Wednesday 21 April 2010

Contrails galore

With aircraft restrictions re-evaluated, it's contrails galore above Soton at the moment. It's been quite interesting to have the sky free of them for the better part of a week, but I say that as someone who's not flying next until mid-May. Anyway, perhaps my officemate, stranded since last week in the US, will make it back soon?

Needless to say, the Tories (and other reprobates) have been quick to turn what appears (at worst) over-cautious regulation into a great big political football. What's worse is that their shrill spokesperson is using the event as an opportunity to go off on one about "over-regulation". Given how overzealous some airlines have been with thousands of misplaced customers on their books, I can just imagine how deregulation will improve things. Either way, it's helpful to know that leopards really don't change their spots.

2 comments:

Anne said...

I remember how eerie, and how interesting, it is to have no air traffic. We experienced that here after 9/11, and as I live fairly close to a major airport, it really was noticeable.

Plumbago said...

That was the closest parallel I could think of too, but I don't remember it being so noticeable here because I think intra-European flights continued even while trans-Atlantic ones ceased.

As it happens, we went on holiday for 2+ weeks in France almost immediately after 9/11, so missed out on a lot of the fallout (so to speak). So our skies might have been quieter then for all I know.

Anyway, now that it's been decided that airplanes have a non-zero dust tolerance, things are getting back to normal contrail-wise.

As we've an election campaign going, it's actually almost as if the volcano never happened now - it was very much vice versa while the planes were still grounded. Which, given election coverage-overload was actually quite a relief.