Turning it back on again has proved to be a little challenging. With reduced staff manning the check in process there are fewer people around who know how to fix it. Hats off to the boys and girls who work on the line in res who had to work all these queues!

In defense of BA - Willie is right - this whole thing was unprecedented. But airlines spend a lot of time creating and planning for disaster scenarios as existed. Well boys and girls we now have a new one to deal with. And it is likely to happen again. That Volcano could erupt for hundreds of years.

But let's also say that there has been a creeping issue which is now confronting airlines. Lack of Capacity. With an estimated 3-5 years of airframe production capacity now sitting parked in various deserts the reduction and better matched ASKs to RSKs - the capacity of the overall system to match seats in the situations such as we have seen becomes a lot harder. Airlines should go back and look at their scenarios on how they can plan for eventualities such as this. And don't forget that now there is a legal requirement to adhere to newer tougher rules - The EC Customer Protection which came into force in 2005 was enforced by the EC. Regulation (EC) No 261/2004.

For sure - the chaps who design and sell and more importantly manage PSSs should think of how they can deal with situations like this in the future. Welcome back to the world of FIMs and Reaccomodation. And don't forget the Law is going to be breathing down your neck.

Cheers

The Germans Are Coming (Again)

Deutsche Bahn - German National Railways - was at one time the world's most loss making travel business. Today it is the model of efficiency. The services are pretty good. I recently road the rails with them and was even more impressed than before.

Now it seems they are setting their sights across the waters to the UK Based pan European Bus and Train operator Arriva.

This would mark a significant expansion outside Germany for DB.

DB will be subject to some strict scrutiny not just by the regulators but by other European Short Haul transport operators - I am thinking Ryanair for one. How much of the State subsidies are used to fund these forms of acquisition is a touchy subject in Europe. The quasi government owned or subsidized entities have advantages. Not least of which is the underwriting of the risk in their core businesses. The BBC and its commercial arm BBC Worldwide Ltd (formed 15 years ago from the BBC Enterprises unit) competes with many commercial operators. And let's not forget the Boeing vs. Airbus battle.

So will DB be successful in its bid for Arriva? Probably. This is a business of enormous scale and with significant labour issues. Arriva alone has 34,000 employees.

Watchout... The Germans are coming!

Cheers

A Week In "Customer Service" Hell

According to my phone logs in and out - this week I have spent more than 22 hours of time "interacting" with Customer Service operations. These ranged from technology companies to financial services to airlines and hotels.

What a thoroughly unpleasant experience. I have come to the following conclusions:

After more than 15 years of full on internet - Customer Service has ceased to exist either by phone, chat and online.

Users have no choice but to use the web as the human customer service is so universally awful.

The damage done to brands is largely self inflicted.

The basic tenants of human decency have been replaced by fake concern and routine lying

Lying is an art form and comes in so many ways.

Perhaps I should have come to earth at a different time. Because the whole experience of talking to these people has been universally bad.

I realize I may not be the easiest person on the planet but trust me on this one - I tried all sorts of different tactics - being nice, being dumb, being assertive, it really didn't matter.

Of the more than 25 people I have spoken to - there was JUST ONE - who actually listened to my problem/issue and then worked with me to resolve it. But she was clearly off her script by that time. But thanks to her - something that had taken days to not resolve with some of her colleagues - she worked at it and (heaven forbid) even called me back to make sure it still worked.

So to all you customer service managers - or Chief Customer Contact Person - YOU SHOULD BE ASHAMED OF YOURSELVES.

Cheers

With SPECIAL thanks to Orange (subsidiary of France Telecom) for the image from their article on how to complain.

CO says "The Economy Rebounding Slowly" - But do we agree with them?

In the first quarter of 2010 - almost all the airlines reported their numbers. I note that the big 6 (WN, US, UA, CO, DL and AA) all had cautious words to say about their performance.

However I am not sure I agree with them. ARC's numbers for revenue/bookings not passenger's flown show differently.

The numbers show a very strong resilience in pick up from January onwards which in turn has shown a gradual rise from the low point of the middle of last year. Indeed March's numbers are at the same level for revenue and transactions as March of 2008 the previous best month on ARC record.

So to say the economy is rebounding in Continental's words "slowly" doesn't quite gibe.

But then I am just a passive observer...

Cheers

Welcome To Earth Day - Boy Is She PO'd

Mother Nature - (aka Mother Earth) should be happy with us. We are starting to do some real things to address the damage we have done to our environment.

BUT is it enough and is it too late?

Probably not to both questions but here is a short list of some things we can do to change behavior and stop abusing our home. These are all easy and good things to do.

1. Stop using Plastic Bags. At my house we have a bag holder. It used to get filled up, we had to get another one. Now it is rarely filled and the only thing that goes in there is the newspaper protector. I ALWAYS (or at least try to) refuse to get a plastic bag at any retail point. My car is now full of those recycled bags and I put a little note on the dashboard to remind myself - "Got Bags" before I go into a store. This is something you can do.

2. If its less than a mile WALK. Stop using cars for short trips. If its less then 3 miles - the bike it.

3. Reduce the food waste. Try this experiment. At the end of each meal pile all the unused food onto a plate and put it on a scale - then see how much you wasted. Doing this every day for a week see if you can reduce the amount by both cooking less and eating the things on your plate. In my household we have reduced the amount we throw away to almost nothing. Do the same thing in a restaurant. There is no shame in sharing meals or ordering 2 appetizers rather than a grossly filling main course.

These are 3 easy things you can do.

Remember my motto - Avoid, Reduce, Repurpose and Recycle.

This is good for all of us.... try it today

Cheers

ARC Numbers - A Robust Q1 - Ash Impact

The numbers from ARC are in for March and I have had a chance to review them. I think they look pretty good. What is interesting is that yields are actually running higher than in a long time.

The headline numbers for the month of March/YTD are pretty encouraging:



So now we are seeing some real improvement lets keep fingers crossed that (absent Ash) the market is on the up trend.

BTW I did a quick back of the envelope job on the total number of passengers affected. So far if we assume that the average plane affected has a capacity of 200 passengers (considering the mix of transatlantic large planes and European single aisle craft - this is a good number). Strangely enough my numbers (average of 1.1 million pax a day impacted) differ slightly from IATA. But I suspect that the word impacted means that some passengers were delayed as opposed to outright lost flights. Air4Casts was also using 1.1 million pax a day that I believe is the right number. So using IATA's numbers that is 7.2 Million passengers in 6 days. Ouch.

The US wont be as badly impacted although this is the largest portion of the international non-continental traffic. But still the global number also affects the GDS. Using the global number of 7.2 Million tickets and some very broad numbers - here is the estimate of GDS impact:

7,200,000 Tix total
3,600,000 GDS Tix
8,280,000 Segments
57,960,000 GDS lost Revenue @$7

Ouch - and the majority of that loss was from Amadeus.

Cheers

Ryanair Right To Hold Off Another Day?

Seems that everyone is back in the air playing catch up with their flights. But one noticeable exception has been Europe's largest carrier by passenger numbers. Ryanair.

They have been far more careful than the other carriers. FR has been running a full schedule from their Southern and Eastern bases but the core of the network based in the North of Europe has been shut down for the better part of a week.

They also have a better DOC model and less overhead costs to carry. Thus they can operate more directly tied to their flights and carried passengers.

But did they err too much on the side of caution?

Their stranded passengers might think so, but they might just have made the right decision. Only time will tell. Their numbers will definitely take a big hit because they have less capacity spare to play with.

Cheers

GDSs Start Modifying Terms and Pricing - Welcome to the New Model that you will pay - Unbundled and of course More Expensive.

"So how would you like your GDS PCA today sir - you can have it anyway you want it as long as its black." (And profitable to me).
"This is a really old bike good for only one thing, it is not modern and can do very little ... I will give you only a few measly pennies.." "What it was your beloved ancestor's prize possession - then take less not more for this old heap of iron scrap...."

For some time now those airlines (that are astute and are tightly managing their costs) have probably noticed that their total flow of money to the GDSs are - well let's not put too fine a point on it - expanding.

In preparation for the ancillary revenue model that are emerging the GDSs are taking different tacks with regard to the cost model. Some are unbundling and others are now "adjusting" their fee structures.

One thing is for sure. The GDSs are determined not to be left out of this gravy train. They are going to be charging a lot of money for ancillary revenue services if they can get away with it. I predict a showdown is coming between the GDSs and the airlines over this. The GDSs are already putting out stories on how much new infrastructure they are putting in place to make themselves ready for AR. Travelport is taking a different tack from its competitors and is sticking well and truly with the IBM model by buying a whole load of new zTPF boxes.

As one IT wag told me several years ago after evaluating the zTPF system - he made an interesting point. For the first time in his memory (he had started with TPF version 2.X) - zTPF was going to run effectively the same Operating System but with no new functionality added. Seems like the old boys in Hursley (near Winchester) are finally being pensioned off.

But I digress..

The issue is going to be how the GDSs price the ancillary services. Will they do it fairly and equitably? And here they stand at a reasonable risk. If they price it at zero or essentially little charges then they will have a hard time in cost recovery. If they price it too expensively - the airlines wont distribute the AR products via the GDS and will resort to new channels and more flexible yet cheaper alternatives like Direct Connect tools.

The Airline accountants (now somewhat dusted in ash) are going to be looking for more places to save money. The GDS better play nice. For the coming IPOs this year - this represents a bit of a threat. The world is not quite as homogeneous as it once was.

Better pay attention to this one chaps... it wont be a nice and easy model. As the old adage goes - "Fool me once shame on you, fool me twice shame on me." Think of that when you stand across and start negotiating over that big old iron.

Cheers

The UK Government vs the Will of Willie Walsh

This whole episode fascinates me. The issues confronting the decision makers are very complex and not easy to discern and that is before making decisions.

It seems pretty evident that BA management took a calculated risk that the government and its various organs could be manipulated if presented with a fait accompli. This is exactly what they did. They carefully planned how they could make the UK airspace open. Considering the evidence in front of them there was a relatively low risk. In my humble and not very educated opinion there was minimum risk at any time to the passengers. If anyone didn't want to take the flight they could exit and not step on the aircraft. Lufthansa decided yesterday to start flights against the advice of their authorities - again with minimal risk. In doing so they forced their government's hand. BA therefore made the same decision (albeit a little more hurriedly. So with 28 or so aircraft that headed north or eastwards - the aircraft duly arrived over UK airspace. Finally some time around 2000 the UK Government and NATs agreed to open the UK airspace. However by then some of these planes were already out of fuel and landing in a wide variety of places - BRU, SNN, CDG amongst others. A few brave souls who had put on extra fuel and had the temerity to wait it out started to arrive to a closed UK Airspace. The first to actually land was BA84 from Vancouver and it circled over the Isle of Man for nearly 90 mins before finally making its way and landing before the scheduled opening of the airspace.

The rest is history.

Now we have the UK government in the form of lord Adonis playing damage control.(As an aside here is a definition...Myth & Legend / Classical Myth & Legend.. Greek myth a handsome youth loved by Aphrodite. Killed by a wild boar, he was believed to spend part of the year in the underworld and part on earth, symbolizing the vegetative cycle...) given his political gyrations perhaps not such an inapt name...

But beware ... the issue of the aircraft and the damage remains an unknown quantity.

So indulge me a little here and let me make a plea to the whole industry. We don't know enough and we are not doing enough to measure the ash cloud and its impact. The one or two empirical evidence sources we have are not enough to draw on conclusively. We should be sending aircraft into the cloud in the same way we have hurricane hunter aircraft. Not enough study of this phenomenon is being made.

For some results taken a few days ago by a German research aircraft go here:
http://www.bmvbs.de/Anlage/original_1134440/Report-of-Falcon-Flight-19-April-2010.pdf

At the very least this aircraft D-CMET and its UK counterpart D-CALM should be up there testing the atmosphere every day.

Clearly the current rules are not adequate and we are not doing enough to coral the issues into cogent decisions.

Whether Willie and his boys are right or wrong is not the issue. It is whether we know enough to let them be right or wrong. To err is human to forgive divine but not over the souls of innocent passengers either today or at some point in the future if an engine that wears out prematurely breaks down.

Cheers - I hope

First Into LHR - BA84

Looks like the Canadians win...

My spies on the ground (Thanks Professor Mike) confirm they hear 747 engines

So who called it?

Congrats to BA for the b*lls to hold the planes in the air for that long.

And best to the pilots and crews of the planes that will arrive at British Airports tonight.

Cheers

For the Geeky Lot - Volcanic Ash Reading Material

As you can imagine the Professor is wont to follow the world through the eyes of an academic. While I have a day job this is way too good an opportunity to see what else is out there in terms of scientific knowledge.

So in the interests of those of you who are also a little geeky - here are two documents that you might want to read.

The first one is the formal ICAO document on the standards and expected impact of Volcanic Ash. The subject has been studied and is known to have harmful effects. So ICAO (the official UN body on aviation) has reports for each of its major areas. This is the formal contingency plan. So far the adherence to the plan seems to have been somewhat spotty at best - however this is SUPPOSED to be the rule book. Have a fun read here:

http://www.paris.icao.int/documents_open/show_file.php?id=274

The other document is associated with the formal review of an accidental fly through a cloud - as it turned out also over another of Iceland's Volcanoes. The case was ten years ago when a NASA plane inadvertently flew through a cloud that had shifted further than planned and right into the flight path of a NASA DC8-73. it took me a while to find this after I saw a reference to it - but this is the original document from NASA (there is another copy on the ALPA pilot's site also.)

http://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi.ntrs.nasa.gov/20030068344_2003079762.pdf

This is a good document to describe the actual impact of what really happens.

Enjoy both of these...

Cheers