Ashcloud empties the skies – heavens above!

Well I haven’t attempted to fly anywhere just recently, which is probably just as well – because despite the gloriously sunny days, we are led to believe a huge plume of volcanic ash was lurking up there in the jet stream.  I bet someone will decide it is not at all dangerous some time soon.  In the meantime the skies above us are eeriely quiet.

Maybe there was an ash cloud – maybe there wasn’t.  It seems that everybody was not reacting to some ash that was actually there – but some ash that was there on some computer modelling.  And every time the airlines sent up a plane they couldn’t fins any ash.

I suppose it is good that the airlines erred on the side of safety.  But by the time they had all lost a few million quid they were pretty keen to get their planes back up there flying through whatever Icelandic volcanoes could throw at them.

The od thing is though that they don’t seem terribly keen to bring people back.  Now I am not overly sympathetic with people that have gone on holiday and then find they cannot get back thanks to an ‘act of God’.  But surely it is beholden on the nation’s airlines, not to mention the government, to get people back?

Here we are in an election month and the moribund Labour government can’t even organise a few plane to bring people home.  Apparently a couple of warships were stooging around the channel – and one even popped into Santander to pick up some troops and some disgruntled tourists – but that seems to be about as far as our glorious government has managed to go in bringing stranded people home.

All in all it is not terribly impressive.  I am sure that things will work out eventually.  But surely it would have been easy enough to take on the act of God and mount a rescue operation?   I mean think of the PR value.  At least somebody in the cruise line show a bit of initiative and sent out their shiny new cruise ship to practice on irate British tourists stuck in Santander.  And it seemed to work a treat.  Everybody was happy.  If only they told us who the cruise line were.