Iceland's revenge has been smothering Europe for almost a week now, and the airline industry is reportedly losing $280 million a day. Naturally, they're keen to stop losing money, so today saw some carefully staged test flights, followed by stock declarations that the planes were not damaged and everything was fine. The message is clear: the European airline industry wants to be rid of "silly" flight restrictions.
But this is a real problem - take a look at these photos of what the ash did to the innards of a Finnish airforce jet's engines. If they start flying again, the risks of an accident will significantly increase. The airlines don't care about that, because they're insured - insured for the cost of replacing the plane, and insured for the cost of compensating the relatives of dead passengers. And so they're willing to gamble with their passenger's lives in order to avoid going out of business.
Preventing this sort of corporate sociopathy is exactly why we have government.
